Chapter 2 Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews

Chapter 2

Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews

2.1

The 18 th century British literature affords historians and students a vista of contrasts. Law ‘had come to replace religion as the main ideological cement of society’ 1, but lawyers were acerbically satirised. As the parliamentarians extended the death penalty to a myriad of misdemeanours, the literary legislators applied the weapons of satire to the vice and disorder around them. Injustices produced by law were a common subject for satire. The middle decades of the 18 th century saw a wave of anxiety about crime. Henry Fielding 2 (1707-54), who as a young man witnessed the hanging of Jonathan Wild at Tyburn in 1725, immersed himself uniquely in the literary and legal discourses on crime from the 1740s. Fielding led a life in successive phases, as a young man about town, as a playwright, a lawyer and a novelist. In 1749 he was appointed to the magistracy, and he devised the Bow Street Runners police force during his term in office. Though he may appear to us as a representative of the integrated culture of law and letters, it was only when Walpole’s Licensing Act of 1737 closed down the theatres that he enrolled in the Middle Temple, studied law and became a barrister. As a struggling advocate on the Western Circuit, he combined both professions. In early 1730s, Fielding wrote anonymous political satire and essays for journals such as The Champion , but in 1742, he published his first novel,

48 Joseph Andrews . Styling his book a ‘comic epic poem in prose’ Fielding attempted an accurate representation of the manners and morals of his society. Rather than direct condemnation, he sought to elicit ridicule of folly and vice by satire. He professes allegiance in this work to realist canons of portraiture, not to the caricaturist’s technique of exaggeration. Joseph Andrews tests the innocence of Joseph, Fanny and Parson Adams against the depredations of greedy publicans, uncharitable priests, cunning robbers and a host of self-serving ‘People of Fashion’ in a series of adventures on the road. Fielding established himself as a writer before he embarked on his legal studies, and he had achieved success in the novel before he became a magistrate. Nevertheless, issues related to crime and law underlay his entire career as an author, even in his earlier days as a dramatist and journalist. His mother’s father was a justice of the Queen’s Bench, while his paternal grand-father was an archdeacon of Salisbury; in these two men there may have been something of the genesis of Fielding’s bent toward the law and his firm sense of Christian morality. During 1728 to 1737, Fielding wrote over twenty comedies and burlesques. By that time, he was established as England’s leading playwright. In 1737, the Stage Licensing Act was passed by the Horace Walpole’s government which made dramatic performances open to government censorship 3. The Act effectively ended Fielding’s dramatic career. He turned to three alternative occupations which were to occupy him to the end of his life, and which interacted with each other in various ways: the law, political journalism 4 and novel-writing. He was called to the Bar in 1740, practising on the Western Circuit, and in 1748 became Justice of the Peace for Westminster, eventually extending his jurisdiction to the whole of Middlesex. He created the force which eventually became the Metropolitan

49 Police, and in his later years as a magistrate wrote a number of tracts on socio-legal issues. His judicial philosophy, as expressed in these, was relatively hard-line, but his novels, and especially Amelia (1751), show an angry awareness of the malpractices and injustices of the law and a compassionate feeling for its victims: the plight of good persons driven by poverty into petty crime and punished by corrupt and unfeeling magistrates is a recurrent preoccupation. A tension between the claims of strict justice, and those of a larger perspective on the whole human case, seems to have exercised Fielding throughout his legal and fiction-writing career. It is evident in the early Journey from this World to the Next (1743) as well as in Tom Jones (1749). Years surrounding the publication of Joseph Andrews were hard ones for Fielding. 5 Moreover, as a result of his literary and political notoriety, it was difficult for Fielding to get ahead in the legal profession. Yet if Fielding could not get money by practicing law, he did use the subject of law in his writing: Jonathan Wild (1743) is filled with biting accounts of the grotesque malpractices in the system of criminal law.

