Sterne | Page 7

born three years later than Sterne, had entered a year after
him at Cambridge as a pensioner of Peterhouse, and the two students
went through their terms together, though the poet at the time took no
degree. There was probably little enough in common between the shy,
fastidious, slightly effeminate pensioner of Peterhouse, and a scholar of
Jesus, whose chief friend and comrade was a man like Hall; and no
close intimacy between the two men, if they had come across each
other, would have been very likely to arise. But it does not appear that
they could have ever met or heard of each other, for Gray writes of
Sterne, after Tristram Shandy had made him famous, in terms which
clearly show that he did not recall his fellow-undergraduate.
In January, 1736, Sterne took his B.A. degree, and quitted Cambridge
for York, where another of his father's brothers now makes his
appearance as his patron. Dr. Jacques Sterne was the second son of
Simon Sterne, of Elvington, and a man apparently of more marked and
vigorous character than any of his brothers. What induced him now to
take notice of the nephew, whom in boyhood and early youth he had
left to the unshared guardianship of his brother, and brother's son, does
not appear; but the personal history of this energetic
pluralist--Prebendary of Durham, Archdeacon of Cleveland, Canon
Residentiary, Precentor, Prebendary, and Archdeacon of York, Rector
of Rise, and Rector of Hornsey-cum-Riston--suggests the surmise that
he detected qualities in the young Cambridge graduate which would
make him useful. For Dr. Sterne was a typical specimen of the
Churchman-politician, in days when both components of the compound
word meant a good deal more than they do now. The Archdeacon was a
devoted Whig, a Hanoverian to the backbone; and he held it his duty to
support the Protestant succession, not only by the spiritual but by the
secular arm. He was a great electioneerer, as befitted times when the
claims of two rival dynasties virtually met upon the hustings, and he

took a prominent part in the great Yorkshire contest of the year 1734.
His most vigorous display of energy, however, was made, as was
natural, in "the '45." The Whig Archdeacon, not then Archdeacon of the
East Riding, nor as yet quite buried under the mass of preferments
which he afterwards accumulated, seems to have thought that this
indeed was the crisis of his fortunes, and that, unless he was prepared to
die a mere prebendary, canon, and rector of one or two benefices, now
was the time to strike a blow for his advancement in the Church. His
bustling activity at this trying time was indeed portentous, and at last
took the form of arresting the unfortunate Dr. Burton (the original of Dr.
Slop), on suspicion of holding communication with the invading army
of the Pretender, then on its march southward from Edinburgh. The
suspect, who was wholly innocent, was taken to London and kept in
custody for nearly a year before being discharged, after which, by way
of a slight redress, a letter of reprimand for his trop de zèle was sent by
direction of Lord Carteret to the militant dignitary. But the desired end
was nevertheless attained, and Dr. Sterne succeeded in crowning the
edifice of his ecclesiastical honours.[1]
[Footnote 1: A once-familiar piece of humorous verse describes the
upset of a coach containing a clerical pluralist:
"When struggling on the ground was seen A Rector, Vicar, Canon,
Dean; You might have thought the coach was full, But no! 'twas only
Dr. Bull."
Dr. Jacques Sterne, however, might have been thrown out of one of the
more capacious vehicles of the London General Omnibus Company,
with almost the same misleading effect upon those who only heard of
the mishap.]
There can be little doubt that patronage extended by such an uncle to
such a nephew received its full equivalent in some way or other, and
indeed the Memoir gives us a clue to the mode in which payment was
made. "My uncle," writes Sterne, describing their subsequent rupture,
"quarrelled with me because I would not write paragraphs in the
newspapers; though he was a party-man, I was not, and detested such
dirty work, thinking it beneath me. From that time he became my

bitterest enemy." The date of this quarrel cannot be precisely fixed; but
we gather from an autograph letter (now in the British Museum) from
Sterne to Archdeacon Blackburne that by the year 1750 the two men
had for some time ceased to be on friendly terms. Probably, however,
the breach occurred subsequently to the rebellion of '45, and it may be
that it arose out of the excess of partisan zeal which Dr. Sterne
developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did