Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/473

 12 s. in. NOV., i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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rately stated, and the supposed identifica- tion of Thwackum, Square, and Dowling is probably equally erroneous. One has only to turn to Hoare's ' History of South Wiltshire,' vol. v. addenda, p. 59, for a biography of the Rev. Mr. Hele : he appears to have been a man. of the highest character, and utterly dissimilar to Thwackum in every respect. One of Chubb's personal convic- tions was that, being poor, it behoved him to refrain from marriage and from begetting children whom he could see no prospect of supporting (see Chubb's ' Posthumous Works,' 2 vols., 1748, and ' D.N.B.'). As Chubb's transparent honesty was, unlike his tenets, never questioned, it would scarcely have been in keeping with the man's characteristics for Fielding to paint him as casting longing eyes on Molly Seagrim. Again, Robert Stillingfleet had acted as Tickling's attorney in the case of Bennett v. Fielding (Public Record Office, King's Bench Plea Rolls, Trinity term, 10 and 11 Geo. II., membrane 658), and it would have been somewhat ill-advised to make him the object of ridicule. It seems more consonant with probabilities that Dowling always "in a violent hurry, and protesting that he had so much business to do, that, if he could cut himself into four quarters, all would not be sufficient " (' Tom Jones,' v. 7) originated in that bookseller and nostrum-proprietor, John Newbery, of whom a contemporary assures us that

" when he enters a house, his first declaration is, that he cannot sit down ; and so short are his visits, that he seldom appears to have come for any other reason but to say, He must go." As Mr. Austin Dobson remarks (in ' An Old Xiondon Bookseller '),

" Newbery's wig must often have been awry, and his spectacles mislaid, in that perpetual journey from pillar to post."

In 1744 Newbery removed from Reading, and opened as a bookseller at the sign of the Bible and Crown, near Devereux Court, without Temple Bar ; and as Fielding simultaneously commenced house at Boswell Court (12 S. i. 264), on the opposite side of the road, we are confronted with no great difficulty in bringing the two men into touch. Besides, as Reading lay on one of the main -coach-routes to the West of England, they had probably met long before 1744.

5. The Cradocks of Salisbury. In F. Lawrence's ' Life of Henry Fielding,' 1855, we read (p. 68) :

"The lady with whom Fielding .... entered the bonds of matrimony was one of three sisters named Cradock, who were amongst the most celebrated belles of the town of Salisburv."

When Mrs. Elizabeth Cradock, then? mother, died in February, 1735, she by her will (made a few days previously) thus disposed of her property :

"....I give to my daughter Catherine one shilling ; and all the rest and residue. . . .1 give, devize, and bequeath unto my dearly beloved daughter Charlott Feilding, wife of Henry Feilding...."

no mention being made of a third daughter. Previous to this (though published later) Henry Price, a poet of Poole, addressed certain laudatory verses to " Charlotte and Kitty Cradock," wherein no hint is given of a trio of sisters. It could scarcely be that the virtues of the third were unworthy of record, for Fielding, in his early days, had made Jove to exclaim :

" C[rado]cks, to whose celestial dower I gave all beauties in my power, To form whose lovely minds and faces I stripp'd half heaven of its graces."

Thus the subject was left, except by Thomas Keightley, who, circa 1857, travelled westward, meditating a Life of Fielding, and " learned in Salisbury that the Crad- dock [sic] family, which is now extinct, was highty respectable " (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1858, p. 8).

There appeared last year in ' N. & Q.' (12 S. i. 425) an article containing an index to all the memorial and monumental inscriptions in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury remaining in 1902-3, when they were transcribed by Mr. T. H. Baker (supra). In the list of names occurred that of Cra- docke. Having been granted access to a duplicate copy of this particular MS., I am able to set out the record to which the name refers :

Choir. N. aisle. Floor. E. end.

Here Lyeth y 8 Body of | Mrs. Mary Penelope Cradocke j who departed this Life | October y* 28 th i 1729 1 setatis suae xxiv.

So far as the date is a criterion, Mary Penelope may well have been the sister of Charlotte and Kitty Cradock, and this finds support from an entry in the " Burialls " Register of 1729, with a copy of which I have been favoured by the courtesy of Mr. 'J. J. Hammond of Salisbury and Mr. Freemantle, the head verger of the Cathe- dral : " Mrs. Mary Penelopy Cradock of the Close was buryed 1he 1st November." That Charlotte Fielding lived in the Close is well known ; see ' Fielding and the Collier Family,' 12 S. ii. 104).

This may be thought a somewhat trivial discovery, * but it furnishes evidence in refutation of Richardson's gratuitous state-