Outlaws -- Fiction; Rob Roy, 1671-1734 -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 1689-1745 -- Fiction
While she spoke thus, we were advancing hastily towards Inglewood Place,
while, as if to divert me from the task of further remonstrance, she drew
a ludicrous picture of the magistrate and his clerk.--Inglewood
was--according to her description--a white-washed Jacobite; that is, one
who, having been long a non-juror, like most of the other gentlemen of the
country, had lately qualified himself to act as a justice, by taking the
oaths to Government. “He had done so,” she said, “in compliance with the
urgent request of most of his brother squires, who saw, with regret, that
the palladium of silvan sport, the game-laws, were likely to fall into
disuse for want of a magistrate who would enforce them; the nearest
acting justice being the Mayor of Newcastle, and he, as being rather
inclined to the consumption of the game when properly dressed, than to
its preservation when alive, was more partial, of course, to the cause of
the poacher than of the sportsman. Resolving, therefore, that it was
expedient some one of their number should sacrifice the scruples of
Jacobitical loyalty to the good of the community, the Northumbrian
country gentlemen imposed the duty on Inglewood, who, being very inert in
most of his feelings and sentiments, might, they thought, comply with any
political creed without much repugnance. Having thus procured the body of
justice, they proceeded,” continued Miss Vernon, “to attach to it a
clerk, by way of soul, to direct and animate its movements. Accordingly
they got a sharp Newcastle attorney, called Jobson, who, to vary my
metaphor, finds it a good thing enough to retail justice at the sign of
Squire Inglewood, and, as his own emoluments depend on the quantity of
business which he transacts, he hooks in his principal for a great deal
more employment in the justice line than the honest squire had ever
bargained for; so that no apple-wife within the circuit of ten miles can
settle her account with a costermonger without an audience of the
reluctant Justice and his alert clerk, Mr. Joseph Jobson. But the most
ridiculous scenes occur when affairs come before him, like our business
of to-day, having any colouring of politics. Mr. Joseph Jobson (for
which, no doubt, he has his own very sufficient reasons) is a prodigious
zealot for the Protestant religion, and a great friend to the present
establishment in church and state. Now, his principal, retaining a sort
of instinctive attachment to the opinions which he professed openly until
he relaxed his political creed with the patriotic view of enforcing the
law against unauthorized destroyers of black-game, grouse, partridges,
and hares, is peculiarly embarrassed when the zeal of his assistant
involves him in judicial proceedings connected with his earlier faith;
and, instead of seconding his zeal, he seldom fails to oppose to it a
double dose of indolence and lack of exertion. And this inactivity does
not by any means arise from actual stupidity. On the contrary, for one
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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