Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/412

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sons and three daughters. The fifth son was Patrick Young [q. v.]; another son, John (1585–1655), graduated B.A. from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1600–1, M.A. in 1604, and B.D. in 1611, being incorporated at Oxford on 9 July of that year; he held various livings, a canonry in Wells cathedral from 1611, and the deanery of Winchester from 1616. His gift of ground for the erection of a school in St. Andrews has erroneously been credited to his brother Patrick.

Sir Peter's second wife was Dame Joanna Murray, widow of Lord Torphichen, who survived her marriage for only six months, dying in November 1596. In 1600 Sir Peter married his third wife, Marjory, daughter of Nairne of Sandfurd, Fifeshire, by whom he had four daughters. She survived him, and in 1642 made application to the House of Lords for payment of arrears of pension amounting to 2,850l. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. p. 65). Previous to this time (in 1631) Charles I had directed that a pension of two hundred marks conferred on Young should be paid to his son, Sir Peter Young (ib. 9th Rep. p. 244). It is stated that besides the ‘Life of Queen Mary,’ Young wrote a ‘Life of George Buchanan;’ but Dr. Smith, writing in 1707, could find no trace of it.

[The principal authority for the life of Young is Smith's Vitæ quorundam Eruditissimorum et Illustrium Virorum, in which several extracts from Young's Diary are given. A translation of the article on Young, along with other particulars of his career, was published by Hugh W. Young in a privately printed book, ‘Sir Peter Young, Knt., of Seaton,’ in 1896, the frontispiece being a reproduction of a portrait that appeared in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. See also P. Hume Brown's George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer; Irving's Memoirs of Buchanan; Reg. P. C. Scotl. ed. Masson, passim; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–1625; Millar's Roll of Eminent Burgesses of Dundee, p. 78; Miscellany of the Maitland Club, i. 15; Miscellany of Scot. Hist. Soc. vol. i.; Reports of Deputy Keeper of Public Records, 43, 45, 46; Calderwood's Hist. of Kirk, ed. Wodrow Soc. v. 60, 365, 393, vi. 581.]

A. H. M.

YOUNG, ROBERT (1657–1700), forger and cheat, was born about 1657, possibly at Warrington, Lancashire, and educated in Ireland. He himself, in one of his unveracious accounts of his career, states that he was educated at Enniskillen school, co. Fermanagh, and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, but his name does not appear upon the list of graduates. In 1675 he married Anne Yeabsly, and five years later, though she was still living, he went through the form of marriage with Mary, daughter of Simon Hutt, a Cavan innkeeper, who was thenceforth the favoured companion in his wanderings and accomplice in his crimes. Soon after 1680 he managed to procure admission to deacon's orders at the hands of John Roan, bishop of Killaloe, whom he circumvented by forging certificates of his learning and moral character. He obtained a curacy first at Tallogh in the county of Waterford, ‘whence for divers crimes he ran away on another man's horse, which he never restored.’ From his next curacy at Castlereagh, co. Roscommon, he ‘was forced to flee for getting a bastard.’ While at Kildallon in the diocese of Kilmore he was delated to the bishop, Francis Marsh [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Dublin, ‘for many extravagances, the least of which was marrying without banns or license.’ He now fled into the diocese of Raphoe, but was taken up for bigamy and imprisoned first at Lifford, then at Cavan. From gaol he wrote to both his wives, comparing himself to David, and assuring each of them that she alone was the object of his love. He succeeded in inducing his first wife not to appear against him, and seems to have been allowed benefit of clergy. Detained for non-payment of prison fees, he managed to procure his release by pretending to Ormonde (the ‘popish plot’ being then in the air) that he could make disclosure of serious plots against the government. ‘The Scotchman,’ as Marsh calls him in a letter to Bishop Sprat, then ran away to England with his second wife. In England they operated at first under the name of GREEN, perambulating the country with forged testimonials, purporting to be in the hand of the archbishop of Canterbury. At Bury St. Edmunds, on 6 Oct. 1684, they were pilloried as common cheats. From Bury gaol, on 30 Sept. 1684, Young had written a long letter to Archbishop Sancroft, with an entirely novel account of his parentage and early life, expressing his mortal hatred of ‘discentors, especially that damnable faction of Presbytery,’ and stating that he had been put upon ‘the hellish and durty stratageme’ of forging testimonials by one Wright, a non-existent ‘scrivener of Oxford.’ Failing in his object, he vowed to be revenged on the archbishop. As soon as he was released he forged a new set of testimonials with a dexterity which was generally admitted to be marvellous, and set to work, with a new alias and a new story, collecting large sums of money from wealthy clergymen, including three bishops who were intimate with Sancroft, and believed that they recognised his