This is a note on the writings of Jonathan Swift, writer of Gulliver's Travels , and his views on John Walller M.P. for Doneraile who persecuted a local clergyman , Rev. Throp.

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Swift’s previous writings on Tighe, Bettesworth, and Allen explain his quite deliberate classification of them as vicious, vindictive, and irrational, traits that in their combination may point to madness. Swift’s depictions of each in “The Legion Club” are quite brief, perhaps because he does not wish to repeat what he had already written. He instead applies the general premise already evident in “Mad Mullinix and Timothy,” A Vindication of His Ex - y the Lord C -, and the two parts of “Traulus”: these men exist in an insane or demonic universe. Regardless of whether insanity or demonic possession is the cause of their behaviour, the next logical step is to confine them to an asylum, a project carried out in “The Legion Club” itself.

But these three were not the only ones destined to be inmates. Early in the 1735—36 Parliamentary session, Swift found reason to confine Colonel John Waller as well. Waller, MP for Doneraile, had persecuted the Reverend Roger Throp for refusing to relinquish the rectory of Killcornan so that Waller could assign it to someone else and receive considerable profit in turn. According to A Narrative of the Case of the Reverend Mr. Roger Throp, A. M. decs'd. (1739), Waller ordered his tenants to deny Throp the tithes legally due to him and he instead collected them for himself. Waller ordered his servants to steal two of Throp’s horses, hounded him with many frivolous lawsuits, confiscated his cattle, arrested his servant and intimidated any who might serve him, destroyed his orchard, hired a mob to hurl dirt at him, hired someone to smash all the windows in his house, manufactured a rape charge against him, and had his servant whipped. When Throp would not back down in the face of such malicious and incessant harassment and responded with legal proceedings against Waller, the MP claimed breach of privilege. Waller further retaliated by having a servant shoot at Throp, barely missing his head, and having his house burnt to the ground. Throp received a small degree of justice when the House of Commons would not find against him for breach of privilege, but having been hounded in this manner for over three years, he became ill and died at the age of thirty-two in January 1736. Thus the Throp case was quite recent when Swift was writing the poem in the spring of that year.

The pamphlet describing these incidents makes for grim reading. Although it is probably a biased source, it uses an even tone to narrate a series of events with little embellishment. The portrait of Waller that emerges is of a man who will stop at nothing to force others to bend to his will. It is therefore not surprising that Swift would have been outraged at this greedy MPs cruel persecution of a lowly clergyman. Swift certainly knew about Throp’s case, and probably involved himself personally in it. A letter to Swift from Martha Whiteway implies that he wrote a statement in support of Throp, and that Waller sought to punish the author of that statement. Swift may have learned about Throp from Patrick Delany. Delany was Throps tutor at Trinity College, Dublin, and he visited him at his deathbed.'’ After Throps death, Throp’s brother continued to seek justice against Waller, and wrote to Swift, referring to Swifts “abhorrence and detestation of the cruel and inhuman behaviour of that monster” (December 10, 1739, Corr. iv:6o2). This background helps explain Swift’s treatment of Waller in the poem:

Who is that Hell-featur’d Brawler,

Is it Satan? No 'tis Waller.

In what Figure can a Bard dress

Jack, the Grandson of Sir Hardress?

Honest Keeper, drive him further,

In his Looks are Hell and Murther;

See the Scowling Visage drop,

Just as when he murther’d Throp.

For Swift, the whole matter had larger implications beyond this one heart-breaking case. Waller’s campaign against Throp is a miniature version of the broader assault waged by the landed gentry against the tithes and property of the lower clergy. Such concerns became magnified when Parliament considered the abolishing of specific tithes.

The Waller portrait, like that of Tighe, links the MP to republicanism. Wallers grandfather Sir Hardress Waller was a supporter of Cromwell who signed Charles I’s death warrant. Such references explain many of Swift’s frequent allusions to these MPs’ ancestors. Swift in part is getting revenge against those who had libelled him as a Jacobite. He responds by exposing the real traitors, whose descendants currently serve in the House of Commons."