- "RELATIONSHIP of JONATHAN SWIFT And JOHN DRYDEN- In the Life of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, by Craik, published in 1882, it is stated that the grandmother of the dean was Elizabeth Dryden, niece of sir Erasmus Dryden, and sister of the rev. Jonathan Dryden. In the pedigree of the Dryden family, published by Baker in his History of the County, no Elizabeth, niece of sir Erasmus, appears. There is no reason to doubt that the rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, married an Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the Northamptonshire family. As her name was Dryden she was the daughter of some male Dryden. Malone, who wrote the life of John Dryden, states in a private letter that it was said that the rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, was married to one of the daughters of sir Erasmus, and this he thinks was not true; and in his Life of Dryden 1., p. 238, conjectures that she was the daughter of a brother of sir Erasmus.
Taking all the known facts into consideration there appears but one way of explaining the relationship. Elizabeth, the daughter of sir Erasmus, married sir Richard Phillips, bart. Of the seven brothers of sir Erasmus only two are recorded to have married, and the marriage of one of them is put as doubtful in Baker; but Nicholas Dryden, of Moreton Pinkney, married Mary Emyley, and had, according to Baker, three sons, Jonathan, John, and Godwin, and one daughter, Susanna. Jonathan, the eldest, was born about 1601. If this Nicholas had also a daughter Elizabeth, who married the rev. Thomas Swift, and if his son Jonathan became a clergyman, the matter would be clear.
The rev. Thomas Swift had ten sons, of whom one was named Godwin, and another (the father of the dean) was named Jonathan, which names we can fairly suppose they obtained from the two sons of Nicholas Dryden, if we assume that the mother was a daughter of the said Nicholas. All the dates so far as we have them agree with the supposition I have stated. It is recorded that the poet Dryden and dean Swift called each other 'cousins.' According to the supposition the dean was second cousin once removed to the poet, Malone supposes that Jonathan Dryden, the brother of Elizabeth Swift, had a son who was the Jonathan Dryden, who was born in 1639, at Westminster school and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was almost certainly the rev. Jonathan Dryden who was rector of Scrayingham and prebendary of York, and was buried in York cathedral in 1702, who had a son Jonathan born in 1701, who died in 1740.
The rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, was a strong royalist. He built a peculiar house, dated 1636, with large cellars, with a view to storage in troublous times. 'This Thomas Swift, born in 1595, became a man of some mark amid stirring scenes.' When the rebellion broke out 'In spite of his profession, the vicar of Goodrich was of too fervent a spirit to hold aloof from the struggle. It had scarcely opened before he became known amongst the Parliamentarian ranks for a delinquent. The royal standard had been raised in Nottingham, in August, 1649. In October of the same year Thomas Swift?s stout horses and thriving homestead were visited by the Parliamentary marauders.'
Mr. Craik gives many particulars of this vicar and his family, 'This doughty vicar died in 1658, and was buried underneath the altar of the church of which he had been the vicar, and near which stood his battered house.'" [2]
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1595 - 1658 (63 years)
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