little confidence in information coming from such a source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William.  William, after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly.  “I am confident,” he said, “that this is a villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on such grounds.”  After this rebuff, Young remained some time quiet.  But when William was on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the apprehension of a French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a false accuser might hope to obtain a favourable audience.  The mere oath of a man who was well known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was not likely to injure any body.  But Young was master of a weapon which is, of all weapons, the most formidable to innocence.  He had lived during some years by counterfeiting hands, and had at length attained such consummate skill in that bad art that even experienced clerks who were conversant with manuscript could scarcely, after the most minute comparison, discover any difference between his imitations and the originals.  He had succeeded in making a collection of papers written by men of note who were suspected of disaffection.  Some autographs he had stolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to ask after the characters of servants or curates.  He now drew up a paper purporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the banished King.  This document set forth that the subscribers bound themselves in the presence of God to take arms for His Majesty, and to seize on the Prince of Orange, dead or alive.  To the Association Young appended the names of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster.

The next thing to be done was to put the paper into some hiding place in the house of one of the persons whose signatures had been counterfeited.  As Young could not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a subordinate agent for this purpose.  He selected a wretch named Blackhead, who had formerly been convicted of perjury and sentenced to have his ears clipped.  The selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of the qualities which the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness.  There was nothing plausible about him.  His voice was harsh.  Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face.  He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him by others.

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat’s palace at Bromley, introduced himself there as the confidential servant of an imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a letter ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with the semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benediction.  The servants made the stranger welcome.  He was taken to the cellar, drank their master’s health, and entreated them to let him see the house.  They could not venture to show any of the private apartments.  Blackhead, therefore, after begging importunately, but in vain, to be suffered to have one look at the study, was forced to content himself with dropping the Association into a flowerpot which stood in a parlour near the kitchen.