The Notorious Impostor (1692); Diego Redivivus (1692)

Title: The Notorious Impostor (1692); Diego Redivivus (1692)

Author: Elkanah Settle

Editor: Spiro Peterson

Release date: September 23, 2011 [eBook #37517] Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37517

Credits: Produced by David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

The Augustan Reprint Society

ELKANAH SETTLE THE NOTORIOUS IMPOSTOR (1692)

DIEGO REDIVIVUS (1692)

Introduction by Spiro Peterson

Publication Number 68

Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California

GENERAL EDITORS

ASSISTANT EDITOR

ADVISORY EDITORS

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

INTRODUCTION

The great English novel of the eighteenth century was developed out of the long established traditions in the essay, letter, religious treatise, biography and personal memoir. Although this influence has been generally acknowledged, the critical investigation of its exact nature has often been hampered by the lack of readily available texts. Especially is this true of the criminal biographies written in the late seventeenth century. The reprinting of Elkanah Settle's The Notorious Impostor (Part One) and the anonymous Diego Redivivus is thus justified as providing the means for the further study of the early fiction-writer's techniques. Published In 1692, the two pamphlets belong to a group of five closely-related narratives dealing with a real criminal named William Morrell. In the probable order of their publication, these were Diego Redivivus, The Notorious Impostor (Part One), The Second Part of the Notorious Impostor, "William Morrell's Epitaph" in The Gentleman's Journal, and The Compleat Memoirs of the Life of that Notorious

Impostor Will. Morrell. The different accounts forcefully demonstrate how criminal fiction allied itself with both biography and the picaresque. In addition, The Notorious Impostor serves as a representative work by Elkanah Settle whose criminal biographies have never received the attention they deserve. [1]

The combination of fact and fiction in the William Morrell narratives had been tried earlier in Settle's first known criminal biography, The Life and Death of Major Clancie, the Grandest Cheat of this Age (1680). Like Bunyan's Mr. Badman, advertised in the same issue of The Term Catalogues (I, 382), Major Clancie purports to narrate "Real matter of Fact." Thus, in the background, significant historical events, from the Irish Rebellion to the Great Fire, are being enacted. Important English worthies—Lord Ormonde, Bishop Compton, Charles II—become entangled in the villainies of the Major, an actual Irish criminal. None of this historical backdrop is to be found, however, in The Notorious Impostor; and the characters here, although Sir William Walters and Humphrey Wickham were well-known local personages, are not historically eminent. The picaresque in Major Clancie, too, is more readily identifiable than in The Notorious Impostor. For, contrary to its stated aim, the biography of Clancie is more fiction than fact. Anthony Wood, noting the

fictional elaborations, remarked: "Several stories in this book which belong to other persons are fathered on the said major; who, as I remember, was in Oxon in the plague year 1665 when the king and the queen kept their respective courts there." [2] Wood then contributes a few of his own pungent stories about the Major, which have no counterparts in Settle's narrative. Where the two writers provide parallel accounts, the "fiction" appears to be based on a substratum of truth surviving in anecdotes. Settle's verisimilitude had an effect upon Theophilus Lucas's Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the Most Famous Gamesters and Celebrated Sharpers (1714), which begins with a condensed version of The Life and Death of Major Clancie. [3] Lucas presents his account as if it were a true memoir.

The Notorious Impostor was to experience a similar acceptance as a memoir. All modern biographical accounts of its villain-hero, William Morrell, [4] are based on the two separate parts of The Notorious Impostor or The Compleat Memoirs. On January 3, 1692, he had died, a criminal at large; and the strange circumstances of his death became the talk of London. While the event was still a sensation, the bookseller Abel Roper rushed his "last will and testament" lives into print. The first to appear was Diego Redivivus, reprinted here from the rare copy at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Evidence for the publication of Diego Redivivus before The Notorious Impostor is fairly conclusive. The Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers (III, 397) enters Diego Redivivus, on behalf of Abel Roper, for January 12, 1692, and The Term Catalogues (II, 392) advertises The Notorious Impostor in the quarterly issue published in February, but Anthony Wood (III, 384) states that he bought his copy of the latter "in the

beginning of March." A comparison of the two texts, moreover, supports this order of the publication.

