10 Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, a staunch Tory, had quarrelled with the Government and the Court.  On Dec. 7, 1711, he carried, by six votes, an amendment to the Address, to the effect that no peace would be acceptable which left Spain in the possession of the House of Bourbon.  Harley’s counter-stroke was the creation of twelve new peers.  The Whigs rewarded Nottingham by withdrawing their opposition to the Occasional Conformity Bill: 

11 This “Song” begins: 

     “An orator dismal of Nottinghamshire,
      Who had forty years let out his conscience for hire.”

12 The Conduct of the Allies.

13 Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and fourth Earl of Lindsey, was created Marquis of Lindsay in 1706, and Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven in 1715.  He died in 1723.

14 Lady Sunderland (see Letter 27, note 21) and Lady Rialton, ladies of the bed-chamber to the Queen.

15 Hugh Cholmondeley (died 1724), the second Viscount, was created Viscount Malpas and Earl of Cholmondeley in 1706, and in 1708 was appointed Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household, an office which he held until 1713, in spite of his Whig sympathies.  “Good for nothing, so far as ever I knew,” Swift wrote of him.

16 Prov. xxv. 3.

17 See Letter 31, note 8.

18 Thomas Parker, afterwards created Earl of Macclesfield, was appointed Lord Chief-Justice in March 1710.  In September 1711 he declined Harley’s offer of the Lord Chancellorship, a post which he accepted under a Whig Government in the next reign.

19 The Bill against Occasional Conformity.

Letter 37.

1 The proposed visit to London of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the renowned General, and friend of Marlborough, was viewed by the Government with considerable alarm.

2 Swift’s “An excellent new Song; being the intended Speech of a famous orator against Peace,” a ballad “two degrees above Grub Street” (see Letter 36, note 11).

3 Robert Walpole was then M.P. for King’s Lynn, and Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.  He had been Secretary at War from February 1708 to September 1710, and the Commissioners of Public Accounts having reported, on Dec. 21, 1711, that he had been guilty of venality and corruption, he was expelled from the House of Commons, and taken to the Tower.

4 William King, D.C.L., author of the Journey to London in 1698, Dialogues of the Dead, The Art of Cookery, and other amusing works, was, at the end of the month, appointed Gazetteer, in succession to Steele, on Swift’s recommendation.  Writing earlier in the year, Gay said that King deserved better than to “languish out the small remainder of his life in the Fleet Prison.”  The duties of Gazetteer were too much for his easy-going nature and failing health, and he resigned the post in July 1712.  He died in the following December.