made out long lists of noncommissioned officers and privates. Letters from Yorkshire brought news that large bodies of men, who seemed to have met for no good purpose, had been seen on the moors near Knaresborough. Letters from Newcastle gave an account of a great match at football which had been played in Northumberland, and was suspected to have been a pretext for a gathering of the disaffected. In the crowd, it was said, were a hundred and fifty horsemen well mounted and armed, of whom many were Papists.[1]
Meantime packets of letters full of treason were constantly passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy, and between Wales and Ireland. Some of the messengers were honest fanatics; but others were mere mercenaries, and trafficked in the secrets of which they were the bearers.
Of these double traitors the most remarkable was William Fuller. This man has himself told us that, when he was very young, he fell in with a pamphlet which contained an account of the flagitious life and horrible death of Dangerfield. The boy's imagination was set on fire; he devoured the book; he almost got it by heart; and he was soon seized, and ever after haunted, by a strange presentiment that his fate would resemble that of the wretched adventurer whose history he had so eagerly read.[2] It might have been supposed that the prospect of dying in Newgate, with a back flayed and an eye knocked out, would not have seemed very attractive. But experience proves that there are some distempered minds for which notoriety, even when accompanied with pain and shame, has an irresistible fascination. Animated by this loathsome ambition, Fuller equalled, and perhaps surpassed, his model. He was bred a Roman Catholic, and was page to Lady Melfort, when Lady
- ↑ Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons' Journals, May 14, 15, 20, 1690; Kingston's True History, 1697.
- ↑ The Whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, being an Impartial Account of his Birth, Education, Relations and Introduction into the Service of the late King James and his Queen, together with a True Discovery of the Intrigues for which he lies now confined; as also of the Persons that employed and assisted him therein, with his Hearty Repentance for the Misdemeanours he did in the late Reign, and all others whom he hath injured; impartially writ by Himself during his Confinement in the Queen's Bench, 1703. Of course I shall use this narrative with caution.
