Ensign Sterne, when with the army in Flanders,
married Agnes, the daughter of a Mr. Nuttall
of Clonmel, a rich sutler or contractor for army
provisions, and the lady was the widow of a
Captain Hebert, or Herbert. The marriage
took place at Bouchain about two years before
the birth of Laurence, his sister Mary, fifteen
months older than himself, having been
born at Lisle during the interval. Ensign
Sterne's regiment, which had remained in
Flanders until after the signing of the Treaty of
Utrecht, came into barracks at Clonmel just
before Laurence's birth, his mother having
arrived from Dunkirk only three days before
that event. Except, two, all regiments raised
since the peace of Ryswick, the Thirty-fourth
one of the number, were then being remorselessly
broken and disbanded at the close of war, and,
said Sterne afterwards, "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." Ensign Roger was
in no desperate case. He took his wife and her
two little ones to Yorkshire, and dwelt with his
mother, who was then a widow, in her house
at Elvington, having Corporal Butler, an Irish
orderly of the disbanded regiment, for his
attendant. Ensign Sterne was, says his son
Laurence, "a little smart man, active to the
last degree in all exercises, most patient of
fatigue and disappointments, of which it pleased
God to give him full measure. He was in temper
somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet
disposition; void of all designs, and so innocent
in his own intentions that he suspected no one;
so that you might have cheated him ten times a
day, if nine had not been sufficient for your
purpose."

In less than a twelvemonth the Thirty-fourth
Regiment was again established under Colonel
Chudleigh, and rejoined by Ensign Roger and
his family at Dublin barracks, whence they were,
within another month, shifted to Exeter, a third
child, a son, Joram, who lived only five years,
being born during the journey. After a year
in Exeter, the regiment was ordered back to
Dublin, where it remained stationary for the
next three years. Here Ensign Sterne, who
had, as well as his wife, moneyed connexions, and
may have had means of his own to dissipate,
instead of living in barracks upon his ensign's
pay of three shillings and twopence-halfpenny a
day, furnished a large house, and, says his son,
"in a year and a half's time spent a great deal
of money.'' During the year at Exeter and the
three years at Dublin there was no addition
to the little family, but when the soldier went
from Dublin with his regiment to take part
in the Vigo expedition, Mrs. Sterne, whose
youngest boy had died of small-pox on the way
from Plymouth to the Isle of Wight, was consoled
two days after the sailing of the expedition
with a daughter, who was christened Anne.
This girl, however, like the brother who
preceded her and the brother who was next born,
died before reaching the age of four. The sixth
child was a girl, who did not live a twelve-
month, four frail infants thus perishing between
the births of the first two children, Mary and
Laurence, and the last-born, Catherine, so that
these three of the seven were all who reached
maturity.

Upon his return from Vigo Bay, Mrs. Sterne
and the little family rejoined the ensign, then
stationed with his regiment in Wicklow
barracks, Laurence then being a boy of seven.
There the child lived among the soldiers, and
might take in with his earliest impressions, if he
would, from his father and the corporal who was
his orderly (or from anybody else), images that
were shaped afterwards into Uncle Toby and
Corporal Trim.

But during six months of the time spent
here, the Sterne family was housed hospitably
in the vicarage of Anamoe, seven miles from the
town of Wicklow, with the Rev. Mr. Fetherston,
a relation of Laurence's mother. At Anamoe
young Laurence tumbled into a mill-race, was
swept under the revolving mill-wheel, and shot
out on the other side, unharmed, into smooth
water. He tells this of himself as "incredible,"
and we do not learn without some trace of
suspicion that precisely the same story is told of
the boyhood of his great-grandfather, the
archbishop. The mill-race, at any rate, is still to be
seen at Anamoe.

When the regiment went presently for a year
to Dublin barracks, the Sternes lived in barrack.
There the boy "learned to write, &c.," and the
little Anne died. Her brother afterwards recollected
her, and said of her, "she was of a fine
delicate frame, not made to last long, as were
most of my father's babes." The regiment was
next quartered at Mullingar, where there was
again a relation—this time one of the Sterne
family—who took the little household in and
entertained it for a twelvemonth. A couple of
posts from Mullingar is Port Arlington, where
a Lefevre, whose son had a commission in the
army, set up a French school. In this fact
some have seen the first hint of Sterne's Le
Fever.

After a change to Carrickfergus, the Sternes
came back with the regiment to Wicklow,
whence Ensign Roger, having got leave of
absence from his colonel, took his son
Laurence, then eleven years old, to the Halifax
Free Grammar School. For the head of his
family—Roger's eldest brother, Richard Sterne
of Elvington—was resident also at Woodhouse,
a mile and a half from Halifax, and one of the
governors of its grammar-school. Here, therefore,
Laurence was educated during the next
seven years of his life. At the close of the
seven years, his father, the former ensign, then
Lieutenant Sterne, died of yellow fever at
Jamaica, after having escaped death from a
sword-thrust in a duel, and the lieutenant's rich
and kindly brother Richard, of Elvington, says
Laurence, "by God's care of me, became a
father to me."

Laurence Sterne's mother was alive seven-
and-twenty years later, and her life seems to