The Right Honble the Earl FauconbergLondon

Date-stamped: 10 August

Remains of red wax seal

Newborough 6th August 1761

Mr Sterne is very much put about for want of a Stable, he has been at me Sevl: times to mention it to              your Lordship, if you will please to let one be Built for four or five Stands he will pay your Lordship Twelve pence p pound for what it Costs Building, which may be added to the Rent —–

Stable: the stable block was built and may be seen at Shandy Hall. Some of the original stalls are still in situ.

The Right Honble the Earl of Fauconberg

London

Date-stamped: 9 [July] and place stamped: EASING / WOULD

Remains of black wax seal

My Lord                                                                                                               Newborough 6th July 1760

Last Tuesday Mr Sterne went along with me to Sutton in order to give his Assistance
in Settleing the Rentals and Assessmts, which was not agreed to till that Day, and I have Inclosed
Sent your Lordship every Freeholders Seperate Rental (with the Assessmt: at 3d p pound) as it was
then Agreed to, and the Small Tenants of 20s and under are left out as they are all of ’em poor
people, in order to save them the Expense of the Window Duty —

Sutton: Sterne was one of the Commissioners for the Land Tax for the township of Sutton and in that capacity signed the annual statements of the amounts each individual was required to pay.

20s and under: under an Act of Parliament of 1432 (10 Hen. 6, c. 2), it was necessary to hold a freehold worth forty shillings in order to have a vote. The poor tenants referred to here are not entitled to vote.

Window Duty: there was no income tax at this point in British history. A window tax had been introduced in 1696 under William III and was intended to be relative to the taxpayer’s wealth based upon the standard of his accommodation. When the tax was introduced, it was levied in two parts: a flat-rate house tax of 2 shillings per house and an additional variable tax for houses with more than ten windows. Dwellings with between ten and twenty windows paid a total of four shillings, while those above twenty windows paid eight shillings. The number of qualifying windows changed in 1766.

I am Extremely Sorry to hear by yours of the Death of my good Lady. This Meloncholy newse hath Struck me so, that I am Disabled from Writing. I Condole with your Honr, in the Loss of so good a Sister, and so Tender a parent none more Amiable and Affectionate than her Ladyship was to all about her, which will render her loss to the Immoderate grief of her Ladyships Family, as also all those her acquaintance

I Shall take Care to get Dark Gray Coates for the Hospital Men and Women, and do every thing that you think is Necessary on the Occasion. Mr Sterne Dines with my Bror, to Morrow and shall then let him know the Contents of yours; I Should be glad to know if your Honr. Or his Lordship think it proper that my Self or any other Should meet the Corpse at York or any part in the Road, I am

Honrd, Sir

Yours Honrs Most Obdt:

Hble Servant

Richd: Chapman

Honrd. Sir: the letter is addressed to the Earl’s brother, the Hon Mr Belasyse, whose fore-name is not recorded.

my good Lady: The Countess of Fauconberg, née Catherine, daughter and heiress of John Betham, alias Fowler, of Rowington, Warwickshire. She married Thomas Belasyse, fourth Viscount Fauconberg, on 5 August 1726. He was elevated on 16 June 1756 to become the first Earl Fauconberg of Newburgh (of the second creation – the first Fauconberg earldom had lapsed with the death of Thomas Belasyse in 1700). She died at the Earl’s London house in George Street, Hanover Square on 29 May 1760. This was Sterne’s first contact with the family in his new position.

Hospital Men and Women: the inhabitants of the two alms-houses, set up for the elderly and indigent. One was endowed for ten men who each received four pounds a year; the other for ten women, who were each given two pounds. In the Visitation Return to the Archbishop of York in the summer of 1764, Sterne wrote: ‘There are two Hospitals endowed by Thomas Earl Fauconberg an Ancestor to the present Earl.—every Thing is well ordered in these Hospitals.’ The reference to ‘Thomas Earl Fauconberg’ is an reference to the Earl Fauconberg of the first creation.

The Right Honble the Earl Fauconberg

London

My Lord                                                                                                          Newborough 23d March 1760

I am extreamly Glad your Lordship hath thought proper to Nominate Mr Sterne to Coxwold living, of which I have acquainted Mrs: Wilkinson this Day, and got Mr Wilkinsons Nomination which I have Sent Inclosed; I Should be glad to know if I am to pay to Mrs Wilkinson this half Years Sallary due Lady Day 1760 —-

Nominate: Historically individuals and institutions not formally part of the Church of England had the right to nominate clergy to a particular living. Though many of these anomalies have been abolished some still remain, most notably among the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and certain public schools, such as Winchester and Eton. There are even a few individuals still retaining this right. Lord Fauconberg’s nomination of Sterne, dated 28 March 1760, is in Sterne’s own hand-writing and an illustration of it may be found in L.P. Curtis’ edition of Sterne’s Letters, facing p. 102.

Mr Wilkinson: Richard Wilkinson, like William Raper (see above), a cleric without a university degree, had been made Sterne’s assistant curate at Sutton-on-the-Forest on 14 June 1740, where he stayed for approximately two years. On the same day he was made assistant curate at Sheriff Hutton, Farlington Chapel. He had been nominated to Coxwold by Lord Fauconberg on 23 October 1753 and had died there on 12 March 1760.

Lady Day: 25 March – one of the four quarter days on which rents and salaries were conventionally due. It appears the cleric of Coxwold was paid half-yearly rather than every three months, which would have required a degree of economic planning.

Richard Chapman, a lawyer living in Oulston, North Yorkshire, less than two miles from Coxwold, regularly attended services in St Michael’s Church in the period when Laurence Sterne was the incumbent. Chapman was the land agent for Earl Fauconberg, the local landowner, and he had a great deal to do with Coxwold, which was essentially the estate village. The Earl lived for most of the year at his London residence in George Street, Hanover Square, and during the social season Chapman wrote every week to let him know what was happening on the estate and in the village. Most of the details of the letters are mundane: the weather, repairs to estate buildings, rents and wages, harvesting of crops and gelding of stallions. Chapman earns his place in literary history by virtue of the fact that he also commented on Sterne’s activities as a clergyman and his performance as a preacher.

