ge by
stealing the pigs and fowls of his parishioners. [194] He was now lodged
in a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators
instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be got, and that
much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than by
robbing on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes,
Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made haste to transfer their
industry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous than
any to which they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford
Parliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven
years, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and though
the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful than their
predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of the
first great check given to the practices of this abandoned race of men
well deserves to be circumstantially related.

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to
the government service such as the best governments sometimes require,
and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery
had been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with
contempt. Their liberality enabled him to live during some months like
a fine gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed
them in gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and
showed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, in
the antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre.
He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if he
thought that William could not live without him, followed His Majesty
first to Ireland, and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague.
Fuller afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue
fit for an ambassador, that he gave ten guineas a week for an apartment,
and that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silver
stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of course, brought him
to poverty. Soon after his return to England he took refuge from the
bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within the verge of Whitehall. His
fortunes were desperate; he owed great sums; on the government he had no
claim; his past