Personal arguments and literary feuds were, of course, commonplaces of the eighteenth century, but in no other instance has a writer's unpleasant personality so thoroughly eclipsed his work. Hawkins's multitude of enemies has so poisoned his reputation that he has never been given the credit due him for his pioneering efforts as an editor, a musical historian, and a biographer.
Sir John Hawkins was born in London on 9 April 1719 to Elizabeth Gwatkin Hawkins and John Hawkins, an impecunious carpenter and, according to his granddaughter Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins, a man "of no eminence" who frequently lent money to the needy without interest, security, or, at times, repayment. Despite the elder John Hawkins's financial circumstances, he sent his son to two schools, the names of which are unknown. After this early education Hawkins in 1736 began training under the architect Edward Hoppus. The following year Hawkins's cousin Thomas Gwatkin, a clerk to the attorney John Scott, persuaded him to take up the law, and Hawkins became articled to Scott, with whom he spent the next five years. They were most unhappy years, for Scott was parsimonious and demanding. The attorney seemed more concerned with his apprentice's handwriting, necessary to a copy clerk, than in his education as an attorney, and Hawkins was kept so busy that he had little time for the necessary reading.
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