Fielding | Page 3

III.
THE CHAMPION--JOSEPH ANDREWS
CHAPTER IV.

THE MISCELLANIES--JONATHAN WILD
CHAPTER V.
TOM JONES
CHAPTER VI.
JUSTICE LIFE--AMELIA
CHAPTER VII.
THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO LISBON
POSTSCRIPT
APPENDIX No. I.
FIELDING AND SARAH ANDREW
APPENDIX No. II.
FIELDING AND MRS. HUSSEY
APPENDIX No. III.
AMELIA'S ACCIDENT
APPENDIX No. IV.
FlELDINGIANA
INDEX
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS--FIRST PLAYS.

Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came of an ancient
family, and might, in his Horatian moods, have traced his origin to
Inachus. The lineage of the house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully
justifies the splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From
that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, temp. Henry III.,
and assumed the name of Fieldeng, or Filding, "from his father's
pretensions to the dominions of Lauffenbourg and Rinfilding," the
future novelist could boast a long line of illustrious ancestors. There
was a Sir William Feilding killed at Tewkesbury, and a Sir Everard
who commanded at Stoke. Another Sir William, a staunch Royalist,
was created Earl of Denbigh, and died in fighting King Charles's battles.
Of his two sons, the elder, Basil, who succeeded to the title, was a
Parliamentarian, and served at Edgehill under Essex. George, his
second son, was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Callan,
with succession to the earldom of Desmond; and from this, the younger
branch of the Denbigh family, Henry Fielding directly descended. The
Earl of Desmond's fifth son, John, entered the Church, becoming
Canon of Salisbury and Chaplain to William III. By his wife Bridget,
daughter of Scipio Cockain, Esq., of Somerset, he had three sons and
three daughters. Edmund, the third son, was a soldier, who fought with
distinction under Marlborough. When about the age of thirty, he
married Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, Knt., of Sharpham Park,
near Glastonbury, in Somerset, and one of the Judges of the King's
Bench. These last were the parents of the novelist, who was born at
Sharpham Park on the 22d of April 1707. One of Dr. John Fielding's
nieces, it may here be added, married the first Duke of Kingston,
becoming the mother of Lady Mary Pierrepont, afterwards Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, who was thus Henry Fielding's second cousin. She
had, however, been born in 1689, and was consequently some years his
senior.
According to a pedigree given in Nichols (History and Antiquities of
the County of Leicester), Edmund Fielding was only a lieutenant when
he married; and it is even not improbable (as Mr. Keightley conjectures
from the nearly secret union of Lieutenant Booth and Amelia in the
later novel) that the match may have been a stolen one. At all events,
the bride continued to reside at her father's house; and the fact that Sir

Henry Gould, by his will made in March 1706, left his daughter L3000,
which was to be invested "in the purchase either of a Church or
Colledge lease, or of lands of Inheritance," for her sole use, her
husband having "nothing to doe with it," would seem (as Mr. Keightley
suggests) to indicate a distrust of his military, and possibly
impecunious, son-in-law. This money, it is also important to remember,
was to come to her children at her death. Sir Henry Gould did not long
survive the making of his will, and died in March 1710. [Footnote: Mr.
Keightley, who seems to have seen the will, dates it--doubtless by a slip
of the pen--May 1708. Reference to the original, however, now at
Somerset House, shows the correct date to be March 8, 1706, before
which time the marriage of Fielding's parents must therefore be placed.]
The Fieldings must then have removed to a small house at East Stour
(now Stower), in Dorsetshire, where Sarah Fielding was born in the
following November. It may be that this property was purchased with
Mrs. Fielding's money; but information is wanting upon the subject. At
East Stour, according to the extracts from the parish register given in
Hutchins's History of Dorset, four children were born,--namely, Sarah,
above mentioned, afterwards the authoress of David Simple, Anne,
Beatrice, and another son, Edmund. Edmund, says Arthur Murphy,
"was an officer in the marine service," and (adds Mr. Lawrence) "died
young." Anne died at East Stour in August 1716. Of Beatrice nothing
further is known. These would appear to have been all the children of
Edmund Fielding by his first wife, although, as Sarah Fielding is styled
on her monument at Bath the second daughter of General Fielding, it is
not impossible that another daughter may have been born at Sharpham
Park.
At East Stour the Fieldings certainly resided until April 1718, when
Mrs. Fielding died, leaving her elder son a boy of not quite eleven
years of age. How much longer the family remained there is unrecorded;
but it is clear