At this time Sterne was Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest,[157] some eight miles from York, and his uncle, Jacob Sterne, gave him a prebendal stall in York Cathedral about the same time. For two years he had courted Elizabeth Lumley. She was much in love with him, but from smallness of means on either side, deemed marriage imprudent. She, however, had a desperate illness, and informed Sterne she had made him her heir. His gratitude for this, and affection, recalled her to life and matrimony. For details of this I must refer the reader to the various lives written of “Tristram,” as his nickname was to be later in the Robinson family. [157] His great-grandfather, Richard Sterne, had been Archbishop of York, and a friend of Laud’s. From Hayton Elizabeth writes to Mr. Freind at Bath, to scold him for not writing to her and her sister. In this she says-- “My sister is well again, and once more I possess my soul with tranquillity. I believe you will guess I suffered great and terrible anxiety when I was forced to leave her to a dreadful distemper, whose terrors received great additions from my particular fears of it, and tenderness to her. The want of sleep, at first, a little damaged my constitution, I had a slight fever with disorder for a week, which I believe was chiefly occasioned by it. I did not mention it to my brother, for fear it should make him uneasy, but I am now perfectly well, and from the reflection of my sister’s good fortune, happy too, though great is the change you will see, from London and lolling on the velvet sofa of a duchess, to humbly sitting on a 3-legged cricket[158] in the country.” [158] A three-legged stool. [Page heading: CURE FOR LOVE] At the end of the letter of an admirer of her’s she says-- “Our friend B----[159] increases in chin and misery, he came to breakfast with my Papa one morning, and complained of the Hyp, for which my good parent advised him to take assafœtida, the prescription was admirable, he might as well have sent him to the Tinker’s to have mended the hole in his heart. Oh! cruel fate that made no cure for love, thought my friend, and sighed bitterly: really I could not help laughing at the precious balm my Pappa was for applying to the wound. It would have ruined a happy lover with me.” [159] Mr. Brockman, of Beachborough. _Letter from the Duke of Portland._ “Whitehall, April 25, 1741. “MADAM,