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chaplain to some ship, or to some cure in one of our western plantations. Which his grace again refused, and upon surer grounds than before : for, in the mean time, he had sent to Dr. Foley, chaplain to the Archbishop of Dublin, then in England, for a better information concerning this bold and importunate man, which produced the letters hereafter set down from the Lord Archbishop of Dublin, and the Lord Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, touching his forging of orders, his degradation, his double marriage, and other his good qualities.

Thus failing at the archbishop's, he forthwith sent his woman to Windsor, where the court then resided, with a petition to the king; therein she sets forth, that her name was Mary Green, the wife of one Robert Green, an Irish minister; who, going into the West-Indies, upon urgent affairs, was taken captive by the pyrates of Sallee. Therefore she prays that the king would be graciously pleased to recommend her sad condition to the clergy of England; and that his Majesty would request them (so her secretary words it) to contribute their charity toward her husband's ransom. This petition was read in council, June 18, 1684, and referred to the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Bishop of London. But we may be sure the petitioner, or her husband, came no more to Lambeth for an answer to the reference. They took a shorter way, and much easier to themselves; they forged a favourable report upon the petition, under the Archbishop and Bishop of London's hands and seals; by vertue of which (together with the archbishop's true hand and seal, which they had gotten by chance, and affixed a false recommendation to it) they wandered a long time over England, sometimes together, sometimes asunder, he passing for her brother, sometimes under the name of Robert Hutt, sometimes of Robert Green and so cheated the king's subjects of very considerable sums.

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But at length this plot was unluckily spoiled by their coming in their progress to play their pranks in Suffolk, the archbishop's native country, especially in Bury; where exhibiting their false recommendations to Mr. Cleggat, the minister of that town, the vagabond and his quean were seized upon suspicion; and, being severally examined, they themselves confessed before divers justices of the peace the whole train of their forgeries in this particular. Whereupon they were tried, and found guilty, and sentenced to stand in the pillory in the market of Bury, October 6, 1684; he going under the name of Robert Young, alias Hutt; she of Mary Green, alias Hutt, alias Peirson, alias Young.

Some time after this, having made a property of the name of Green, and of the captive Irish minister long enough, and squeesed out of it as much money as it would afford; and not being to be terrified from so gainful a traffick by one pillorying at Bury, they still carried it on, only changing the scene, and altering their style: she, that before was Mary Green, is again sent out, and furnished by her friend, with a new set of forged instruments and

names.

In some of her false recommendatory papers, she passed for Mrs. Mary Jones, wife of Mr. Robert Jones, rector of Ashford : in others, for Mrs. Mary Smith, wife of Mr. John Smith, supposed rector too, at the same time, of the same Ashford, in the diocese of Canterbury: whereas neither Jones, nor Smith, was ever rector there, no more than Doctor Hookes is rector of Wingrave in Buckinghamshire.

However, each of these her new husbands was pretended to be a prisoner for a vast debt, upon the account of suretiship: and she carried about with her divers counterfeit letters of the hand still of Archbishop Sancroft, desiring (and in one of her papers making his grace humbly to beseech) the contributions of the bishops and clergy for the poor man's enlargement.

This cheat was indeed more gainful to them than the former. The archbishop's hand was so admirably well imitated, especially in the subscriptions of his name, that she generally met with a very kind reception; and particularly applying herself to three bishops, who, of all the bench, were the archbishop's most intimate friends, even they were deceived by a legerdemain so well devised, and nothing doubting, but it was his grace's true hand (though they knew it almost as well as their own) they and their clergy were very bountiful to her.

Nor was Robert Young himself all this while idle, but sometimes he accompanied this Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith, as her brother; sometimes he came after her as her receiver; sometimes he went a different road from her, as her agent deputed to sollicit good people's charity to so pious a work: shewing another false letter under the hand of Dr. Faulconberge, secretary to the archbishop; wherein were set down divers sums, as given by several of the clergy, to draw in others; and, among the rest, I thank her, she owns the receipt of 41. from the Bishop of Rochester.

