Retreat from London
By the spring of 1714 Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish clergyman and the sharpest political writer of his day, was exhausted. For four years he had been the chief propagandist for Queen Anne’s Tory ministry, but its two leaders, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, had fallen out, and Swift could not reconcile them. In early June he left London and went to stay with his friend John Geree, the rector of Letcombe Bassett, in the downland village south-west of Wantage.
The Victoria County History records that he stayed at the rectory for about three months. It was a quiet country household, a sharp contrast with the ministerial dinners he had left behind.
Writing at the rectory
At Letcombe he wrote Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs, a pamphlet urging the Tory party to act decisively. Events overtook it: Harley was dismissed at the end of July, Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714, and the Hanoverian succession brought the Whigs to power. The pamphlet was not published until 1741. Swift left for Ireland in August to take up his post as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where he spent most of the rest of his life and wrote Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729).
Traditions
Local tradition says Swift wrote under an old mulberry tree in the rectory garden, and some accounts say his friend Alexander Pope visited him there. Neither story has been confirmed from contemporary sources, but the letters Pope, Arbuthnot and others wrote to Swift at Letcombe that summer do survive.
What to see locally
- The Old Rectory, Letcombe Bassett: a private house; it can be seen from the lane but is not open.
- St Michael’s Church, Letcombe Bassett, where Geree was rector.
- The village is on the spring line below the Ridgeway, with watercress beds along Letcombe Brook.