Criminal justice in London In the early Hanoverian age it was widely thought that crime had reached a new pitch of intensity: people in most ages have felt the same. Yet there were rational grounds for believing that social unrest posed an increasing threat, especially in the capital. Even if the crime waves Fielding wrote about were in some measure a matter of perception rather than objective reality (the statistics do not show a simple graph of upward progression), there was enough reality in them to warrant serious concern. For one thing, a polite and commercial nation could no longer endure some of the blatant evils which had gone on more or less unchecked in earlier

50 centuries. For another, demographic changes had outrun the administrative capacity of a system based on medieval and Tudor institutions. Thirdly, sheer growth meant that the law encountered a different scale, if not always a different kind, of problems in its operations. According to Pat Rogers 6 some historians have interpreted the entire system as a ruling-class conspiracy masquerading as a genuine operation of criminal justice. He further says that the view has not been accepted by the majority of scholars, who have pointed to the checks and balances by which some of the rigours of the law could be mitigated, and by which the court- room could provide a relatively level playing-field, granted the inequalities which prevailed outside the compass of law in the wider society. Fuller investigation of the day-to-day workings of legal institutions has shown that the system contained many fair-minded and hard-working people, who attempted to carry out their duties honourably in the face of huge social problems presented by the new urbanized environment. Pat Rogers further states that Justice Thrasher in Amelia displays no such urge to deal equitably with the men and women who come before him, and he was not alone in this. But in his magisterial capacity Fielding himself met the best standards of the time, even if his conduct does not stand up to meticulous scrutiny on every occasion, and his judicial philosophy lagged behind the most advanced thinking of the Enlightenment. Seated in his house on the west side of Bow Street, Fielding did not have to look far to see the evidence of what was going on. When first appointed to the magistracy, he had briefly taken a house in the neighbourhood, at Brownlow Street, off Drury Lane. From this site he could have taken a five-minute stroll and assembled a hundred career criminals, if they had been willing to show themselves. Close by squatted the fearsome ‘rookeries’ of St. Giles, a byword for poverty, disease, and crime for another

51 century, and a model for the slum Tom-all-alone’s which Dickens later created in Bleak House .

Legal and Social Works – Soon after Henry Fielding’s appointments to the magistracy in 1748 (for Westminster) and 1749 (for Middlesex County), he was elected chairman of the Westminster Sessions and in that capacity addressed the grand jury in 1749 – A Charge delivered to the Grand Jury . It is the first of his several important works where he exhorts the members of the jury strictly to enforce the laws against public immorality. As soon as Fielding was appointed to the magistracy, he naturally took a central role in the national discourse regarding legal and social affairs. The area of his responsibility covered some of the most notorious blackspots in the entire country, with a thriving criminal subculture and a pattern of unrest marked by frequent riots. In addition, Fielding did more than serve as a proactive Justice of the Peace in the capital. He wrote widely on matters of public policy, as they were affected by the law and by the institutions which supported its implementation: pamphlets, charges to the jury, and articles in the press flowed from his pen during the brief tenure of his magistracy. Of course, his novels deal centrally with some of the same issues, as they had done from the start. Equally, his comic masterpiece, Jonathan Wild , touches (albeit with satiric obliquity) on authentic issues regarding crime in London. Most of Fielding’s pronouncements relate to topical circumstances, such as an apparent wave of violent robberies, a riot in the streets, or a controversial ‘missing persons’ case. However, the cast of mind underlying the writing of these works is philosophic as well as pragmatic. While Fielding was a practical reformer and active participant in day-to-day controversial discourse, he was also a deeply reflective man, with a fuller

52 knowledge of humane learning – history, literature ancient and modern, and political theory – than almost all of his colleagues on the bench. Even if he had never written his plays or his fiction, his remaining oeuvre would still interest students of early Hanoverian England, because it discusses the controversies of the time through the prism of a thoughtful attitude towards society and a well-stocked mind. One other complicating factor enters into the equation. The failed Jacobite rebellion led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonny Prince Charlie’) in 1745-46 was not primarily a legal phenomenon: its roots lay in nationalist and constitutional affairs and in religious divisions. However, the means by which the regime defended itself from invasion, the way in which it put down the rising, and the manner in which captured Jacobites were tried and punished did excite general debate. Fielding had something to say on these issues, as he did on so many subjects related to crime and punishment – prisons, the state of the poor, charity, the problem of gin abuse, the game laws, and much else. An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers (1751) impartially exposes the reigning vices of his time; and the laws that relate to the provision for the poor and the punishment of felons are largely and freely examined. Convinced that the “Constitution” of England was being undermined by luxury seeping down from the great, who were above the laws, to infect the lower classes, Henry Fielding identifies the symptoms of this social disease (among them, drunkenness and the popularity of masquerades and gaming) and proposes reforms in the penal laws that would facilitate the apprehension and punishment of malefactors. A Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning 7 (1753) was the first of Henry Fielding’s many pamphlets published on this sensational case, which remained a topic of heated controversy for many months.

