Note 314c — JOURNAL TO STELLA (continued 7)
Reading edition
Abel Boyer, Whig journalist and historian, attacked Swift in his pamphlet, An Account of the State and Progress of the Present Negotiations for Peace. Boyer says that he was released from custody by Harley; and in the Political State for 1711 (p. 646) he speaks of Swift as “a shameless and most contemptible ecclesiastical turncoat, whose tongue is as swift to revile as his mind is swift to change.” The Postboy said that Boyer would “be prosecuted with the utmost severity of the law” for this attack.