een embezzled by means which they could not discover.
The proprietors, in a petition to the house of commons, represented that
by the most notorious breach of trust in several persons to whom the
care and management of their affairs were committed, the corporation had
been defrauded of the greatest part of their capital; and that many
of the petitioners were reduced to the utmost degree of misery and
distress; they therefore prayed, that as they were unable to detect the
combinations of those who had ruined them, or to bring the delinquents
to justice, without the aid of the power and authority of parliament,
the house would vouchsafe to inquire into the state of the corporation,
and the conduct of their managers; and give such relief to the
petitioners as to the house should seem meet. The petition was
graciously received, and a secret committee appointed to proceed on the
inquiry. They soon discovered a most iniquitous scene of fraud, which
had been acted by Robinson and Thompson, in concert with some of the
directors, for embezzling the capital, and cheating the proprietors.
Many persons of rank and quality were concerned in this infamous
conspiracy; some of the first characters in the nation did not escape
suspicion and censure. Sir Robert Sutton and sir Archibald Grant were
expelled the house of commons, as having had a considerable share in
those fraudulent practices; a bill was brought in to restrain them and
other delinquents from leaving the kingdom, or alienating their effects.
In the meantime, the committee received a letter from signior John
Angelo Belloni, an eminent banker at Rome, giving them to understand,
that Thompson was secured in that city, with all his papers, and
confined to the castle of St. Angelo; and that the papers were
transmitted to his correspondent at Paris, who would deliver them up, on
certain conditions stipulated in favour of the prisoner. This letter
was considered as an artifice to insinuate a favourable opinion of the
pretender, as if he had taken measures for securing Thompson, from
his zeal for justice and affection for the English people. On this
supposition, the proposals were rejected with disdain; and both houses
concurred in an order that the letter should be burned at the Royal
Exchange, by the hands of the common hangman. The lower house resolved,
that it was an insolent and audacious libel, absurd and contradictory;
that the whole transaction was a scandalous artifice, calc