Jonathan Swift | Anglo-Irish Author And Clergyman - Britannica

Career as satirist, political journalist, and churchman

After Temple’s death in 1699, Swift returned to Dublin as chaplain and secretary to the earl of Berkeley, who was then going to Ireland as a lord justice. During the ensuing years he was in England on some four occasions—in 1701, 1702, 1703, and 1707 to 1709—and won wide recognition in London for his intelligence and his wit as a writer. He had resigned his position as vicar of Kilroot, but early in 1700 he was preferred to several posts in the Irish church. His public writings of this period show that he kept in close touch with affairs in both Ireland and England. Among them is the essay “Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome,” in which Swift defended the English constitutional balance of power between the monarchy and the two houses of Parliament as a bulwark against tyranny.

In London Swift became increasingly well known through several works: his religious and political essays; A Tale of a Tub; and certain impish works, including the “Bickerstaff” pamphlets of 1708–09, which put an end to the career of John Partridge, a popular astrologer, by first prophesying his death and then describing it in circumstantial detail. Like all Swift’s satirical works, these pamphlets were published anonymously and were exercises in impersonation. Their supposed author was “Isaac Bickerstaff.” For many of the first readers, the very authorship of the satires was a matter for puzzle and speculation. Swift’s works brought him to the attention of a circle of Whig writers led by Joseph Addison, but Swift was uneasy about many policies of the Whig administration. He was a Whig by birth, education, and political principle, but he was also passionately loyal to the Anglican church, and he came to view with apprehension the Whigs’ growing determination to yield ground to the Nonconformists. He also frequently mimicked and mocked the proponents of “free thinking”: intellectual skeptics who questioned Anglican orthodoxy. A brilliant and still-perplexing example of this is Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1708).

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A momentous period began for Swift when in 1710 he once again found himself in London. A Tory ministry headed by Robert Harley (later earl of Oxford) and Henry Saint John (later Viscount Bolingbroke) was replacing that of the Whigs. The new administration, bent on bringing hostilities with France to a conclusion, was also assuming a more protective attitude toward the Church of England. Swift’s reactions to such a rapidly changing world are vividly recorded in his Journal to Stella, a series of letters written between his arrival in England in 1710 and 1713, which he addressed to Esther Johnson and her companion, Rebecca Dingley, who were now living in Dublin. The astute Harley made overtures to Swift and won him over to the Tories. But Swift did not thereby renounce his essentially Whiggish convictions regarding the nature of government. The old Tory theory of the divine right of kings had no claim upon him. The ultimate power, he insisted, derived from the people as a whole and, in the English constitution, had come to be exercised jointly by king, lords, and commons.

Quick Facts Pseudonym: Isaac Bickerstaff (Show more) Born: November 30, 1667, Dublin, Ireland (Show more) Died: October 19, 1745, Dublin (aged 77) (Show more) Notable Works: “A Modest Proposal” “A Tale of a Tub” “Argument Against Abolishing Christianity” “Drapier’s Letters” “Gulliver’s Travels” “Journal to Stella” “The Conduct of the Allies” “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift” (Show more) See all related content

Swift quickly became the Tories’ chief pamphleteer and political writer and, by the end of October 1710, had taken over the Tory journal, The Examiner, which he continued to edit until June 14, 1711. He then began preparing a pamphlet in support of the Tory drive for peace with France. This, The Conduct of the Allies, appeared on November 27, 1711, some weeks before the motion in favour of a peace was finally carried in Parliament. Swift was rewarded for his services in April 1713 with his appointment as dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.