still held by his descendants, the 7th Baron (b. 1860) being best known as a great Yorkshire cricketer.
There is a portrait of Hawke in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. His Life by Montagu Burrows (1883) has superseded all other authorities; it is supplemented in a few early particulars by Sir J. K. Laughton’s article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. (1891).
HAWKER, ROBERT STEPHEN (1803–1874), English antiquary
and poet, was born at Stoke Damerel, Devonshire,
on the 3rd of December 1803. His father, Jacob Stephen
Hawker, was at that time a doctor, but afterwards curate and
vicar of Stratton, Cornwall. Robert was sent to Liskeard
grammar school, and when he was about sixteen was apprenticed
to a solicitor. He was soon removed to Cheltenham grammar
school, and in April 1823 matriculated at Pembroke College,
Oxford. In the same year he married Charlotte I’Ans, a lady
much older than himself. On returning to Oxford he migrated
to Magdalen Hall, where he graduated in 1828, having already
won the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1827. He became
vicar of Morwenstow, a village on the north Cornish coast,
in 1834. Hawker described the bulk of his parishioners as a
“mixed multitude of smugglers, wreckers and dissenters of
various hues.” He was himself a high churchman, and carried
things with a high hand in his parish, but was much beloved
by his people. He was a man of great originality, and numerous
stories were told of his striking sayings and eccentric conduct.
He was the original of Mortimer Collins’s Canon Tremaine in
Sweet and Twenty. His first wife died in 1863, and in 1864 he
married Pauline Kuczynski, daughter of a Polish exile. He died
in Plymouth on the 15th of August 1875. Before his death
he was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church, a
proceeding which aroused a bitter newspaper controversy.
The best of his poems is The Quest of the Sangraal: Chant the
First (Exeter, 1864). Among his Cornish Ballads (1869) the
most famous is on “Trelawny,” the refrain of which, “And
shall Trelawny die,” &c., he declared to be an old Cornish saying.
See The Vicar of Morwenstow (1875; later and corrected editions, 1876 and 1886), by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, which was severely criticized by Hawker’s friend, W. Maskell, in the Athenaeum (March 26, 1876); Memorials of the late Robert Stephen Hawker (1876), by the late Dr F. G. Lee. These were superseded in 1905 by The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker, by his son-in-law, C. E. Byles, which contains a bibliography of his works, now very valuable to collectors. See also Boase and Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis. His Poetical Works (1879) and his Prose Works (1893) were edited by J. G. Godwin. Another edition of his Poetical Works (1899) has a preface and bibliography by Alfred Wallis, and a complete edition of his poems by C. E. Byles, with the title Cornish Ballads and other Poems, appeared in 1904.
HAWKERS and PEDLARS, the designation of itinerant dealers who convey their goods from place to place to sell.
The word “hawker” seems to have come into English from the
Ger. Höker or Dutch heuker in the early 16th century. In an
act of 1533 (25 Henry VIII. c. 9, § 6) we find “Sundry evill
disposed persons which commonly beane called haukers ...
buying and selling of Brasse and Pewter.” The earlier word
for such an itinerant dealer is “huckster,” which is found in
1200. “For that they have turned God’s house intill hucksteress
bothe” (Ormulum, 15,817). The base of the two words is the
same, and is probably to be referred to German hocken, to squat,
crouch; cf. “hucklebone,” the hip-bone; and the hawkers or
hucksters were so called either because they stooped under
their packs, or squatted at booths in markets, &c. Another
derivation finds the origin in the Dutch hock, a hole, corner.
It may be noticed that the termination of “huckster” is
feminine; though there are examples of its application to women
it was always applied indiscriminately to either sex.
“Pedlar” occurs much earlier than the verbal form “to peddle,” which is therefore a derivative from the substantive. The origin is to be found in the still older word “pedder,” one who carries about goods for sale in a “ped,” a basket or hamper. This is now only used dialectically and in Scotland. In the Ancren Riwle (c. 1225), peoddare is found with the meaning of “pedlar,” though the Promptorium parvulorum (c. 1440) defines it as calathasius, i.e. a maker of panniers or baskets.
