History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

The Man of the Hill’s first-person narrative, continued across Chapters xi, xii, and xiii, begins with his 1657 birth in Mark, Somerset, to a gentleman farmer and his harsh, shrewish wife. His elder brother, his mother’s favourite, was a poor student obsessed with hunting and shooting, who left formal education at 15, while the younger brother excelled at his studies, attending Taunton school before matriculating at Exeter College, Oxford. At Oxford, he fell in with Sir George Gresham, a wealthy, malicious peer who took pleasure in ruining poorer, studious classmates by luring them into expensive, debauched lifestyles beyond their means. The Man of the Hill, high-spirited and amorous, proved an easy target: he quickly ran up enormous debts, neglected his studies, earned a reputation as a ringleader of campus disorder, and narrowly avoided expulsion. When his father cut off his allowance after receiving reports of his behaviour, he was desperate, and in a moment of moral failure stole 40 guineas from his frugal, sleeping roommate’s writing desk. The roommate, too timid to confront him, reported the theft to the vice-chancellor, who issued a warrant for his arrest. The Man of the Hill learned of the warrant and fled Oxford, traveling to London with his mistress, and spent the entire stolen sum in a matter of weeks. When his money ran out, his mistress, unable to bear their poverty, betrayed him to a former lover in Oxford, and he was thrown in jail. He was tried at the Oxford assizes but acquitted for lack of prosecution when his original roommate left the area and refused to testify. Ashamed to return home to his father, who he assumed would reject him for his theft, he chose to remain in London, living in anonymous isolation in the crowded city to avoid public shame.

One night, hungry and wandering the Inner Temple, he ran into an old college friend, Watson, who invited him for drinks at a tavern. Initially he lied about having money, but eventually confessed his poverty; Watson paid for the meal, then revealed he knew the Man of the Hill had been acquitted of the robbery, and praised him for it, urging him to take up professional gambling as a low-risk way to make money. They visited a gaming table, where Watson won a large sum, then invited the Man of the Hill to join him in fleecing two inexperienced, wealthy young gamblers at a nearby tavern. The Man of the Hill agreed, received a share of the plunder, and soon fell in with Watson’s gang of professional sharpers, living a precarious existence of alternating extreme wealth and abject poverty for the next two years, relying on cheating and gambling to survive.

His turning point came one night when, returning penniless from the gaming table, he came across a mob surrounding a man who had been robbed and badly beaten by ruffians. He offered to help the injured man get to a nearby tavern for medical care. The surgeon who treated the man was the king’s serjeant-surgeon, a generous man who offered to pay for the patient’s care and lend him money. When the wounded man looked at the Man of the Hill, however, he cried “Oh my son!” and fainted: it was his father, who had traveled to London after a neighbour told him his son was living a debauched life there, and had been attacked by ruffians on his way to find him. Overcome with shame and joy, the Man of the Hill promised to return home with his father as soon as he was able to travel. Before he left London, he went to say goodbye to Watson, who tried to dissuade him from returning to his “foolish old father,” but the Man of the Hill refused. He returned to Somerset, where his father welcomed him without ever mentioning the theft, only expressing his years of grief over his disappearance. The Man of the Hill resumed his studies of philosophy and Christianity, finding solace in them after his father died four years later. His elder brother, now master of the family estate, was a coarse, uneducated sportsman who looked down on the Man of the Hill’s intellectual pursuits, so the two brothers separated: the Man of the Hill received a £1000 lump sum and a small lifetime annuity in exchange for giving up all claim to the family property. He traveled to Bath to treat a paralytic condition caused by prolonged grief and sedentary study, where he ran into Watson, who had attempted suicide after losing all his money gambling. The Man of the Hill argued Watson out of self-murder, lent him £100, and urged him to find honest, steady work, but when he visited Watson the next day, he found Watson gambling with a notorious sharper, had just bet the Man of the Hill’s £50 bill, and lost it. The Man of the Hill gave Watson the remaining £50 he had promised, received a worthless IOU in return, and left resolved never to see his former friend again. As he departed, an overexcited apothecary ran in with false news that the Duke of Monmouth had landed in the west of England at the head of a large Dutch army, to launch a Protestant rebellion against the Catholic King James II. The Man of the Hill, a committed Protestant who believed James’s rule threatened English religious liberty, immediately decided to join Monmouth’s rising.