ABSTRACT

Jonathan Swift returned to Ireland in August 1714 to take his oaths to the new monarch, resume his role as vicar of Laracor, and assume his duties as Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin. Even when he eventually adopted an Irish voice, he commonly found himself speaking from the margins of power to those who ruled Ireland. Spurred by political developments, he interrupted work on Gulliver's Travels in 1724 to write his most brilliant and successful political tracts, later collected as The Drapier's Letters. The incoming Whig ministry acted, and some of his friends then reacted, as if they wanted to confirm Swift's deep conviction of human fractiousness and factiousness. He returned under suspicion, tarred by the actual or apparent Jacobitism of some of his closest associates. Swift was slow to recognize that the smoke tainting him originated in an actual fire. His conviction of his own integrity made it hard for him to grasp how much circumstances told against him.