Chapman’s letters appear to be one of only two eye-witness accounts of Sterne’s preaching – and they are very revealing. Sterne was presented to the perpetual curacy of Coxwold in March 1760 and as early as 20 July of the same year Chapman was reporting that his ‘Doctrine, (tho Chiefly Extempory) takes So well amongs the Congregation that the Church can Scarce Contain the number of People that appear every Sunday.’ Fourteen months later there were two successive letters which further attested to Sterne’s pastoral concerns and to his popular appeal, On 20 September 1761 Sterne and his churchwardens bought from Chapman a Scotch ox ‘which is to be roasted whole’ in celebration of the coronation of George III, which took place in Westminster Abbey on 22 September. Furthermore we are told ‘Mr Sterne hath prevailed with me to give e’m [Sterne and the church wardens] a Bushel of wheat for Bread so that all the Poor in the Parish may be Satisfied—there will also be a Collection for a Drink for e’m–.’ At this time a bushel of wheat contained 9 gallons – 72 Troy pounds – and would have made nearly 90 standard one-pound loaves. As his responses to the Archbishop’s Visitation of 1743 also show, Sterne was genuinely concerned for the material as well as spiritual welfare of his flock.

The following week Chapman sent a report of the celebrations to the Earl: ‘in the first place a very fine ox with his Hornes gild was laid down whole before the fire in the middle of the Town Street about nine oClock in the Morning, at half past roasting The Bells put in for Church, where an Excelent Sermon was Preached Extempory on the Occation by Mr Sterne, and gave great Content to every Hearer, the Church was quite full, both quire and Isle to the very Door, and the Text &c you will see both in the London and York Papers about 3 oClock the Ox was cut up and distributed amongst those who could not get nearest to e’m, Ringing of Bells Squibs and Crackers Tarr-Barrills and Bonefires &c and a Ball in the Evening concluded the Joyfull Day.’ This clearly was one of the great days in the history of Coxwold.

In both accounts the Earl is told, Sterne preaches ‘Extempory.’ This creates a slight puzzle. The text of the sermon preached for the coronation was indeed recorded in the newspapers: the York Courant reported: ‘At the village of Coxwould that Day was celebrated in the following manner: A large Ox was roasted whole, with his Head on and Horns gilt, and all the Parishioners invited to Dinner after Divine Service, which was perform’d by the Rev. Mr. Sterne; who on that Occasion, preach’d a sermon from 2 Chron. XV, 14,15. And they sware unto the Lord with a loud Voice, and with Shouting, and with Trumpets, and with Cornets. And all Judah rejoiced at the Oath.’ This sermon was published after Sterne’s death as ‘Asa: a Thanksgiving Sermon’ (number XIII in Sermons by the late Rev. Mr. Sterne, 1769). The problem is reconciling Chapman’s description of the occasion as being extempore and the subsequent publication of the text. There are two possible explanations: that Sterne did indeed preach extempore and then wrote down a version of what he had delivered, which was subsequently published; alternatively, he wrote out the sermon first, committed it more or less to memory, and then delivered it as if it were extempore. This would have enabled him to make eye-contact with his congregation and enhance the effectiveness of his delivery.

The latter version is the more likely and accords with the initial advertisements for the first two volumes of his sermons, which appeared in the York press in 1760, and described them as ‘the dramatick sermons of Mr. Yorick.’

Chapman’s letters also provide us with more mundane aspects of Sterne’s life in Coxwold: he needs stabling for his horses, and he is involved with the assessment of rents. A more lasting contribution to the village is to be found in the letters which describe the alterations to St Michael’s Church which, we are told, are to a plan devised by Sterne himself. It is most unfortunate that the plan of the alterations to the church, which Chapman tells the Earl is in Sterne’s own hand, has been separated from the relevant letter and appears to be lost. As it is generally believed that the idiosyncratic garden front on Shandy Hall is to Sterne’s design, it would have been very useful to have had his plan of the new church interior as evidence of his architectural skills both in planning and drawing. A lighter side to village life, and one which suggests the social aspirations of Mrs Sterne, is to be found in the letter discussing her postilion.

The letter which mistakenly reports Sterne’s death will be discussed more fully in the section ‘Sterne’s lives and deaths’ which is preparation and will appear during the summer.

The Laurence Sterne Trust is indebted to the North Yorkshire Archives for permission to reproduce these documents, and particularly to Keith Sweetmore for arranging the photography and permission.

The Trust is also most grateful to Hambleton District Council for a grant towards those parts of this website which deal with matters of local interest.

W. G. DAY

The Right Honble the Earl Fauconberg

London

Date-stamped: 19 March

Remains of red wax seal

My Lord                                                                      Newborough 16th March 1760

Old John Raper was with me to Day, to desire I would acquaint your Lordship that he hath a Son that’s a Parson, if yr Ldship would be pleased to give him Coxwold Living, if so, he has an Organ of his own Making, which he wou’d make a present of to the Church; he hath a bad Character and has behaved very Ill for which Mr Hugill Discharged him from Smeaton; he’s now Curate for Mr Sterne at Sutton; We have had fine Seasonable Weather for this Fortnight past and the Roads are now very good I am

My Lord

Your Lordships Most
Obdt: Hble Servant

Richd:: Chapman

John Raper: John Raper was one of Lord Fauconberg’s tenants in Coxwold.

a Son that’s a Parson: William Raper, originally a farm boy from Coxwold was Sterne’s curate in Sutton, where his first entry in the parish register is dated 23 November 1759. He was not a university-trained cleric.

Living: the term used to describe a position in the Church of England.

Hugill: The Hugills were a family from Great Smeaton, several of whom held the local living. This particular member is not recorded in the Church of England database.