The French term for a hawker or pedlar of books, colporteur (col, neck, porter, to carry), has been adopted by the Bible Society and other English religious bodies as a name for itinerant vendors and distributors of Bibles and other religious literature.
The occupation of hawkers and pedlars has been regulated in the United Kingdom, and the two classes have also been technically distinguished. The Pedlars Act 1871 defines a pedlar as “any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals, mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise ... or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft.” Any person who acts as a pedlar must have a certificate, which is to be obtained from the chief officer of police of the police district in which the person applying for the certificate has resided during one month previous to his application. He must satisfy the officer that he is above seventeen years of age, is of good character, and in good faith intends to carry on the trade of a pedlar. The fee for a pedlar’s certificate is five shillings, and the certificate remains in force for a year from the date of issue. The act requires a register of certificates to be kept in each district, and imposes a penalty for the assigning, borrowing or forging of any certificate. It does not exempt any one from vagrant law, and requires the pedlar to show his certificate on demand to certain persons. It empowers the police to inspect a pedlar’s pack, and provides for the arrest of an uncertificated pedlar or one refusing to show his certificate. A pedlar’s certificate is not required by commercial travellers, sellers of vegetables, fish, fruit or victuals, or sellers in fairs. The Hawkers Act 1888 defines a hawker as “any one who travels with a horse or other beast of burden, selling goods,” &c. An excise licence (expiring on the 31st of March in each year) must be taken out by every hawker in the United Kingdom. The duty imposed upon such licence is £2. A hawker’s licence is not granted, otherwise than by way of licence, except on production of a certificate signed by a clergyman and two householders of the parish or place wherein the applicant resides, or by a justice of the county or place, or a superintendent or inspector of police for the district, attesting that the person is of good character and a proper person to be licenced as a hawker. There are certain exemptions from taking out a licence—commercial travellers, sellers of fish, coal, &c., sellers in fairs, and the real worker or maker of any goods. The act also lays down certain provisions to be observed by hawkers and others, and imposes penalties for infringements. In the United States hawkers and pedlars must take out licences under State laws and Federal laws.
HAWKESWORTH, JOHN (c. 1715–1773), English miscellaneous writer, was born in London about 1715. He is said to have been
clerk to an attorney, and was certainly self-educated. In 1744
he succeeded Samuel Johnson as compiler of the parliamentary
debates for the Gentleman’s Magazine, and from 1746 to 1749
he contributed poems signed Greville, or H. Greville, to that
journal. In company with Johnson and others he started a
periodical called The Adventurer, which ran to 140 numbers,
of which 70 were from the pen of Hawkesworth himself. On
account of what was regarded as its powerful defence of morality
and religion, Hawkesworth was rewarded by the archbishop
of Canterbury with the degree of LL.D. In 1754–1755 he published
an edition (12 vols.) of Swift’s works, with a life prefixed
which Johnson praised in his Lives of the Poets. A larger edition
(27 vols.) appeared in 1766–1779. He adapted Dryden’s
Amphitryon for the Drury Lane stage in 1756, and Southerne’s
Oronooko in 1759. He wrote the libretto of an oratorio Zimri
in 1760, and the next year Edgar and Emmeline: a Fairy Tale,
was produced at Drury Lane. His Almoran and Hamet (2 vols.,
1761) was first of all drafted as a play, and a tragedy founded
on it by S. J. Pratt, The Fair Circassian (1781), met with some
success. He was commissioned by the admiralty to edit Captain
Cook’s papers relative to his first voyage. For this work, An
Account of the Voyages undertaken ... for making discoveries
in the Southern Hemisphere and performed by Commodore Byrone,
Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret and Captain Cook (from 1764
to 1771) drawn up from the Journals ... (3 vols., 1773),
Hawkesworth is said to have received from the publishers the
sum of £6000. His descriptions of the manners and customs
of the South Seas were, however, regarded by many critics
as inexact and hurtful to the interests of morality, and the
severity of their strictures is said to have hastened his death,
which took place on the 16th of November 1773. He was buried
