MR JUSTICE FIELDING
"The principal Duty which every Man owes is to his Country."
_Enquiry into the ... Increase of Robbers_.
To have created the English novel were, it might seem, achievement enough
to tire for a while the most vigorous of intellects; but to the author of
_Tom Jones_ the apathy of repose was unknown. At no period of Fielding's
short life can he be discerned as doing nothing; and, indeed, to an
insight so penetrating, to an ardour so irrepressible, the England of
George the Second can have afforded but very little inducement to
inaction.
Thus, in the one month of October 1748, the pages of _Tom Jones_ must have
been nearing completion, if indeed the sheets were not already passing
through the press. The Hanoverian philippics of "Mr Trott-Plaid" were
still resounding in the _Jacobite's Journal_. While, on the 26th. of the
month, Fielding's oaths were received for an entirely new rôle, that of a
Justice of the Peace for Westminster. [1] Ten days later the _Jacobite's
Journal_ had ceased to exist; and that a rumour was abroad connecting this
demise of the _Journal_ with the bestowal of a new and arduous post on its
editor appears from a paragraph in the _London Evening Post_. On Nov. 8,
that organ prepares its readers for the fact that the now defunct "Mr
Trott-Plaid" may possibly "rise awful in the Form of a Justice." Within
four weeks of this announcement 'Justice Fielding's' name appears for the
first time in the Police-news of the day, in a committal dated December
10th [2]. And two days later he is sending three thieves to the Gatehouse,
and admitting a suspected thief to bail, "after an Examination which
lasted several hours." And it is interesting to notice that throughout
this first month of his magisterial work the now 'awful form' of Justice
Henry Fielding was kept constantly tempered in the public mind by the fact
of his still undiminished popularity as a dramatist. In this December his
comedies, with the inimitable 'romp' Kitty Clive as _Miss Lucy_, or the
_Intrigueing Chambermaid_ or _Chloe_, as the case might be, were played no
fewer than nine times on the Drury Lane boards.
Scarcely had Fielding bent his genius to these new responsibilities of
examining Westminster suspects and sending the rogues of that city to
prison, than he appears preparing for an extension of those duties over
the county of Middlesex. To be a county magistrate in 1750, however,
necessitated the holding of landed estate worth £100 per annum; and
Fielding's estate, for many years, seems to have been his pen. In this
difficulty he turned to the Duke of Bedford, whose public virtues, and
private generosity, were so soon to be acknowledged in the Dedication of
_Tom Jones_. It was but three weeks after his appointment that the
Westminster magistrate wrote as follows to the giver of those "princely
Benefactions":
"Bow Street. Decr. 13. 1748.
"My Lord,
"Such is my Dependence on the Goodness of your Grace, that before my Gout
will permit me to pay my Duty to you personally, and to acknowledge your
last kind Favour to me, I have the Presumption to solicite your Grace
again. The Business of a Justice of Peace for Westminster is very
inconsiderable without the Addition of that for the County of Middlesex.
And without this Addition I cannot completely serve the Government in that
office. But this unfortunately requires a Qualification which I want. Now
there is a House belonging to your Grace, which stands in Bedford St., of
70l. a year value. This hath been long untenanted, and will I am informed,
require about 300l. to put in Repair. If your Grace would have the
Goodness to let me have a Lease of this House, with some other Tenement
worth 30l. a year, for 21 years, it would be a complete Qualification. I
will give the full Worth for this lease, according to the valuation which
any Person your Grace shall be pleased to appoint sets upon it. The only
favour I beg of your Grace is, that I be permitted to pay the Money in two
years, at four equal half-yearly Payments. As I shall repair the House as
soon as possible, it will be in Reality an Improvement of that small Part
of your Grace's estate, and will be certain to make my Fortune.
"Mr Butcher will acquaint your Grace more fully than perhaps I have been
able to do; and if Your Grace thinks proper to refer it to him, I and mine
will be eternally bound to pray for your Grace tho I sincerely hope you
will not lose a Farthing by doing so vast a service to,
"My Lord your Grace's
"Most obliged most obed' humble servant
"H. Ffielding." [3]
It seems probable that the Duke found better means of helping wit and
genius, than by the leasing of the dilapidated tenement in Bedford Street.