The existence of the holograph MS was only made known in the early nineteen-eighties, some time after having been found among the papers of Sir John ‘Jock’ Colville, Winston Churchill’s Joint Principal Private Secretary, when the relevant parts of his collection were being prepared for transfer to the archives at Churchill College, Cambridge. An arrangement was made for the MS to be photographed so that Kenneth Monkman could prepare for publication a facsimile edition with an extensive commentary and annotations, which appeared in 1985. The MS was subsequently up for auction at Christie’s, London, on 29 June 1995, lot 371, and was bought by Raymond Burton, who loaned it to Shandy Hall for display. The MS was subsequently inserted into a designer binding and is now on long-term deposit in the Rare Book section of the library of the University of York. Partly because of Monkman’s concern that his work should not be pre-empted by any other scholar (as had some of his earlier researches) the holograph was seen by very Sterne specialists in its original unbound state: J.C.T. Oates, Nicolas Barker, and the present editor. It was not even shown to Arthur Cash, then finalising the text of his first volume of his biography of Sterne, with the result that, following the Medalle text, there is a misleading version of Sterne’s mother’s maiden name in Cash’s work, which sent him off on a wild-goose chase. The condition of the unbound MS is a matter of some importance in the ascertaining of the definitive text of the Memoir.

What is quite clear from a close inspection of the unbound holograph is that the MS currently held in the Burton Collection is complete in itself. Having looked closely at it before it was rebound, I can confirm that it is an improvised notebook of 16 pages made from a single foolscap sheet. The stitching was solely to make good the notebook, and there is no sign whatever of there having been any conjoined material. The condition of the verso of the final leaf of the MS clearly shows some wear and tear: a vertical fold mark and two small holes along the line of this fold, which affect two words. This indicates that the final leaf of the MS as it now stands was also the outer leaf. Moreover, the last words on the verso of the final leaf of the MS occur mid-way down the page. This holograph is complete as it stands and cannot have been used as the copy-text for the Medalle version.

There are some major differences between the two versions. Sterne’s holograph has 1520 words, including interlineations and legible deletions. The section of the Medalle version which ends at the same point as her father’s original, contains 1327 words. The approximately 200 word diminution is not entirely the result of her omitting deleted passages, as some material is transferred to her continuation. The section of the 1775 text which follows on from Sterne’s dating of his father’s death contains a further 614 words, giving a total in the printed version nearly twenty-five per cent longer than the holograph.

Medalle moved material round – minor details are omitted from their correct position in the MS and transferred to the additional sequence; and repeated material unnecessarily – for example, the reference to Sterne’s cousin sending him to university, which in the second section is also misdated. There are mistakes in the final quarter of Medalle’s text which could not have been made by Sterne himself, for example the use of the title ‘Prebendary of York’, a non-existent title; Sterne would have been well aware, having held two distinct prebendaryships, that they had their individual toponyms. This highly dubious mode of editing is exactly that to be seen in a number of those letters which Medalle printed and of which the MSS are extant. For those letters, and for the Memoir, Medalle’s method must have been to rewrite her father’s work, incorporating her extensive revisions, and send her manuscript to Becket. Where there are examples of such creative editing, noticeable features are Medalle’s self-promotion and a desire to bathe her parents’ marriage in a rosy glow, which is not borne out by those references to his spouse in the ‘Journal to Eliza’ and in those letters of Sterne for which the texts are indisputable.

There is a possibility that some material was derived from anecdotes which Sterne or Mrs Sterne had told her and which she may be recalling: the reference to the acquisition of the living of Stillington given by Levett is true insofar that Levett was living in the south of England, but there is, as yet, no reason to tie the gift to Elizabeth Sterne’s intervention. Similarly the story of the schoolroom may be a family story.

What stands out is the change in address. In the MS the material is an account which satisfies the statement that it was all set down for eventual transmission to Sterne’s daughter. In the final section it is clearly addressed directly to her and is designed to reinforce the closeness of the relationship between father and daughter and also between her parents. The final remarks are not borne out by any other source: ‘I tried to engage your mother to return to England’ has all the signs of that creative rewriting in which Lydia engages in those letters where we can compare MSS with her printed version; and the ‘inexpressible joy of seeing my girl every thing I wished her’ is as nauseous a misconception as could be imagined if one thinks of the MS of the Journal to Eliza: ‘my wife–<& I wish I could not add my Daughter (for she has debauch’d her Affections)> uses me most unmercifully–every Soul advises me to fly from <them> her–but where can I fly If I fly not to thee?’ (Entry dated 2 August 1767: for full text of ‘Journal to Eliza,’ see link.)

It can safely be said that the holograph is the sole authentic version of the Memoir, and that the 1775 printed version is a typical example of the creative attitude to her father’s material adopted by Medalle for her own agenda.

Military background.

Many of the events and military movements recorded in Sterne’s manuscript are of no real historical consequence and are not dealt with in modern histories. The most valuable source for these details is Nicolas Tindal’s The Continuation of Mr Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. From the Revolution to the Accession of King George II (2 volumes, London: John and Paul Knapton, 2^nd edn, 1751) which was a continuation of Tindal’s translation of Rapin de Thoyras’s XXXX and which deals with the events in considerable detail.

2   sent: though it has been suggested that this is a error for ‘set’, the word Medalle substituted in her version, Sterne may be using ‘sent’ in the sense recorded in OED sv sent v. 1:  ‘4. a. To cause (a thing) to be conveyed or transmitted by an intermediary to another person or place.’

2   for my Lydia: this phrase is repeated  below, at l.99, and reinforces that the memoir as it stands in the holograph is not directly written to Medalle, as the printed version claims. Medalle suppressed the second reference and introduced passages employing the second person: ‘you both followed me,—I left you both in France … when I called upon you’ (Letters, p. 23) to imply that the memoir was written directly both for and to her.

3   a Curiosity or a kinder Motive:

4   Arch Bishop Sterne: Richard Sterne (1595/6–1683), Master of Jesus College, Cambridge (1634-44 and 1660), and Archbishop of York (1664-83), the great-grandfather of Laurence Sterne.