53 Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder (1752) contains, above thirty cases, in which this dreadful crime has been brought to light. As a magistrate Henry Fielding was concerned with organizing an effective police force of constables who understood their responsibilities under the law when preserving the peace and apprehending criminals. “A Treatise on the Office of Constable,” 8 reflects these concerns. 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 the First commonly called the Riot Act, are fully considered. As a magistrate, Henry Fielding and his constables had been active in July in quelling a series of dangerous riots directed against brothels in the Strand. On the eve of the Westminster parliamentary by-election, in which the court candidate was brother-in-law to Henry Fielding’s patron, the Duke of Bedford, Henry Fielding published this defense of the government’s unpopular decision to hang a young man, Bosavern Penlez, who had taken advantage of the riots to take part in the looting of a brothel. Claude Rawson in his article, “Fielding’s Style”, states – Fielding … a magistrate himself, a believer in law and order, and by no means soft on crime. Like many of his contemporaries … he defended the death penalty for felonies that might consist of no more than the theft of ‘a few Shillings’, and denounced ‘false Compassion’ and ‘ill grounded Clemency’ in such matters. … He held generally humane views on social and legal issues. 9

2.2 Fielding’s career as a novelist virtually began with an attack on Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela (1740) which tells the story of a servant-girl’s virtuous resistance to the advances of her master Mr. B. The

54 latter eventually marries her, and she becomes the Lady of B – Hall. The book was subtitled ‘Virtue Rewarded’ and hostile readers found it easy to impute a calculating prudence to the heroine’s chaste conduct. Fielding’s brilliant parody, Shamela , did precisely that, as the name implies. Fielding also converted Mr. B. to Squire Booby, a surname later extended to the squire’s kinswoman in Joseph Andrews , the surname Andrews being that of both the original Pamela and her Shamelaic reincarnation. The publication of Pamela created what Parson Oliver in Shamela described as an ‘epidemical Phrenzy’. It also gave rise to burlesques and parodies, of which the two best- known were Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741), and The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews . In this regard what Claude Rawson states is significant: The brooding figure of the rival novelist Richardson hovers over Fielding’s literary career from the beginning. It does so not in any simple sense as an object of parody, although, as often happened in the writings of Fielding’s satiric predecessors and contemporaries, including Swift, Pope and Gay, parody provided both the impulse and the frame for a 10 discourse which transcends the object of parody. It should be noted that even though Fielding’s Joseph Andrews is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela , he infuses in it his knowledge of the contemporary judicial system of England to satirize the malpractices of the judges and juries. For example, in Book I, Chapter 8, Fielding shows the readers Lady Booby, seemingly scolding Joseph for his conduct, then embarking on her attempt at seduction, but utterly confounded by Joseph’s sense of virtue: “I am out of patience,” cries the Lady: “Did ever Mortal hear of a Man’s virtue! … Will Magistrates who punish Lewdness, …, make any scruple of committing it? 11 Thus, Lady Booby’s rhetorical question characteristically reflects Joseph’s innocence as pretense, and simultaneously it comments on the nature of the