At any rate a month later, on January 11, we find Fielding duly swearing
to an estate as consisting of "several Leasehold Messuages or Tenements
Lying or being in the several parishes of St Paul Covent Garden, St Martin
in the ffields, St Giles in the ffields, and St Georges Bloomsbury ... now
in the possession or occupation of [my] Tennants or Undertennants, for and
during the Term of Twenty one years of the clear yearly value of £100...."
This statement, which is preserved in the Middlesex Records, is followed
by Fielding's signature, appended to an oath that his qualification to
serve as a Justice of the Peace for the county is as above described. [4]
On the day following this sworn statement, January 12, 1749, his oaths
were received as a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex. [5] But even this
did not satisfy all the requirements of those days of doctrinal
inquisitions and Jacobite risings. The certificate may still be seen among
the Middlesex Records, duly certified by Charles Tough, Minister of the
Parish and Church of St Pauls, Covent Garden, and 'Sworn in Court,' that
"Henry Fielding Esq. on Sunday the 26th day of March, 1749, did receive
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in ye Parish Church aforesaid,
immediately after Divine Service and Sermon, according to the usage of the
Church of England." [6] And among the same archives the dusty _Oath Roll_
is preserved, bearing, under date of April 5, 1749, the signature of
_Henry ffielding_ to a declaration of disbelief in the doctrine of
Transubstantiation; a comprehensive oath of faithful service to King
George and abjuration of King James; an oath directed against the power of
the Holy See; and an oath of true allegiance to King George. All which
oaths and declarations, it appears from the endorsement of the _Roll_,
were taken immediately after the administration of Holy Communion, as
attested by two credible witnesses.[7]
It is with this second Commission in the Peace that we enter on the last
five years of Fielding's crowded life, years full of that valiant struggle
with eighteenth century crime to which the health of the great novelist
was ultimately sacrificed. For no magistrate ever fulfilled more
faithfully, or at greater personal cost, the first obligation of his Oath,
"Ye shall swear that as Justice of Peace ... ye shall do equall right to
the Poor and to the Rich, after your Cunning Witt and Power and after the
Laws and Customes of the Realm...." And Fielding brought to his new post
something more than a zealous discharge of the daily and nightly duties of
an eighteenth century police magistrate. His genius and his patriotism
found opportunity in the squalid Bow Street Court-room for advocating
reforms as yet untouched by the slow hand of the professional
philanthropist. The names of those reformers, of the men and women who
swept away the pestilential horrors of eighteenth century prisons, of the
statesmen who abolished laws that hung a man for stealing a handkerchief,
and destroyed the public gallows that gave the mob their _Tyburn holiday_,
of the creators of our temperance legislation, of our poor-law system, of
our model dwellings,--all these are held high in honour. Because Henry
Fielding was above all things a great creative genius his wise and
strenuous efforts to raise social conditions, and to eradicate social
sores, have been unduly forgotten.
"Whatever he desired, he desired ardently," says Murphy. We soon have
evidence of Justice Henry Fielding's ardent desire to cleanse London from
some of the crying evils of his time. Of these evils none pressed more
cruelly on the honest citizens than the prevalence and brutality of street
robberies. To the well-protected Englishman of to-day the London of 1750
would seem a nightmare of lawlessness. Thieves, as Fielding tells us,
attacked their victims with loaded pistols, beat them with bludgeons and
hacked them with cutlasses; and as to the murderers of the period, he has
recorded how he himself was engaged on _five_ different murders, all
committed by different gangs of street robbers within the space of one
week. The exploit of one such gang may be quoted, from a newspaper
paragraph of the first month of Fielding's administration at Bow Street.
