Jonathan Swift grew up and wrote in an Ireland that struggled for its identity. He in many ways embodied the conflict between England and Ireland, and his satires attest to the many issues of concern at the time. These days most students see Swift first and foremost as the author of Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal. These accomplishments and others will likely remain so long as scholars exist. More than this, though, he was an Anglican minister in a predominantly Catholic Ireland during a time when these distinctions meant everything. When we look at Swift as an Irish Patriot it is important to note that the majority of Irish Catholics (and therefore a majority of the Irish population) could not view him as such. Swift fought against England to further the Irish cause. At the same time, though, his views opposed those of the majority of Irish. It is out of this tension that his best works come.
By looking at the historical and social issues in seventeenth and eighteenth century Ireland, we can see the climate that prompted Swift to write the well-known satires that we read today. Before we look at the fruits of his literary career, though, we should consider his role in the Anglican Church.
Swift in the Clergy
We typically view Swift only as a satirist, but his primary occupation was in the clergy.
As Swift approached 23, the canonical age at which he could be ordained, and after almost seven years at Trinity College and an additional year with Temple, he had not yet definitely resolved to enter the Church to the exclusion of other possible careers. (Landa 3)
This uncertainty with regards to his vocation was not entirely uncommon for men his age. Even in Austen's Pride and Prejudice we see the same type of vacillation from Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham. Oftentimes the political and economic factors played as large a role in the decision as any desire to serve the Anglican Church.
After his studies at Trinity College, he still had doubts about his vocation. In 1689 he entered the household of Sir William Temple, who was friends with King William. At this time he decided to pursue a career in the Church. A dispute that he had with Sir William Temple led to his eventual ordination in Ireland as opposed to England, his first choice (Landa 3). In 1695 he received orders and took up a living in Kilroot, his first benefice. In 1699 he once again tried, and failed, to receive a prebend (a stipend furnished by a cathedral to a clergyman) in England. He returned to Ireland as a chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley. From there he assumed the benefice(1) that he held for the remainder of his life, that of Laracor. "But more importantly, the sojourn...paved the way for his becoming a prebendary of St. Patrick's, in which capacity he served until his appointment as dean." (Landa 27) This eventual service as dean of St. Patrick's marks the highlight of Swift's religious career.
Upon his appointment as dean at St. Patrick's he arrived at the cathedral and found an anonymous poem on the front door:
Look down, St. Patrick, look we pray
On thine own church and steeple;
Convert thy dean on this great day;
Or else, God help the people
Jonathan Swift's religious devotion was similarly questioned throughout his career. Despite these questions, Swift did demonstrate an earnest desire to further the aims of Christianity and the welfare of his faithful. "Not even Swift's enemies accused him of neglecting his stewardship of St. Patrick's; and all of the early biographers testify to his scrupulous and pious management." (Landa 192)
Religion in Ireland
Protestant suppression of Catholics in Ireland during Swift's lifetime was the rule rather than the exception. As to the ratio of Catholics to Protestants in Ireland, "estimates vary from 2 to 1 up to 5 to 1...In A Modest Proposal, Swift computed the ratio at 3 to 1." (Ferguson 7) Whatever the exact proportion, the minority ruled the majority:
During the Protestant Ascendancy -- the period from 1691 to 1800 -- the Irish Catholics, who made up the great bulk of the population, were under the absolute control of the Protestant minority." (Ferguson 7)
Catholics were subject to penal laws and were, in general, afforded markedly fewer rights than their countrymen of the Protestant religion. Swift could not, as a citizen, be immune to the necessary tension that accompanied such divisions in Ireland. His strong views as an Anglican minister virtually guaranteed that he would have fundamental differences in belief from the vast majority of his compatriots.
To be a Protestant or a Catholic in eighteenth-century Ireland indicated more than mere religious allegiance: it represented opposing political cultures and conflicting views of history. (Foster 136)
So, Jonathan Swift's religion, if nothing else, was sufficient to distinguish him from the majority of
the population in Ireland.
