ABSTRACT
‘Pox! The world is come to a fine pass, indeed, if we are all fools except a parcel of Roundheads and Hanover Rats! Pox! I hope times are a-coming that we shall make fools of them and every man shall enjoy his own. I hope to see it, sister, before the Hanover rats have eat all our corn, and left us nothing but turnips to feed upon.’ 1 So roars Squire Western in Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones. The novel is set in 1745, but Fielding only lets this slip incidentally, and it was published in 1749. Squire Western is the Whig Fielding’s caricature of the Tory Jacobite squire who goes to bed each night ‘generally so drunk he could not see’, whose life was dedicated to his dogs and hunting, who is a JP with no knowledge of the law, who swears and farts and drinks to ‘the king over the water’. 2