"On Friday evening," says the _General Advertiser_ for January 23, 1749,
"about twenty fellows arm'd with Pistols, Cutlasses, Hangers, &c. went to
the Gatehouse and one of them knocking at the Door, it was no sooner
open'd than they all rush'd in, and struck and desperately wounded the
Turnkey, and all that oppos'd them, and in Triumph carried off the Fellow
who pick'd General Sinclaire's pocket of his watch as he was going into
Leicester House." Surely, cries the indignant newspaper, "this instance of
Daring Impudence must rouse every Person of Property to assemble and
consult means for their own Security at least; for if Goals can be forc'd
in this manner, private Houses can make but little resistance against such
Gangs of Villains as at present infest this Great Metropolis." It was
admitted that the numbers and arms of street robbers rendered it
ordinarily impossible to arrest them in the act; and Fielding tells us how
"Officers of Justice have owned to me that they have passed by [men] with
Warrants in their Pockets against them without daring to apprehend them;
and indeed they could not be blamed for not exposing themselves to sure
Destruction: For it is a melancholy Truth, that at this very Day a Rogue
no sooner gives the Alarm within certain Purlieus, than twenty or thirty
armed Villains are found ready to come to his Assistance." And the new
Justice found no effectual means at his disposal for coping with what he
very aptly calls the enslaved condition of Londoners, assaulted, pillaged,
and plundered; unable to sleep in their own houses, or to walk the
streets, or to travel in safety. There were the Watch, who, we learn from
_Amelia_ were "chosen out of those poor old decrepid People, who are from
their Want of bodily Strength rendered incapable of getting a Livelihood
by Work. These Men, armed only with a Pole, which some of them are scarce
able to lift, are to secure the Persons and Houses of his Majesty's
Subjects from the Attacks of Gangs of young, bold, stout, desperate and
well-armed Villains.... If the poor old Fellows should run away from such
Enemies, no one I think can wonder, unless he should wonder that they are
able even to make their Escape." [8] These lineal descendants of Dogberry
were supplemented by constables who it appears had to apply to the
military when called upon to cope with the mere suppression of a
gaming-house; and by "Thief-catchers," individuals so popularly odious
that "the Thief-catcher is in Danger of worse Treatment from the Populace
than the Thief." While the law was thus handicapped, the thief, on his
side, had the advantage of the irregular buildings and the immense number
of lanes, alleys, courts, and bye-places of London and Westminster, which,
says Fielding, "had they been intended for the very purpose of
concealment, they could scarce have been better contrived. Upon such a
view the whole appears as a vast Wood or Forest, in which a Thief may
harbour with as great Security as Wild Beasts do in the Desarts of Africa
or Arabia." Also the thief's organisation was excellent: "there are at
this Time," Fielding observes, "a great Gang of Rogues whose Number falls
little short of a Hundred, who are incorporated in one Body, have Officers
and a Treasury; and have reduced Theft and Robbery into a regular System."
Further, he could generally bribe or deter the prosecutor. And in a last
resource "rotten Members of the Law" forged his defence, and abundant
false witnesses supported it. An illuminating example of the methods
employed by our Georgian ancestors towards "deterring" prosecution occurs
in a smuggling case of 1748, perpetrated shortly before Fielding first
took office. A party of smugglers caught a custom-house officer and a
shoemaker on their way to give evidence. The officer had 'every joint of
him' broken; and after other torture, the description of which is more
suitable for eighteenth century pages than our own, was dispatched. The
less fortunate shoemaker was hung by the middle over a dry well, and left
there. Several days afterwards the smugglers, returning and hearing him
groan, cut the rope, let him drop to the bottom, and threw in logs and
stones to cover him. And it was not only from the common thief that the
Londoner of 1750 suffered. That fine flower of eighteenth century
lawlessness, the gentleman of the road, carried his audacities into the
heart of the Town itself. "I was sitting in my own dining-room on Sunday
night," writes Horace Walpole, to a friend, "the clock had not struck
eleven, when I heard a loud cry of 'stop thief!' A highwayman had attacked
a postchaise in Piccadilly: the fellow was pursued, rode over the
watchman, almost killed him, and escaped."
