Edmund spelled his last name Feilding
because that was the more aristocratic form. His cousins were the Earls
of Denbigh and that went straight to his head.
Edmund eventually died in a debtor's
prison, leaving behind an estate valued at five pounds. Apparently his
wife's parents were on to something.
This didn't help Edmund's finances
because Sarah's father had arranged his will very carefully.
This was three strikes against her.
(Her only acceptable quality was being female.)
He calmed down as he grew older.
He switched to suing people and only occasionally hired others to brawl
on his behalf.
Like father, like son. Henry always
managed to live just outside his means, though he was never as bad as his
father.
Here are some of the characters
he created: Harry Luckless, Bookweight, Judge Squeezum, Captain Merit,
Lord Richly, Mother Bilkum, Puzzletext, Colonel Promise, Squire Tankard,
and Mrs. Slipslop.
Henry wrote lots of rather bad poetry
to Charlotte, but she married him anyway.
Many people blamed Henry's plays
for the passage of these laws, because he continually attacked Walpole,
the current Prime Minister in his work. Certainly Walpole was not amused,
but I think it's unfair to give Henry ALL the blame. It wasn't his fault
the Prime Minister wasn't a good sport.
Henry suffered from gout and dropsy.
He was a bit young for gout, but his earlier excesses in the realms of
alcohol and food brought it on early. If you want to look them up, dropsy
is now called edema. Gout is still gout, though it's no longer fashionable.
He'd already been there, and let
me tell you, he did NOT want to experience THAT again.
One newspaper, the Daily Advertiser,
announced that Henry was in fact dead and that there was an imposter writing
all this nasty stuff. To make this remark even funnier, please read the
section on John Partridge under Jonathan
Swift.
This was ordinarily a very lucrative
sort of job, but Henry was honest and thereby missed out on £200
or so per year.
Lest I forget, he also published
Tom
Jones in 1749 and a novel called Amelia in 1751. The plot was contrived
(the heroine conveniently inherits a large sum of money) and contained
several factual errors. You can bet Richardson pointed THAT out loudly
and often.
The city watchmen (a very disorganized
organization) had severe problems catching and keeping
criminals because the criminals were generally
younger, stronger, and better armed.