sought by the reputed Captain Robert Midford, who "prevailed upon him to
play a game called 'Faro' for a small matter of diversion, but by degrees
drew him on to play for larger sums, and by secret and fraudulent means
obtained very large sums, in particular notes and bonds for L500."
Further, the colonel entered into a bond of L200 to one Mrs Barbara
Midford, "sister or pretended sister of the said Robert"; and so finally
was threatened with outlawry by 'Captain' Midford for, presumably, payment
of these debts. How Colonel Edmund finally escaped from the clutches of
these rogues does not appear; but it is clear enough that his Dorsetshire
meadows were a safer place than Princes Coffee-house for a gentleman who
could lose L500 at faro to a masquerading army captain. Also Sir Henry
Gould's wisdom becomes apparent, in bequeathing his daughter an
inheritance with which her husband was to have "nothing to doe."

In 1718, two years after Colonel Fielding's experience at Princes, Mrs
Fielding died, leaving six young children to her husband's care, two sons
and four daughters, Henry, the eldest being but eleven years old. Her
death is recorded in the East Stour registers as follows:--"Sarah, Wife
of the Hon. Edmund Fielding Esqre. and daughter of Sir Henry Gould Kt.
April 18 1718."

About this time (the dates vary between 1716 and 1719) Edmund Fielding
was appointed Colonel of the Invalids, an appointment which he appears to
have held until his death. And within two years of the death of his first
wife, Colonel Fielding must have married again, for in 1720 we find him
and his then wife, _Anne_, selling some 153 acres with messuages,
barns and gardens, in East and West Stour, to one Awnsham Churchill,
Esquire. What relation, if any, this land had to the property of the
colonel's late wife and her children does not appear.