Thomas Osborne, 1st Viscount Osborne of Thorpe

“ He then resigned the benefice and retired to Lewes, where he died on 9 May 1889. He married in 1834 Emily, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell of Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire, and was thus brother-in-law of Charles Kingsley and James Anthony Froude. His wife died on 19 Dec. 1875, leaving two sons and two daughters.
Osborne is chiefly known in connection with the series of 'lay sermons' delivered from the pulpit of the 'Times' newspaper under the signature 'S. G. O.' A philanthropist of a militant and almost ferocious type, he was always lashing abuses and provoking controversy. ”

“ Pitt, who, as George the Second said, had never opened Vattel, and which was very near making a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan, who could not work a sum in long division. This was the sort of talent which raised Clifford from obscurity to the head of affairs. To this talent Osborne, by birth a simple country gentleman, owed his white staff, his garter, and his dukedom. The encroachment of the power of the Parliament on the power of the Crown resembled a fatality, or the operation of some great law of nature. ”

“ I’m the only one that ain’t goin’ straight. But when I get out of here I mean to go straight. Say, Tom, do you think I can get a job, here in Auburn? My bit is up in December, and I should like to stay here and get straight before I go back home.”
“When you get out,” is my answer, “it will be up to me to stand treat for a dinner of beefsteak and fried potatoes, at any rate. And I’ll do the best I can to help you get a job, Joe, if you really do mean to go straight. But in that neither I nor any one else can help you; you know you’ll have to do that yourself.” ”

“ By that I do not mean the Warden, as he has proven himself to be a just man in every respect. I mean those who are in immediate charge of us. Some of them are not in accord with your project, and showed their disapproval by reprimanding us for greeting you as we did last Sunday. But they are not to blame in one sense, for they have been here so long their feelings have become stagnated and any new movement appears to them an intruder. They may be in a position to prevent us from showing our feelings physically, but, thank God, they cannot control us mentally. ”

“ The Warden will have many new problems to handle while he is in office; for the old way is worn out and the new way is surely coming. Fortunately he is a genuine progressive and the new has no terrors for him. ”

“ Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. ”

“ Osborne, it wasn't that. I myself am given to anger; and I'm blessed with as good health as any man in my years. Besides, anger's a good thing for Thomas. He needs a deal of it. But it should come from the right quarter—and that is me, myself, Mr. Osborne. I know my place, and I know my rights and duties as well as any butler that lives. And it's my duty to scold Thomas, and not master's. Master ought to have said, 'Robinson! you must speak to Thomas about letting out the fire,' and I'd ha' given it him well,—as I shall do now, for that matter. ”

“ And so all you young people will be together, and a merry time you’ll have, I’ll be bound. Ah, there is Sir Thomas; I must explain to him.”
Sir Thomas cared little for precedence, but much for his dinner and more for his wine. He was considered quite a courtier in manner at Sheffield, and bowed to Mrs. Osborne on the conclusion of her explanation.
“When Mr. Osborne has the ordering of the wines, and Mrs. Osborne the commanding of the victuals,” he said handsomely, “he would be a man what’s hard to please if he wasn’t very well content. ”

“ It seems that we must again line up and be counted; then we are escorted by the officer temporarily in charge of us back into the shop, where we are once more counted before we return to our regular places.
In order to make up for lost time Murphy and I work steadily on our basket bottoms; he suggesting that we each watch the other’s work, to see whether we are keeping the sides even. A mistake is easier to notice across the table than in your own work closer at hand. My fault seems to be to pull the withes too tight, making the sides somewhat concave ”

“ Osborne was in every way the most hospitable of men, and he would have felt it as a personal disgrace if (as never happened) any guest of his had not all the wine he wanted, even as he would have felt it a personal disgrace if any guest was not met at the station, or did not have sufficient breakfast. But wine to his mind was something of quite a different class to all other hospitalities, and was under his personal control, so that if Sir Thomas liked his drop of sherry in the middle of the morning, Mr. ”

