Dr Daniel Reed

Whereas current research into the biographical aspects of Sterne’s life chiefly seeks to explore the connective sinews of the author’s social networks at the height of his literary fame, this essay argues that new pathways for investigating Sterne’s formative years can be discovered through the re-examination of his early clerical career. Whilst Sterne is usually treated as the focal subject when looking at the Church in York, the completion of an extensive historical investigation into Lancelot Blackburne’s archiepiscopate (1724–1743) has made it possible to reinsert him into a refreshed historical context and thereby test old
assumptions about the formation of his clerical identity. This provides a foundation for the reassessment of patronage connections between Sterne and his uncle Jaques. Attention is also drawn to the case of Lewis Stephens (1689–1747), prebendary of York, and satirical writer – hitherto unknown to Sterne studies – whose experience of breaking patronage ties with Blackburne in the 1730s provides an instructive comparison for Sterne’s later rejection of the same in 1742. This essay utilises the guiding themes of patronage, performance, and reputation, and its findings are supported by new discoveries from the York diocesan archives and elsewhere.

Drawing extensively on hitherto unexplored manuscript sources, this article outlines, first, the functioning of patronage within the eighteenth‐century church, with particular reference to the formation of Lewis Stephens's clerical identity. This provides a foundation for, second, the interrogation of Stephens's satirical compositions, and especially the depiction of his former patron Archbishop Lancelot Blackburne. Finally, the relationship between Stephens's contributions to public religious discourse, clerical conduct and private literary compositions and those of other leading satirists and writers of the period is analysed in order to illuminate the interplay between the roles of clergyman and writer in Walpolean Britain.

This article identifies two previously-unknown Sterne letters of 1752, the first ‘new’ pieces of Sterne’s correspondence to be brought to light in over ten years. First, evidence is forwarded to demonstrate that just two years after delivering the assize sermon ‘The Abuses of Conscience’ at York Minster, Sterne wrote a letter of application (now lost) to serve Richard of Sykes of Sledmere, High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1752 – an episode entirely unknown within Sterne studies. The second letter, to John Fountayne, Dean of York, provides a personal insight into Sterne’s activities as commissary in the peculiar courts of the diocese of York. A full text of this letter is presented from the original manuscript. These discoveries, it is argued, provide a crucial insight into a period in which Sterne was embroiled in disturbances in York chapter politics, domestic unhappiness, and an ongoing struggle to gain a foothold with both ecclesiastical and lay patrons in order to further his clerical career.