liked.  When the suspicions of Boniface were aroused by the non-arrival of the equipages and attendants he presented his bill.  Hatfield assured him that his money was perfectly safe, and that luckily his agent, who collected the rents of his estate in the north of England, was then in Ireland, and would give him all needful information.  The landlord called upon this gentleman, whose name had been given to him, and presented his account, but of course without success; and Hatfield was thrown in the Marshalsea jail by the indignant landlord.  By this time he was thoroughly familiar with the mysteries of prison life as it then existed, and had scarcely seated himself in his new lodging when he visited the jailer’s wife and informed her of the relationship in which he stood to the lord-lieutenant.  The woman believed him, gave him the best accommodation she could, and allowed him to sit at her table for three weeks.  During this time he sent another petition to the new viceroy, who, fearing lest his own reputation should suffer, released him, and was only too glad to ship him off to Holyhead.

He next showed himself at Scarborough in 1792, and succeeded in introducing himself to some of the local gentry, to whom he hinted that at the next general election he would be made one of the representatives of the town through the influence of the Duke of Rutland.  His inability to pay his hotel bill, however, led to his exposure, and he was obliged to flee to London, where he was again arrested for debt.  This time the wheel of Fortune turned but slowly in his favour.  He lingered in jail for eight years and a-half, when a Miss Nation, of Devonshire, to whom he had become known, paid his debts, took him from prison, and married him.

Abandoning his Rutlandshire pretensions, he now devoted himself to business, and persuaded a Devonshire firm, who knew nothing of his antecedents, to take him into partnership, and also ingratiated himself with a clergyman, who accepted his drafts for a large amount.  Thus supplied with ready money he returned to London, where he lived in splendid style, and even went so far as to aspire to a seat in the House of Commons.  For a time all appeared to go well; but suspicions gradually arose with regard to his character and his resources, and he was declared a bankrupt.  Deserting his wife and her two children, he fled from his creditors.  For some time nothing was heard of him, but in July 1802 he arrived in Keswick, in a carriage, but without any servant, and assumed the name of the Honourable Alexander Augustus Hope, brother of the Earl of Hopetoun, and member of Parliament for Linlithgow.