55 magistrates of Fielding’s time. In Book I, Chapter 9, Fielding further mentions that the danger of Lady Booby’s behavior lies in the turbulence of the conflict between passion and reason. But while describing her state of mind Fielding uses legal terminology: …She was a thousand times on the very Brink of revoking the Sentence she had passed against the poor Youth. Love became his Advocate, and whispered many things in his favour. Honour likewise endeavoured to vindicate his Crime, and Pity to mitigate his Punishment… (83) It should be noted that such legal terminology is not at all a coincidence, for in the next paragraph Fielding intervenes by using the first person intrusive narrator to illustrate Lady Booby’s confused state of mind: So have I seen, in the Hall of Westminster , where Serjeant Bramble hath been retained on the right Side, and Serjeant Puzzle on the left; … Here Bramble hits, there Puzzle strikes; … ’till at last all becomes one Scene of Confusion in the tortured Minds of the Hearers; … and neither Judge nor Jury can possibly make anything of the Matter; … (83) Here, the Hall of Westminster is the chief law court of England until the nineteenth century. The term ‘Serjeant’ is defined as “a member of a superior order of barristers (abolished in 1880), from which until 1873 the Common Law judges were always chosen” 12 . Judith Hawley in her introduction to Fielding’s Joseph Andrews explains that Bramble and Puzzle are colloquial names for lawyers, the first suggesting that he will entangle you like a bramble, the second suggesting a confused understanding of the law. Another aspect of law and order problem is reflected in the stagecoach episode in Book I, Chapter 12. When Joseph sets out for Lady Booby’s country seat, he is stripped, robbed, beaten unconscious, and thrown into a ditch by two thieves. A stagecoach comes up and after much argument amongst the selfish travellers, Joseph is lent a coat and lifted into

56 the coach. The shallowness of the travellers is further emphasized when the coach is stopped by the thieves. While Joseph shows concern for the clothes he has borrowed, only one of the travellers displays any real compassion for Joseph’s naked and battered state. The coachman thinks of his schedule and his fare, the lady affects shock at the thought of a naked man, the old gentleman wants to make haste to avoid being robbed himself, and the lawyer is worried only by the possible legal repercussions: … the Lawyer, who was afraid of some Mischief happening to himself if the Wretch [Joseph] was left behind in that Condition, saying, No Man could be too cautious in these Matters and that he remembered very extraordinary Cases in the Books, threatened the Coachman, and bid him deny taking him up at his peril; for that if he died, he should be indicted for his Murder, and if he lived, and brought an action against him, he would willingly take a Brief in it. (90) This shows the lawyer’s sheer selfish and hypocritical nature. These are all types of selfishness and ingratitude. Only the postillion feels truly compassionate: “he would rather ride in his shirt all his life than suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition.” Fielding’s aside that this man was later transported is his way of commenting on a society which would so harshly condemn a chicken thief. The other travellers are selfish and hypocritical and when the stagecoach is robbed, Fielding satirizes the lady who carries Nantes in her water bottle and the lawyer who is brave after the event: As soon as the Fellows were departed, the Lawyer, who had, … a Case of Pistols in the Seat of the Coach, informed the Company, that if it had been Day-light, and he could have come at his Pistols, he would not have submitted to the Robbery;… (91) This foreshadows the case of the man who is brave before the event (Book II, Chapter 9); on that occasion, it is Adams who is truly brave, just as in this

57 episode Joseph knocks down one of the robbers while he himself attacked from behind 13 .

In Book I, Chapter 14, Fielding mentions that one of the thieves has been taken. The mob that has gathered searches the captive, and the surgeon and Barnabas enter into the dispute as to which parties have the best legal claim to the recovered articles. Barnabas added that “these were Bona Waviata , and belonged to the Lord of the Manor.” (100) The surgeon characteristically relies on popular handbooks which do not provide a level of knowledge adequate for the professional. The amateur lawyer, Barnabas, who trusted entirely to Wood’s Institutes 14, distinguishes between the old principle of ‘finders keepers’ and the legal situation with regard to lost and stolen goods, for Bona Waviata are Goods which are stolen and waived upon pursuit (for fear of being apprehended) by the thief in his flight, and upon that account forfeited to the Lord of the Manor. The reason of this forfeiture is as a punishment of the owner of the goods, for not pursuing and bringing the thief to be charged. If the thief had not the goods in possession upon pursuit, there is no forfeiture; and then the owner may seize them where he finds them, without any fresh pursuit. In legal and other matters, both Barnabas and the surgeon are motivated by vanity rather than for public justice. Book I, Chapter 16 deals with the “Thief’s Escape”. The vain ostentation of Barnabas and the surgeon is in contrast to the thief, who, the pair of legal wranglers find on their return, has escaped – thanks to the carelessness or dishonesty of the constable, Tom Suckbribe . The constable’s name, Tom Suckbribe , indicates that the thief owes his escape to more than the constable’s malpractices and negligence. Many of the names (Whipwell, Slipslop, Booby, Peter Pounce, Fanny Goodwill, Mrs. Grave-airs, etc.) carry

