Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/20

8 Cloyne observed as well as I; but that little instrument of theirs did use all his power to misrepresent your grace, and your cause, both in town and city, as far as his narrow sphere could reach. And he spared not to say, that your grace had personal resentment against him; that you sought his ruin, and threatened him with it. And I remember, at a great man's table, who has as much influence in England as any subject can well have, after dinner came in a master in chancery, whom I had before observed to be a principal person in Doctors Commons, when your grace's cause was there debating; and, upon occasion of being there, fell into discourse of it, wherein he seemed wholly an advocate for Christ Church; for all his arguments were only a chain of misinformations, which he had learned from the same hand; insomuch that I was forced to give a character of some persons, which otherwise I should have spared, before I could set him right, as I also did in the affair of the late dean of Derry, which had been told with so many falshoods and disadvantages to your grace, as it is hard to imagine.

I humbly presume to say thus much to your grace, that, knowing the prejudices that have been given, you may more easily remove them, which your presence will infallibly do.

I would also beg of your grace to use some of your credit toward bringing to a good issue the promise the queen made, at my lord bishop of Cloyne's intercession, to remit the first fruits and tenths of the clergy; unless I speak ignorantly, for want of information, and that it be a thing already done. But what