Shandy's ancestor, Sir Roger Shandy, who fought at Marston Moor, bore an obvious relation to an ancestor of the unamiable squire of Sutton, who had set forth his ancestor's prowess at Marston Moor in an epitaph that he caused to be inscribed in the church while Sterne was vicar. Ox Lane and Ox Close are still names of fields in Sutton parish, and Oxmoor figures largely in the conversation of Yorick with the Shandy brothers.
In London ‘Tristram’ was denounced on wider grounds. Dr. Johnson was offended by its indecent innuendo, and always spoke with scorn of ‘the man Sterne.’ They met only once, and then Sterne further outraged his censor by displaying to the company an obscene drawing. Richardson declared Sterne's book ‘execrable.’ Horace Walpole found the digressions insupportable, and the whole ‘a very insipid and tedious performance.’ Dr. Farmer warned the undergraduates at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who rated it highly, that, ‘however much it may be talked about at present, in the course of twenty years, should any one wish to refer to it, he will be obliged to go to an antiquary to refer to it’ (cf. Mrs. Delany, 1st ser. iii. 588, 593). Professional critics in the press, who envied Sterne's reception by the world of fashion, pursued him with unremitting hostility. Goldsmith wrote of him in the ‘Citizen of the World’ (No. 74): ‘In England, if a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets his whole fraternity [of brother-authors] in a roar, nor can he escape, even though he should fly to the nobility for shelter.’ Smollett in the ‘Critical Review,’ and Griffith in the ‘Monthly Review,’ made furious onslaughts. A report got abroad in the newspapers that Sterne designed to introduce Warburton into a later volume as Tristram's tutor, and was bought off. Sterne hotly denied the rumour in a letter to Garrick (Letter vii.) It seems due to the fact that soon after his arrival in town Warburton, who recognised his genius, sent for him, and sought to obtain a promise that he would restrain his tendency to obscenity in future volumes. On parting Warburton gave him a purse of money and sent him books. Sterne corresponded amicably with the bishop later in the year; but subsequent volumes of ‘Tristram’ were not purged of indecency, and Warburton, while acknowledging their wit, expressed a fear that Sterne was ‘an irrecoverable scoundrel’ (cf. J. S. Watson, Life of Warburton, 1863; Kilvert, Warburton Papers, pp. 239–46; Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, v. 616–18; Sterne, Letters, vii. x. xi.). When in 1760 Sterne's friend, Hall-Stevenson, published a vapid adulatory ode on his ‘Cousin Shandy's’ visit to town, which disgusted many of Sterne's supporters, the newspapers bespattered Hall-Stevenson as well as his hero. The attack was developed in separately issued pamphlets. ‘The Clockmaker's Outcry against the Author of “Tristram Shandy”’ was soon followed by ‘A Methodist Preacher's Letter to Sterne,’ 1760, and ‘Explanatory Remarks upon the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by Jeremiah Kunastrokius, M.D.,’ 1760. ‘A Funeral Discourse occasioned by the much lamented death of Mr. Yorick … by Christopher Flagellan, A.M.’ (1761), was a well-sustained piece of irony. A more impudent attack was the issue, late in 1760, of a spurious third volume of ‘Tristram’ by a hack-writer named John Carr [q. v.] Sterne at first bore such blows good-humouredly. ‘The scribblers use me ill,’ he wrote to Warburton on 9 June 1760, ‘but they have used my betters much worse.’ Subsequently he complained of ‘the cant of criticism’ with a good deal of heat.
In the middle of May (1760) he returned to Yorkshire, travelling in unwonted state, as befitted in his opinion his newly acquired fame. He preached in the cathedral on the 18th before the judges of the assizes. In the preceding March he had the good fortune to receive from his old friend Lord Fauconberg an offer of the perpetual curacy of Coxwold, worth 160l. a year. The village was admirably situated upon high ground on the Thirsk road, some twenty-two miles from York, and lay within easy reach of the moors. Newburgh Priory, the patron's house, was a mile off. Sterne accepted the benefice with alacrity, receiving permission to retain the livings of Sutton and Stillington, which were thenceforth served solely by curates. After a twenty-two years' settlement at Sutton, the climate of which he always found unhealthy, Sterne accordingly moved in the summer of 1760 to the invigorating elevation of Coxwold. There seems to have been no parsonage, but Sterne lived on the Thirsk road, near the church, in a large cottage, which he christened Shandy Hall. The house, which he was constantly extending and improving, has been recently renovated, and is now adorned by a tablet attesting Sterne's occupancy. The change reconciled him for a time to the contrast between the dull monotony of country life and the brilliant variety of his metropolitan experiences. But he had, as Garrick wrote, ‘degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled his