58 on the Jonsonian tradition of humours, and Fielding himself emphasizes in the first chapter of Book III that his characters are types. But after the thief’s escape, “Mr. Tow-wouse was in some Tribulation; [because] the surgeon having declared, that by Law, he was liable to be indicted for the Thief’s Escape, as it was out of his House: He was a little comforted however by Mr. Barnabas’s Opinion, that as the Escape was by Night, the indictment would not lie.” (105) Although Tow-wouse is not an official gaoler, he could be held responsible for the escape of a prisoner lawfully detained on his premises. If a gaoler voluntarily permits a prisoner to escape, he is guilty of felony and is esteemed guilty of the offence for which the prisoner was committed; if the gaoler is negligent, he is guilty of a misdemeanour. However, the case is not clear-cut: the prisoner has not been legally indicted, but it is also not certain that Tow-wouse would be exonerated because the escape was by night. Fielding drops hints of the immoral behavior of the judges of his times when he describes (in Book I, Chapter 18) Betty’s passionate nature: While she [Betty] burnt for him, several others burnt for her. Officers of the Army, young Gentlemen travelling the Western Circuit, in-offensive squires, … were set afire by her Charms! (116) ‘Western Circuits ’ is one of the eight districts (six in England, two in Wales) through which itinerant judges would travel twice a year to try cases at the court of assizes. Fielding’s subtle satire of such judges is reflected in the aforesaid comment. But not all of Fielding’s judges and lawyers are immoral and corrupt, for there are a few persons like Horatio (in the Leonora episode – Book II, Chapter 4), who are sincere and honest. Fielding describes him as follows: Horatio … was a young Gentleman of a good Family, bred to the Law, and had been some few Years called

59 to the Degree of a Barrister. … he had a Dignity in his Air very rarely to be seen. (130) After Horatio and Leonora’s engagement – …the Quarter Sessions [italics mine] chanced to be held for that County in a Town … It seems it is usual for the young Gentleman of the Bar to repair to these Sessions, ... as to shew their Parts and learn the Law of the Justices of Peace: for which purpose one of the wisest and gravest of all the Justices is appointed Speaker or Chairman, …, and he reads them a Lecture, and instructs them in the true Knowledge of the Law. (134) Justices of the Peace presided over Quarter Session, courts lasting two or three days, held to try small offences four times a year in every county. Though they were supposed to be dignified affairs, attended by all the legal hierarchy, Woods records that special or petty sessions were sometimes held in an inn ‘for the more speedy Dispatch of Business in the Neighbourhood.’ Lawyers are again attacked in Book II, Chapter 5, after Fielding tells his readers that Joseph is at the inn, sitting in the kitchen and suffering from a heavy fall from Adams’ eccentric horse. The hostess, who is treating the contusion, is berated by her husband for wasting time on a mere footman – to which Adams replies that he believes the devil has more humanity. This sparks off a fistfight in which Adams lays out the host then promptly receives from the hostess a panful of hog’s blood in the face. One of the two men advises the host to recover damages against Adams – “…you will recover Damages, in that Action which undoubtedly you intend to bring, as soon as a Writ can be returned from London; …” (146) To initiate a lawsuit, the plaintiff had to obtain a writ from the court of Chancery directing the Sheriff of the county to order the defendant’s appearance in the court. The same person persuades the Host by saying – “I don’t care … to intermeddle in these Cases: but you have a Right to my Evidence; … I must speak the

