Family and Education

b. ?1724, o.s. of Anthony Swymmer of St. Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica, member of the Council there, by his 2nd w. Milborough. educ.Winchester; Peterhouse, Camb. 7 Nov. 1741, aged 17.1 m. 5 Jan. 1748, Arabella, da. and coh. of Sir John Astley, 2nd Bt., of Patshull, Staffs., s.p. suc. fa. 1730.

Offices Held

Biography

A member of a good Bristol merchant family, Swymmer, who was born in Jamaica, where his grandfather owned a plantation,2 was returned for Southampton as a Tory in 1747. In March 1752, when a scheme was afoot for a restoration of the Stuarts with Prussian help, he went over to Paris with his father-in-law, Sir John Astley, meeting the Young Pretender, and bringing a paper from England for the Jacobite Earl Marischal, then Prussian ambassador to France. He and his wife then travelled to Rome, with a recommendation to the Pretender’s secretary, who described him as ‘a most agreeable companion, and which is more a perfect honest man [i.e. Jacobite]’, adding: ‘If you will make him happy ... let him know H.R.H. [the Young Pretender] is well, for surely no man on earth loves him better nor would do more to serve him’.3

He died 4 Jan. 1760 in Jamaica.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

The genealogical particulars here given supersede those in Namier and Brooke, House of Commons 1754-90.

• 1. T. A. Walker, Peterhouse Adm. Bk. 279.
• 2. V. L. Oliver, Caribbeana, iv. 227-32, where there is some confusion.
• 3. 28 Sept., 29 Nov. 1752, Stuart mss 336/7, 338/69; A. Lang, Pickle the Spy, 190, 213, who misdates a letter.