Chronology
1667 On 30 November, Jonathan Swift, the son of English parents, is born in Hoey’s
Court, Dublin, his father having died a few months earlier.
1673 Swift is sent to Kilkenny College.
1682 Swift enters Trinity College, Dublin.
1686 Swift graduates BA speciali gratia.
1688-9 William of Orange invades England by invitation; James II flees to France and
subsequently establishes himself in Ireland. After Trinity College suspends its
session, Swift flees to England.
1689 Under family patronage, Swift is employed by Sir William Temple, a retired
diplomat and statesman, at Moor Park in Surrey; there he meets Stella
(Esther Johnson), then a girl of eight, and becomes her tutor.
1690 1 July, William III defeats James II at the Battle of the Boyne; James flees to
France, and Swift returns to Ireland to seek preferment.
1690 Ode. To the King, Swift’s first published poem.
1691 Swift returns to Moor Park as Temple’s secretary.
1692 Swift graduates MA at Hart Hall, Oxford.
1693 An Answer to a Scurrilous Pamphlet, Swift’s first prose publication.
1694 Swift leaves Moor Park and is ordained priest in Dublin; he is appointed to the
Church of Ireland prebend of Kilroot, in a largely hostile Presbyterian area,
near Belfast.
1696-8 Swift returns to Temple’s service at Moor Park; during the next three years,
he writes The Battle of the Books defending Sir William’s role in the
controversy of the Ancients and the Moderns, as well as most of A Tale of a
Tub and the Discourse concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit.
1699 Death of Sir William Temple; Resolutions 1699. Swift returns to Dublin as
domestic chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lord Justices of Ireland.
1700 Swift is presented to the vicarage of Laracor, near Trim, co. Meath, and
prebend of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin; he publishes his edition of Sir
William Temple’s Letters.
1701 Swift returns to England and publishes A Discourse of the Contests and
Dissensions, as well as his edition of Sir William Temple’s Miscellanea:
The Third Part; meanwhile, his poem “The Humble Petition of Frances
Harris” is circulating in manuscript.
1702 Swift graduates DD at Trinity College, Dublin; Esther Johnson and her
companion, Rebecca Dingley, move to Dublin. On the death of William III,
Queen Anne ascends the throne; England and her allies declare war on
France (War of the Spanish Succession).
1704 Swift publishes A Tale of a Tub and its companion pieces.
1707 Swift is appointed a Church of Ireland commissioner to solicit from Queen
Anne the remission of the First Fruits; while in London, he becomes
known to a large circle of literati, including Addison and Steele, as well
as to men in power.
1708-9 Swift becomes involved in the Bickerstaff Hoax; he contributes to Steele’s
The Tatler, and publishes his edition of Sir William Temple’s Memoirs: Part III.
The signing of the Barrier Treaty keeps the Dutch in the alliance; in June,
Swift returns to Ireland.
1710 After the fall of Lord Treasurer Godolphin in August, Robert Harley comes
to power as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Swift arrives in London, beginning
the Journal to Stella. After the Tories’ landslide victory in the general election,
he agrees to support Harley and his new Ministry. In November, he starts his
career as the Government’s chef de propagande with a series of thirty-three
weekly papers, The Examiner; he resumes old friendships and becomes close
to Dr Arbuthnot and Matthew Prior.
1711 Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; in November, Swift publishes The Conduct of
the Allies, a withering attack on the Dutch. During a crisis over the peace
negotiations, he circulates his anti-Whig libel, The Windsor Prophecy, his most
fateful poem, which angers the Queen and hinders his preferment in the
Church of England; meanwhile, he becomes closely involved with Hester
Vanhomrigh (Vanessa). Harley is made Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer,
whereas his antagonist John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, is dismissed.
1712 Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty, another attack on the Dutch; split
between Oxford and Secretary St John, who is made Viscount Bolingbroke.
1713 Cadenus and Vanessa, by which Swift tries to cool Hester Vanhomrigh’s
passion; Oxford obtains for him only the Deanery of St Patrick’s, not in the
Queen’s gift; Swift is installed in Dublin. He attacks Steele’s Whig journalism
in The Importance of the Guardian Considered and the deist philosopher
Anthony Collins in Mr Collins’s Discourse of Free-Thinking Put into Plain
English. The Scriblerus Club, including Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, Parnell,
and Oxford as members, establishes itself; Swift’s friendship with Pope leads
to cooperation on The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus to satirize dullness and
pedantry (published in 1741). A Peace Treaty with France is signed at Utrecht.