60 Truth.” (146) and he offers his own distorted views as evidence. But the Host has no faith in the law. He mentions, “I have no stomach to Law, I thank you. I have seen enough of that in the Parish, where two of my Neighbours have been at Law about a House, ’till they have both lawed themselves into a Goal.” (146) Here, ‘Goal’ is ‘gaol’ – presumably debtors’ prison. But the Host’s remark foreshadows the lawsuit in Dickens’s Bleak House . The other gentleman tries to convince Adams that he may win the case because “…the Assault of the Wife was in Law the Assault of the Husband; for they were but one Person;…” (146) According to Wood, the husband and wife are accounted to be but one Person in Law. In some cases, for example, debt, treason and murder, the wife could be indicted without her husband, but in other cases where the wife had done wrong or had been wronged, they had to stand trial together and damages had to be given for or against the husband. This is how Fielding exploits his knowledge of certain statues to make fun of people’s attitude towards law. In Book II, Chapter 10, when a group of young “bird-batters” discovers the distraught woman (Fanny) and her rescuer (Adams), Adams is still vacillating between faith in his legs or in the law. He tries to relate what has happened but the canny villain interrupts with his own version: he is a poor traveler who was robbed by this pair of rogues!. Catching a pair of thieves immediately seems better sport than catching birds, and so the bird- batters march Adams and Fanny off to the Justice. The resigned Adams misses an opportunity to escape, for when the clerk of the company mentions the possibility of an 80 pound reward they all start to bicker about their share. Fielding writes – This contention was so hot, and so totally engaged the Attention of all the Parties, that a dexterous nimble Thief, had he been in Mr. Adams’s situation, would have taken

61 care to have given the Justice no Trouble that Evening. Indeed it required not the Art of a Shepherd to escape. (165) Fielding refers to the topical example of Jack Shepherd (1702 – 24), a robber and highwayman, notorious for his repeated escapes from prison. He was celebrated in popular literature. 15 Judith Hawley explains: By the statute 4 & 5 William and Mary, Chapter 8, “He who Apprehends and Prosecutes a Highway-Man to Conviction, shall … Receive … Forty Pounds … with His Horse, Furniture, Arms, Money, and other Goods taken with Him; not taking away the Rights of any Persons claiming the same, from whom they were taken. (357) Adams and Fanny are put in a stable (Book II, Chapter 11) while the justice, just returned from a fox-chase, finishes his dinner. Afterward, “the justice being now in the height of his Mirth and his Cups”, proceeds to “have good sport” with them, without any regard to the issues at stake. Some lewd remarks are leveled at Fanny – “she was relation of Turpin .” Dick Turpin (1705–39), famous highwayman, was hanged shortly before the composition of Joseph Andrews . Further, the justice orders the clerk to make the mittimus – without reading a word of the dispositions, and the indignant objections from Adams do nothing to prick his conscience. ‘ Mittimus ’ is a warrant by which a justice commits an offender to prison. At this point, the clerk introduces into the evidence Adams’s copy of Aeschylus, which is literally and figuratively Greek to the justice. Fielding satirizes such foolish justices when he mentions that the justice takes Aeschylus to be Adams’s fictitious name. Soon when Adams’s identity as a clergyman is proved then the same justice hastily tries to make amends. Though Adams is accused of stealing his cassock, it is the ignorant parson of the parish who proves to be the impostor. To provide spice to his satire Fielding inserts a parody on “a knowledge of Latin” and also provides us with a justice, thick and bloated from his own meal. Fielding was himself a magistrate and had first-hand

62 knowledge of the abuse of common law by those supposed to be on the right side of it. The world of Aeschylus is unknown to such ignorant lesser mortals – but Fielding emphasizes Adams’s humanity by allowing him to warm up almost to boiling point in his debate with the justice. In Book III, Chapter 3 Wilson narrates ‘the History of his Life’ and mentions that at one time he was arrested for not paying back 35 pounds. Fielding repeatedly condemned the inhuman (and inefficient) practice of imprisoning debtors. The situation persisted into the nineteenth century and was mentioned prominently in the novels of Dickens. When Lady Booby attends church (Book IV, Chapter 1), her ogling of Joseph is interrupted by Adams’s announcement of the banns of marriage between Joseph and Fanny. Furious, Lady Booby summons Adams and condemns the character of the two lovers, but Adams stands firm in his approval of the match, despite Lady Booby’s threats to have him dismissed. Moreover, she is alarmed by what Adams has learnt from lawyer Scout: I have been informed by Lawyer Scout , that any person who serves a Year, gains a Settlement in the Parish where he serves. (280) To restrict the number of people entitled to parish relief, several statutes established qualifications for settlement. The poor had 40 days to establish residence in a parish, or could claim settlement if they rented property worth £10 p.a., or if they paid taxes, performed a public office, were bound apprentices, or were unmarried servants hired for a year. Lady Booby sends for this potentially dangerous lawyer – Scout. She angrily informs him that “I am resolved …to have no discarded Servants of mine settled here; and so, if this is by your Law, I shall send to another Lawyer.” But Scout replies: “If she sent to a hundred Lawyers, not one nor all of them could alter the Law.” (281) He, further uses legal jargon in order to convince her of the nature of