I admire how it was possible this their wicked trade was not sooner discovered; which it had been in a nation less charitable than ours. But here they successfully drove it on the better part of the year 1687, till at length the archbishop was alarmed from divers quarters, by notice that his hand and seal went a begging about the kingdom; which occasioned the advertisements, that were given to the whole nation, in the Gazettes of September and October 1687, to beware of Mrs. Jones and Robert Smith; and to apprehend them, that they might be dealt with according to law: whereupon Mrs. Jones was very closely traced to Chester, and searched for there by the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph's order. But she prevented the diligence of his messenger, and escaped to London.

Not long after this, they both came to Bromley. The occasion of it was (as I have understood since) that Mr. Goodwyn, who officiated sometime for Mr. Dobson, falling suddenly ill, and going to London for cure; and being at a loss for the supply of a chaplain at the College of Widows, had by chance this Young offered to him, as a grave Irish clergyman, of good preferment in that

church, but at present out of business, having fled that kingdom with his family, upon the beginning of the Duke of Tyrconnel's rage against the protestants.

By help of this imposture he and his wife were entertained at Bromley, though, by good hap, they made a very little stay here. Yet, as short as it was, he has left signal marks behind him of his wickedness, and particularly of his owning that he had the knack to counterfeit any man's hand in England.

However, during his small time in the college, the good widows had respected him, and his fellow traveller so kindly, that he remembered it two or three years after, when he was in Newgate. I will presently produce the very letter written thence, in which he is not ashamed to beg of an hospital, and in a canting strain, to intreat they would make a collection among them, towards his being removed to the king's bench.

The whole letter is full of prevarications: but there is one I cannot forbear mentioning now. For though the true cause of his and his reputed wife's being clapped up in Newgate, was their forging several bills of exchange, and receiving the money upon them, for which they both then stood convicted, and had been pilloried; yet he solemnly protests, and thanks God, that he was not a prisoner for any ill thing, but only because an Irishman (whom I pray God forgive, these are his very words) swore against me, that, by virtue of bills, I raised money for the use of King James: whereas (says he) you all remember I stood up for the church of England, and stood in the gap against the Roman Catholicks in the worst of times.

But after a short time of sojourning here, of about six weeks, or two months, in the year 1687, Robert Young soon perceived, that the poor town of Bromley was not a proper seat for him to set up his rest in; where he could only expect a bare subsistence by reading prayers, as a substitute to one who was himself a substitute to the chaplain of the college: whereas he knew, and had practised, a far more ready way of getting a plentiful livelihood: whether honest or dishonest he mattered not.

Wherefore, removing hence to Wapping, and thence to Whitechapel, he began to look out for some fitter place for a new scene of action; where he might more profitably exercise his best-beloved faculty of counterfeiting hands and seals.

At length he cast his eye on St. Albans, a town, which, by reason of its great trade, and convenient distance from London, and, being so great a thorough-fair, he pitched on to practise in it some of the cleanliest feats, I must say, of his knavish dexterity in that kind.

Between St. Albans and London, he began to ply in the beginning of the year 1688, and it was not long before he crept into a great familiarity in the post-house there. By what arts of courtship he became so intimate on a sudden in the family, I leave it to the ensuing papers to inform my reader.

However, by this means, he procured the absolute command of

all the mails of that road; and so had the opportunity of opening and perusing, and taking out, and putting in, what letters he pleased, between the chief traders of those parts, and their correspondents in London.

Having thus furnished himself with proper tools, and chosen as fit a shop to work in, as any in England, he presently fell to his usual way of commerce; whereof I shall only mention three or four instances; they being the very same for which he and his supposed wife were afterwards condemned of forgery at the Old Bailey.

His first cheat was thus: in July 1688, he went to Northampton, and, under the name of Robert Smith, paid to Mr. John Clarke, an inhabitant there, the sum of twenty pounds, and took his bill of exchange for it, to one Mr. Jonathan Kendall of London: Mr. Clarke also sending a letter of advice, that he had drawn such a bill upon him for the use of Mr. Robert Smith.

Robert Young, whom we must now call Robert Smith, forged another bill verbatim by the true one, for the same sum of twenty pounds, payable to himself under the same false name; and, straight coming up to Loudon, delivered the forged bill to Mr. Kendall; which being so very exactly done, Mr. Kendall made no delay of paying it, and had Robert Smith's receipt, dated July 16. As soon as this was over, honest Robert immediately took horse, and hasted down to Northampton; where, arriving on July 17, he forthwith went to Mr. Clarke, and told him, that he had offered his bill at London, but Mr. Kendall refused to pay it, and therefore desired his money again, producing the true bill; which Mr. Clarke receiving, and seeing no imaginable cause of distrust, paid the twenty pounds without demurr.

