For some time the dean placed faith in Mrs. Howard, and more especially in the Queen’s graciousness. He knew also the Queen’s views on Church matters, and his unorthodoxy, which had hindered Anne from making him a bishop, would, he thought, be a point in his favour with Caroline. His commanding literary abilities ought certainly to have given him a strong claim upon her consideration. But Swift, the friend of Bolingbroke, was disliked by Walpole, and Caroline distrusted every one who was intimate with Bolingbroke. Moreover Swift thought, like so many others, that the way to the King’s favour lay through his mistress rather than his wife, and on both his visits to England he paid great court to Mrs. Howard, visiting her frequently, flattering her, telling her some of his best stories, and writing her some of his wittiest letters. Caroline, who knew of this friendship, resented it, and though she gave the great dean audience, and was affable to him as she was to every one, she made a mental note against his name, and never helped him to realise his wish of obtaining English preferment. She had never promised to give it to him, but she had promised to send him her medallion. Swift, who for some time after his return to Ireland, kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Howard, wrote to her recalling the Queen’s promise. “First, therefore,” he writes, “I call you to witness that I did not attend on the Queen until I had received her repeated messages, which, of course, occasioned my being introduced to you. I never asked anything till, upon leaving England for the first time, I desired from you a present worth a guinea, and from her Majesty one worth ten pounds, by way of a memorial. Yours I received, and the Queen, upon taking my leave of her, made an excuse that she had intended a medal for me, which not being ready, she would send it me the Christmas following: yet this was never done, nor at all remembered when I went back to England the next year, and attended her as I had done before. I must now tell you, madam, that I will receive no medal from her Majesty, nor anything less than her picture at half-length, drawn by Jervas; and if he takes it from another original, the Queen shall at least sit twice for him to touch it up. I desire you will let her Majesty know this in plain words, although I have heard I am under her displeasure....