All readers of English history know the
stories of Oates, and Bedloe, and Dangerfield;
and all know that one of the most terrible
symptoms of the civil troubles in which they
flourished, is the prevalence of false witnesses,
who, to shelter themselves, or for the gratification
of old hatreds, or more commonly
for the sake of gain, or of favour with those
in power, forge evidence against the lives and
liberties of others. Of the latter class—one
of an infamous school—Mr. William Fuller,
may be taken as a fair example. His
adventures are briefly touched on by Mr.
Macaulay, who describes him as having done
all that man could do to secure an eminent
place among villains. " That Fuller's plot is
less celebrated than the Popish plot," he
says, " is rather the fault of historians than
of Fuller." But though now forgotten, he
must once have secured a considerable
amount of public interest, if I may judge
from the bundle of pamphlets concerning
him which I have lately stumbled upon in an
old library. I find many lives of him. Here
is The whole Life of Mr. William Fuller,
being an Impartial Account of his Birth,
Education, Relations, &c., Together with a
true Discovery of the Intrigues for which he
now lies confined; with his hearty
Repentance for the Misdemeanours he did in
the late Reign, Impartially writ by Himself,
1703: and to this is prefixed an engraved
portrait of William Fuller, Gent, (the
engraver has left out the e in gent, but being
afterwards better informed, has conscientiously
inserted it with a caret). And truly
he does appear here an honest, simple, country
gentleman, of a very open and pleasant
countenance. Then, I have the Life and
Unaccountable Actions of William Fuller,
alias Esq. Fuller, alias Colonel, &c.; the
notorious English Cheat, &c. The Second
Edition, with large Additions; also the
Life of William Fuller, alias Fullee, alias
Fowler, alias Ellison, &c.; by original, a
Butcher's son; by education a Coney- wool-
cutter; by inclination an Evidence; by vote
of Parliament an Impostor; by Title of his
own making a Colonel, and by his own
Demerits, now a close Prisoner in the Fleet,
1702. I have a number of other pamphlets;
from all of which, giving him the benefit of
his own explanations as far as they go, I will
endeavour to sketch his story.

Fuller was born at Milton next Sittingbourne
in Kent, in sixteen hundred and
seventy. His father, he says, was a grazier,
and supplied the fleets and navies during
the Dutch wars with cattle; but the hostile
biographers say a butcher, and declare that
he could only have fed the fleets and navies
by a miracle. His mother, he also informs
us, was the daughter of Charles Herbert,
cousin-german to the Marquis of Powis, who
married his father without the knowledge of
any of her relations and friends; and,
although this, too, is denied, it appears from
circumstances to be probable. His parents
died when he was young, but they had placed
him at a good school at Maidstone, where,
says Fuller, whose humility and repentance
had not by any means lowered his self-
esteem, " I scorned common sports, and had
always an aspiring mind." His guardian,
Mr. Cornelius Harfleet, however, does not
appear to have observed any of these indications
of future greatness; for he apprenticed
him to Mr. James Hartley, a skinner, in
Shoe Lane, London; but Fuller felt that he
could not " be company for a parcel of silly
unpolished fellows and wenches, pulling and
cutting of beaver and coney-skins." He
fretted in his new employment; and meeting
one day with a relation of his mother's, Sir
John Burrows, a Roman Catholic, he was
introduced by him to Lord Powis, and taken
into that nobleman's family, and afterwards
became page to Lady Melford, the wife of
another Catholic nobleman at the court of
James. Here, Fuller saw much of court-life,
and when the Revolution came, fled to France
with his master.

The queen had already taken refuge at
Saint Germains but the king still lingered in
England; and one day Fuller was despatched
with letters from the queen to her
husband. " Though I was young," says Fuller,
"being born in Kent, I had a perfect
knowledge of those roads, and having been
used to travel, the queen adjudged me a
proper person." The account of this part of
his life is necessarily drawn from his own
narrative; but it is probably substantially
correct; for it is impossible to account for
some portions of his known career, without
assuming his intimate acquaintance with the
Courts of Saint James and Saint Germains.
Fuller discharged his commission to the
satisfaction of his employers, and was thenceforth
frequently sent upon such perilous errands.
Letters to various persons in England were
elaborately sewn into the buttons of his coat,
and Fuller undertook, at imminent risk of
the hangman, to deliver them. Sometimes
he came boldly up the river, and went ashore
near the Tower, and set about his business
unobserved; or, a French sloop landed him
at night on the beach between Deal and
Dover; but at other times the smugglers
were his friends. At that time our
forefathers, in their wisdom, had forbidden the
export of wool from this kingdom, and the
consequence was a large smuggling trade in
that article upon all the southern coast. The
men engaged in this Owling trade, as he
calls it, frequently conveyed Fuller over, and
landed him in the marshes near Lydd,
whence he got to London as well as he could.
Once after landing he groped his way over
the slippery shingles,—the smugglers having
given him good-night, and put out to sea again,
—and climbed up the sea-bank of the great
Romney Marsh. A heavy wind was blowing,
which threatened to carry him over into the