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Bedloe married Lord Duncannon's eldest son, and to have died of a surfeit from sweetmeats. Mary remained unmarried, living with her mother at Chepstow. But after twelve years of widowhood Mrs. Beddoe, alias Bedloe, took another husband, one Taynton, who had trailed a pike at Chepstow Castle under Thomas Nanfan. He was an ingenious contriver of clocks and watches, but made his living chiefly as a cobbler. William Bedloe worked with him at this trade, and it is here that we are on safe ground. If we suppose the reported genealogy to be true, it merely proves that William Bedloe was the most disreputable of his family. If it were false, his forefathers could scarcely have surpassed him in wickedness. He claimed for himself the attainment of proficiency in Latin, heraldry, and mathematics. David Lewis, the Jesuit, who was afterwards executed at Monmouth, took notice of the boy when he was twelve years old, and taught him much, with intent of converting him. When aged twenty, in 1670, he travelled to London with one hundred pounds in his pocket, and lived near two Jesuits, Father Harman and Father Johnson. They dined at Locket's ordinary, and were said to adjourn to Mother Cresswell's. Bedloe certainly lived a sharping life in London before he went to Dunkirk, where he was recommended by the lady abbess to Sir John Warner, who sent him to Father Harcourt, the Jesuit, afterwards executed on the evidence of Oates. By his own account, William Bedloe went to Rome, Flanders, Spain, &c., carrying letters; but opened them and made forged copies, which he delivered, retaining the originals. He bore an alias of Captain Williams, under which he cheated the Prince of Orange, and from him, by fraud, obtained a captain's commission. But this captaincy was as apocryphal as the 'invisible degree' of doctor won by Titus Oates at Salamanca. Five years of varied service, intrigues, frauds, and broils, prepared him, with occasional employment by the Jesuits, for emerging into notice as a betrayer and forsworn spy. He declared that Titus Oates had anticipated and outstripped him in making revelations of the popish plot. At the beginning of August 1678, he confessed that he 'had once been an ill man, but desired to be so no more.' He wrote from Bristol, offering to make startling declarations. The Earl of Danby gave little credit to him; and in revenge for this, Bedloe asserted that a bribe was offered to him by Danby, who promised that he should be supported in whatever country he chose to retire into, if he would suppress his threatened revelations. The commons accepted his account of the murder of Sir E. B. Godfrey, and gave him 500l. The extant portrait of Bedloe, prefixed to his 'Narrative' of the fire of London having been caused by the papists, shows a villainous countenance, harsh and forbidding, full of malice and revenge. With beetle brows, hard mouth, and savage eyes, we see the man, unscrupulous, unrelenting, as he in later life became. Dressed in finery beyond his station, his arrogance is as self-evident as his malice. He declared that Counsellor Reading had tried to tamper with him for suppression of his testimony, and Reading was condemned to a year's imprisonment, with exposure for an hour in the pillory, and to pay a fine of 1,000l. Bedloe made many accusations and found willing associates. The king's chemist, Dr. James, deposed that one Dr. Smith, a papist, tried to make him poison Bedloe with a pill on 20 March 1679. By this time he was almost as popular as Oates. He received ten pounds weekly allowance from the royal funds, and lived at the rate of two thousand a year. Rich dupes were plentiful. The citizens feasted him. His folio pamphlets, with copperplate portrait prefixed, had a large sale. He attributed the most extensive plots and execrable crimes, falsely, to the Romanists. He now married the elder of two sisters, reputed co-heirs of six hundred pounds per annum, and Richard Duke wrote a clever buffooning poem on the marriage as an 'Epithalamium.' It was popular as a broadside, and is preserved in the Roxburghe collection (iii. 835), reprinted in 'Roxburghe Ballads ' (iv. 165). It begins, ' Goddess of Rhime, that didst inspire the Captain with Poetic fire.' This poem was issued at Christmas 1679. The lady's name was Anna Purifoy, daughter of an Irishman, Colonel Purifoy. After Bedloe's marriage he did not remain long in London, where he had printed and published a folio tragedy in 1679, entitled 'The Excommunicated Prince, or the False Relique: a Tragedy, as it was acted by his Majesty's Servants, being the Popish Plot in a Play. By Captain William Bedloe.' It is believed to have been written by Thomas Walter, an Oxford scholar of Jesus College. The sub-title was added to gain a sale, and it was dedicated to George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham. The hero is Teimurazez, prince of Georgia, who is excommunicated by the pope. Bedloe had travelled on the continent as courier to Lord Belasyse, against whom he afterwards swore acts of high treason; but he pretended to have been a soldier, though he never saw a battle. He went to Bristol with his wife, and lived on Stonie Hill for half a year. Then he was recalled to London in the middle of July 1680. He was now, with Oates, experiencing the fickleness of fortune and the waning of 