63 the problem. Unlike Adams, however, Scout quickly bends himself to Lady Booby’s purpose; he echoes her reasoning, vilifies Fanny, and refers her to Justice Frolick as the man to legally banish the two (Joseph and Fanny). Fielding closes the chapter by saying that the vermin who eat up the poor committed to Bridewell 16 are really none other than the Scouts of this world, who are the “pests of society, and scandal to a profession, to which indeed they do not belong”. The steadfast honesty of Adams stands in direct contrast to the sly hypocrisy of Scout, who will ensure – for certain favours – that no law stands in the way of the will of such eminent people as Lady Booby. He assures her that “the Justice will stretch it as far as he is able, to oblige your Ladyship.” (282) Fielding directly comments on Scout: This Scout was one of those Fellows, who without any Knowledge of the Law, or being bred to it, take upon them, in defiance of an Act of Parliament, to act as Lawyers in the Country, and are called so. (283) An Act of Parliament that is ‘an act for the better Regulation of Attorneys and solicitors’ (1729) imposed a £5 fine on those who practiced law without having served a five-year apprenticeship with an attorney and being duly sworn in. Scout was technically exempt because the regulation was not extended to the Quarter Sessions until 1749. Two days after her interview with Adams and Scout, Lady Booby heard the second publication of the banns. To her further dismay she now learns from Slipslop that Scout has carried both Fanny and Joseph before the justice. Earlier, she wanted to be rid of them both, but now she cannot bear to lose Joseph. Her worries are interrupted, however, by the arrival of her nephew and his wife, Pamela (who is Joseph’s sister). News of Joseph’s arrest reaches Mr. Booby through his servants, and he leaves to see what he can do to help his brother-in-law. He arrives at the “judgment-seat” just after the justice (who is a neighbor and acquaintance of his) has ordered Joseph

64 and Fanny to Bridewell for a month. Mr. Booby reads the deposition, written by the justice himself, and is horrified to find that the trumped-up charge is no more than that “Joseph Andrews with a knife cut one hassel-twig” belonging to lawyer Scout, who smugly remarks that “if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged.” It should be noted that according to the statute 43 Elizabeth I, chapter 7, anyone convicted of having cut any fruit trees, robbed any orchard or broken any hedges, pales or other fences, should pay the damages, or be committed to the constable to be whipped. So, Booby protests and the justice commits Joseph and Fanny to Mr. Booby’s custody. The justice, like Scout, is a miserably inadequate man of law; illiterate and open to pressure, he is prepared to initiate any charge simply to satisfy Lady Booby – and is equally prepared to drop it to accommodate Mr. Booby.

Among Fielding’s novel Jonathan Wild , which takes its subject from the career of the best-known criminal of Fielding’s lifetime, is a moral satire, not a serious enquiry into the causes of crime in the 1720s: it deals with the problem of evil partly in a playful way, and partly in terms of political grandees such as Walpole, whose rise and fall Fielding allegorizes as a timeless exemplum. The book does not give us the Newgate to which the authorities dispatched Penlez, or even for that matter the prison in which Booth finds himself at the start of Amelia .