It was into a conflict with this epidemic of crime that Fielding, at
forty-three, and with already broken health, flung his energies, to such
purpose that in these last five years of his life it is but too easy to
forget the creator of _Joseph Andrews_, of _Tom Jones_, and of _Amelia_,
in his last 'ardent desire,' as ardently pursued, to purify the sorely
diseased body politic. His method of attack was twofold. He dealt
vigorously with the individual criminal; and he sought to remove some of
the causes by which those criminals were engendered. The individual attack
is, for the most part, but sordid reading. Thus from a fragment of the
Westminster _Committment Books_, preserved with the Middlesex Records, we
may see how in January and February of this year 1749 'Henry Fielding
Esq.' committed to the New Prison such cases as:
Thomas Thrupp for riot
Thomas Trinder for burglary
T. Chamberlain and Terence
Fitz Patrick for assault
C. O'Neal for assaulting two Watchmen
Mary Hughes and Caterine
Edmonds for assault and beating
John Smithson for exercising the art of pattenmaker
without having been brought up thereto
for seven years
Cornelius York for filing guineas
Christo Kelsey for ill fame
Bryan Park for assault
This sorry list, interspersed with cases of murder, of robbery with
violence, and of smuggling, may doubtless be extended over the entire five
years of Fielding's work on the Bench; and to reiterate the details of
such work would be as tedious now as the monotonous discharge of these
duties must once have been to the author of _Tom Jones_. [9] Of much more
enduring interest is the great novelist's second line of attack on the
problem confronting him.
For Henry Fielding's insight was far too profound for him to fail to
strike at the root of individual crime, in those conditions which bred the
criminal as surely as, to use his own favourite simile, unclean
surroundings breed disease. And he had not been six months on the Bench
before finding his first opportunity in a _Charge_ delivered, as their
Chairman, to the Westminster Grand Jury, on June 29, 1749. [10] This "very
loyal, learned, ingenious, excellent and useful" Charge was published "By
Order of the Court, and at the unanimous Request of the Gentlemen of the
Grand Jury"; and it is, Mr Austin Dobson tells us, "still regarded by
lawyers as a model exposition." It is also a stirring appeal to the worthy
jurors to discharge their duties as befitted men called upon to exercise
one of the most ancient and honourable of English liberties: "Grand
Juries, Gentlemen," declared their new Chairman, "are in Reality the only
Censors of this Nation. As such, the Manners of the People are in your
Hands, and in yours only. You, therefore, are the only Correctors of
them.... To execute this Duty with Vigilance, you are obliged by the Duty
you owe both to God and to your Country." Here is the same zeal, now
directed to stimulating the conscience of the Westminster Jurors, which
moved _Captain Vinegar_ to lay about him so lustily on all the abuses
within reach of his newspaper, and which inspired the 'father of the
English Novel' with the admitted motive,--"I declare, that to recommend
Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History"--if
not with the consummate art of his pages.
Fielding specially directs the energies of his jurors to the repression of
open profligacy, the more as, through the 'egregious folly' of their
parents, the _Town_ had then become the 'seminaries of education' for
youths of birth and station. And he bids them attend to those 'temples of
iniquity' the masquerade rooms of the time, with a side glance at Foote's
scandalous performances; to the gaming houses; to the prevalent vice of
profane swearing, that "detestable Crime, so injurious to the Honour of
God, so directly repugnant to His positive Commands, so highly offensive
to the Ears of all good Men, and so very scandalous to the Nation in the
Ears of Foreigners"; and to the libeller, a species of 'Vermin' whom "men
ought to crush wherever they find him, without staying till he bite them."
It is noteworthy also, that to the genius of Fielding, 'watching,
brooding, creating,' the characteristic feature of his age seemed to be a
"fury after licentious and luxurious pleasures." "Gentlemen," he cries,
"our News-Papers, from the Top of the Page to the Bottom, the Corners of
our Streets up to the very Eves of our Houses, present us with nothing but
a View of Masquerades, Balls, and Assemblies of various Kinds, Fairs,
Wells, Gardens, &c. tending to promote Idleness, Extravagance and
Immorality, among all Sorts of People." Many of the public, he declares,
make diversion "no longer the Recreation or Amusement, but the whole
Business of their Lives"; and not content with three theatres they must
have a fourth. What would he have said to a London in which not four but a
hundred and twenty theatres draw nightly, and sometimes twice a day, their
crowded audiences.
