Jonathan Swift's Memoirs of a Jacobite

Abstract

The Irish-born satirist and pamphleteer Jonathan Swift, Church of Ireland Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral Dublin, was a juring High Churchman, yet he was involved in publishing the memoirs of an Irish Jacobite soldier in Scotland, a work which is in part a printed apologia for Episcopalian Jacobitism. The remarkable book was Memoirs of Capt. John Creichton. Written by Himself, an octavo volume of 170 pages, first published in 1731. It is an instance of Swift 's sympathy, indeed elective affinity with a Jacobite community of allegiance. This essay will consider aspects of the work and contend that Swift 's involvement with Creichton's memoirs was prompted by his High Church confessional politics which was the principal lens through which Swift viewed the Revolution in Scotland, Ireland and England. Swift had a three kingdoms perspective. He fully supported Anglican opposition in 1686–8 to James II's attempt to repeal the laws and Test Acts against Roman Catholics and Protestant nonconformists and to the King's exercise of the prerogative through Declarations of Indulgence. He wrote that the Revolution of 1688 was justified, but that in its consequences ‘the Prince of Orange's expedition … produced some very bad effects, which are likely to stick long enough by us’. Show more