Queen's student makes remarkable find of Jonathan Swift
Pat Miller, a mature student studying for her Master's degree in English at Queen's University Belfast, has made a remarkable literary discovery. She has found long-lost documents connected to 18th century Irish author Jonathan Swift during her research at Armagh Public Library.
Pat has found the long-missing fair copy of a Memorial sent to Swift by Archbishop King, on the subject of the First Fruits and Twentieth parts. This document by Archbishop King was prepared for Queen Anne in 1710 to propose that the tythe payments made to her be cancelled. "As part of a Research Methods module I was taking, archivists from libraries and museums around Northern Ireland visited us at Queen's. As a result I learned about the Swift archive at Armagh Public Library and subsequently arranged to visit it," Pat explained. "The Armagh Public Library's Swift archive holds six well-documented letters from Swift to Archbishop King on the ecclesiastical subject of the 'First Fruits and Twentieth Parts' and a first edition of Gulliver's Travels, annotated by Swift in his own hand.
While I was there, I was shown another anonymous archive that Assistant Keeper Carol Conlin explained had been looked at by a number of academics but that she thought might help my project work. "The papers had the appearance of a scrapbook and on studying closely each page I found a folded document. When I opened this, it was clearly different to the rest of the archive's and in a different hand. Its title was A Memorial about the First Fruits and Twentieth Parts made payable to Her Majesty out of the Ecclesiastical Benefices of Ireland. "Further research led me to believe that this was the original Memorial from Archbishop King to Swift, of which two versions rewritten by Swift are well-documented."
The mother of three from Cultra in County Down is delighted with the discovery and particularly proud of the communications she has been receiving from one of the world's leading authorities on Jonathan Swift and his correspondence, Dr David Woolley, who lives in retirement in Australia. "Dr Woolley was very excited to hear I had discovered the original First Fruits Memorial; on the telephone he told me 'I had made his day'," Pat enthused. "He told me that this Memorial was thought to have ended up in Swift's waste paper basket!"
Pat Miller checks out a book "The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift", edited by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Dr David Woolley.
The original Memorial has never to date been in the public domain and this important find will now allow Swift scholars a new opportunity to consider exactly what Swift changed in his drafts and his possible motives for these changes. In addition, Pat also made a second important discovery, when she identified a previously unknown manuscript by the Reverend John Lyon that is of great significance to biographers of Swift. A protege of Swift, the Reverend Lyon catalogued Swift's library and during the final years of Swift's life was the custodian of his person and had unlimited access to all his papers. "After studying the manuscript I believe that what I have found is a detailed account of a particular episode in Swift's career that Lyon was preparing for publication," Pat proudly states. The discovery will form the foundation of the PhD thesis that researcher Pat hopes to begin at Queen's once her MA work is completed next summer. In addition, she has just completed an academic paper on her find, entitled appropriately, The Contents of Jonathan Swift's Waste Paper Basket Recovered.
source - http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/TheUniversity/GeneralServices/News/PressReleases/
In 1710, on the persuasion of the primate of Ireland, Swift solicited the queen for a remission of the first-fruits and twentieth parts to the Irish clergy. In doing this he was joined by the Bishops of Ossary and Killaloe, but the matter was to be left entirely in his hands in case the bishops left London before it was brought to an end. Starting on his journey to London on the first of September, he reached Chester on the 2nd, and there wrote the first of the letters in his Journal to Stella. When he reached London he was full of bitterness against the fallen Whigs who had neglected him, and on the first October he wrote Sid Hamet's Rod, a lampoon on Lord Godolphin. On the 4th he was introduced to Harley, and by Harley he was presented to St. John. Between him and these two ministers a warm friendship commenced. Almost at once he became a close adviser, and was admitted to the meetings of the ministry. On the 10th November 1710 appeared Swift's first number of The Examiner, in which, till the 14th of June 1711 "he bore the battle upon his single shield" - a battle in which he found opposed to him all the friends he had made on his previous visits to London - Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, Burnet. But he was more than a match for them all, and one after another he planted his rankling shafts in the bosoms of Wharton, Somers, Marlborough, Sunderland, and Godolphin. Against Wharton he poured out the very vials of his wrath in his Short Character of the Earl of Wharton. In the midst of the turmoil he did not forget the mission on which he had left Ireland, and at length, owing to the influence he acquired over the ministers he brought it to a successful issue just at the moment the bishops recalled his commission on the pretext of putting it in the hands of the Duke of Ormond.
Originally published in The Cabinet of Irish Literature, Dublin: 1880