Two days after the delivery of this _Charge_ (which the _General
Advertiser_ praises as "excellent and learned") a three days street riot
broke out, which it fell to Fielding to subdue. On Saturday July 1 a mob
had gathered in the Strand, about a disorderly house where a sailor was
said to have been robbed. Beadle Nathaniel Munns, arriving on the scene,
found the mob crying out "Pull down the house, pull down the house!"; and
sent for the constables. Meanwhile the mob broke open the house and
demolished and stripped the same; and throwing the goods out of the
windows, set fire to them, causing such danger of a general conflagration
that 'the parish engines' were sent for. A constable, _not being able to
find any magistrate in Town_, went to Somerset House to procure assistance
from the military, and on his returning with a corporal and twelve men, a
force that later that night was increased to an officer and forty men, the
mob was at last dispersed. On the next day, however, Sunday, they
reassembled, and proceeded to demolish a second house, and to burn the
goods thereof with an even larger fire than that of the preceding night.
Mr Saunders Welch, High Constable for Holborn and, Fielding tells us, "one
of the best Officers who was ever concerned in the Execution of Justice,
and to whose Care, Integrity and Bravery the Public hath, to my Knowledge,
the highest Obligations," passing through Fleet Street at the time, saw
this second fire, and was told by the owner of another house that the mob
threatened to come to him next. Upon which Mr Welch "well knowing the
Impossibility of procuring any Magistrate at that Time who would act,"
went to the Tilt Yard and procured an officer and some forty men; and
returning, found the third house in great part wrecked, the danger of fire
here being aggravated by the extreme narrowness of the street on both
sides and the fact that the premises of a bank were adjacent. This same
Sunday night, also, the mob broke open the night-prison under Beadle
Munns' house, rescuing two prisoners; and forced the Watch-house of the
Liberty with stones and brick bats, to the imminent danger of the Beadle's
life, as "sworn before me, Henry Fielding." Till three in the morning Mr
Welch and the soldiers remained on duty, by which time the rioters had
again dispersed. All this time Fielding, Mr Welch records, was out of
town; but, by noon on Monday, the Justice was back in Bow Street: and, on
being acquainted with the riot, immediately dispatched an order for a
party of the Guards to bring the prisoners to his house, the streets being
then full of a riotous crowd threatening danger of rescue. Fielding
proceeded to examine the prisoners, a "vast mob" meanwhile being assembled
in Bow Steet, and the streets adjacent. On information of the threatening
aspect of the people he applied to the Secretary at War for a
reinforcement of the Guards; and from his window, spoke to the mob,
informing them of their danger, and exhorting them to disperse, but in
vain. Rumours, moreover, came that four thousand sailors were assembling
to march to the Strand that Monday night. In view of these rumours and of
the riotous state of the streets, Fielding, the officer of the guard, and
Mr Welch "sat up the whole night, while a large party of soldiers were
kept ready under arms who with the peace officers patrolled the streets."
And thanks to this vigorous action on the part of their new magistrate the
citizens found peace restored within twelve hours of his return to town.
The same day as that on which Fielding was addressing the riotous mob from
his Bow Street windows, and sitting up all night with the officer of a
military guard, he found time to write to the Duke of Bedford on his own
behalf and on that of his family, concerning the provision for which he
betrays so constant an anxiety.
"Bow Street. July 3. 1749.
"My Lord,
"The Protection which I have been honoured with receiving at the Hands of
your Grace, and the goodness which you were pleased to express some time
toward me, embolden me to mention to your Grace that the Place of
Solicitor to the Excise is now vacant by the Death of Mr Selwyn. I hope
no Person is better qualified for it, and I assure you, my Lord, none
shall execute it with more Fidelity. I am at this Moment busied in
endeavouring to suppress a dangerous Riot, or I w'd have personally
waited on your Grace to solicite a Favour which will make me and my
Family completely happy.
"I am, &c.,
"H. Ffielding." [11]
The vacant post was secured, alas, by another candidate.
A few weeks after the riotous scenes which had enabled Fielding to show
himself a man of prompt action in times of popular ferment, the
publication is advertised of his _Charge_, published "by order of the
Court and at the request of the Gentleman of the Grand Jury." And on the
same day he submits to the Lord Chancellor a copy both of this pamphlet,
and of a draft of a _Bill for the better preventing Street Robberies &c_,
the design of which it appears Lord Hardwick had already encouraged.
