•WXLLIAUr AND HAEY.

59

listen to any accusation that might be brought against Whigsand Nonconformists. Young declared on oath that, to hisknowledge, a design had been formed in Suffolk against thelife of King James, and named a peer, several gentlemen, andten Presbyterian ministers, as parties to the plot. Some of theaccused were brought to trial; and Young appeared in thewitness box: but the story which he told was proved by over-whelming evidence to be false. Soon after the Revolution hewas again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the fourth or fifthtime, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determinedto try whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser ofJacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He firstaddressed himself to Tillotson. There was a horrible plotagainst their Majesties, a plot as deep as hell; and some of thefirst men in England were concerned in it. Tillotson, thoughhe placed little confidence in information coming from such asource, thought that the oath which he had taken as a PrivyCouncillor 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 willhave nobody disturbed on such grounds.” After this rebuff,Young remained some time quiet. But when William was onthe Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the ap-prehension 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 turnkeysof twenty gaols was not likely to injure any body. But Youngwas master of a weapon which is, of all weapons, the mostformidable to innocence. He had lived during some years bycounterfeiting hands, and had at length attained such con-summate skill in that bad art that even experienced clerks whowere conversant with manuscript could scarcely, after the mostminute comparison, discover any difference between his imita-