Swift justice – Frank McNally on the height of the Drapier’s Letters controversy

Three hundred years ago this autumn, Ireland was convulsed by the controversy of Wood’s Halfpence and the campaign against it by one “M.B., Drapier”, a thinly disguised Jonathan Swift.
English Ironmonger William Wood had secured his lucrative contract for an Irish coinage in 1722, partly by bribing the King’s mistress.
Rumours of the coins’ poor quality were not allayed by assurances of their purity from the Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, since Wood had supplied the samples for testing.
In March 1724, the first of a series of protest pamphlets appeared, headed “A Letter to the Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common People of Ireland”, ostensibly written by an obscure “Drapier” (ie draper).
Two other letters followed in August: “To Mr Harding the Printer” and “To the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom of Ireland”.
By autumn, the country was “in a very fever of excitement”, as one historian put it: “Everywhere meetings were held for the purpose of expressing indignation against the imposition, and addresses from brewers, butchers, flying stationers, and townspeople generally, were sent in …”
Swift’s campaign was not confined to letters. He also fanned the flames with songs and poems, written for a popular audience. Typical of these was a drinking ballad that exploited the coin-maker’s surname for crude word plays, as attributed here to the stereotypical Irishman “Teague” (ie Tadhg or “Taig”):
“I hear among scholars there is a great Doubt/From what kind of tree this Wood is hewn out./Teague made a good pun by a Brogue in his Speech,/And said: By my Shoul he’s the Son of a Beech.”
In October, the Drapier turned up the heat with his boldest pamphlet yet: “A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland.” This made clear it was not just the coinage that was at stake but national freedom: “[B]y the laws of GOD, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of your own COUNTRY, you ARE and OUGHT to be as FREE a people as your brethren in England.”
That same month, Englishman John Carteret – who knew Swift from London – was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and approved a £300 reward for the discovery of the author of this “wicked and malicious pamphlet”.
According to a much-repeated story, told by Thomas Sheridan (grandfather of the playwright Richard Brinsley) and others, Swift’s butler was suspiciously late coming home the night the reward was posted.
This caused the outraged Dean to lock the doors and sack him next morning until Sheridan successfully appealed for mercy. Although perpetuated by Swift himself, the story has been dismissed as “18th-century sensationalism”.
The truth, it seems, is that Swift had little fear of being identified. When the Drapier’s printer John Harding was arrested on November 7th, the Dean wrote in his own name to the Grand Jury that would try Harding, all but outing himself as the true author, and urging them to drop the charges. To the outrage of the Lord Chief Justice, William Whitshed, the jury did just that.
Whitshed had already earned Swift’s enmity with the 1720 prosecution of another printer, Edward Waters, for the pamphlet “On the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture”.
There, the anonymous Swift advised “utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that comes from England” and – in a phrase that would be revived two centuries later, urged readers to “burn every Thing [English], except their People and their Coals.”
Whitshed secured a guilty verdict for Waters only after a jury had nine times tried to acquit. In the case of Harding, on November 21st, 1724, he sent the jury back a mere three times – unsuccessfully – but it was enough to attract the renewed focus of Swift’s satirical pen.
For that, no subject was considered too sensitive. Not even the fact that, 50 years earlier, Whitshed’s maternal grandfather had taken his own life, apparently in Christchurch Cathedral. Or that the grandfather’s son had married a woman presumed to be a widow whose husband had later reappeared alive, rendering children of the second marriage illegitimate.
Both these details featured in “Verses Occasioned by Whitshed’s Motto on his Coach”. The motto was “Libertas et Natale Solum” (“Liberty and my Native Land”). In which vein, the poem begins: “Liberty & natale Solum: Fine words! I wonder where you stole ‘em.”
Later comes this: “In Church your Grandsire cut his Throat;/To do the job too long he tarry’d,/He should have had my hearty Vote,/To cut his throat before he marry’d.”
Whitshed’s ambitions to be Lord Chancellor did not survive the notoriety. Nor did he himself, for long. He died in 1727, aged only 48, his end seemingly hastened by the stress.
Drapier had meantime published another letter, to Lord Viscount Molesworth, in December 1724. This was the knock-out blow to an already to an already punch-drunk opponent. There would be one more in the series – although it had probably been written earlier, at the height of the campaign, to be published only when the row had subsided.
The last was headed: “An humble address to both Houses of Parliament”. But there was nothing humble about it. By Christmas 1724, the Drapier had effectively won. His triumph was complete the following September, when Wood’s patent was withdrawn.