“ In April 1695 he was impeached once more by the Commons for having received a bribe of 5000 guineas to procure the new charter for the East India Company. In his defence, whilst denying that he had received the money and appealing to his past services, he did not attempt to conceal the fact that according to his experience bribery was an acknowledged and universal custom in public business, and that he himself had been instrumental in obtaining money for others. ”

“ In March 1679 a new parliament hostile to Danby was returned, and he was forced to resign the treasurership; but he received a pardon from the king under the Great Seal, and a warrant for a marquessate. [10] His proposed advancement in rank was severely reflected upon in the Lords, Halifax declaring it in the king’s presence the recompense of treason, “not to be borne”; and in the Commons his retirement from office by no means appeased his antagonists. ”

“ When I think of you I am reminded of a postal that I received from my brother not long ago, after him not knowing that I was in prison. When he found it out he sent me a postal and on it were these few words: “A friend is one who knows all about you and likes you just the same.” Well, Mr. Osborne, I leave here on the 20th of this month and believe me—never again for me. I have played the crooked game in every way it can be played, most every kind of crooked game there is. ”

“ Stuhlmiller has taken the matter up with John, the citizen instructor, whose last name I have not yet learned, and with Captain Kane. They are thinking about repairing an old vat where the withes can be properly heated and softened by steam. That is all right, but it won’t help my fingers much, as I shall be out of here long before it is done.
About my going out there is a little joke. Every man wants to know how long I’m going to stay here. I tell them I don’t see how I can remain beyond Sunday, as there is business I have to attend to in New York City next week. ”

“ On the prorogation of 1689 he was commissioned by 150 tory members, who held a grand dinner at the ‘Apollo Tavern’ in Fleet Street, to convey their thanks and felicitations to the king, and when, at the beginning of 1690, Halifax laid down the privy seal, and the Marquis of Caermarthen [see Osborne, Thomas, Duke of Leeds] became chief minister, Lowther was appointed first lord of the treasury in the new administration, in which the tories slightly predominated, and was entrusted with the management of the House of Commons. ”

“ Osborne is, and is meant to be, a poor enough creature, but he is an eminently human being, and one whose poorness of character is developed as he allows bad influences to tell upon his vanity and folly. ”

“ Mr. Osborne’s stay among us has awakened new thoughts and higher ideals among the men confined here than any other agency hitherto tried or thought of.
His coming as he did, precisely the same as the most lowly of malefactors, and receiving no better treatment than would be accorded any others, has awakened feelings among the majority that can hardly be credited, much less described.
Those who in the past week have written articles in the various newspapers ridiculing Mr. Osborne’s experiment, [Pg 294] would have been put to shame had they been present at the chapel services this morning. ”

“ You’ve committed a serious offense.”
“That’s all right; but I wish my hands weren’t so sticky. I can’t get them clean with that cold water.”
“I’ll get you some hot water.”
Jack goes off to fulfill his errand; and I see that Grant has come into the shop and is talking to Captain Kane. Wondering if this is the first the latter has heard of my plan of action, I take my coat and cap down from the hook and put them on. The men begin to feel that [Pg 201] something is up; and a number of them cease work and stare as an officer steps up to our table. ”

“ To-morrow, Monday, Oct. 6, I shall request one of the boys in the basket-shop to draw up a resolution pledging our loyalty to your cause; and I shall ask only those who are sincere to sign it. After this has been done I am going to ask our Warden for permission to start a Tom Brown League; its members to be men who have never been punished. Tom, I hope that you and your fellow-commissioners as well as Supt. ”

“ Illustrious Persons, by J. le Neve (1714) . Further material for his biography exists in Add. MSS., 26040-95 (56 vols., containing his papers) ; in the Duke of Leeds MSS. at Hornby Castle, calendered in Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. vii. pp. 1-43; MSS. of Earl of Lindsay and J. Eliot Hodgkin; and Calendars of State Papers Dom. See also Add. MSS. 1894–1899, Index and Calendar; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. ii., House of Lords MSS.; Gen. Cat. British Museum for various pamphlets. (P. C. Y.) ”

