1 Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Forbes, who was afterwards attainted for his share in the Rebellion of 1745.

2 Obscure (cf.  Letter 7, note 30).

3 Jacob Tonson the elder, who died in 1736, outlived his nephew, Jacob Tonson the younger, by a few months.  The elder Tonson, the secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, published many of Dryden’s works, and the firm continued to be the chief publishers of the time during the greater part of the eighteenth century.

4 John Barber.

5 By his will Swift left to Deane Swift his “large silver standish, consisting of a large silver plate, an ink-pot, and a sand-box.”

6 I.e., we are only three hours in getting there.

7 Cf.  Letter 15, note 9.

8 The Examiner was revived in December 1711, under Oldisworth’s editorship, and was continued by him until 1714.

9 James Douglas, fourth Duke of Hamilton, was created Duke of Brandon in the English peerage in September 1711, and was killed by Lord Mohun in a duel in 1712.  Swift calls him “a worthy good-natured person, very generous, but of a middle understanding.”  He married, in 1698, as his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Digby, Lord Gerard, a lady to whom Swift often refers in the Journal.  She outlived the Duke thirty-two years.

10 See August 27th, 1711.

11 William Fitzmaurice (see Letter 11, note 19).

12 The Duke of Shrewsbury (see Letter 3, note 32) married an Italian lady, Adelhida, daughter of the Marquis of Paliotti, of Bologna, descended maternally from Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite.  Lady Cowper (Diary, pp. 8, 9) says that the Duchess “had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, though she would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency; . . . but then, with all her prate and noise, she was the most cunning, designing woman alive, obliging to people in prosperity, and a great party-woman.”  As regards the name “Presto,” see Letter 2, note 11.

13 Probably a cousin.

14 Presumptuous:  claiming much.

15 See Letter 13, note 15.  John Winchcombe, a weaver of Newbury, marched with a hundred of his workmen, at his own expenses, against the Scots in 1513.

16 Thomas Coke, M.P., of Derbyshire, was appointed a Teller of the Exchequer in 1704, and Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen in 1706.  In 1706 he married—­as his second wife—­Mrs. Hale, one of the maids of honour (Luttrell, v. 411, 423; vi. 113, 462; Lady Cowper’s Diary, 15, 16), a lady whose “piercing” beauty it was, apparently, that Steele described under the name of Chloe, in No. 4 of the Tatler.  Jervas painted her as a country girl, “with a liveliness that shows she is conscious, but not affected, of her perfections.”  Coke was the Sir Plume of Pope’s Rape of the Lock.

17 The committee of management of the Royal household.

18 Francesca Margherita de l’Epine, the famous singer, and principal rival of Mrs. Tofts, came to England in 1692, and constantly sang in opera until her retirement in 1718, when she married Dr. Pepusch.  She died in 1746.  Her sister, Maria Gallia, also a singer, did not attain the same popularity.