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Notes
I have received great assistance in my research for this paper from Ruthe R. Battestin who conducted investigations on my behalf at the Inner Temple Library, the Guildhall Library, the Public Record Office, the Law Society Library, and elsewhere. Her help has been so pervasive that I have not felt it possible to acknowledge it specifically on every occasion. The encouragement and expert advice of Martin C. Battestin have been very heartening and helpful. I have benefited also from the professional services of Mr. M. J. Wood of the Society of Genealogists; Michael Yelland of the Association of Genealogists and Record Agents; and T. D. Mathew, Windsor Herald. References to the Champion in this paper are to original issues, unless otherwise stated. Numerals, when given after the date, refer to page and column.
The Folger Shakespeare Library possesses a possibly unique copy (call-number: PR3668/R8E8/Cage).
Replaced in the collected edition of the Champion by the "Remarkable Queries," a very effective attack on Walpole originally published in C141 (7 Oct 1740).
Robinson published at least one literary work in the Champion which is not an essay and not reprinted in this collection: a poem in praise of Garrick, signed "Somnus" and dated from the "Inner Temple," printed in C380 (22 Apr 1742), 2/3.
A William Robinson of Gwersyllt, Denbighshire, was admitted to the Inner Temple on 17 June 1727, but he died in June 1739 (Inner Temple Library, typescript of admissions to the Inner Temple; Alfred N. Palmer, "A History of the Old Parish of Gresford," Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th series, V [1905], 63). I am grateful to Ruthe Battestin for checking this typescript and to Mr. W. W. S. Breem, Librarian and Keeper of Manuscripts, Inner Temple Library, for checking other unpublished records of the Inner Temple.
"William Robinson of the Inner Temple, London, Gent" was enrolled as a solicitor in the Court of Chancery on 12 May 1741 (Law Society Library, MS. Roll of Solicitors, Vol. I, 1720[29]-91). He is referred to as an attorney in several apprenticeship documents (PRO. IR1/16, fol. 199; IR1/18, fols. 93, 192; IR1/20, fol. 192; documents dated January 1742, February 1747, June 1749, and May 1756, respectively). For the assignment, see Articles of Clerkship, PRO. CP5/46. William Robinson is not designated "of the Inner Temple" in this assignment, but the clerk whose articles were assigned, William Dearsly, was apprenticed to William Robinson of the Inner Temple in May 1756 (PRO. IR1/20, fol. 192).
Boyd's Marriage Index, which covers, I believe, about 50% of Anglican marriages in the London/Middlesex area in this period, is kept by the Society of Genealogists. Information about the marriage as given in the text is supplemented from the marriage allegation (Guildhall Library. Marriage Allegations, Bishop of London, 10,091/86, no. 231) and the register of St. Gregory by St. Paul (Guildhall Library, MS. 18,934, p. 145). I am grateful to Ruthe Battestin for first determining that the signatures on the assignment and allegation match. I have since compared photocopies of these signatures myself.
One record might be seen as casting doubt on the identification of William Robinson of the Inner Temple with the William Robinson of the Robinson-Byard marriage. There is a baptismal entry for a Sally Robinson, "d. of William and Ann Robinson, of Whitefriars," in the printed Temple Church Register under date 7 January 1745/46, several months before the Robinson-Byard marriage (Register of the Temple Church, transcribed by G. D. Squibb, Harleian Society Publications, n. s. 1 [London, 1979], p. 22). This Sally would be the right age for Sally, the daughter of William Robinson of the Inner Temple, buried 1750, aged 4 (Essays, pp. 84-85). William Robinson of the Inner Temple did baptize his son John at the Temple Church on 19 October 1753 (Register, p. 27). Perhaps the explanation suggested by Mr. Wood is the most plausible: that Robinson's first wife died within a short time of Sally's birth and Robinson needed to remarry quickly to provide a mother for his infant daughter. Remarriages for such a purpose were, as Mr. Wood points out, rather frequent. The name Ann was a common one, and it would not be too much of a coincidence if it were the name of Robinson's second wife as well as of his first.
Ms. Sarah Nichols, Assistant Librarian of the Law Society, has informed me that Robinson is not listed in the London/Westminster section of the first three editions of Browne's Law List (1775, 1777, and 1779).
See British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975; David Erskine Baker et al., Biographia Dramatica (London, 1812), I, 603; and Samuel Halkett and John Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, new ed., ed. James Kennedy et al. (Edinburgh, 1926-62), III, 166. Robinson's first name is omitted in these sources, probably because they all derive from an earlier British Museum catalogue in which it was omitted.
In one of the poems published with the first edition, Robinson writes a friend about a journey northward of several days to what must have been his family home: "The Joy, the Transport I felt here / At the sweet Sight of all that's dear / I can't describe! . . . / Our Folks and yours are very well" (p. 96). Thomas Ashburner, "of Kendall, Bookseller," subscribed for twenty-five copies of this edition, by far the largest subscription ("A List of the Subscribers Names," p. 15).
Robinson's essays in the Champion, from his first contribution in April 1740, are clearly those of a Londoner. According to documents at the Law Society and the PRO, he was practicing law from his chambers in the Inner Temple from 1741 to at least August 1758 (see text and note 7 above).
Essays VI, VII, IX, and XII. The first and last of these essays appear in original issues of the Champion still extant, C113 (2 Aug 1740) and C409 (29 June 1742). Robinson also mentions Otterspool in Essay IV (Essays, p. 28), originally published in C92 (14 June 1740).
This reference to Adams seems meant as a compliment to Young, the model for Parson Adams and one of the translators of the work Robinson is praising. If so, it would be, I believe, the earliest datable allusion to Young as the original of Adams.
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