e
perversity of his humour by so inopportune an appearance was Laurence
Sterne. "My birthday," he says, in the slipshod, loosely-strung
notes by which he has been somewhat grandiloquently said to have
"anticipated the labours" of the biographer--"my birthday was ominous
to my poor father, who was the day after our arrival, with many other
brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife
and two children."

Roger Sterne, however, now late ensign of the 34th, or Chudleigh's
regiment of foot, was after all in less evil case than were many,
probably, of his comrades. He had kinsmen to whom he could look for,
at any rate, temporary assistance, and his mother was a wealthy widow.
The Sternes, originally of a Suffolk stock, had passed from that
county to Nottinghamshire, and thence into Yorkshire, and were at
this time a family of position and substance in the last-named county.
Roger's grandfather had been Archbishop of York, and a man of more
note, if only through the accident of the times upon which he
fell, than most of the incumbents of that see. He had played an
exceptionally energetic part even for a Cavalier prelate in the great
political struggle of the seventeenth century, and had suffered with
fortitude and dignity in the royal cause. He had, moreover, a further
claim to distinction in having been treated with common gratitude
at the Restoration by the son of the monarch whom he had served. As
Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, he had "been active in sending the
University plate to his Majesty," and for this offence he was seized
by Cromwell and carried in military custody to London, whence, after
undergoing imprisonment in various goals, and experiencing other
forms of hardship, he was at length permitted to retire to an obscure
retreat in the country, there to commune with himself until that
tyranny should be overpast. On the return of the exiled Stuarts
Dr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later was
translated to the see of York. He lived to the age of eighty-six, and
so far justified Burnet's accusation against him of "minding chiefly
enriching himself," that he seems to have divided no fewer than four
landed estates among his children. One of these, Simon Sterne,
a younger son of the Archbishop, himself married an heiress, the
daughter of Sir Roger Jaques of Elvington; and Roger, the father of
Laurence Sterne, was the seventh and youngest of the issue of this
marriage.