4   Handysides: one of a number of errors in this autobiography. Roger Sterne’s regiment, as Fitzgerald noted, I. 27, was the 34^th Foot, at that date Hamilton’s, and subsequently Chudleigh’s and then Hayes’. Monkman notes: ‘That his son should make such a mistake seems odd, but it may have been thirty years or more since he had seen his father for the last time, and a childhood memory of Hamilton may well have surfaced in 1758 as Handasyde, a name made familiar to him firstly at St. Ives during his assistant-curacy there in 1737-8 when the Colonel Handasyde in question was MP for nearby Huntingdon, ands afterwards during his Yorkshire days when the same Handasyde was MP for Scarborough in 1747-54. Possibly there were other links: in 1760 a ‘Mrs Handasyde‘ of Windsor subscribed to SY’ (pp. xviii-xix)

5   Hobert: misread by Medalle as ‘Hebert’ thus causing confusion which continued up to and including Arthur Cash’s biography of Sterne, ‘Hebert’ does not appear in an army lists of the time, and the suggested alternative ‘Herbert’ is far too common to be helpful. Some scholars posited the notion that ‘Hebert’ was a French name and that of Agnes’ father, rather than her husband (See Elwin, 304; Fitzgerald, 2^nd edn, I. 3; and Cross, 11-12, who accepts this hypothesis as fact.) There is a single Hobert in the army lists for the period in question: Edward Hobert, entered as an Ensign in the 8^th, Queen’s, Regiment of Foot, who fought at Blenheim, for which, in March 1705, he was awarded £11 as his share of Queen Anne’s Bounty and was promoted lieutenant. He is also recorded as being at Malplaquet in 1709. Whereas the holograph qualifies Hebert’s rank with ‘I think’, Medalle omits the suggestion of doubt and thus further added to the confusion among subsequent scholars. Monkman (p. xx) demonstrates the appositeness of ‘of a good family’ by suggesting connections with the Hobart family (also spelled (Hobard, Hobbard, Hoberd, Hobert and Hubbard) , two of whose members were Attorney-General, the first under Henry VII, the second under James I. Other members of this family include a Gentleman of the Horse who fought with William III and the Battle of the Boyne, a Brigadier-General, and the Earl of Buckinghamshire, (created 1746), who became Governor General of Ireland. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to link Edward Hobert with this family.

6   Nuttle

7-8  Suttler … Anns Wars: OED: ‘one who follows an army or lives in a garrison town and sells provisions to the soldiers.’

8   when his Wifes Daughter: Medalle alters ‘when’ to ‘where’

9   Sept 25 – 1711 OS: it is difficult to determine why Sterne should feel the necessity to specify OS [Old Style] at this point; nor ‘N.S.’ [New Style] below at ll.16-17. The English calendar was brought into line with much of the rest of Western Europe in 1752, by an act of Parliament the previous year, An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use, (An 24 Geo II), which enacted that the correction would be effected by the expedient of leaving 11 days out of September 1752: the dates jumped from 2 September to 14 September. Confusion about which year a date fell is usually confined to the dates from 1 January to 24 March, as 25 March (Lady Day), was the day on which for centuries the official New Year started. Thus up to and including 1751, 24 March was the last day of one calendar year and 25 March was the first day of the next. During the eighteenth century there was often confusion, sometimes as in the pamphlets preceding A Political Romance deliberately engendered confusion, about the year in which the dates 1 January to 24 March fell. This is why in l.81 Sterne very properly records the date of his sister Catherine’s birth as ‘March 12. 1724/5,’ where the day fell in 1724 O.S. and 1725 N.S. There was never any doubt about in which calendar year a date in a September fell, nor any date in a July. Monkman comments that the ‘exactness in listing all but one of the birth-dates of Roger’s seven children seems to confirm that Laurence had a family Bible by him when writing …’ (p. xxiv).

10-11   graceless Whelp: ‘graceless’ meaning lacking a sense of decency; OED neatly defines ‘whelp’ n. 3. a: ‘Applied depreciatingly to the offspring of a noxious creature or being. (Cf. son of a bitch.)’

12   Clo<..>|m|wel: Clonmel, a strategically important town in County Tipperary, mainly on the northern bank of the River Suir, where even the church was fortified.

13   my Mother … Dunkirk: it was relatively common for wives and families to travel with the regiment, even in times of conflict. Following the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, the French had been forced to demolish the fortifications at Dunkirk, a topic which Sterne humorously deals with at some length in Tristram Shandy.

14   ominous: an unusual use of the meaning OED records as obsolete with the last recorded use dated 1662: sv ominous, adj,  ‘3. Of good omen, auspicious; expected to produce a favourable result.’ Medalle inserted ‘not’ before ‘ominous’ to make Sterne’s meaning less consciously ambiguous.

14   that Day: Medalle alters this detail to ‘the day after our arrival’, thus diminishing the whole point of ‘ominous’ by divorcing the synchronicity of the birth and the breaking.

15   broke: the term to describe a regiment being disbanded. Officers were reduced to half-pay, which meant that Roger Sterne, as an ensign, having earned just under £70 per annum, now had to support his family on less than £35.

16   Lile in french Flanders: having been besieged by the Confederate army led by Prince Eugene of Savoy, Lille surrendered on 22 October 1708 (Tindal, 4. 86-87). Roger Sterne’s regiment was part of the occupying garrison. The distinction between French Flanders and Dutch Flanders continues to this day in the bilingual divisions of Belgium.

16-17   Jul 10 1712. N.S.: see above, note to l.9 ‘Sept 25 – 1711 OS’

17-18   one Weemans … Dublin: Medalle, presumably for reasons of social snobbery, Medalle suppressed the key detail here, preferring the anodyne, ‘she married one Weemans in Dublin’ (Letters, p. 3), thus eliminating the reference to trade. Fitzgerald nonetheless identified Weemans as ‘son of a Dublin Mr Wimmins, who died in 1711, and whose other son married a sister of the now well-known Dean of Down, the husband of Mrs Delany’ (I.74). Mrs Delany famously declared of Tristram Shandy in 1760, ‘it has not and will not enter this house.’

