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PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 1901

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES,

&c. &c.

JOHN HATFIELD,

The Keswick Impostor,

Executed at Carlisle, September 3, 1803, for Forgery.

With Particulars of the once celebrated "Beauty of Buttermere," a Victim to his Villainy.

THE subject of our present consideration (who had latterly acquired the appellation of the Keswick Impostor,) and whose extraordinary case had excited considerable and universal odium, was born in the year 1759, at Mortram, in Longdale, Cheshire, of low descent, but possessing much natural abilities. His face was handsome, the shape of which, in his youth, was oval, his person genteel, his eyes blue, and his complexion fair.

After some domestic depredations (for, in his early days, he betrayed an iniquitous disposition,) he quitted his family, and was employed in the capacity of a rider to a linendraper in the north of England. In the course of this service, he became acquainted with a young woman, who was nursed, and resided at a farmer's house in the neighbourhood of his employer. She had been, in her earlier life, taught to consider the people with whom she lived as

her parents. Remote from the gaieties and follies of what is so idly denominated polished life, she was unacquainted with the allurements of fashion, and considered her domestic duties as the only object of her consideration. When this deserving girl had arrived at a certain age, the honest farmer explained to her the secret of her birth: he told her, that notwithstanding she had always considered him as her parent, he was in fact only her poor guardian, and that she was the natural daughter of Lord Robert Manners, who intended to give her one thousand pounds, provided she married with his approbation.

This discovery soon reached the ears of Hatfield: he immediately paid his respects at the farmer's, and having represented himself as a young man of considerable expectations in the wholesale linen business, his visits were not discountenanced. The farmer, however, thought it incumbent on him to acquaint his lordship, with a proposal made to him by Hatfield, that he would marry the young woman, if her relations were satisfied with their union, but on no other terms. This had so much the appearance of an honourable and prudent intention, that his lordship, on being made acquainted with the circumstances, desired to see the lover. He accordingly paid his respects to the noble and . unsuspecting parent, who conceiving the young man to be what he represented himself, gave his consent at the first interview; and, the day after the marriage took place, presented the bridegroom with a draft on his banker for £1500. This transaction took place about the year 1771

or 1772.

Shortly after the receipt of his lordship's bounty, Hatfield set off for London; hired a small phaton; was perpetually at the coffee-houses in Covent-garden; described himself to whatever company he chanced to meet, as a near relation of the Rutland family; vaunted of his parks and hounds; but as great liars have seldom good memories, he so varied in his descriptive figures, that he acquired the appellation of lying Hatfield.

The marriage portion now exhausted, he retreated from London, and was scarcely heard of until about the year

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