At launch, playwright
Henry Fielding (as “Captain Hercules Vinegar”) served as principal editor, and his former theatrical collaborator and assistant
James Ralph soon took charge of the news-opinion columns “Index to the Times” and “Journal of the War.” Both men had been forced out of the theatre by the
Licensing Act 1737, which required pre-approval of plays and confined legitimate performance to the patent houses. The Hercules Vinegar persona appeared at once: the first issue introduced a swaggering “Captain” who laid aside the sword for the pen; two days later he styled himself “of
Hockley in the Hole.” The byname echoed an earlier prize-fighting persona associated with London’s bear-garden amphitheatres. Readers quickly heckled the imposture—letters from “A. Moore … near St. Paul’s” and “Paul Serious” (4 December 1739) mocked both title and pseudonym—prompting an editorial reply that dating from Hockley placated the “beautiful Goddess of Envy” and hinted at “deeper Reasons.” A week later the persona moved in print: a letter headed “From my Dining Room in
Pall-Mall, Dec. 10th, being the first Night of my Arrival from
Hockley in the Hole” signalled the shift, and the same day the paper offered an ironical defence of the
Licensing Act 1737—the statute that had curtailed Fielding’s and Ralph’s stage careers—with barbs at
Colley and
Theophilus Cibber. On 13 December the “Captain” claimed the play-house as his province and lampooned a crude stage-makeup trick on a mimic “Caesar’s brow.” January 1740 kept the thread alive with a few telling moments: an “odd slip” on 5 January, a note signed “Hercules Vinegar” but misaddressed to “Mr. Champion”; on 10 January, a letter that pretended to attack “Vinegar” but was really a hit at Walpole—flagged by a brief end-note signed “**,” which was Ralph’s mark for the political target; on 15 January, an essay noting that pieces “from
Hockley in the Hole” were discounted until the move to a more “polite Part of the Town”; and, on 26 January, a letter jeering at “Capt. Vinegar” preaching virtue. After late January the fiction was only lightly sustained—apart from two spring flashes—“the Captain” receded and most papers ignored his individuality. Spring 1740 revived the
bear-garden theme: on 25 March the paper carried an invitation to the amphitheatres for a bout at
broad-sword and
quarter-staff, and on 1 April it printed a letter from “Vander Bruin” urging “gymnastic Encounters” and announcing two “Brother Bears” for
baiting—a piece also read as political satire. On 3 April the paper ran “An Essay on Truth,” arguing against rhyme in serious poetry. Thereafter the dramatic thread thinned: Gray noted the “Captain” returned to the theatre only “once in a great while.” By early September 1740 a reader letter (6 September) asked for regular theatre coverage; the next issue reviewed Milward’s
Hamlet and discussed
Drury Lane’s management passing to
Quin, and on 16 September correspondents’ replies were printed. While Fielding carried the essay-moral pieces, politics were largely Ralph’s brief. He ran the “Index to the Times” and “Journal of the War,” cataloguing the
War of Jenkins' Ear, naval shortcomings, and parliamentary corruption in a “crisp [and] provocative” tone. Early political essays in this phase also mapped elements of the “constitution” and warned against faction, with one dubbing Walpole “Traitor-Achitophel” and another urging popular leverage—“the weight of England is in the people.” advertising
Champion; or, Evening Advertiser. British Museum, inv. 1868,0808.3630. Meanwhile the political line hardened: on 29 May 1740 the paper printed “the heads of the dealings of the last Parliament,” promising the “material Merit of both Parties” at a glance, and in late May–early June it ran an anti-corruption cartoon that was reprinted, boosting notoriety. In this phase the
Champion worked chiefly as an opposition Whig journal and, like peer essay papers, preferred “
patriot”/“
country interest” language over Whig–Tory labels; despite the prosecutions of 1737, no London newspaper—including the
Champion—was prosecuted in Walpole’s last two years. Fielding stepped down in June 1741—friction typical of group-managed, bookseller-owned papers “seem[ing] to have accounted” for his departure; Ralph was named editor, and Fielding’s two-sixteenths share was reassigned to him. By then Fielding had already entered prose fiction with the anonymous parody
Shamela (1741). Fielding later sketched the collaboration in a dream-vision: a coach packed with party leaders drawn not by horses but by two half-starved donkeys, “Vinegar” and “Ralph,” driven hard with the whip and given nothing for their pains. The drivers repeatedly called on “Vinegar” to pull harder despite his shabby condition, while “Ralph,” yoked beside him, strained and brayed as if unfed since the winter frosts. After Fielding’s departure, theatrical comment surfaced only occasionally—for example, a letter titled “Character of Mr. Garrick” in October 1742, reprinted that month in the ''
Gentleman's Magazine''. Under Ralph, the paper’s profile expanded even as parliamentary reporting remained restricted: while Parliament was sitting, rules of privilege confined coverage to brief, often deliberately elliptical items. On 12 December 1741 it noted that “the Disputes of the famous Political Club” continued past one in the morning, and by the end of that month even the ministerial
Daily Gazetteer reported that the
Champion was “greatly in demand in the city.” The paper also gave space to colonial–commercial strategy: in a series by
George Burrington (former governor of North Carolina) it urged using naval power against the springs of French trade and empire (24 October, 3 November 1741; 30 January, 4 and 11 February 1742). In late 1741–early 1742 the editorial line sharpened into an isolationist critique framed by Hanoverian neutrality. On 26 December 1741 the paper linked
Admiral Haddock’s inaction against the Toulon fleet to
Hanoverian constraints; on 19 January 1742 it invoked the
Act of Settlement clause that Britain need not defend territories not belonging to the English crown “without the consent of Parliament,” arguing abuse of the proviso and rejecting claims that Hanover’s vulnerability should limit British operations; the same issue urged applying “the Remainder of our wealth, strength, and vigour” to self-preservation and contended that support for Austria had already cost too much, aligning with the isolationist case advanced in
The Plain Truth (1742), probably by Ralph. Across the opposition press that winter, positions diverged—an isolationist case in the
Champion versus conditional intervention in the
Craftsman—and the essay papers then fell largely quiet on war questions between Walpole’s fall and late 1742. After Walpole’s resignation, the paper coupled a defence of press liberty with close attention to opposition organisation. On 6 March 1742 it warned that liberty of the press would not have been preserved had he remained in power, alleging that a bill had been prepared to subject printing to a licenser on the model of the
1737 stage restraints. Between March and July it tracked manoeuvring—on 13 March reporting a meeting of about 200 opposition MPs at the Fountain Tavern (held 12 March), and on 1 July likening the Commons’ refusal to authorise printing the secret committee’s report to a “hopeful Babe … STRANGLED in the BIRTH” at a “GREAT HOUSE at Westminster.” It also helped circulate constituency “instructions” to
MPs, printing them alongside the
Craftsman,
London Evening Post,
Daily Post, and
Universal Spectator, with the monthly magazines reprinting them and MPs’ letters of thanks. On 19 August 1742 it revisited its parliamentary survey with another heads-style summary; the run ended weeks later on 31 August 1742. == Reception ==