Thomas Robinson

“ ROBINSON, Sir THOMAS (1700?–1777) , ‘long Sir Thomas,’ governor of Barbados and amateur architect, born about 1700, was eldest son and heir of William Robinson (bapt. Rokeby, Yorkshire, 23 Sept. 1675, d. 24 Feb. 1720) , who married, in 1699, Anne, daughter and heiress of Robert Walters of Cundall in Yorkshire; she died on 26 July 1730, aged 53, and was buried in the centre of the south aisle of Merton church, Surrey, where a marble monument was placed to her memory. Sir Thomas, her son, also erected in the old Roman highway, near Rokeby, an obelisk in her honour. ”

“ In 1551 Robinson completed the first rendering into English of Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia.' In the dedication to his former schoolfellow, Cecil, he expressed regret for More's obstinate adherence to discredited religious opinions, modestly apologised for the shortcomings of his translation, and reminded his patron of their youthful intimacy. ”

“ Robinson died at Leicester on 24 March 1813, and was buried on the 29th in the chancel of St. Mary's, his funeral sermon being preached by Edward Thomas Vaughan [q. v.] , who published a memoir of Robinson, with a selection of his letters, in 1815. He was twice married. ”

“ In 1856, however, Robinson was elected an ‘associate engraver of the new class,’ and in the following year lost his election as a full member only by the casting vote of the president, Sir Charles Eastlake, which was given in favour of George Thomas Doo; on the retirement of the latter in 1867 he was elected a royal academician. Among his more important works were ‘The Emperor Theodosius refused admission into the Church by St. Ambrose’ and a portrait of the Countess of Bedford, both after the pictures by Vandyck in the National Gallery ”

“ Plainly he was in great uncertainty of mind.
“Perhaps I have nothing to tell,” he said at last.
“A man does not attempt to murder detectives unless he has a crime to conceal.”
“That is true,” he said, nodding his head; “very just and true.”
There was nothing to be gained by a long bargaining of secrets with him. Whatever his business he could speedily discover mine if he chose. If I were honest with him he might return the confidence.
“I am arranging for the escape of Julius Craig, now doing his time in the prison yonder,” I told him.
“Julius Craig!” he echoed, with wild eyes. ”

“ He set himself at once to recover some of the property rights of his see which his predecessor had alienated; and he obtained sanction for his acts from Lucius III. He then initiated a scheme which, as he claimed, and doubtless with some justice, had been contemplated by St Thomas and even long ago by St Anselm—the erection of a collegiate church in the suburbs of Canterbury. It was to be dedicated not only (as they had intended) to St Stephen, but now also to St Thomas as well; for the English martyr had as yet no church of his own in his native land. ”

“ ELLIOT, DANEMORE, GROSSMITH, and BRANDON THOMAS. As for the last-mentioned, it is well worth a visit to this theatre to see Mr. BRANDON THOMAS in two pieces, first as the Model, and then as the Heavy Swell. It is a strong thing to say, but I can call to mind no actor on the stage at the present moment who could in two different characters on the same night so completely and absolutely lose his identity,—for voice, manner, action, and of course appearance are all utterly changed,—as does Mr. BRANDON THOMAS as Gloucester the Model, and as Captain Tom Robinson.
All the ladies are good. ”

“ A nervous man would never have stood that strain; but we were not a neurotic couple, the old chap and I.
As hard and keen and clever as a lad of twenty-one was Thomas Hearne. It was he who spent the day in Plymouth, returning with a wig and long overcoat that might temporarily conceal the convict's identity until he could change his yellow prison uniform for the clothes I had already bought; it was he who gathered to himself all the weather lore of the village until he had become a better prophet than the wisest veteran of the moors. ”

“ He was not a man of extraordinary ability, but his political career was wholly free from those vices which most of the public men of his day displayed. He married Mary, daughter of Alderman Lane of London, and by her had two sons, Thomas (d. 1737) , who was an active member of parliament, and Paul, a barrister-at-law. The grandson of the elder son, also Thomas, was raised to the peerage as Baron Foley of Kidderminster 20 May 1776. A similar peerage, held by a cousin, had become extinct ten years earlier [see Foley, Thomas] . The peerage of the second creation is still extant. ”