The opening sections of Amelia contain some mordant passages on the state of the criminal system, and shades of the prison-house soon begin to close on the plot as it develops. Much of Amelia clearly draws on Fielding’s experience in the hard days he endured before achieving his eminent position on the bench. Most of the action revolves around the quarter of London that Fielding knew best, in parishes such as St Martin’s

65 and St. Clement’s. But more important than any literal allusions are the pervading images of enclosure, confinement, exile: the book portrays the capital as a forest of gaols and sponging-houses. By comparison Joseph Andrews has a lighter touch in its handling of the perils of crime. Two such innocents as Joseph and Parson Adams are always likely to fall foul of some powerful interest, and the titular hero risks losing his liberty as well as his job when he resists the advances of his mistress. But the language is always less menacing in its overtones than it will become in Amelia . The outcome here is a happier one, and the impact of judicial inadequacy on rural society is made to seem, implausibly in some ways, less baneful than is the case in London. Tom Jones conducts a more elaborate interrogation of crime than his other fiction. As was the case with his later tenure as a magistrate and his legal writings, it draws on a lifetime’s experience of the myriad ways in which human beings interact with crime and the law, as victims, perpetrators, witnesses, and innocent bystanders. If the novelist ultimately bequeathed a more lasting legacy, it could be argued that his contemporaries had equal cause to value him for his energetic and sometimes heroic efforts to cope with the immediate problems thrown up by a society barely able to contain the pressures of modern living. Thus, the novels touch on many questions, he confronted and would confront as a lawyer and a magistrate. However, they dramatise rather than analyse legal matter. This leads us to Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and George Eliot’s Adam Bede , written more than a century later and after the police reforms in Britain.

NOTES

1. The quoted phrase is from J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750 (London: Longman, 1984) 145. 2. Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, Somerset, educated at Eton College, and studied law in London and at the University of Leiden. 3. The Stage Licensing Act remained in force until 1968 – in its later period the Act was more often concerned with moral than with political censorship. 4. From 1739 to 1741 Fielding edited a satirically political newspaper, The Champion . 5. The death of his father in June 1741, left him sorrowful, and in March 1742 his daughter died. In June 1741 Fielding also severed his connection with The Champion . 6. For the details of Fielding’s substantive contributions to penology, that is the non-fictional texts he produced as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster and Middlesex see Pat Rogers, “Fielding on Society, Crime and the Law”, The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding , ed. Claude Rawson (Cambridge: CUP, 2007). 7. Elizabeth Canning, a servant girl of eighteen, claimed to have been abducted and held against her will in an outlying suburb of London for four weeks before she made her escape. Henry Fielding, who as magistrate had examined the girl and those she accused, remained convinced of her innocence despite evidence that she had perjured herself. 8. “A Treatise on the Office of Constable,” published posthumously in Sir John Fielding’s Extracts from such of the Penal Laws, as particularly

67 relate to the Peace and Good Order of this Metropolis (1761), was assembled by his brother from notes Henry Fielding left behind at his death. 9. Claude Rawson, “Fielding’s Style” The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding , ed. Claude Rawson (Cambridge: CUP, 2007) 155. 10. Claude Rawson, Satire and Sentiment 1660-1830 (Cambridge: CUP, 1994) 136. 11. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews , ed. Judith Hawley (London: Penguin, 1999) 80. All quotations from the novel are taken from this edition. Page numbers in parentheses have been given in the body of the text. 12. C. T. Onions, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , 3rd ed. (Oxford: OUP, 1972). 13. Despite the barbed portrayal of hypocrisy in this section, one remembers Fielding’s qualification in the preface: “the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible”. Indeed, the whole spirit of this passage is farcical. In Crime and Punishment in England: A Sourcebook edited by Andrew Barrett and Christopher Harrison (London: UCL Press, 1999) 156, one can find the following data which indicates high rate of highway robberies in the 17 th century England: Sentenced to Executed Pardoned/ transported/ death died in gaol Highway 362 251 111 robbery 14. Fielding himself possessed a copy of Thomas Wood’s An Institute of the Laws of England , and annotated it for his own use. 15. Defoe, for example, published two accounts of Shepherd’s exploits in his Colonel Jack and Roxana: The Unfortunate Mistress .

68 16. Bridewell Hospital in London, where the ‘idle poor’, vagrants and whores were condemned to menial labour. The name became generic for any house of correction. In ‘A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor’ (1753), Fielding argued for the reform of this system which he believed was likely to corrupt the morals of the inmates. ..