Jonathan Swift
by George Vertue
ca. 1735
British Museum 1850,0223.585
Frontispiece to the fourth volume of G. Faulkner's edition of The Works of Jonathan Swift, (Dublin: 1735). The frontispiece shows two putti descending from the heavens to crown Swift with a laurel wreath. Swift hands a document to Hibernia to his right. He places his foot on the chest of William Wood, the target of his Drapier's Letters. In an act of favouritism by the King, Wood had been granted a patent to coin £108,000, in halfpence for use in Ireland. Swift's satires eventually raised the public ire against the violation of rights of the Irish Parliament and Privy Council, and compelled the government to withdraw the paten. In this image, copper pennies fall below Wood's head onto the ground.
© The Trustees of the British Museum in the UK
This image is provided courtesy of the British Museum under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. In certain other jurisdictions it is considered to be in the public domain.