1714 The Harley-Bolingbroke Ministry disintegrates. Having published another
attack on Steele, The Public Spirit of the Whigs, attracting a price of £300 on
the head of the author, Swift retires to Letcombe Regis in Berkshire. Oxford is
dismissed. On 1 August, Queen Anne dies, and George I accedes to the
throne; Bolingbroke, too, is dismissed. Swift leaves for Dublin in August and
takes up residence in his Deanery. He continues working on The History of the
Four Last Years of the Queen, begun in 1712.
1715 Bolingbroke flees to France and takes service with the Pretender. He is
impeached, together with Oxford and the Duke of Ormond. A Jacobite
Rebellion erupts in Scotland.
1717 Oxford’s impeachment is discontinued, and he is released.
1719 Declaratory Act establishes the British House of Lords as final Court of
Appeal for Irish suits and asserts the right of the Westminster Parliament to
legislate for Ireland.
1720 Swift publishes his first tract on Irish affairs, A Proposal for the Universal Use
of Irish Manufacture; its printer is prosecuted. With the South Sea Bubble
crisis exploding, Jacobite conspirators in England try to exploit it; Swift’s
friend, Bishop Francis Atterbury, is committed to the Tower. A patent is
issued to the ironmonger William Wood for the manufacture of copper coins
for Ireland.
1721 A manuscript of part of Gulliver’s Travels circulates among Swift’s friends. Sir
Robert Walpole is made Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.
1722 The publication of Wood’s patent provokes Irish protest.
1723 Vanessa dies. Atterbury is found guilty ‘of high crimes and misdemeanours,’
and another friend, John Lord Carteret, jockeyed out of power by Walpole.
1724 Swift attacks the British Government for Wood’s patent in his Drapier’s
Letters and becomes a national hero in Ireland. Carteret arrives in Dublin
as Lord Lieutenant, responding to the Letter to the Whole People of Ireland
by offering a price of £300 for the discovery of the Drapier. The reward goes
unclaimed.
1725 Carteret calls the Irish Parliament to announce the surrender of Wood’s
patent.
1726 Swift arrives in London with a transcript of Gulliver’s Travels. He stays till
August, chiefly with Pope at Twickenham but also with Gay, meets with Prime
Minister Walpole and finds him unsympathetic. On 28 October, Gulliver’s
Travels is published, after Swift’s departure for Dublin.
1727 Swift is back in England for his final visit, from April to September; the first
two volumes of the Pope-Swift Miscellanies are published. On the death of King
George I, his son George accedes to the throne.
1728 Stella dies. After Stella’s death, Swift spends eight months with Sir Arthur and
Lady Anne Acheson at their seat Market Hill, source of the Market-Hill poems.
The third volume of Miscellanies is published, and Swift collaborates with the
priest and schoolmaster Thomas Sheridan on the periodical, The Intelligencer.
Pope’s Dunciad, with its inscription to Swift, appears.
1729 A Modest Proposal
1731 Verses on the Death of Dr Swift is composed (published in 1739), as are some
of the misogynist and misanthropic poems (A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to
Bed, Strephon and Chloe, and Cassinus and Peter as well as The Beasts’
Confession to the Priest and The Day of Judgement).
1732 The fourth volume of Miscellanies is published, as are The Lady’s Dressing
Room and various tracts on Irish affairs.
1733 On Poetry: A Rapsody.
1735 Bolingbroke retires to France. The Dublin printer, George Faulkner, brings out
the four-volume edition of Swift’s Works. The Dean makes his will.
1736 A Character, Panegyric, and Description of the Legion Club; Swift fails in his
attempt to publish The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen.
1738 A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation is published in
Dublin and London.
1740 Swift makes his last will.
1741 Letters to and from Dr Swift.
1742 On 17 August, Swift is declared ‘of unsound mind and memory,’ and his affairs
are handed over to trustees.
1744 Alexander Pope dies.
1745 Directions to Servants is published. On 19 October, Swift dies in his Deanery;
he is buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Epitaph he composed is carved
and placed according to his instructions. His fortune, which he had determined
to devote to ‘public use,’ flows into the foundation of St Patrick’s Hospital, ‘a
House for Fools and Mad.’