Keightley, who seems to have seen the will, dates it--doubtless by a
slip of the pen--May 1708. Reference to the original, however, now at
Somerset House, shows the correct date to be March 8, 1706, before which
time the marriage of Fielding's parents must therefore be placed.] The
Fieldings must then have removed to a small house at East Stour (now
Stower), in Dorsetshire, where Sarah Fielding was born in the following
November. It may be that this property was purchased with Mrs.
Fielding's money; but information is wanting upon the subject. At East
Stour, according to the extracts from the parish register given in
Hutchins's _History of Dorset_, four children were born,--namely, Sarah,
above mentioned, afterwards the authoress of _David Simple_, Anne,
Beatrice, and another son, Edmund. Edmund, says Arthur Murphy, "was an
officer in the marine service," and (adds Mr. Lawrence) "died young."
Anne died at East Stour in August 1716. Of Beatrice nothing further is
known. These would appear to have been all the children of Edmund
Fielding by his first wife, although, as Sarah Fielding is styled on her
monument at Bath the _second_ daughter of General Fielding, it is not
impossible that another daughter may have been born at Sharpham Park.

At East Stour the Fieldings certainly resided until April 1718, when
Mrs. Fielding died, leaving her elder son a boy of not quite eleven
years of age. How much longer the family remained there is unrecorded;
but it is clear that a great part of Henry Fielding's childhood must
have been spent by the "pleasant Banks of sweetly-winding Stour" which
passes through it, and to which he subsequently refers in _Tom Jones_.
His education during this time was confided to a certain Mr. Oliver,
whom Lawrence designates the "family chaplain." Keightley supposes that
he was the curate of East Stour; but Hutchins, a better authority than
either, says that he was the clergyman of Motcombe, a neighbouring
village. Of this gentleman, according to Murphy, Parson Trulliber in