The next few months witnessed one of the most amusing hoaxes ever perpetrated against the quackery of astrologers, the victim being a Protestant alarmist and plot vaticinator styled John Partridge. In Jan. 1708, Swift, under the name of Isaac Bicker staff, issued a solemn prediction that the notorious almanac maker, Partridge, would die at 11 o'clock P.M. on March 29, and on March 3o he published a letter confirming this prophecy. Partridge's fatuous denial and reply to Bickerstaff elicited Swift's amusing Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., in April 1709. The episode has left a permanent trace in literature, for when, in 1709, Steele was to start the Tatler, it occurred to him that he could secure the public ear in no surer way than by adopting the name of Bickerstaff.
From Feb. 1708 to April 1709 Swift was in London, urging upon the Godolphin administration the claims of the Irish clergy to the first-fruits and twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), al ready granted to their brethren in England. His having been se lected for such a commission shows that he was not yet regarded as a deserter from the Whigs, although the ill success of his repre sentations probably helped to make him one. By Nov. 1710 he was again domiciled in London, and writing his Journal to Stella, that unique exemplar of a giant's playfulness. In the first pages of this minute record of a busy life we find him depicting the decline of Whig credit and complaining of the cold reception accorded him by Godolphin, whose penetration had doubtless detected the precariousness of his allegiance. Within a few weeks he had become the lampooner of the fallen treasurer, the bosom friend of Oxford and Bolingbroke, and the writer of the Examiner, a journal established as the exponent of Tory views (Nov. 1710). He was now a power in the State and the associate of ministers on a footing of perfect cordiality and familiarity. For a brief time he seemed to resume the whole power of the English press in his own pen and to guide public opinion as he would—his serv ices to his party as writer of the Examiner, which he quitted in July 1711, were even surpassed by those which he rendered as the author of telling pamphlets. We need not suppose that he was consulted respecting the great Tory strokes of the creation of the twelve new peers and the dismissal of Marlborough (Dec. 17n), but they would hardly have been ventured upon if The Conduct of the Allies and the Examiners had not come first.
Generous men like Oxford and Bolingbroke cannot have been unwilling to reward so serviceable a friend, especially when their own interest lay• in keeping him in England. Swift still had formidable antagonists in the archbishop of York, whom he had scandalized, and the duchess of Somerset, whom he had satirized.
Anne was particularly amenable to the influence of priestly and female favourites, and it must be considered a proof of the strong interest made for Swift that she was eventually persuaded to appoint him to the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. In June 1713 he set out to take possession of his dignity, and encountered a very cold reception from the Dublin public. The dissensions between the chiefs of his party speedily recalled him to England. He found affairs in a desperate condition. The queen's demise was evidently at hand and public opinion was turning towards the Whigs when the Tories manifestly could not be trusted to maintain the Protestant succession. Bolingbroke's brain teemed with the wild est plans. Swift's mediation was unavailing.
When the discord of Oxford and Bolingbroke had become patent to all the nation, Swift, foreseeing, as is probable, the impending fall of the former, retired to Upper Letcombe, in Berkshire, and there spent some weeks in the strictest seclusion. This leisure was occupied in the composition of his remarkable pamphlet, Some Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs, which in dicates his complete conversion to the bold policy of Bolingbroke. The utter exclusion of Whigs as well as Dissenters from office, the remodelling of the army, the imposition of the most rigid restraints on the heir to the throne—such were the measures which, by recommending, Swift tacitly admitted to be necessary to the triumph of his party.
Bolingbroke's daring spirit, however, recoiled from no extreme, and, fortunately for Swift, he added so much of his own to the latter's ms. that the production was first delayed and then, upon the news of Anne's death, immediately suppressed. This incident only just anticipated the revolution which, after Bolingbroke had enjoyed a three days' triumph over Oxford, drove him into exile and prostrated his party. Almost the first acts of Bolingbroke's ephemeral premiership were to order him LI,000 from the ex chequer and despatch him the most flattering invitations. The same post brought a letter from Oxford, soliciting Swift's company in his retirement; and, to the latter's immortal honour, he hesi tated not an instant in preferring the solace of his friend to the offers of Bolingbroke. When, a few days later, Oxford was in prison and in danger of his life, Swift begged to share his cap tivity; and it was only on the offer being declined that he finally directed his steps towards Ireland, where he was very ill received. The draft on the exchequer was intercepted by the queen's death.