“ Whose baite hath brought me to my baine,
⁠and caught me from my Books:
⁠Wherefore, for you, my praier shall be,
⁠to send you better grace,
⁠That modestie with honestie,
⁠may guide your youthfull race.
Finis quod Thomas Richardson, sometime Student in Cambridge. ”

“ HUTTON, THOMAS (1566–1639) , divine, a Londoner by birth, was admitted into Merchant Taylors' School (being the son of a member of the company) on 6 April 1573 (School Reg.) , and was elected in 1585, aged 19, a probationary fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. ”

“ He appealed to the lord keeper, and obtained compensation from the company upon the ground that the infirmities of age rather than ‘insufficiency’ had caused the alleged misconduct. He is said to have died in 1631 at an advanced age. He had a son, John Hayne, of St. John's College, Oxford, who from 1616 to 1618 was first under-master at Merchant Taylors'; but Thomas Hayne [q. v.] , also a master of the school and a grammarian, does not seem to have been related to him. ”

“ His affection for the convict seemed to fill his life. No risk, no labour was too heavy; no storm would drive him from his post. Often when I was smoking by the inn fire, he was crouching patiently amongst the rocks on the cairn hill, as if it were his only son for whom he waited. There was something inhuman in his merciless self-sacrifice; but I had no reason to complain, for it lightened the burden on my shoulders.
It was at three o'clock on Tuesday, May 9th, that Julius Craig escaped. Poor devil! if he had but known!
Hearne and I had quarrelled that morning over the fog question. ”

“ He was bursar of his college in 1622, and junior proctor of the university 1620–1. He afterwards studied medicine, proceeding M.D. at Oxford, and was a candidate of the London College of Physicians 25 June 1623. A letter describing Ben Jonson's reception at Oxford, written by Thomas Foxe to his father, is preserved in ‘MS. Harl.’ 416, f. 226, and has been printed by Mr. Winters. On 8 May 1634 James Hay, earl of Carlisle, applied to him for a loan of 500l. He seems to have acquired much property, and to have been friendly with men eminent in literature and society. ”

“ The sight of a man in a white waterproof loitering on the cairn bill would be his signal that all was ready. Sudden fogs were frequent upon the moor, and when they came while the convicts were at work in the fields, the chance of escape was excellent; for the authorities did not chain their men, and the warders rarely used their rifles. They trusted to the huge moors upon which men who escaped were easily retaken, half dead from fatigue and starvation. ”

“ But after all the opinions of our friends are not what we love them for—so I don’t see why they should be a ground of aversion. Robinson’s nature is singularly generous and his intelligence very fine, though there are things he muddles up. ”

“ I said.
“Why should I?” he asked, very reasonably. “Wise men don’t blaze abroad their opinions for nothing. I don’t know what you are for that matter, and I don’t want to.”
Nevertheless, I told him, and he said that I might as well pursue that idea as any other. Then he resumed his newspaper.
Time passed, and I forgot the matter, and was contented to feel that Robinson had high morals and even refined instincts for such a large man. I came to know him well and went home with him to tea and made the acquaintance of his sister. ”

“ While on some points we hold Robinson to have been altogether wrong; on others—and these not trivial, but important points—we hold that he is nearly as much in advance of the present age as he was of his own, because he adheres more closely than even religious men are ordinarily wont to do, to the spirit and genius of those older Scriptures which have yet to liberate a world from all but invulnerable superstitions. ”

“ He then sent one of his shrill whistles into the woods, and then another, with such good effect that Gabriel presently appeared, loping easily along. “Good fellow, good fellow. Now, Newton, we’ll ketch that skunk. Here, here, old boy,” and he hurried swiftly away with the hound at heel.
Arrived at the house they found Toombs unconfined, but under the vigilant guard of a lynx-eyed Green Mountain Boy. When Job inquired for the Canadian, he detected a gleam of triumph in the glowering eyes of the surly, half-defiant prisoner. ”

