Chapter 5 examines Swift’s major foreign policy writings, particularly the Conduct of the Allies and the History of the Four Last Years of the Queen. It differentiates his neoclassical balance-of-power theory – which pointed toward the need to negotiate peace – from modern, nonnormative, militaristic, and pseudoscientific versions of the theory, which his contemporaries used to justify continuing the war. Swift condemned militarism even when exhibited by his own country. He opposed the attempted subjugation and domination of an enemy country as unwise policy that would lead to international power imbalances and unintended consequences, and thus threaten both domestic constitutionalism and international security. He adopted a mixed qualitative-quantitative method of argument and revealed the conceptual flaws of the quantitative or military-statistical approach adopted by the pro-war Whigs. While his arguments facilitated the Peace of Utrecht (1713), French delays in implementing the peace terms left Swift with little more than satire in his last Tory pamphlets.

Swift learned about foreign affairs from one of England’s greatest diplomats, Sir William Temple, friend of William III and champion of balance-of-power foreign policy. But he became chief apologist for the notorious foreign policy maneuver by which Britain abandoned William's Grand Alliance to negotiate a ceasefire with archenemy France. The Whig opposition accused Swift and the Tories of ushering in foreign hegemony and domestic absolutism – and most critics today insist Swift was an authoritarian political thinker and devotee of Thomas Hobbes. Yet Britain and France negotiated the Peace of Utrecht (1713), a milestone of international cooperation, the first major treaty to include “balance of power” in its provisions, and the inspiration of Enlightenment philosophical projects of “perpetual peace,” ultimately including the European Union. This paradox reveals the need to study Swift’s views on international politics in both theory and practice. The key lies in his universalist conception of balance of power.

Alcuin of York, who ended his days at St. Martin’s, Tours, in France, after working for Charlemagne at Aachen, wrote a biography of Willibrord, an early missionary in Frisia, mentioned also in Eddi’s life of Wilfrid. Alcuin made both a prose and a verse version: excerpts from both are recorded here. Willibrord studied at Ripon and in Ireland before crossing to the Continent to work as a missionary in Frisia, as well as making a journey to Rome.