Talk:Sir Henry Hobart, 4th Baronet

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Biography: Peerage and Baronetage

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Lawyer and girl in the bush

I have adjusted the Hobart-Le Neve text in this article.

In writing the Oliver Le Neve article I have searched extensively for any historic and modern reliable source that says Le Neve was a lawyer or that the duel at Causton was witnessed by a girl in a bush. These claims have been made on the web (and some Wikipedia articles), on blog and forum sites, and repeated in newspaper articles, all that provide no verifiable evidence for either; such as this one: The Duel. There appears no evidence he was lawyer; even if he studied law (we don't know) at Hart College, Oxford, that wouldn't qualify him to be called a lawyer unless he practiced as one; being a magistrate doesn't make him de facto a lawyer. The girl in the bush idea is local legend, which is therefore completely unreliable for an encyclopedia unless this girl is documented in a reliable source, but not newspapers and blogs that tend to repeat the legend claim without offering any proof.

Having said that about the duel, if there were no contemporary witnesses, how would we know what was supposed to have taken place, actually took place? It could be that Hobart and/or Le Neve told of it, the story being handed down verbally through family and friends. I can find no evidence for that. An author I use as one Le Neve source, Adam Nicolson, Six Hundred Years of a Peculiarly English Class, seems to have done a lot of research and has more than likely seen actual contemporary first hand records. If the lawyer and witness thing was credible, I suspect he would have found it and alluded to it in his book.

If anyone can find cast iron reliable evidence for these claims being true I would be grateful; until then they should be left out of all Wikipedia articles which mention Oliver Le Neve and his duel with Hobart. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 12:42, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]