College in the same university in 1573. In the interval he visited Paris, witnessed the St. Bartholomew massacre, and was one of the first to bring the news to England. About 1580 he became secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and was engaged in carrying despatches to English agents abroad and sending home ‘intelligence.’ In August 1580, while in Paris, he met Anthony Bacon [q. v.], who became his intimate friend. Early in 1581 he spent three and a half months in Germany, and was at Pisa, Padua, and Geneva later in the same year. He came from Paris in March 1582 and returned in February 1587–8. His many letters, sent home while on the continent, show him to have been an assiduous collector of information and a trustworthy public servant. On 23 Nov. 1585 he became M.P. for Boroughbridge. When settled in England Faunt was very friendly with both Anthony and Francis Bacon, and, as an earnest puritan, was implicitly trusted by their mother, Ann, lady Bacon, who often wrote to her sons imploring them to benefit by Faunt's advice. He met Anthony on his return from the continent early in 1592, and conducted him to his brother Francis's lodgings in Gray's Inn. ‘He is not only an honest gentleman in civil behaviour,’ wrote Lady Bacon at the time, ‘but one that feareth God indeed, and as wise withal, having experience of our state, as able to advise you both very wisely and very friendly’ (Spedding, Life of Bacon, i. 112). In 1603 Faunt was clerk of the signet, an office which he was still holding on 20 Sept. 1607. In March 1605–6 there was talk of his succeeding Winwood as ambassador at the Hague. In 1594 Faunt obtained a grant of crown lands in Yorkshire; in 1607 the reversion to Fulbrook Park, Warwickshire, and in the same year a promise from Sir Robert Cecil to obtain some of the land belonging to the see of York. He married (before 1585) the daughter of a London merchant. He wrote ‘A Discourse touching the Office of Principal Secretary of State,’ 1592 (unprinted), in Bodleian Library, Tanner MS. 80, f. 91.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 477, 555; Winwood's Memorialls, vol. i.; Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, vols. i. and ii.; Spedding's Life of Bacon, vol. i.; Ayscough's Cat. of MSS.]
FAUNTLEROY, HENRY (1785–1824), banker and forger, was born in 1785. His father, who bore the same names, was one of the original founders of the banking house of Marsh, Sibbald, & Co. of Berners Street, London, in 1782. The younger Fauntleroy entered the house as a clerk in 1800, and on the death of his father in 1807 was taken into partnership. His knowledge of the business was extensive, and from the first almost the whole management of the bank and its affairs was left in his hands. On 14 Sept. 1824 an announcement appeared in the papers in the names of the firm to the effect that it was necessary to suspend payment at the bank in consequence of ‘the very unexpected situation in which we find ourselves placed by the extraordinary conduct of our partner, Mr. Fauntleroy.’ Fauntleroy had been arrested on 11 Sept., and, after a private examination before a magistrate, committed to Coldbath Fields. The warrant was obtained on the depositions of two trustees of 1,000l. in 3 per cent. annuities who had entrusted the stock to Fauntleroy; the dividends were regularly paid to them, but it was discovered that the stock had been sold in September 1820, under a power of attorney, purporting to be signed by the trustees themselves and by Fauntleroy, and the trustees' signatures were forged. At the police-court examination on 18 Sept. evidence was given that Fauntleroy had in a similar manner disposed of other stock, representing sums of 17,500l., 46,000l., and 5,300l. He was remanded till 1 Oct., when further charges were gone into, and he was committed for trial, being sent in the meantime to Newgate. Great public excitement was aroused by the case, and in the interval before the trial the newspapers vied with each other in publishing stories of what was alleged to be Fauntleroy's dissolute and extravagant mode of life. The statement was freely circulated that he had appropriated trust funds to the amount of a quarter of a million, the whole of which he had squandered on the establishments of his various mistresses in town and country, and in gambling. The trial took place on 30 Oct. at the Old Bailey, before Justice Park and Baron Garrow. Seven separate indictments were preferred against Fauntleroy, and the attorney-general, who prosecuted, relied on the case in which the prisoner had forged a deed in the name of his sister-in-law for the transfer of 5,480l. He was able to prove one and all of the cases sufficiently for all practical purposes by the production of a paper in Fauntleroy's handwriting, and signed by him, which contained a list of the various sums fraudulently dealt with, and the following statement: ‘In order to keep up the credit of our house I have forged powers of attorney, and have thereupon sold out these sums without the knowledge of any of my partners. I have given credit in the accounts for the interest when it became due.’ A postscript added: ‘The
