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and Member for Linglithgow. His real name was John Hatfield. 
He was born in the year 1759, of humble parentage, in Cheshire, 
but possessing great natural abilities. His face was handsome, his 
person genteel, and his complexion fair. In his boyhood he 
showed an evil disposition, and he quitted his family and became 
a rider to a linen-draper in the north of England. 
In the course of his journeys he discovered that a young person, 
the natural daughter of a nobleman, was to have a fortune of 
41,000 if she married with her father’s approbation. He courted 
the unsuspecting girl, and told her foster parents that he would on 
no account marry the young woman if her relations were not 
satisfied with their union. This seemed so honourable to the un- 
suspecting nobleman, that after seeing the man he consented, and 
the day after the marriage he presented Hatfield with a draft on 
his banker for £1,500. This took place in 1771 or 1772. 
He now went off into the fashionable parts of London, and soon 
dissipated the money, and left his wife with three daughters to 
depend on the charity of her relations. Wherever he went he 
vaunted his parks and his hounds, and earned for himself the 
appellation of “the lying Hatfield.” 
He next got into the King’s Bench prison for a debt of £160, 
and he had the impudence to induce a clergyman who visited the 
prison to ask the head of the house of his wife’s father to pay off 
this debt,—which he did out of pure benevolence on the bare 
statement that he was a poor unfortunate member of the same 
family. 
In 1792 he was again thrown into prison for debt, when a Miss 
Nation, of Devonshire, to whom he had become known, paid his 
debts, took him from prison, and married him. 
Soon after he was liberated, he prevailed upon some highly 
respectable merchants in Devonshire to take him into partnership 
with them; and with a clergyman to accept his drafts to a large 
amount. Upon this he made a splendid appearance in London, 
and, before the general election, even proceeded to canvas the 
borough of Queensborough. Suspicions now arose. He was 
declared bankrupt in order to unmask him. He then left his 
