hand. At length in 1687 the imposture came under the notice of the archbishop, who caused to be inserted in the ‘London Gazette’ (September and October 1687) advertisements warning the charitable to beware of Mrs. Jones and Robert Smith (i.e. Young and his paramour). Young next gave himself out as a grave Irish clergyman of good preferment, but a victim of Tyrconnel's persecuting fury; some funds were necessary to support this character, and these he seems to have obtained by a series of highly successful frauds at St. Albans, where he had secured the corrupt connivance of the postmaster. Forming a design of a wealthy marriage, Young was now anxious to get rid of Mary Hutt; but at this juncture the pair were betrayed to one of their victims, and lodged in Newgate on a charge of forgery. They escaped with the pillory and a fine, owing to lack of evidence; but, the fines remaining unpaid until 25 May 1692, they remained in prison for upwards of two years.
During the western rebellion Young had stood false witness against a number of presbyterian divines, but his evidence had been disbelieved. While lying in Newgate he determined upon reverting to this branch of his profession and fabricating a sham plot, and with this object in view he addressed himself in the first instance to Tillotson. The archbishop mentioned his allegations with all reserve to William, who treated them with disdain. Young was temporarily disconcerted; but when at the end of April 1692 William left England for the Low Countries, and when the nation was agitated by apprehension of French invasion and Jacobite insurrection, Young's hopes revived. By writing in feigned names to ask after the characters of servants or curates, he had accumulated a collection of autographs from men of note who were suspected of disaffection. With consummate caligraphic skill he now drew up a paper purporting to be an association for the restoration of the banished king. To this document he appended the forged signatures of Marlborough, Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft, and Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester. The owners of the first four names were already under the suspicion of the government. With regard to Sprat it was well known that there was more of the opportunist than of the conspirator in his composition. Why Young selected the ease-loving bishop to be the pivot of his plot was probably because he had been prospecting round Bromley in 1690, and knew that ingress into the palace was easy. Young himself could not quit Newgate, and he selected as his emissary a rogue named Stephen Blackhead, whose ears had suffered in the pillory. Blackhead conveyed to the bishop a letter carefully forged by Young from an imaginary doctor of divinity. Highly pleased with the terms of the letter, the bishop told his butler to treat the messenger well. Blackhead, affecting great reverence for the entourage of a bishop, asked the butler to show him Sprat's study, with a view of concealing the traitorous document among the papers on the episcopal table. Failing in this, he had finally to content himself with dropping the ‘association’ into a flowerpot in a disused parlour. Young now demanded to be heard before the privy council on a matter of the greatest import. He had timed his plot to a nicety. The government were overweighted with anxiety. They thought Young's story plausible enough to order Sprat's arrest, and messengers were sent down to Bromley on 7 May 1692 with a warrant from Nottingham to take the bishop into custody, and to search his apartments for the signed instrument in which the alleged conspirators avowed their aims. Young particularly requested that the officers might be ordered to examine the bishop's flowerpots. Hence the incident was referred to by Lady Marlborough and others as ‘the flowerpot plot’ (see Brewer, Historic Note Book). Very fortunately for the bishop the forged document was not found, and after ten days' detention Sprat was suffered to return to Bromley. In the meantime Young had sent Blackhead to recover the paper, which he thereupon forwarded to the secretary of state (Romney), with an ingenious explanation. The bishop was recalled before the council (10 June 1692) and confronted with Blackhead. Finding the bishop's story corroborated by his servants at all points, and greatly relieved by the victory of La Hogue, the privy councillors turned sharply on Blackhead, who lost his nerve and finally blurted out the truth. But Young was utterly unabashed; he repudiated Blackhead, and denied that he had given directions for the flowerpots to be searched. He declared that the bishop had bought off his accomplice, and that they were trying to stifle the plot. Sprat, conscious that he had perhaps narrowly escaped the block, upbraided Young for his unprovoked malignity. He replied with as much cunning as effrontery, ‘All is not confessed yet. A parliament will come, and then you shall hear more from me’ (Sprat, Relation, pt. ii.). Another temporary sufferer, but eventual gainer, by Young's false accusation was the Duke of Marlborough, now promptly released from the Tower.
