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Essay on Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was born on April 22nd, 1707. His father, Edmund Fielding, was the son of an archdeacon of Dorset and had, the year before, married possibly after an elopement Sarah Gould, the daughter of a magistrate. The actual birthplace of the child has never been definitely determined. It may have been Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, the residence of the Gould family, or more doubtfully, as tradition has it, Capel Street, Dublin, where, about this time, the major must have been stationed with his regiment.
Fielding was, therefore, of good family on both sides. The Fieldings were closely related to the Earls of Denbigh, and a tradition, since disproved but not before it had given rise to one of Gibbon's famous epigrams, claimed that they traced their descent from the Hapsburgs. (R. DUEBER 10)
Fielding's earliest childhood was passed in Sharpbam Park and later in East Stour, a village in Dorset, where Colonel Edmund Fielding, who was placed on half-pay about 1710, had settled in order to try the life of a gentlemanfarmer. He was not quite cut out for success in such a venture. Perhaps this soldier-farmer was too fond of London life, for Miss Godden has discovered that he once (in 1716) lost there £780 at faro.
Henry, the eldest of five children, was rather less than eleven years of age when his mother died in April, 1718. This was the beginning of a somewhat ugly family quarrel. The Colonel soon went away to London, leaving his children in the care of a sister of Lady Gould, his mother-in-law. After a year he married again and returned to East Stour with his second wife. She was said to be an Italian and a Roman Catholic, which would make her new family doubly suspicious of her. The result was a lengthy law-suit between Lady Gould and her son-in-law, each of whom claimed the custody of the children....
