SWIFT, Edmund L. The Life and Acts of Saint Patrick the Archbishop, Primate and Apostle of Ireland.

Now first translated from the original Latin of Jocelin, the Cistercian Monk of Furnes, who flourished in the early part of the twelfth century. With the elucidations of David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory. Engraved frontispiece and one other plate from Thomas Messingham’s ‘Floreligium’. Bound with: Vie des Saints ... By Jean F. Godescard. With engraved plates. Two volumes in one. Dublin: Printed for the Hibernia Press Company by James Blyth, 1809. pp. [viii], 266, viii, 43, [1], vi. Paris: 1835. pp. [viii], [130], 12 (plates). Contemporary half calf on marbled boards. A very good copy.
“The best known of the medieval Latin lives of St. Patrick was written by Jocelin, one of the ‘black monks’ whom the Norman John de Courci brought from Furnes in Lancashire and established at Down after he had effected a military lodgement in that district” - Kenny 140.
Edmund Lewes Lenthall Swift (1777-1875), writer, was born in Dublin, the son of Theophilus Swift and he was educated at Mr Dowling’s school in Blackrock, and at Eton College. He entered the King’s Inns (1793) and the Middle Temple, London (1800). A member of the lawyers’ corps in Ireland (1796-1803), he was finally called to the Irish bar in 1803 and to the English bar twelve years later. He became keeper of regalia in the tower of London, after which he retired on a pension.

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