of

by some emetic which he had swallowed for the purpose deceiving them. In answer to their questions, he said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England, and were lodged in the house of a Roman Catholic apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee had reported, sent some members to the house which he had indicated. That house and all the neighboring houses were searched. Delaval and Hayes were not to be found, nor had anybody in the vicinity ever seen such men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of the session, just before the Black Rod knocked at the door, unanimously resolved that William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he had insulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniated honorable men, and that an address should be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany.* He was consequently tried, convicted, sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the pillory. The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost to all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his two favorite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to persist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of the late King, who had spent six thousand pounds in order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes so this fable ran-had been instructed by James in person. They had, in obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for their appearance, and had then absented themselves, and left him exposed to the resentment of the House of Commons.† The story had the reception which it deserved, and Fuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long intervals, again emerged for a moment into infamy.

JOHN, EARL OF BREADALBANE.

JOHN, Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great house of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains. He could bring seventeen

*Commons' Journals, Feb. 22, 23 and 24, 1691-2.

+ Fuller's Original Letters of the late King James and others to his greatest Friends in England.

hundred claymores into the field; and ten years before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands with this great force, for the purpose of supporting the prelatical tyranny.* In those days he had affected zeal for monarchy and episcopacy; but in truth he cared for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two different sets of vices, the growth of two different regions, and of two different stages in the progress of society. In his castle among the hills he had learned the barbarian pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at Edinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and Mary, and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings of his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, would be wearisome.† That course became somewhat less tortuous when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemed probable that the Earl would be a loyal subject of their Majesties, till some great disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust him: but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish statesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked him out as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work of quieting the Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he declared with every appearance of truth, strong personal reasons for wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were so situated that, while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their herds or sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged: his cattle were daily driven away: one of his houses had been burned down. It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put an end to hostilities.‡

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, and was entrusted with the money which was to be distributed among them. He invited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came but the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a larger share of the English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane was suspected of intending to cheat

Burnet, i. 418.

↑ Crawford to Melville, July 23, 1689; The Master of Stair to Melville, Aug. 16, 1689; Cardross to Melville, Sept. 9, 1689; Balcarras's Memoirs; Annandale's Confession, Aug. 14, 1690. + Breadalbane to Melville, Sept. 17, 1690.

both the clans and the King. The dispute between the rebels and the government was complicated with another dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonalds were really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum More; and no arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave question therefore arose whether the money entrusted to Breadalbane should be paid directly to the discontented chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claims which Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussions. But no Celtic potentate was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known among the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian.*

ROBERT YOUNG.

THE exposure of Fuller, in February, had, as it seemed, put an end to the practices of that vile tribe of which Oates was the patriarch. During some weeks, indeed, the world was disposed to be unreasonably incredulous about plots. But in April there was a reaction. The French and Irish were coming. There was but too much reason to believe that there were traitors in the island. Whoever pretended that he could point out those traitors, was sure to be heard with attention; and there was not wanting a false witness to avail himself of the golden opportunity.

This false witness was named Robert Young. His history was in his own lifetime so fully investigated, and so much of his correspondence has been preserved, that the whole man is before us. His character is indeed a curious study. His birthplace was a subject of dispute among three nations. The English pronounced him Irish. The Irish, not being ambitious of the honor of having him for a countryman, affirmed that he was born in Scotland. Wherever he may have been born, it is impossible to doubt where he was bred; for his phraseology is precisely that of the Teagues who were, in his time, favorite characters on our stage. He called

The Master of Stair to Hamilton, Aug. 17-27, 1691; Hill to Melville, June 26, 1691; The Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Aug 24, 1691.

VOL. III.-34

himself a priest of the Established Church: but he was in truth only a deacon; and his deacon's orders he had ob tained by producing forged certificates of his learning and moral character. Long before the Revolution he held curacies in various parts in Ireland; but he did not remain many days in any spot. He was driven from one place by the scandal which was the effect of his lawless amours. He rode away from another place on a borrowed horse, which he never returned. He settled in a third parish, and was taken up for bigamy. Some letters which he wrote on this occasion from the jail of Cavan have been preserved. He assured each of his wives, with the most frightful imprecations, that she alone was the object of his love; and he thus succeeded in inducing one of them to support him in prison, and the other to save his life by fors wearing herself at the assizes. The only specimens which remain to us of his method of imparting religious instruction, are to be found in these epistles. He compares himself to David, the man after God's own heart, who had been guilty both of adultery and murder. He declares that he repents; he prays for the forgive ness of the Almighty, and then entreats his dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Having narrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several years about Ireland and England, begging, stealing, cheating, sonating, forging, and lay in many prisons under many names. In 1684 he was convicted at Bury of having fraudulently counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and was sentenced to the pillory and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wrote to implore the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read with all the original bad grammar and bad spelling.* That the writer

acknowledged his guilt, wished that his eyes were a fountain of water, declared that he should never know peace till he had received episcopal absolution, and professed a mortal hatred of Dissenters. As all this contrition and all this orthodoxy produced no effect, the penitent, after swearing bitterly to be revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to another device. The Western Insurrection had just broken out. The magistrates all over the country were but too ready to listen to any accusation that might be brought against Whigs and Non-conformists. Young declared on oath that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed in Suffolk against the life of King James, and named a peer, several gentlemen,

I give one short sentence as a specimen: “O fie that ever it should be said that a clergyman have committed such durty actions."

and ten Presbyterian ministers, as parties to the plot. Some of the accused were brought to trial; and Young appeared in the witness box: but the story which he told was proved by overwhelming evidence to be false. Soon after the Revolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the fourth or fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determined to try whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser of Jacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He first addressed himself to Tillotson. There was a horrible plot against their Majesties, a plot as deep as hell; and some of the first men in England were concerned in it. Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in information coming from such a source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William. William, after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I am confident," he said, "that this is a villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on such grounds." After this rebuff, Young remained some time quiet. But when William was on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the apprehension of a French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a false accuser might hope to obtain a favorable audience. The mere oath of a man who was well known to the turnkeys of twenty jails was not likely to injure anybody. But Young was master of a weapon which is, of all weapons, the most formidable to innocence. He had lived during some years by counterfeiting. hands, and had at length attained such consummate skill in that bad art, that even experienced clerks who were conversant with manuscript, could scarcely, after the most minute comparison, discover any difference between his imitations and the originals. He had succeeded in making a collection of papers written by men of note who were suspected of disaffection. Some autographs he had stolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to ask after the characters of servants or curates. He now drew up a paper purporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the banished King. This document set forth that the subscribers bound themselves in the presence of God to take arms for His Majesty, and to seize on the Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association, Young appended the names of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.

The next thing to be done was to put the paper in some