24   Family Seat … York: Elvington is a small parish 11 kilometres south east of York

24-25   Daughter to … Heiress: another minor error of recollection: she was the grand-daughter, rather than daughter. Simon Sterne (d. 1703), of Elvington and Woodhouse, Yorkshire, was the second son of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, and married Mary Jaques, a local heiress; Roger (the father of Laurence) was the second son of this marriage; his elder brother, Richard, inherited the estate. Sir Roger Jaques (d. 1653), had been Lord Mayor of York in 1645.

27   decamped … Baggage: The phrase is of military origin. Bag and baggage was the entire property of an army and its soldiers. To ‘retire bag and baggage’ meant to beat an honourable retreat, surrendering nothing. Cf. Shakespeare, As You Like It: “Let vs make an honorable retreit, though not with bagge and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.”

28   Exeter: a fortified port in the western reaches of the English Channel.

29   Liverpool … Plymouth: a remarkable overland journey between two ports, particularly as Mrs Sterne may have been pregnant at this stage. Medalle omits the date. A similar journey is recorded below between Bristol and the Isle of Wight.

31   laid in: OED sv lie, v.1: ‘24. lie in. a. To be brought to bed of a child …’

32   Joram: not a common name, though found in the Old Testament as a alternative form of Jehoram, see 2 Samuel,, 8.10, ‘Joram brought with him vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and vessels of brass’; or XXXX Joram the son of Jehosophat, whose ‘vale’ is alluded to by Sterne on more than one occasion: XXXX. As a dialect word, jorum or joram is a large bowl for holding liquid, a tin cup tapering to a point for warming beer, or a large quantity of anything. Monkman (p. xxvi) suggests that Roger Sterne’s propensity for unusual names for his male offspring (with the exception of Laurence himself) may have been the trigger for the depiction of Walter Shandy’s theories of nomenclature.

34   <Driven … Month>: Sterne realised that he had made an error of chronology and deleted this reference – the event is inserted at its correct point below, line 52.

35   many ⁺: it is not clear why Sterne should have elected to insert a cross at this point.

37   unhinged: ‘Thrown into confusion; unsettled, disordered,’ OED unhinged, ppl.a.

38   Isle of White: recte Isle of Wight. Here, as so often in this memorandum, Sterne resorts to a quasi-phonetic spelling of place-names, cf, Animo (l.57). The Isle of Wight has long been important in British naval matters as it is separated from the mainland by the Solent which has high tides in both east and west channels, thus providing more opportunities to put to sea. Its proximity to the great mainland base of Portsmouth is also crucial.

39   Vigo Expedition: the Vigo Expedition was a minor punitive raid of which Thomas Carlyle wrote that it ‘made much noise among mankind. Filled all Gazettes at that time;–but now, again, is all fallen silent for us,–except this one thrice-insignificant point, That there was in it, ‘in Handyside’s Regiment,’ a Lieutenant of Foot, by name STERNE, who had left, with his poor Wife at Plymouth, a very remarkable Boy called Lorry, or LAWRENCE; known since that to all mankind. When Lorry in his LIFE writes, ‘my Father went on the Vigo expedition,’ readers may understand this was it. Strange enough: that poor Lieutenant of Foot is now pretty much all that is left of this sublime enterprise upon Vigo, in the memory of mankind;–hanging there, as if by a single hair, till poor TRISTRAM SHANDY be forgotten too’ (History of Friedrich II of Prussia, V, 5) The expedition lasted from 21 September 1719 till 11 November 1719 and was a response to the Spanish invasion of Scotland on 16 April 1719, when two frigates arrived at Kintail with arms for the Jacobite rebels. Tindal (4. 604) records ‘King George had a mind to be revenged’ and ordered that British forces take Corunna, a major port in north-west Spain. Four thousand men were sent to the Isle of Wight under the command of Lord Cobham, and these men included Chudleigh’s Regiment, in which Roger Sterne was then serving. They sailed on 21 September 1719, and on 10 October, instead of Corunna, took Vigo, which surrendered as soon as they approached, the British losing two officers and ‘two or three men.’  They occupied the town for just over a fortnight and set sail back to England on 23 October. (Extensive report in Tindal, 4. 604-605.)

40   Milford Haven: a port in Pembrokeshire, south Wales, on a fine natural harbour, which has been used as a military base for centuries, after Henry II used it as a staging post for his invasion of Ireland in 1171.

42   Bristol to Hamshire: this journey, via Plymouth, is a remarkably circuitous route, and it is unsurprising that it should have had such deleterious effects.

43   small Pox: as distinguished from the great (or French) Pox, i.e. syphilis.

46   supplyed: OED, supply, v.1. ‘4. To make up for, make good, compensate for (a defect, loss, or void); to compensate for (the absence of something) by providing a substitute.’

47   <Hester> Anne: Monkman suggests, ‘A likely explanation of Sterne’s error in first writing  “Hester” is that his aunt of that forename, second wife of his uncle Richard, died in 1720, a date probably recorded in the family Bible close by that of Anne’s birth in 1719’ (p. xxv).

47   pretty Blossom fell off: Cf SY, II, 94: ‘the new-born babe falls down an easy prey … like a tender blossom put forth in an untimely hour’; and Curtis Letters 226, p. 408: to Mr. or Mrs. William James, York, 28 December 1767: ‘I was afraid that either my friend M^r James, or M^rs James, or their little Blossome was drooping’

51   but thro my Mother Intercessions: this construction may be evidence of some haste in the writing. It would make more sense to a modern reader if it read: ‘but for my mother’s intercessions.’ The absence of the possessive indicator, whilst unusual, is not unknown in English, perhaps the most famous example being in King Lear when the Fool says ‘It had it head bit off by it young.’

