it must be construed as an abatement of your
affection towards her.' " Vaughan was again
exceedingly urgent in asking back the packet;
but Bliss remembering his many evasions, and
supposing that this was a trick, declined
advising his niece to restore the parcel without
proper consideration. The very next day
it was discovered that the notes were
counterfeits.

This occasioned stricter enquiries into
Vaughan's previous career. It turned out
that he bore the character in his native place
of a dissipated and not very scrupulous person.
The intention of his mother to assist him was
an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss
Bliss the forged notes solely for the purpose
of deceiving her on that matter. Meanwhile
the forgeries became known to the authorities,
and he was arrested. By what means, does
not clearly appear. The " Annual Register"
says that one of the engravers gave information;
but we find nothing in the newspapers
of the time to support that statement; neither
was it corroborated at Vaughan's trial.

When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a
piece of paper into his mouth, and began to
chew it violently. It was, however, rescued,
and proved to be one of the forged notes;
fourteen of them were found on his person,
and when his lodgings were searched twenty
more were discovered.

Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on
the seventh of April, before Lord Mansfield.
The manner of the forgery was detailed
minutely at the trial:—On the first of March
(about a week before he gave the twelve
notes to the young lady) Vaughan called on
Mr. John Corbould, an engraver, and gave an
order for a promissory note to be engraved
with these words:

"No.————.

"I promise to pay to————, or
Bearer,————, London————."

There was to be a Britannia in the corner.
When it was done, Mr. Sneed (for that was
the alias Vaughan adopted) came again, but
objected to the execution of the work. The
Britannia was not good, and the words " I
promise " were too near the edge of the plate.
Another was in consequence engraved, and on
the fourth of March Vaughan took it away.
He immediately repaired to a printer, and had
forty-eight impressions taken on thin paper,
provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had
ordered, on the same morning, of Mr. Charles
Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second plate,
with what he called " a direction," in the
words, "For the Governor and Company of
the Bank of England." This was done, and
about a Week later he brought some paper,
each sheet " folded up," said the witness, "very
curiously, so that I could not see what was in
them. I was going to take the papers from him,
but he said he must go upstairs with me, and
see them worked off himself. I took him
upstairs; he would not let me have them out of
his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them,
and put them one by one on the plate in
order for printing them. After my boy had
done two or three of them, I went downstairs,
and my boy worked the rest off, and the
prisoner came down and paid me."

Here the Court pertinently asked, " What
imagination had you when a man thus came
to you to print on secret paper, 'the Governor
and Company of the Bank of England?'"

The engraver's reply was:—" I then did not
suspect anything. But I shall take care for
the future." As this was the first Bank of
England note forgery that was ever
perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.

It may be mentioned as an evidence of
the delicacy of the reporters that, in their
account of the trial, Miss Bliss's name is not
mentioned. Her designation is " a young lady."
We subjoin the notes of her evidence— :

"A young lady (sworn). The prisoner
delivered me some bills; these are the same
(producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes
sealed up in a cover, for twenty pounds each),
said they were Bank bills. I said they- were
thicker paper—he said all bills are not alike.
I was to keep them till after we were married.
He put them into my hands to show he put
confidence in me, and desired me not to show
them to any body; sealed them up with his
own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to
discover them to any body. And I did not
till he had discovered them himself. He was
to settle so much in Stock on me."

Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole
object was to deceive his affianced, and that
he intended to destroy all the notes after his
marriage. But it had been proved that the
prisoner had asked one John Ballingar to change
first one, and then twenty of the notes; but
which that person was unable to do. Besides,
had his sole object been to dazzle Miss Bliss
with his fictitious wealth, he would most
probably have entrusted more, if not all the notes,
to her keeping.

He was found guilty, and passed the day
that had been fixed for his wedding, as a
condemned criminal.

On the llth May, 1758, Richard William
Vaughan was executed at Tyburn. By his
side, on the same gallows, there was another
forger: William Boodgere, a military officer,
who had forged a draught on an army agent
named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with
the first forger of Bank of England notes.

The gallows may seem hard measure to
have meted out to Vaughan, when it is
considered that none of his notes were negotiated
and no person suffered by his fraud. Not
one of the forty-eight notes, except the twelve
delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his
possession; indeed the imitation must have
been very clumsily executed, and detection
would have instantly followed any attempt to
pass the counterfeits. There was no endeavour
to copy the style of engraving on a real
Bank note. That was left to the engraver;