although they seem to indicate that alliances of the kind were not unusual. Perhaps Pamela had made them fashionable. On the other hand, the supposed allusion to Lyttelton and Fielding, to be found in the first edition of Peregrine Pickle, but afterwards suppressed, receives a certain confirmation. “When,” says Smollett, speaking of the relations of an imaginary Mr. Spondy with Gosling Scrag, who is understood to represent Lyttelton, “he is inclined to marry his own cook-wench, his gracious patron may condescend to give the bride away; and may finally settle him in his old age, as a trading Westminster justice.” That, looking to the facts, Fielding’s second marriage should have gained the approval and countenance of Lyttelton is no more than the upright and honourable character of the latter would lead us to expect.
The Jacobite’s Journal ceased to appear in November 1748. In the early part of the December following, the remainder of Smollett’s programme came to pass, and by Lyttelton’s interest Fielding was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. From a letter in the Bedford Correspondence, dated 13th December 1748, respecting the lease of a house or houses which would qualify him to act for Middlesex, it would seem that the county was afterwards added to his commission. He must have entered upon his office in the first weeks of December, as upon the ninth of that month one John Salter was committed to the Gatehouse by Henry Fielding, Esq., “of Bow Street, Covent Garden, formerly Sir Thomas de Veil’s.” Sir Thomas de Veil, who died in 1746, and whose Memoirs had just been published, could not, however, have been Fielding’s immediate predecessor.