53   Wicklow: county town of County Wicklow, situated on the east coast 44 km south of Dublin. There is a major land-facing fortification, the ‘Black Castle’, immediately south of the harbour.

55   Devischer: Medalle here misread her father’s quite clear handwriting and substituted ‘Devijeher’, as Monkman says, ‘led astray seemingly by the alignment of its long ‘s’ with the descender of the ‘7’ in the line above, and failing to note the clear repetition of the name in the line below’ (p. xxvi). Roger Sterne named this son after a senior officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Devischer. Though, as Curtis noted, Letters, p. 6, n.12, there were two Lt Col. Devischers, Abraham and Edward, Monkman prefers the latter as his promotion to the rank took place within weeks of the birth, ‘providing a timely occasion.’ It is indicative of Roger Sterne’s lack of promotion that Abraham Devischer joined up as an ensign the year after Sterne’s father, yet had become a lieutenant-colonel by the time this child had been born to a man who was still only an ensign.

56   Fetherston: beyond this reference, little is known of Fetherston or Featherstone.

57   Animo: Annamoe, a village in County Wicklow, 32 km from Dublin, on the Avonmore river. Another of Sterne’s quasi-phonetic spellings.

58   wonderful Escape: Ian Campbell Ross (Life, p. 27) points out that despite Sterne’s claims of authenticity ‘a virtually identical story is told of Sterne’s great-grandfather Richard, the future archbishop of York. He, indeed, went one better by enjoying a second miraculous deliverance. Not only did he fall into a sluice that carried him unscathed beneath a revolving mill-wheel, he fell also from a church steeple where he was unwisely playing at see-saw.’ Ross queries whether Sterne ‘had heard the story as a young child and later, growing up away from his family, mistakenly appropriated it to himself,’ and concludes: ‘from an early age Laurence Sterne clung to the flimsiest reasons for believing in his own future eminence.’ (p. 27.)

63   learnd to write: at this point Sterne was seven – not a particularly early age for such a skill to be acquired.

63   Carickfergus: the oldest town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It has a twelfth-century Norman castle, which withstood several days of siege by the forces of William of Orange in 1689, before surrendering on 28 August; William himself subsequently landed at Carrickfergus on 14 June 1690.

64   Droheda: an important walled town and port in County Lough, 56 km north of Dublin. Another quasi-phonetic place-name, based on /ˈdrɒhədə/, recte Drogheda.

65   Mullengar: Mullingar, the main town of County Westmeath

65-66   a kind Relation: Brigadier-General Robert Stearne, of Tullynally Castle in Westmeath. This identification was first made by David Thomson in Wild Excursions (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972, pp. 53ff). More details of this distant relation are provided by Ian Campbell Ross using Phillipps MS 13285 in the National Library of |Ireland (see Life, p. 28). Ross suggests that Sterne was susceptible to the military recollections of Robert Stearne, who had been at the siege of Namur in 1695, and which he described as ‘undoubtedly y^e Most desperate that had been made in y^e Memory of man’ and that these influenced his portrait of Uncle Toby.

68   loadend: EDD records loadened as a Yorkshire dialect term, ‘to load, burden; to freight.’ OED regards the word as obsolete and the final citation is from Sterne himself: ASJ ‘He had loaden’d himself in going up stairs with a thousand compliments to Madame.’ He also used the word in SY, III, 135, and possibly Curtis, 123, p.213, letter to John Hall Stevenson, from Paris, 19 May 1764: ‘I went and came like any louden’d carl’ where Curtis suggests this may be a corruption of ‘loadened.’ Sterne occasionally uses local dialect words, most notably in his verse.

69   Rueful: OED, rueful, a, 1. ‘Exciting sorrow or compassion; pitiable, lamentable; doleful, dismal.’

69   in March to Carickfergus: Medalle assumes from Sterne’s use of a capitalised noun that the reference here is to the month of March, whereas the military manoeuvre makes more sense in context.

72   Another sent to fill his Place: the apparently disengaged tone of this statement should be viewed in the light of the far greater infant mortality rates of the time.

73   Susan: possibly an indication of the social horizons of Sterne’s parents: though Susan is a diminutive of the biblical Susanna, it was a common name for female servants in the eighteenth century.

73   weary Journy: though this has the air of a biblical reference, ‘weary Journy’ appears neither in the 1611 King James’ Bible nor the Book of Common Prayer (1662).

75   School … near Halyfax: First identified by Peter Facer in ‘A Short History of Hipperholme Grammar School,’ Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, (1970), pp. 49-70.

76-77   My Cos … University:

78   <2>: an immediate correction, which shows signs of being smudged through by the writer’s thumb.

79-80   Catherine … own folly: Cf Curtis Letters 12, pp. 37-8, letter to Jaques Sterne, [5 April 1751]: ‘But to return to my Sister. As we were not able to give her a fortune, and were as little able to Maintain her as she expected – Therefore as the truest Mark of our Friendship in Such a Situation, My Wife & self took no Small Pains, the time she was with us, to turn her Thoughts to some way of depending upon her own Industry, In which we offer’d her all imaginable Assistance. 1^st By proposing to her, that if She would set herself to learn the Business of a Mantua‑Maker, as soon as she could get Insight enough into it, to make a Gown & set up for herself, – “That we would give her 30. pounds to begin the World & Support her till Business fell in. – Or if she Would go into a Milliners Shop in London, My Wife engaged not only to get her into a Shop where she should have Ten pounds a Year Wages, But to equip her with Cloaths &c: properly for the Place: or lastly if she liked it better, As my Wife had then an Opportunity of recommending her to the family of one of the first of our Nobility – She undertook to get her a creditable place in it where she would receive no less than 8 or 10 p^ds a Year Wages with other Advantages. – My Sister shew’d no seeming opposi­tion to either of the two last proposals, till my Wife had wrote & got a favourable Answer to the one – & an immediate offer of the Other. – It will Astonish you, Sir, when I tell You, She rejected them with the Utmost Scorn; – telling me, I might send my own Children to Service when I had any

But for her part, As she was the Daughter of a Gentleman, she would not Disgrace herself, but would Live as Such. Notwithstanding so absurd an Instance of her Folly which might have disengaged Me from any further Concern, – Yet I persisted in doing what I thought was Right. & tho after this, the Tokens of our Kindness were Neither so great nor so frequent as before Yet nevertheless we continued Sending What We could conveniently Spare.’