“ He had to climb over many rocks and pierce many thickets. At each step he saw a rich growth of plants, stems, leaves, flowers, but nothing to eat, no fruits, or nuts. At length he came to a tree as high as a small church steeple. Then he thought of what his father had once said about the trees in strange countries. "Many are as tall as a church steeple and the nuts are as big as one's head." He looked again. Yes, there they hung among the leaves, concealed high above in the crown [Pg 46] ! But so high, it was well that Robinson had learned to climb while on board the ship. ”

“ There was no playing of favorites: each man worked; each man, if for no more than his own sake, must work with good-will. “The people,” Robinson had written of them, “are for the body of them industrious and frugal, we think we may safely say, as any company of people in the world.” He knew intimately the men of whom he spoke. They were “common people” as compared with some of the aristocrats of Massachusetts Bay; yet on the Mayflower roster appeared “masters,” “servants,” and “artisans” ”

“ Robinson, though a realist in the sense that his preoccupation is with motive, turns down the light in the presence of his protagonist that in the gloom he may take on the air of something larger and more mysterious than the garishly actual. ”

“ Tom, however, was loath to abandon his joke, and argued:
"But he said for Robinson to square him with you, didn't he?"
"Why, yes."
"Then, Robinson can tell him the feed for the dozen of us was the only way he could do it." ”

“ This terrible and unnatural privation of all light is very trying to all God's creatures, to none more so than to man, and among men it is most dangerous and distressing to those who have imagination and excitability. Now Robinson was a man of this class, a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that vent themselves in action, but not rich in the tough fortitude which does little, feels little and bears much. ”

“ He is practicing still, and it is more than probable that the Robinson name, on whose lustre he prides himself, has never been dimmed by action of his, although among solicitors of a higher class he has the name of being a sharp practitioner. He may be known by his frank address, his manly appearance, his deep and outspoken conviction of the necessity of not living for this world alone. He has been an actor in the play so long that at last he has almost come to believe he is what he makes so loud a profession of being. ”

“ Jasper is only two miles off, and the Vigilants will be riding over here before we have time to say Jack Robinson.”
“There’s still time,” said George, “and as there’s only one man here against us now—I mean Hare—we can seize him, tie him to something, and then escape into the darkness.”
“So we can, my boy,” replied Watson, who was thinking as deeply and as calmly as if a game of chess, rather than a matter of life and death, were the issue. “There’s no trouble as to our escaping. But remember this. It’s pitch dark and raining again like cats and dogs; we don’t know our way ”

“ But he was not quite correct, for about nine or ten years afterwards four more were taken, who, there can be no doubt, were the last of them, for the smoke of the savage has been no more seen in Tasmania since.
Whatever the future historian of Tasmania may have to say of this ancient people, he will do them an injustice if he fails to record that, as a body, they held their ground bravely for 30 years against the invaders of their beautiful domains.
Robinson was never the popular man he might have been had he been a little more sociable than he was. ”

“ Wat Adair, if you do not come out with the whole truth," said Robinson, with angry earnestness, "I take back my promise. Tell me all you know."
"Curry acted by the captain's directions," continued the woodsman, "he was well paid for it, as he told me, and would have got more, if a quarrel amongst Habershaw's people hadn't stopped them from taking Major Butler's life. So I have heard from the men myself." ”

“ How would men treat him when he should no longer be the same Robinson? How had he condescended to Poppins! how had he domineered at the "Goose and Gridiron!" how had he patronized those who served him in the shop! Men remember these things of themselves quite as quickly as others remember them. Robinson thought of all this now, and almost wished that those visits to Blackfriars Bridge had not been in vain. ”

“ On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.
They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,
And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;
Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon,
And all because it happened that they both knew Robinson! ”

“ We have no space to enter at length into the various incidents in the life of this truly great and good man—a life, which, notwithstanding the carefully compiled memoir prefixed to these volumes, and many briefer or larger notices in other publications, still remains to be written. A few particulars, however, will assist the reader in forming a proper opinion of the man and his times.
John Robinson was born, probably, in Lincolnshire, in 1575. ”