"Bow Street, July 21. 1749.
"My Lord,
"I beg your Lordship's acceptance of a Charge given by me to the Grand
Jury of Westminster though I am but too sensible how unworthy it is of
your notice.
"I have likewise presumed to send my Draught of a Bill for the better
preventing street Robberies &c. which your Lordship was so very kind to
say you would peruse; I hope the general Plan at least may be happy in
your Approbation.
"Your Lordship will have the goodness to pardon my repeating a desire
that the name of Joshua Brogden, may be inserted in the next commission
of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster for whose [integrity] and
Ability in the Execution of his office. I will engage my credit with your
Lordship, an Engagement which appears to me of the most sacred Nature.
"I am,
"My Lord, with the utmost Respect and Devotion,
"Your Lordship's most Obed't
"Most humble Servant
"H. Ffielding. [12]
"To the Right Hon'ble.
"The Lord High Chancellor of G. Britain."
All trace of the text of this draft Bill seems to have been lost; but the
fact of the Lord Chancellor's consent to consider its provisions shows
clearly enough how rapidly Fielding was adding to his now achieved fame as
the author of _Tom Jones_ the very different reputation of an authority on
criminal legislation.
The application on behalf of Joshua Brogden, later if not at this time the
Justice's Clerk, recalls the further pleasant tribute paid to the
soundness of Mr Brogden's morals in the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_.
If all Fielding's modest magisterial income of £300 a year had gone, as he
declares it should have done, to his clerk, that functionary would, he
tells us, have been "but ill paid for sitting almost sixteen hours in the
twenty four, in the most unwholesome, as well as nauseous air in the
universe, and which hath in his case corrupted a good constitution without
contaminating his morals." It was Joshua Brogden who had witnessed, a few
months earlier, the agreement with Andrew Millar for _Tom Jones_. Could
the good clerk but have played the part of a Boswell to his illustrious
master we should have something more than our present scanty materials for
the personal life of Henry Fielding.
Yet another of Fielding's rare letters belongs to this year; a letter
conveying his formal congratulations to Lyttelton, on that model
statesman's second marriage, and in which his warm heart again makes
application, not on behalf of his own scanty means, but for a friend.
"Bow Street, Aug't 29, 1749.
"Sir,
"Permit me to bring up the Rear of your Friends in paying my Compliments
of Congratulation on your late Nuptials. There may perhaps be seasons when
the Rear may be as honourable a Post in Friendship as in War, and if so
such certainly must be every time of Joy and Felicity. Your present
situation must be full of these; and so will be, I am confident, your
future Life from the same Fountain. Nothing can equal the excellent
character your Lady bears among those of her own Sex, and I never yet knew
them speak well of a woman who did not deserve their good words. How
admirable is your Fortune in the Matrimonial Lottery! I will venture to
say there is no man alive who exults more in this, or in any other
Happiness that can attend you than myself; and you ought to believe me
from the same Reason that fully persuades me of the satisfaction you
receive from any Happiness of mine; this Reason is that you must be
sensible how much of it I owe to your goodness; and there is a great
Pleasure in Gratitude though it is second I believe to that of
Benevolence; for of all the Delights upon Earth none can equal the
Raptures which a good mind feels on conferring Happiness on those whom we
think worthy of it. This is the sweetest ingredient in Power, and I
solemnly protest I never wished for Power, more than a few days ago for
the sake of a Man whom I love, and that more perhaps from the esteem I
know he bears towards you than from any other Reason. This Man is in Love
with a young Creature of the most apparent worth, who returns his
affection. Nothing is wanting to make two very miserable People extremely
Blessed but a moderate portion of the greatest of human Evils. So
Philosophers call it, and so it is called by Divines, whose word is the
rather to be taken, as they are, many of them, more conversant with this
Evil than ever Philosophers were. The Name of this man is Moore to whom
you kindly destined that Laurel, which, though it hath long been withered,
may not probably soon drop from the Brow of its present Possessor; but
there is another Place of much the same Value now vacant: it is that of
Deputy Licensor to the Stage. Be not offended at this Hint; for though I
will own it impudent enough in one who hath so many Obligations of his own
to you, to venture to recommend another man to your Favour, yet Impudence
itself may possibly be a Virtue when exerted on the behalf of a Friend; at
least I am the less ashamed of it, as I have known men remarkable for the
opposite Modesty possess it without the mixture of any other good Quality.
