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2. The book arrives ...


November 2016

Back from France, and there’s a package in the post from the Sussex Record Society.  Yes, it’s The Letters of John Collier of Hastings 1731-1746 edited by Richard Saville.
Since deciding to write a biography of Collier I’d done a bit of research on-line and got a rough idea of his life.  Born in Eastbourne to an Innkeeper in 1685, John Collier had done incredibly well for himself.  By the time he was 20 he had apparently qualified as a lawyer and had moved to Hastings to take up his first job at clerk to the town council.  Being a Cinque Port, Hastings council was known as a Corporation and the councillors as Jurats.  Collier was soon elected a Jurat and became Mayor for the first time in 1719.  He was involved with the Corporation as Clerk or Mayor for the rest of his life, but also carried on a legal practice in London, also buying and holding a sinecure as Usher and Cryer of the court of King's Bench.  He became land agent to two Prime Ministers, Henry Pelham and his brother the Duke of Newcastle as well as for various other members of the gentry and aristocracy.  What had particularly fired my interested was just how Collier managed to hold down so many disparate jobs and, most importantly, how he managed to travel between them.  The roads in the first part of the 18th Century were appalling and those between Hastings and Sevenoaks generally impassable in a carriage for most of the year.  It meant he had to ride on horseback and overnight in or around Sevenoaks, and then proceed by carriage or stage coach.  The journey took a minimum of two days, and sometimes more.  Yet it was a trip he made on a regular basis – generally at least four times a year.
Anyway here in my hands at last is Dr Saville’s book.  And what a joy.  It is beautifully produced with illustrations, copious footnotes, a full 40 page introduction and, crucially, a comprehensive bibliography which will make my research a good deal easier.  And it includes, I’m extremely flattered to find, mention of my own book, The Smuggling Life of Gabriel Tomkins.

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