Black George and the Black Act

Black George and the Black ActJohn Alien Stevenson In the flood of reversals and recognitions that marks the closing chapters of Tom Jones, one act of restoration can easily be lost. Given that Tom, in a matter of hours, goes from prison and the prospect of the gallows to a triumphant place as Allworthy's heir and Sophia's husband, the recovery of the £500 in banknotes he lost on the day he was exiled from Paradise Hall seems like a small matter, no more than a precise balancing of the books in this, the most symmetrical of novels. But among the few brush-strokes that Fielding employs to conclude this business, there is one odd comment—odd, at least, for anyone with a knowledge of eighteenth-century criminal law. Allworthy, having discovered the money and identified Black George as the culprit, asks Lawyer Dowling what legal recourse he has. The question is a tricky one, and Dowling is cautious. George did not, after all, directly steal the money; he found it on the ground and kept it. The lawyer answers that George "might be indicted on the Black Act; but said, as it was a Matter of some Nicety, it would be proper to go to Counsel." A few chapters later, he reports that no criminal charges are possible, only an action of trover, by which the banknotes could be recovered as lost property.1 1 Martin C. Battestin and Fredson Bowers, eds., The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (Middletown , Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), pp. 922, 947. References are to this edition. The footnote on p. 922 briefly summarizes the origins and provisions of the Black Act without attempting to explain why Dowling mentions it here. The law of trover is described in note 2 on p. 632. Fielding refers to the Black Act two other times in his work. See Martin C. Battestin, ed., Joseph Andrews (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), p. 290; the reference there is indirect, alluding to the Act's prohibition against cutting down trees, and is not noted by Battestin. See also The Jacobite's Journal, ed. W.B. Coley (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), p. 128; here, Fielding ironically bemoans the fact that abuses EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 8, Number 3, April 1996 356 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Why has Fielding brought up the Black Act? It was probably the most notorious of all statutes in the infamous Bloody Code of eighteenthcentury English jurisprudence, but, as Dowling is forced to admit, it has no legal relevance to George's action. But if Fielding's gamekeeper and the Black Act are not literally connected, they do share a common world, a world of the game laws, of the hunt, of a changing and sometimes embattled English countryside. And considered together, they provide a new perspective on a variety of issues: on Fielding's thinking about questions of class and the law, on the peculiar inconsistencies and striking liminality of George's character, and on the way Fielding may be commenting on aspects of his own ill-defined social status. I will begin by building up a rather thick description of certain aspects of Black George. He is a minor character in a long novel, and it is easy to miss the complex variety of associations that Fielding puts in play around him. Once that description is in place, we can return and consider, not only Black George's relation to the Black Act, but the singular way in which Fielding has created this character.2 The Game Laws George Seagrim is first introduced to us, neither by his name nor by his nickname, but by his occupation, "the gamekeeper." But what sort of work did an eighteenth-century gamekeeper actually do?3 That question is not only practical but legal, and to understand the law regulating the work of gamekeepers, we must go back to 1671 and the Game Law of in the book trade are not subject to the Act. Black George has received almost no critical attention ; however, two recent studies have begun to focus our attention on the serving classes in Fielding's fiction. See John Richetti, "Representing an...