treason in endeavoring to give Cæsar more than his due. These two crimes cost Mr. Swift no less than £300."[8] With the memory of such things as these in the family, there need be no wonder at the dean's decided tendency to Toryism. His father and three uncles, that is, four out of ten sons, and three or four daughters of the persecuted clergyman, fled to Ireland, where the eldest son, Godwin Swift, a barrister, married a relative of the Marchioness of Ormond, and was made, by the Marquis of Ormond, his attorney-general in the palatinate of Tipperary. This Godwin married the co-heiress of Admiral Deane; the second son, a daughter of Sir William Davenant. Another was Mr. Dryden Swift, so called after his mother, who was a Dryden, and a near relation of the poet's. Thus Swift was of good family and alliance. He was the only son of Jonathan Swift, the eighth son of Thomas Swift, the vicar of Goodrich, who was so plundered. His mother was Abigail Erick, of Leicestershire, descended from the most ancient family of the Ericks, who derive their lineage from Erick the Forester, a great commander, who raised an army to oppose the invasion of William the Conqueror, by whom he was vanquished, but afterward employed to command that prince's forces. In his old age he retired to his house in Leicestershire, where his family has continued ever since, has produced many eminent men, and is still represented by the Heyricks of Leicester town, and the Herricks of Beaumanor. Swift's father was a solicitor, and steward to the Society of the King's Inn, Dublin; but he died before Swift was born, and left his mother in such poverty that she was not able to defray the expenses of her husband's funeral. He was born on the 30th of November, 1667, St. Andrew's Day, in a small house, now called No. 7, in Hoey's Court, Dublin, which is still pointed out by the inhabitants of that quarter, and, by the antiquity of its appearance, seems to vindicate the truth of the tradition. Here a circumstance occurred to him as singular as the case of his father, who, as a child in the cradle, had his clothes stripped from him by the troopers of Captain Kirle. His nurse was a woman of Whitehaven, and being obliged to go thither in order to see a dying relative, from whom she expected a legacy, out of sheer affection for the child, she stole on shipboard, unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years; for, when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage till he could better bear it. The nurse was so careful of him, that before he returned he had learned to spell, and by the time that he was five years old he could read any chapter in the Bible.