In this Fault then you must indulge me; for should I ever see you as high
in Power as I wish, and as it is perhaps more my Interest than your own
that you should be, I shall be guilty of the like as often as I find a Man
in whom I can, after much intimacy discover no want, but that of the Evil
above mentioned. I beg you will do me the Honour of making my Compliments
to your unknown Lady, and believe me to be with the highest Esteem,
Respect, Love, and Gratitude
"Sir,
"Y'r most obliged
"Most obed't
"humble Servant
"Henry Fielding.
"To the Hon'ble
"George Lyttelton, Esqr." [13]
This Edward Moore was a poet held worthy, it would seem, to possess the
Laureat's 'withered' laurel (even in 1749 Fielding cannot refrain from a
thrust at Colley Cibber); a journalist; a writer of whom Dibden declared
that the tendency of all his productions was to "cultivate truth and
morality"; a tradesman in the linen business; and the son of a dissenting
minister: a combination of circumstances closely recalling Fielding's
friendship for the good dissenter, jeweller, and poet, George Lillo. And
it is to an undated letter by Edward Moore, hitherto overlooked, that we
owe one of the rare references to Henry Fielding from a contemporary pen.
Moore is writing to a dissenting minister at Taunton, one Mr John Ward, of
whom it was said that venerable as he himself was for learning, worth, and
piety he deemed it "_an honour to have his name connected with that of
Moore_,"--a further proof of the quality of man whom Fielding choose for
friend. Moore had been prevented, by Fielding's illness, from appointing
an evening on which he might invite the Taunton minister to his lodgings
to meet there some of the first wits of the day. "It is not," he writes,
"owing to forgetfulness that you have not heard from me before. Fielding
continues to be visited for his sins so as to be wheeled about from room
to room; when he mends I am sure to see him at my lodgings; and you may
depend upon timely notice. What fine things are Wit and Beauty, if a Man
could be temperate with one, or a Woman chaste with the other! But he that
will confine his acquaintance to the sober and the modest will generally
find himself among the dull and the ugly. If this remark of mine should be
thought to shoulder itself in without an introduction you will be pleased
to note that Fielding is a Wit; that his disorder is the Gout, and
intemperance the cause." It is of course idle to contend that Fielding
always carried a cool head. Murphy tells us that to him might justly be
applied a parody on a saying concerning Scipio,--"always over a social
bottle or a book, he enured his body to the dangers of intemperance, and
exercised his mind with Studies." But we must in justice remember that the
Augustan age of English literature concerned itself but very little with
our modern virtue of sobriety. That Fielding, with the other great men of
his day, very often drank more than was good for him, amounts to little
more than saying that he wore a laced coat when he had one, and carried a
sword at his side.
The execution of one of the Strand rioters, Bosavern Penlez by name, in
September, had roused much controversy; and as the evidence in the case
was in Justice Fielding's possession, and the attacks were levelled at the
Government, we find him plunged once more into political pamphleteering in
the publication, under the date of 1749, of the learned little treatise
entitled "_A True State of the Case of Bosavern Penlez' who suffered on
account of the late riot in the Strand. In which the Law regarding these
Offences and the Statute of George I. commonly called the Riot Act are
fully considered_." The pamphlet opens with a warm protest against the
abuse to which Fielding had been subjected by his political opponents. "It
may easily be imagined," he writes, "that a Man whose Character hath been
so barbarously, even without the least Regard to Truth or Decency,
aspersed, on account of his Endeavours to defend the present Government,
might wish to decline any future Appearance as a political Writer"; but
more weighty considerations move him to lay the defence of the Riot Act in
general, and of this application of it in particular, before a public
which had been imposed upon "in the grossest and wickedest manner." We
have already quoted the vivid depositions concerning this Strand riot,
which were sworn before Fielding, and which he here reproduces; and his
historical defence of the public need of suppressing riots, from the days
of Wat Tyler onwards, may be left to the curious reader. Needless to say,
Fielding makes out an excellent case against the toleration of mob law:--
"When by our excellent Constitution the greatest Subject, no not even the
King himself, can, without a lawful Trial and Conviction divest the
meanest Man of his Property, deprive him of his Liberty, or attack him in
his Person; shall we suffer a licentious Rabble to be Accuser, Judge,
Jury, and Executioner; to inflict corporal Punishment, break open Men's
Doors, plunder their Houses, and burn their Goods?" And, at the close,
this pamphlet reveals the warm-hearted magistrate no less than the erudite
lawyer. For of the two condemned prisoners, Wilson and Penlez, the case of
the former seemed to Fielding "to be the Object of true Compassion."
