Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/372

Rh by the yard, and might have been so agreed for.

Philip Savage, esq., as chancellor of the exchequer, demanded fees of the commissioners of the revenue for sealing writs in the queen's business, and showed them for it some sort of precedents; but they, not being well satisfied with them, wrote to Mr. South, one of the commissioners (then in London,) to inquire the practice there. He sent them word upon inquiry, that fees were paid there upon the like cases; so they adjudged it for him, and constantly paid him fees. If therefore there was a fault, it must lie at their door, for he never offered to stop the business: yet his excellency knew so well how to choose an attorney and solicitor general, that when the case was referred to them, they gave it against the chancellor, and said he had forfeited his place by it, and ought to refund the money, (being about two hundred pounds per annum;) but never found any fault in the commissioners, who adjudged the case for him, and might have refused him the money if they had thought fit.

Captain Robert Fitzgerald, father to the present earl of Kildare, had a grant from king Charles the Second, of the office of comptroller of the musters, during the lives of captain Chambre Brabazon, now earl of Meath, and George Fitzgerald elder brother to the present earl of Kildare; which the said Robert Fitzgerald enjoyed with a salary of three hundred pounds per annum; and after his death, his son George enjoyed it; till my lord Galway did, by threats, compel him to surrender the said patent for a pension of two hundred pounds per annum; which he enjoyed during his life. Some time ago the