istory, which I am now going to publish for the information of
posterity, and to control the most impudent falsehoods which
have been published since. I wanted no kind of materials. I knew
your father better than you could at that time, and I do
impartially think him the most virtuous minister, and the most
able, that ever I remember to have read of. If your lordship has
any particular circumstances that may fortify what I have said
in the History, such as letters or materials, I am content they
should be printed at the end, by way of appendix. I loved my
lord your father better than any other man in the world,
although I had no obligation to him on the score of preferment,
having been driven to this wretched kingdom, to which I was
almost a stranger, by his want of power to keep me in what I
ought to call my own country, although I happened to be dropped
here, and was a year old before I left it, and to my sorrow did
not die before I came back to it again. As to the History, it
is only of affairs which I know very well and had all the
advantages possible to know, when you were in some sort but a
lad. One great design of it is, to do justice to the ministry at
that time, and to refute all the objections against them, as if
they had a design of bringing in Popery and the Pretender: and
farther to demonstrate, that the present settlement of the crown
was chiefly owing to my lord your father...."

The Earl of Oxford had failed to extract the manuscript from Swift for
the purpose he had expressed in his letter. But his friend and Swift's
old friend, Erasmus Lewis, who had been Under-Secretary of State during
Lord Oxford's administration, came to the Earl's assistance. He had not
written to Swift for many years, but on June 30th, 1737, he took
occasion to renew the correspondence and referred to the proposal for
publishing the History in a manner which leaves no doubt as to who
suggested to him to write:

" ... Now I name him, I mean Lord Oxford, let me ask you if it
be true, that you are going to print a History of the Four Last
Years of the Queen? if it is, will not you let me see it before
you send it to the press? Is it not possible that I may suggest
some things that you may have omitted, and give you reasons for
leaving out others? The scene is changed since that period of
time: the conditions of the pe