Deane Swift

1707 - 1783, Dublin

BiographyLC name authority rec. n83027724
LC Heading: Swift, Deane, 1707-1783

Biography:
The father, Deane Swift (1707–1783), was the son of Deane Swift (1674–1714) ‘of Reper's Rest, near Dublin, Ireland, gent.’, and grandson of Godwin Swift, the uncle of Jonathan Swift. He had entered Dublin University in 1723, but it is uncertain as to whether he took a degree. He matriculated from St Mary Hall, Oxford, on 10 October 1734, and graduated BA in 1736. The name Deane came from his great-grandfather Admiral Richard Deane (bap. 1610, d. 1653). His cousin, the dean of St Patrick's, commended him to Pope in 1739, having been assured of his good name at Oxford by principal William King. In July 1739 he married Mary Harrison, the daughter of Martha Whiteway and her first husband, Theophilus Harrison. He enjoyed the small ‘paternal estate’ of the Swifts at Goodrich in Herefordshire, and died at Worcester on 12 July 1783. Deane Swift is chiefly remembered for his publication in 1755 of An essay upon the life, writings, and character of Dr. Jonathan Swift, interspersed with some animadversions upon the remarks of a late critical author [the earl of Orrery]. He was also responsible for five volumes of the large octavo edition of Swift's Works (edited by John Hawkesworth, 1769), containing the bulk of Swift's correspondence. He also rendered valuable aid to Nichols in his edition of Swift's Works. From his mother-in-law, Mrs Whiteway, Deane Swift obtained forty of the letters of the Journal to Stella, which he edited; the original manuscripts are now lost.

Theophilus Swift was educated at Oxford, matriculating at St Mary Hall on 24 March 1763, and graduating BA in 1767. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1774, and, after practising for a few years, settled in Ireland on inheriting some property in Limerick from his father in 1783. Some time before this he had married Charlotte Maria Pead, with whom he was to have two sons. He lived in Dublin, where his eccentricities attracted attention. After publishing three volumes of poems, The Gamblers (1777), The Temple of Folly (1787), and The Female Parliament, which were indifferently received, Swift came to public notice in 1789 with A Letter to Sir William Brown, on the Duel of the Duke of York with Colonel Lenox. He accused Lennox, later fourth duke of Richmond, of a treasonable attempt to assassinate ‘the heir presumptive to the heir apparent’, and cast aspersions on his parentage. Lennox challenged Swift to a duel, which took place in a field near the Uxbridge Road, London, on 3 July. Swift, who sustained a pistol wound, was undaunted and refused to retract his assertions. Later that year he published A Letter to the King on the Conduct of Colonel Lennox, which ran to three editions that year. In 1790 Swift's attentions were diverted from Colonel Lennox by a spate of highly publicized knife assaults on young London women by a figure known as ‘the Monster’. Renwick Williams, a florist, was charged and imprisoned, but Swift was one of the few who maintained his innocence, and published A Vindication of Renwick Williams, Commonly called the Monster (1790). In 1794, enraged by the failure of his son Deane (1770?–1860?), ‘the brightest lad in all Ireland’, to gain distinctions in his examinations at Trinity College, Dublin, Swift published Animadversions on the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, a lurid account of how the fellows had broken their vows of celibacy. He was sued for libel, and received twelve months' imprisonment, while one of his adversaries, the Revd Dr Burrows, was gaoled for six months for libelling him. Again, this did not subdue Swift, and from gaol he encouraged his son Deane to write and publish the satiric squib The Monks of Trinity which appeared in 1795.

In 1801 Swift's Essay on Rime appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and during this decade he assisted Walter Scott in compiling his Life of Swift. By 1811 his contentious disposition had led him into another public dispute, articulated in Mr Swift's Correspondence with the Rev Dr Dobbin and his Family. He accused Emma, Dobbin's daughter who later became the mother of Sheridan Le Fanu, of jilting him with the encouragement of her family. Swift died in Dublin in 1815. His elder son, Deane, wrote for The Press, the organ of the United Irishmen, under the pseudonym Marcus, and his younger son, Edmund Lewis Lenthal (1777–1875), wrote plays and became keeper of the regalia in the Tower of London.

Katherine Mullin
(Katherine Mullin, ‘Swift, Theophilus (1746–1815)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/26835, accessed 20 Jan 2016])

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Last Updated8/7/24

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