In 1723 George Berkeley, then a fellow of Trinity College Dublin and already a renowned philosophical thinker, received an unexpected bequest from a woman he had never met. It was for the not insubstantial sum of £2,000 and was partly derived from the profits of a successful investment in the South Sea Company during 1720. Berkeley may not have been acquainted with his benefactor but she is well known to posterity. She was Esther Van Homrigh, the daughter of a prominent Dublin merchant and politician of Dutch origin. She is, however, better remembered as Jonathan Swift's ‘Vanessa’ in which capacity she served as both correspondent of, and muse to, the dean. Swift's dislike of the South Sea Company, as expressed in his public and private writings, is common knowledge, but Van Homrigh, despite Swift's scepticism, converted a government annuity she held into company stock and realized a small profit. Her bequest to Berkeley is proof of this, even if her motives for leaving this sum to him remain somewhat opaque.

The philosopher would later use these funds to part-finance his famous project to establish a college in Bermuda. That scheme may have failed but Berkeley's time in the American colonies, specifically Rhode Island, would prove important when he came to develop his theories on money and banking in The Querist, possibly the most influential Irish economic text of the eighteenth century.