Ambition and Disappointment? Two New Sterne Letters of 1752

Abstract

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 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.