Swift as a Patriot
Swift's status as a Protestant Anglo-Irishman placed him in the privileged class in Ireland. His ability to produce effective pamphlets made him a very useful advocate of his cause, that of the Anglican in Ireland. He did not always love the home of his birth:
After almost a quarter of a century as Dean of St. Patrick's, he was still protesting the accident of birth that had made him (at least in the popular sense) an Irishman: "I happened to be dropped here." (Ferguson 6)
This tendency to choose Britain over Ireland is further evidenced by his actions when the Revolution began in 1689. As violence erupted he and other Anglo-Irish fled to England. Despite this lack of enthusiasm for his Irish roots, Swift did prove himself a valuable champion of Irish rights in the numerous disputes with England. His satirical pamphlets compose the main body of his political commentary. "Swift's pamphlets are fundamental to the rhetoric of the Anglo-Irish literary and political tradition." (McMinn 19)
His Drapier Letters, seven pamphlets written between 1724-1725, earned him the title of "Hibernian Patriot." From the first of these pamphlets comes a slogan that indicates the spirit that endeared him to Ireland: "Burn everything English but their coal." This of course represents quite a different idea about England than he had at the beginning of his clerical career.
During the course of his ecclesiastical career, Swift went from desiring a benefice in England and hating Ireland, to becoming such a vocal leader in the quest for Irish rights.
When Swift determined never to visit England again, he was partly inspired by the same motive that gave A Modest Proposal, the Drapier's Letters, and Gulliver's Travels a permanent literary value not found in the Examiner or the Conduct of the Allies; and this motive can only be Swift's identification of himself with a suffering people. (Ehrenpreis 35)
This analysis of Swift's motivation reconciles his evident favoritism for England with his eventual dedication to Ireland. Surely he owed some part of his success as a satirist to the difficulties so commonplace in Ireland.
Swift's Religious Satires
A Tale of a Tub is the most notable and popular of Swift's satires on the state of religious affairs in his day. This parable describes the lives of three brothers: Peter (a Roman Catholic), Martin (an Anglican), and Jack (a Calvinist). In his typical witty fashion, Swift portrays Martin as the one brother who has best kept the instructions of their father, Jesus, for the preservation of the Church. In doing so, he depicts Peter, and hence the Catholic Church, in a most unfavorable light.
This permits him to ridicule a number of specific doctrines and practices of Catholicism (such as auricular confession, purgatory, and transubstantiation)...Peter is always portrayed as a mountebank and bully.
(Harth 18)
Of course as an Anglican minister he had little choice but to advance the causes of his church
through whatever means at his disposal. He would, if he had the ability, convert all of Ireland to
his religion. It is nonetheless important to note that the majority of Irish citizens would no doubt
be offended by such treatment of their church. And his sentiments did not stop at the Church but
extended to the Irish Catholics themselves: "In 1709, Swift could write of them with an easy
callousness, 'We look upon them to be altogether as inconsiderable as the Women and Children.'
(Ferguson 17) Ireland took such things to heart: "It is not until the twentieth century that Catholic
Ireland could accept Swift as a patriot without equivocation." (Mahony 179) This longevity of
such a sentiment reflects the magnitude of the religious conflict in Swift's Ireland. As an
outspoken Anglican priest, Swift had little chance of becoming an Irish folk hero.
Jonathan Swift's Ireland was one of political and social unrest. From his position in upper rungs of society he produced some of the best satire in Western Literature. The objects of his attacks, though, would not be the obvious choices considering his situation in life. He penned many pamphlets against the England that he seemed to love more that Ireland. Swift also made attacks on the religion that the vast majority of his Irish kinsmen lived by. In spite of these peculiarities he comes to us today as a great Irish patriot. Perhaps it was because of this tension that Swift came to produce the memorable works that will outlive the conflicts of his day.
1. A benefice is an ecclesiastical office to which the endowment from an endowment is attached (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary)