impossible for him to do less than pride
himself, though in the most distant affinity,
to a family of that worth and glory as his
lordship's. His lordship," says the biographer,
was not altogether satisfied with this answer;
but " was pleased to signify that he desired
him to forbear laying farther claim to his
kindred; for if he did not, he would have a
paper pinned to his back, and have him
thrashed by his footmen through the camp,
that it might be known how little affection
or respect he had for his own nephew." This
seems to have alarmed Fuller, who, at the
next town, abandoned his story, though
afterwards he says: " I must own that I passed
for a nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury."
The king appears to have been too
busy to examine his story. He commanded
him to go to Brussels, and wait for further
instructions; and, finally, he returned to
London without obtaining a hearing.

Time was precious and plots will not keep.
On the tenth of November, sixteen hundred
and ninety-one, Fuller finding the Government
slow to believe, boldly petitioned the
House of Commons to be heard. He undertook
to produce five hundred original letters
and papers on behalf of King James, and to
support them by four witnesses, each men of
property, of five hundred pounds per annum.
Names were mentioned, and many trembled
at the threatened disclosures; but Fuller had
no letters or papers. His object was to obtain
money as long as he could delay exposure.
When ordered to appear before the House,
he pretended to have been poisoned; but a
committee being appointed to visit him, he
declared that one Mr. Thomas Jones was the
real discoverer of the business; but neither
Jones nor any other parties named could be
found. After much shuffling of this kind,
Fuller was indicted for libel, and condemned
to stand twice in the pillory, and pay a fine
of two hundred marks to the king, or go to
prison. These punishments, however, did
not cure him. In a short time he obtained
his release, and set up again in his old
business with as great success as ever. At one
time he had a groom, three horses, and a
footman, and lodged on Ludgate Hill. Some
noted Whig gentlemen employed him with
Doctor Kingston, who, now and then reporting
that he knew where a traitor was to be
found, received orders to track him out at
once in company with Fuller. This, with
every variety of swindling, served to repair
Fuller's broken fortunes: he kept an
establishment at Twickenham; and making the
acquaintance of a lady of property, inveigled
her into promising to marry him. Fuller
calls her a young lady with twenty thousand
pounds, but Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary,
under date of August, sixteen hundred and
ninety-six, records the fact of her being a
widow with fifteen thousand pounds. They
were solemnly contracted, and were to be
married, when a troublesome brother went to
Tunbridge Wells; but the lady suddenly fell
sick of the small-pox and died. "I was a
faithful mourner," Mr. Fuller touchingly
observes; " for if I knew my own heart, I
valued her person more than her fortune,
but both together were too great a blessing
for me."

Thus Mr. Fuller, sometimes up, sometimes
down, frequently in the Fleet or its liberties,
and occasionally in splendid lodgings,
contrived to pass a year or two. Through his
invisible friend Jones, he was constantly
hearing of a traitor, and he was always ready
for any Whig gentlemen who wished it, to
prove strange and treasonable practices
committed by somebody in the interest of France,
When the trade nagged a little, he set up as
a literary gentleman—published accounts of
various trips to Hampshire and Flanders, in
search of traitors. Curious glimpses of his
literary associates are obtained in his
narratives and prefaces. There were Mr. John
Tutchin, already named, the editor of the
Observator, who was sentenced (for libels) to
be whipped through every town in England,
Also Mr. Robert Murray, who lodged within
the Liberties of the Fleet, at a coffin-maker's
in the Old Bailey: where Jack Tutchin, being
out of credit, came to live with him; until
Mr. Murray complained urgently of his
fellow-lodger's unfortunate inability to change
his linen. Besides these, were Mr. Pettis, a
scandalous drunken fellow, and a number of
other bold writers and politicians, including
Doctor Kingston, who, said Fuller when he
quarrelled with him, " served his time with
one Sprig, a tailor at Northampton, and
afterwards sold gingerbread and cardmatches
in the old Artillery ground, and jumped into
orders by copying an instrument he found in
a parson's old breeches that came to him to
be mended, and since that was obliged to
quit those orders, to which he never was
justly entitled."

Fuller proved himself a worthy member
of this fraternity, by putting forth a constant
succession of libellous pamphlets, which
he impudently dedicated to various
persons in high positions in the State—the
principal of them tending to show that
the pretender was not the child of King
James or the Queen, but of an Irish woman,
named Mrs. Grey. Fuller pretended that
the queen's supposed confinement was a trick,
and that the child of Mrs. Grey had been
taken from her to support the cheat. He
gave the most circumstantial narratives of
what he had seen in Saint James's Palace
when a page to the Marchioness of Powis,
and afterwards in France, where he alleged
that the real mother had been murdered.
The tracts were read with avidity. They
favoured a popular belief, which was not
without its use to the government, and as
long as he libelled none but Catholics and
Jacobites, they were allowed to circulate.
But Fuller was again emboldened by his