81   March 12. 1724/5: see note to l.9 above

82   Giberalter at the Seige: Gibraltar had been ceded to Britain as part of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), but continued to be – and still is – a point of contention between the two countries, on 11 February 1727 the Spanish set siege to the enclave. At the beginning of March two regiments, one of which was Hayes’ in which Roger Sterne was then serving, embarked at Portsmouth, arriving in Gibraltar at the beginning of April. The siege lasted four months, during which time the British had no difficulty revictualling the garrison from the sea, while the Spanish ‘lost above half their army by slaughter, sickness, and desertion’ (Tindal, 4. 709). A suspension of arms was signed on 23 June 1727 but the Spanish claimed that a suspension of arms did not require a lifting of the siege. Agreement was eventually reached on 24 February 1728 (Tindal, 4. 711).

83   Capt. Phillips in a Duel:

85   Jamaica: Columbus had claimed Jamaica for Spain by virtue of discovery. It was then seized by the English in 1655 by an expedition which had set out with orders from Cromwell to take Hispaniola. It became a haven for buccaneers, but was recognised as a vital garrison island in the English and then British policy of harassing the Spanish fleets sailing between Europe and the Caribbean and South America.

86   the Country Fever: not recorded in OED as a special combination, this is generally accepted as a term for malaria.

89   Port Antonio … Island: port on the northeast coast of Jamaica.

90    little Smart Man

91   patient of Fatigue

91-92   full Measure: Curtis Letters 188, p. 311, letter to Mrs. Daniel Draper [London, March 1767.]: ‘it will be repaid to thee in a full measure of happiness….’

93   void of all Designe: cf ‘And this he did for certain Reasons and Maxims which he wou’d have perswaded Albigion to believe were void of all Design and Artifice…’ The Secret History of Queen Zarah,  (Albigion,  (Albigion [i.e. London]: 1705), 2:24.

94-95   you might have cheated …sufficient

97   in a pensive Moode: cf. Curtis Letters 148, p. 256, letter thought to be to John Wodehouse, 23 [? August] 1765: ‘and your letter has drawn me out of a pensive mood’; and Curtis 170A, p. 286. Letter to Ignatius Sancho, 27 July 1766 ‘for my own part, I never look Westward (when I am in a pensive mood at least) but I think of the burdens which our Brothers & Sisters are there carrying…’

98-99   transmitting them … my Lydia; Medalle suppressed this detail. See note to l.2 above.

100-102   May 3^d 1759 … Bellfries Church: these details are also omitted by Medalle. The registers of St Michael-le-Belfry, York, record ‘Mrs Sterne’ as having been buried on 5 May. The location of the burial – within the church, rather than in the then graveyard – suggests that Sterne had sufficiently overcome his disagreements with his mother and had arranged with the recently-appointed curate, the Revd Dudley Rockettt, who was a friend and subsequently twice acted as Sterne’s surrogate in the spiritual courts, for this privilege. The grave is unmarked. Though there were allegations that Sterne had left his mother in penury in her last days, the detail that she was living in Petergate, which Monkman terms ‘a modestly respectable address’ (p. xxx) suggests these allegations are not entirely true.

105   my poor Father … March 1731: Curtis (Letters, p. 8, n.20) cites War Office records which give Roger Sterne’s death as 31 July 1731. Monkman (p. xxxi) notes that it was in the March that he had been promoted lieutenant and suggests that this is the source of the confusion. The sympathetic epithet ‘poor’ contrasts with the absence of any qualifier in the details about Agnes Sterne.

I have sent down these particulars relating to my family & Self, for my Lydia, In Case hereafter She might have a Curiosity or a kinder Motive to know them —– [2] / [1]

Roger Sterne ^Grandson to Arch Bishop Sterne^ Lieutenant in Handysides Regiment, married to Agnes Hobert, widow of an Officer, I think a Captain ^&^ of a good Family: her Family name, I believe was Nuttle – Tho’ upon Recollection, That was the name of her Father in Law – who was a noted Suttler in Flanders in Queen Anns Wars – when my Father married his Wifes Daughter ^NB (he was in debt to him)^ w^ch was in Sept 25 – 1711 OS.

This Nuttle had a Son by my Grandmother – a fine Person of a man – but a graceless Whelp – What became of him I know not – - The family, if any left live now at Clo<..>|m|wel in the South ^..^ of Ireland – at w^ch Town I was born, ^Nov. 24.1713^ a few Days after my Mother arrived with the Regiment from Dunkirk – my Birth Day was not ominous to my poor Father, who was that Day with <the> many other Brave Officers. broke & sent [1] / [3] a Drift into the wide world, with a Wife & two Children – the elder of w^ch was Mary, she was born in Lile in french Flanders July 10 1712. N.S. – This Child was most unfortunate – She married one Weemans a Linnen Draper in Dublin who used her most unmercifully – spent his Substance, became Bankrupt – left my poor Sister to Shift for herself w^ch She was able to do but for a few Months, for She went to a friends house in the Country & died of a broken heart – She was a most beautiful Woman, of a fine Figure – & deservd a better Fate. —–