“ I can well imagine that Jack Murphy enjoys the novel sensation of having as his partner a man who is for the moment an object of peculiar interest to this community, that is simply human nature. No doubt Harley Stuhlmiller enjoys giving directions to the member of a state commission, that again is human nature. But that these men could assume virtues which they have not, and carry out a wholesale system of deceit—that is not possible. ”

“ His office brought him in £20,000 a year, [6] and he was known to be making large profits by the sale of offices; he maintained his power by corruption and by jealously excluding from office men of high standing and ability. Burnet described him as “the most hated minister that had ever been about the king.” Worse men had been less detested, but Danby had none of the amiable virtues which often counteract the odium incurred by serious faults. Evelyn, who knew him intimately from his youth, describes him as “a man of excellent natural parts but nothing of generous or grateful.” ”

“ It is not our fault if many of the newspapers print ridiculous statements which are not founded upon fact.
I have, by the way, been seeing a number of newspapers, as the men in the shop are all keenly interested and are anxious to share with me any “Tom Brown dope” that comes their way. Every day half a dozen papers reach me in roundabout ways. I always read them, taking care to lurk behind a post or otherwise screen myself from the eye of the Screw. Captain Kane, like Captain Lamb, evidently feels that it is well to temper discipline with tact and discretion. ”

“ Osborne, beaming delightedly.
“That we are. Then there’s Alderman Price and lady, just run down from Sheffield, and Sir Thomas Ewart and lady——”
“Remind me to get out the ’40 port,” said Mr. Osborne. “Sir Thomas likes a glass of that.”
“He likes a dozen glasses of that,” remarked Mrs. Osborne, “but pray-a-don’t sit for ever over your wine at table, Mr. O., for there’s the—the—I never can{64} remember the name of that quartette, but they’re going to give us a bit of music after——”
“Lashing out, lashing out,” said her husband, “you’ll make a pauper of me yet, Mrs. ”

“ So, raising my hand for the Captain’s permission to leave my place, I join Murphy at the sink, and again we use his soap and towel in common. My partner’s treatment of me is certainly very satisfactory; there is just enough of an air of protection suitable for a man who knows the ropes to show toward his partner who does not, combined with an open-hearted deference to an older man of wider experience that somehow is extraordinarily pleasant. ”

“ Osborne was first married, in 1562, to Anne Hewett, then about eighteen years old, and her father's sole heiress. She brought him an estate in Barking, Essex, besides lands in Wales and Harthill in Yorkshire, and died at an early age, being buried at St. ”

“ Murphy laughs. “Well, we’ve got two bottoms each to do this afternoon, to make up for our exercise this morning; so we must hustle up and get ’em done.”
So we both start basket-making; he joking at my efforts to keep up with him, and I, in a futile attempt to do so, “working like a race-horse,” as he expresses it. With pleasant chat the time passes quickly. The strangeness of my situation is beginning to wear away; and the men are getting over their aloofness as they see that, in Joe’s words, I mean business; and also see how well I get along with my partner and my boss. ”

“ This time it is again hash, with the usual accompaniments—the rather sour bread and nasty coffee. (Whatever else changes, the bootleg remains the same.) The hash is better than that which we had for breakfast on—Wednesday, was it? I place aside only one piece of bone and one of gristle.
During the meal I look around more closely than I have previously done at the officers within my range of vision. There is one who wears a flannel shirt, and is so unshaven that he looks like a tramp. I’m glad I’m not under that Captain. ”

“ Closing time comes. “Good night, Jack!” “Good night, Tom!” (I got ahead of my partner this time.) We form in line; the old men and cripples start off first; the rest of us march up the steps and along the tracks; then after pausing at the bucket stands, swing up the yard to the main building; where I seize my bread, clamber up the iron steps; pass a whispered word or two to some of my special friends as we separate for the night; take my tin cup of fresh water which stands on the shelf; stand for a moment at the cell entrance watching the fellows pass who lock in around the corner ”