Accordingly he laid the evidence in his possession before "some very noble
Persons," and, he adds, "I flatter myself that it might be a little owing
to my Representation, that the Distinction between an Object of Mercy, and
an Object of Justice at last prevailed". So the felon gained his respite,
and a lasting niche for his name, in that he owed his life partly if not
wholly to the generous compassion of Henry Fielding. The pamphlet seems to
have made its mark, for a second edition was advertised within a month of
publication.
This eventful year, the year which had seen the publication of _Tom
Jones_, the shackling of Fielding's genius within the duties of a London
magistrate, the issue of two pamphlets occupied with criminal reform and
administration, the drafting of a proposed Criminal Bill, and the
suppression of a riot, closed sadly with the death of Fielding's little
daughter, Mary Amelia, when barely twelve months old. She was buried at St
Paul's, Covent Garden, on the seventeenth of December, 1749. And some time
in the autumn or early winter Fielding himself appears to have been
dangerously ill. This we learn from the following paragraph in the
_General Advertizer_ for December 28: "Justice Fielding has no
Mortification in his Foot as has been reported: that Gentleman has indeed
been very dangerously ill with a Fever, and a Fit of the Gout, in which he
was attended by Dr Thompson, an eminent Physician, and is now so well
recovered as to be able to execute his Office as usual."
[1] His Commission in the Peace for Westminster bears date October 25.
1748.
[2] An application is reported for the 2nd of December before "Justice
Fielding" of Meards Court, St. Anne's, but for reasons given below this
_may_ refer to John Fielding.
[3] From the autograph now at Woburn Abbey, and printed in the
_Correspondence of John Fourth Duke of Bedford_. Vol. i. p. 589.
[4] Middlesex Records. Volume of _Qualification Oaths for Justices of the
Peace_. 1749. From an entry dated July 13, 1749, in the same volume,
Fielding appears to have then owned leases in the three first named
parishes only.
[5] See the King's Writ, now preserved in the Record Office.
[6] Middlesex Records. _Sacramental Certificates_.
[7] Middlesex Records. _Oath Rolls_.
[8] _Amelia_. Book i. Chapter ii.
[9] The Westminster _Session Rolls_, preserved among the Middlesex
Records, contain many recognizances all signed by Fielding.
[10] "On Friday last," announces the General Advertiser for May 17,
"Counsellor Fielding, one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace was
chosen Chairman of the Sessions at Hicks Hall for the County of
Middlesex"; a statement not very compatible with the incontestable
evidence preserved in the _General Orders Books_ of the Middlesex Records,
by which it appears that John Lane Esq're was elected Chairman of the
Middlesex General Sessions and General Quarter Session from Ladyday 1749
to September 1752. The personal paragraphist of 1749 was perhaps no less
inaccurate than his descendant of to-day. But a few weeks later this
honour of chairmanship was certainly accorded to Fielding by his brethren
of the Bench for Westminster. An entry in the _Sessions Book_ of
Westminster, 1749 runs as follows: "May. 1749, Mr Fielding elected
chairman of this present Session and to continue untill the 2nd day of the
next." _MSS Sessions Books for Westminster. Vol. 1749_. Middlesex Records.
[11] From the autograph now at Woburn Abbey, and printed in the
_Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford_, vol. ii. p. 35.
[12] From the hitherto unpublished autograph now in the British Museum.
[13] This letter is now in the Dreer Collection of the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A.