– The Regiment in w^ch my Father served being broke, he left Ireland as^x \at Six Months old -\ soon as I was able to be carryd with the rest of his Family, & came to the Family Seat at Elvington near York, where his Mother lived (She was Daughter to S^r Roger Jaques & an Heiress)- <my>|Th|ere [3] / [4] we sojournd <till> for about <18>^10^ Months when the Regiment was established <..> and our Houshold decamped with Bag & Baggage for Dublin – within a Month of our Arrival, my Father left us being orderd to Exeter – where in a sad Winter, my Mother & her two Children followed him, travelling from Liverpool by Land to Plymouth ^1715^ – (melancholly Description of this Journy not necessary to be transmitted here) in <?Six?>^12^ Months, we were all Sent back to Dublin – my Mother with ^3 of^ us, ^She laid in at Plymouth of a Boy – Joram.^ <separated again from my Father> — We took Ship at Bristol for Ireland & had a narrow Escape from being Cast away – ^by a Leak springing up in the Vessel^ <Driven into Wales where we sojournd a Month> — at Length, after many⁺ perils & Struggles, get to Dublin – ^There^ My Father took <<A leak Sprung in our Ship> . — > [4] / [5] a large house, furnishd it, & in a year and a halfs Time Spent a great deal of Mony — In the Year |17|19 – ^all^ unhinged again — The Regiment orderd with many others to the Isle of White in order to embark for Spain in the Vigo Expedition – We accompanyd the Regiment and ^?first? driven into Milford Haven^ Landed at Bristol – from thence by Land to Plymouth again and to the Isle of White, where I remember <the> We stayd encamped some time before the Embarkation of the Troops —-(In this Expedⁿ <thro> from Bristol to Hamshire we lost poor Joram, a pretty Boy 4 Years old, of the small Pox . )- <She> My Mother Sister & myself remaind at the Isle of White during the Vigo Expedition & untill the Regiment had got back to Wicklow in Ireland, from whence my Father sent for us – We had poor Joram’s loss supplyed during our Stay [5] / [6] in the Isle of White, by the Birth of a Girl <Hester> Anne born Sept. 23. 1719 – This pretty Blossom fell off at the Age of three Years in the Barracks of Dublin — She Was, as I well remember, of a fine, delicate frame not made to last long, as were most of my fathers Babes — We embarked for Dublin – and had all been cast away by a most violent ^Storm^ but thro my Mother Intercessions to the Captain whō She prevaild upon to turn back into Wales where we stayd a Month – And at Length got into Dublin, & traveld by Land to Wicklow, where my father had for some Weeks given us over for lost. —- <..|W|e> We <…> lived in the Barracks at Wicklow one Year (1720) where March 12. 1720 Devischer (so calld after Colonel Devischer, was born [7] / [8] from thence we decamped to stay half a year w^th M^r. <Fe> Fetherston a Clergyman ab^t 7 Miles from Wicklow who being a Relation of my Mothers Invited us to his Parsonage at Animo. It was in this Parish during our Stay, That I had that wonderful Escape <of>^in^ falling thro a Mill Race whilst the Mill was going – and of being taken up unhurt. — The Story is Incredible – But known for Truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the Common people flockd to see me —- from hence we followd the Regiment to Dublin where we lay in the Barracks a year – [9] / [11] In this year 1721. learnd to write &c —-The Regiment orderd in 22^d. to Carickfergus in the North of Ireland — we all Decamp’d but got no further than ^Droheda, thence orderd to^ Mullengar 40 Miles West where’ by <…> Providence we stumbled upon a kind Relation a Collateral Descendant from Arch Bishop Sterne<s> – who took us all to his Castle and kindly entreated us for a Year – & sent us to the Regiment at Carickfergus loadend with <with> kindnesses. &c—-

a most Rueful and tedious Journy had We all in March to Carickfergus where we arrived in 6 or 7 Days —- <..> Little^x \He was left behind at Nurse at a Farm House near Wicklow But was fetch’d to us by my Father the Summer after — August 1. 1724\ Devischer 3Years old here dyed. — Another sent to fill his Place. ^<Aug^t>^ Susan – this Babe too left us behind — in this weary Journy —- [11] / [13] the Autumn of that Year or the Spring after, I forget w^ch, my father got leave of His Colonel to go to England on purpose to fix me at School. w^ch he did, near Halyfax with an able Master with whom I stayd till by Gods Care of me, My Cos: Sterne of Elvington became a father to me, & sent me to the University &c —–

– To pursue the thread of our Story — My Father’s Reg^t was <2> the Year after orderd to Londonderry where another Sister was brought forth Catherine still living – most unhappily estranged from me by my Uncle’s Wickedness & her own folly —–

She was born March 12. 1724/5 [13] / [14]

from this Station the Regiment Sent to Defend Giberalter at the Seige — where my father was run thro’ the Body by Capt. Phillips in a Duel — ^–about a Goose^ w^th much difficulty he Survived – tho with an impaird Constitution, w^ch was not able to withstand the hardships it was put to, for he was sent to Jamaica where he soon fell by the Country fever, w^ch took away his senses first, and made a Child of him, and then in a month or two, he dyed. walking about continually without complaining till the Moment he sat down in an Arm Chair & <dyed> breathd his Last. —— w^ch was at Port Antonio on the North of the Island. ——- [14] / [15]

my Father was a little Smart Man – active to the last Degree in all Exercises – most patient of Fatigue and Disappointm^ts of w^ch it pleased God to giv<->e him full Measure — He was in his Temper some what Rapid & Hasty – but of a kindly sweet <Temper>^Disposition^ — void of all Designe, & so innocent in his ^own^ Intentions, That he suspected no one, So that you might have cheated him ten <Days>^times^ in a Day – if nine <…. ….>^had not been^ sufficient

——————————————————————————————————-

This I thought fit to set down Sept. 5^th ˇ<1758>ˇ – having in a pensive Moode, run over these Incidents, in my mind, I spent half an hour in <setting the> transmitting them, for my Lydia, [15] / [16]

May 3^d 1759

————-

Agnes Sterne my Mother died <….> ab^t 10′ o’Clock in her Lodgings in Petergate — buried in the South Isle of Bellfries Church ——

—–

my poor Father died in March 1731

The marbled page is double sided. Fold marks are visible on the page where the margins have been protected during the marbling process. Some bleeding has occurred on p. 112. Each side is made up of different coloured inks.