Such was Henry Fielding's ancestry, and it cannot be too much insisted on that, throughout all the vicissitudes of his life, he was ever a man of breeding, no less than a man of wit. "His manners were so gentlemanly," said his friend Mrs Hussey, "that even with the lower classes with which he frequently condescended to chat, such as Sir Roger de Coverley's old friends, the Vauxhall watermen, they seldom outstepped the limits of propriety." And a similar recognition comes from the hand of a great, and not too friendly, critic. To "the very last days of his life," wrote Thackeray, "he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down by disease his aspect and presence imposed respect on the people around him." This Denbigh ancestry recalls a pleasant example of Fielding's wit, preserved in a story told by his son, and recorded in the pages of that voluminous eighteenth-century anecdotist, John Nichols. "Henry Fielding," says Nichols, "being once in company with the Earl of Denbigh, and the conversation's turning on Fielding's being of the Denbigh family, the Earl asked the reason why they spelt their names differently; the Earl's family doing it with the E first (Feilding), and Mr Henry Fielding with the I first (Fielding). 'I cannot tell, my Lord,' answered Harry, 'except it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell.'" In accordance with the fighting traditions of his race, Edmund Fielding went into the army; his name appearing as an ensign in the 1st Foot Guards. Also, as became a Fielding, he distinguished himself, we are told, in the "Wars against France with much Bravery and Reputation"; and it was probably owing to active service abroad that the birth of his eldest son took place in his wife's old Somersetshire home. The date fits in well enough with the campaigns of Ramilies, Oudennarde and Malplaquet. Soon after Henry's birth, however, his father had doubtless left the Low Countries, for, about 1709, he appears as purchasing the colonelcy of an Irish Regiment. This regiment was ordered, in 1710, to Spain; but before that year the colonel and his wife and son had a separate home provided for them, by the care of Sir Henry Gould. At what precise date is uncertain, but some time before 1710, Sir Henry had purchased an estate at East Stour in Dorsetshire, consisting of farms and lands of the value of £4750, intending to settle some or the whole of the same on his daughter and her children. And already, according to a statement by the colonel, the old judge had placed his son-in-law in possession of some or all of this purchase, sending him oxen to plough his ground, and promising him a "Dairye of Cows." Sir Henry moreover had, said his son-in-law, declared his intention "to spend the vacant Remainder of his life," sometimes with his daughter, her husband, and children at Stour, and sometimes with his son Davidge, presumably at Sharpham. But in March,