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Nevertheless he read and studied widely, and, after his position with Temple grew unbearable, quarreled with his patron, took orders, and entered the Church of England. Some years later we find him settled in the little church of Laracor, Ireland, a country which he disliked intensely, but whither he went because no other "living" was open to him.
At first sight, it seems altogether unworthy of a man of Swift's genius to waste so much of it and so many of the best years of his life in a sordid struggle after preferment in the church a career in which such selfish ambitions look most out of place. How much better to have stayed quietly at Laracor and written immortal works!
At Laracor he increased the parochial duty by reading prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and performed all the offices of his profession with great decency and exactness.
First come the Partridge tracts. The history of the inimitable hoax of which they are the record is full of interest. In November 1707 Swift, then Vicar of Laracor, came over to England on a commission from Archbishop King.
"And be easy about money, you nauti-nauti, dear girls," says he to old Dingley and me; "for what is mine is yours; and were it my blood, 't is all one." And so laid his plans that we should come to Ireland, where he had preferment at Laracor near Dublin, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
His relationship with Swift became close when he sent the vicar of Laracor to London, to obtain for the Irish clergy the restoration of the first-fruits and twentieth parts; but it was a relationship never cemented by feelings warmer than those of esteem. King acknowledged the ability of Swift, but found him ambitious and overbearingly proud.
The same testimony is borne by all who knew the state of Ireland at that time. A family with which Mrs. Delany had much friendly intercourse was that of the Wesleys, who then and long after lived at Dangan Castle in the county of Meath, within two miles of Laracor, Dean Swift's first Irish living.
It should suffice us to know that the cause which Swift espoused was a disinterested one. As Vicar of Laracor he knew what it was to make a shift of living on an insufficient income; and it may have been, this experience as much as "personal disappointment" which gave pungency to his criticism.
But he had yet more to suffer. Lord Berkeley had the disposal of the deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it; but by the secretary's influence, supposed to have been secured by a bribe, it was bestowed on somebody else; and Swift was dismissed with the livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin in the diocese of Meath, which together did not equal half the value of the deanery.
On the death of his patron in 1699 he undertook by request the publication of his works, and thereafter returned to Ireland as chaplain to the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Berkeley, from whom he obtained some small preferments, including the vicarage of Laracor, and a prebend in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
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