Thus far Mr. Clarke and Mr. Kendall only sustained the loss of twenty pounds, and, perhaps, somewhat smiled at the clever contrivance. But that which next follows, was more extraordinary, and struck deeper into their purses.

And how can my reader now think it probable, that both Mr. Clarke and Kendall should be again cheated by the same hand, of a much greater sum, within less than three months after? Yet so it really happened; and, in such a manner, that it was almost impossible for the wit of man to prevent it.

His second St. Albans cheat, therefore, was this. Being now become perfect in the exact character of Mr. Clarke's writing, he forged a bill, dated October 5, 1688, as drawn by Mr. Clarke on Mr. Kendall, for one hundred and fifty pounds, payable at sight to his own Mary Young, under the name of Mrs. Mary Clarke.

And, because there was a necessity that a letter of advice should go before the bill, he counterfeited one also in this manner: In the Northampton bag, which he opened at St. Albans, he found a long letter written to Mr. Kendall by Mr. Clarke, touching divers par ticular affairs theu transacting between them. This letter he intercepted, transcribed it throughout, and, about the middle of his false copy, inserted these words, that he had drawn on Mr. Kendall a bill of one hundred and fifty pounds, to be paid upon sight to

Mrs. Mary Clarke; and so went on with the other business, as in the true letter. This forged letter he put into the Northampton mail; so it went safe to Mr. Kendall at London.

The next morning after, Mrs. Mary Clarke came to him with her bill. Whereupon Mr. Kendall, not in the least suspecting that the bill or letter of advice were forged, because he was confident, they were both of Mr. Clarke's own hand writing, and the letter giving him an account of several other businesses, which he thought could not possibly be known to any, but to Mr. Clarke, and himself, he presently paid to Mary Clarke the one hundred and fifty pounds, and so lost the whole sum beyond recovery.

His third cheat on the same road was in this manner; about the latter end of February, in the same year, 1688, he sent his second false-self now again under the name of Mary Young, to Mr. Jonathan Mathew of Daventry in Northamptonshire. She paid him nine pounds; for which he gave her a bill of exchange upon Mr. Richard Shipton of London, payable to the said Mary Young, which she received March the 14th.

By this true original of Mr. Mathew's own hand, on the 18th of March following, he forged another bill in the name of the said Mr. Mathew, for two hundred pounds, charged also on the said Mr. Shipton. And having still the liberty to search the Daventry mail at St. Albans, and finding there a letter from Mr. Mathew to Mr. Shipton, he made the same use of it as he had done that of Mr. Clarke's to Mr. Kendall; transcribed it intirely, and, in the same surreptitious manner as before, put in an advice of his having drawn a bill of two hundred pounds, and for whom, which letter was immediately sent by the post to Mr. Shipton.

The false bill and letter of advice, I am assured, was so accurately counterfeited, that Mr. Mathew himself could not discover the difference, nor disown it upon view; but only in that he was certain he had never drawn any bill of that importance.

Mr. Shipton therefore was easily deceived by the similitude of hands; and Robert Young having sent Mary to London, to receive the money, he paid it without the least scruple; since this letter of advice also mentioned other things which Mr. Shipton knew to be true.

Mr. Mathew, as soon as Mr. Shipton sent him word, that he had paid in his name a sum so considerable, dispatched immediately a servant up to London, to let him know, he had never drawn any such bill upon him, and had given him this timely notice, that, if possible, he might retrieve the money.

Thenceforth, they both used all imaginable endeavours to discover the authors of the fraud. Which Mary Young perceiving, by their frequent letters to each other, Robert having still the advantage of opening at St. Albans; she wrote Mr. Mathew a most insulting letter; telling him, that she had made bold to borrow of Mr. Shipton two hundred pounds upon his credit, but would repay it, when she was able. And, to amuse him the more in his search, she added a flam story, that she had got his hand by corrupting

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