Events in Diego Redivivus, as in a news story, have greater immediacy. Morrell's death, the title asserts, took place the third of "this instant January." The specific detail of Diego (p. 2: "about a fortnight before Christmas") is paralleled by the general statement of The Notorious Impostor (p. 30: "Some few days before Christmas"). Although its title-page promises a "Full Relation" of Morrell's cheats, Diego Redivivus presents only the final "will" episode, whereas The Notorious Impostor ranges over the whole criminal career. Both narratives have in common the long will and codicil, except that The Notorious Impostor (p. 34) drastically shortens the Latin passage which, in Diego Redivivus (p. 10), states that the will had been probated. Even more conclusive evidence may be found in comparing the dates of the final events in the two accounts. Diego Redivivus, licensed on January 12, stops short with the humble burial of Morrell on January 13. Considerably later, certainly, must be the occurrence described in the Postscript of The Notorious Impostor: the nurse's and

assistants' recollection that Morrell was laughing to himself in his last grim cheating of the world.

Part One of The Notorious Impostor, as the sequel informs us, met with a "general Reception." Advertised in the February issue of The Term Catalogues, also, was a separate continuation. Interest in the impostor did not diminish during February. "The Death of William Morrell," complained The Gentleman's Journal of this month, "hath made too much Noise not to have reach'd you before this.... Had not his Will and Life been printed, I would have given you a large Account of both." The anonymous writer refers here, perhaps, to Diego Redivivus ("Will") and The Notorious Impostor ("Life") in the order of their publication. He then ironically lauds, in the verses of "William Morrell's Epitaph," the great skill of the impostor ("Columbus-like I a new World descry'd, / Of Roguery before untry'd").

Elkanah Settle's two parts of The Notorious Impostor were finally published together in 1694 as The Compleat Memoirs of the Life of that Notorious Impostor Will. Morrell, alias Bowyer, alias Wickham, &c. … under the imprint of Abel Roper and E. Wilkinson. So extensive are the re-arrangements of the episodes taken from Parts One and Two that The Compleat Memoirs may be regarded as a fifth, very different narrative. All the apologies for not resorting to "romance" are now dropped, and the humorous dedication is replaced by a direct appeal to Gabriel Balam, signed "E. Settle." The Compleat Memoirs then reworks the texts of the two Parts into a smooth, chronologically consistent narrative. [5] Even more important in designating The Compleat Memoirs as "new" are the "Considerable Additions never before Published" announced by the title-page. After using the incidents from The Second Part of the Notorious Impostor, Settle then adds: "Since the first Publication of our fore-going History of our Grand Guzman, we have receiv'd some Comical

Adventures, worth inserting in his Memoirs, which though they now bring up the Rear of his Chronicle, however, they were the first of all his Wedlock Feats...." In the totally new adventures that end The Compleat Memoirs (pp. 72-88), the cynical tone and raciness of the picaresque become even more dominant than in the earlier separate narratives. [6]

The importance of the Morrell narratives in the development of English fiction lies mainly in their deft combinations of the real and the picaresque and in their conscious effort to unify the action, draw out the humour, or handle realistic talk and setting. But the narratives also look backward to an older type, the picaresque. William Morrell makes his printed appearance as the new picaro. The title Diego Redivivus (i.e. James Revived) had overtones of the sensationally picaresque. The witty pseudonym "Don Diego Puede-Ser" had been used by James Mabbe in his translation (1623) of Aleman's Vita del Picaro Guzman; [7] and more recent in English memories were the exploits of James Hind, the English Rogue. In the Dedication, The Notorious Impostor describes itself as "the Life of our English Guzman" and later promises to "paint our new Guzman in some of his boldest and fairest Colours." But the picaresque traditions have shaded into one another. For Morrell is not simply the new Guzman; he is also Hudibras and, in The Second Part, Don Quixote.

Still another reason for the importance of the Morrell narratives is their consciousness of fictional techniques and theory. In Diego Redivivus, for example, the final deception is meticulously developed with closely-woven incidents which do not appear elsewhere. The motives of the characters, too, are sharply defined; and the action is unified by the two references to oath-taking (pp. 2-3). The anonymous author, at the outset, stresses the value of "the Particulars … no disacceptable Entertainment" (p. 1). Aware of theory, he specifies that Morrell created "some Romantick narrative" to explain his poverty (p. 4). In fictional technique, Elkanah Settle approaches a unified theme especially in The Second Part of the Notorious Impostor and the "Comical Adventures" of The Compleat Memoirs where the incidents are mainly of one kind—matrimonial. Theorizing appears, too, in Part One somewhat in the manner of Daniel Defoe: "we dare not venture to play the Historian any farther than certain Intelligence (which yet we have not received) can guide us,

being resolved not to load our Rambles with Romance or Fiction, his Life being furnisht with matter sufficiently voluminous without the addition of Flourish or Fancy" (p. 27). This may be Settle's pointed reference to the "fiction" of Diego Redivivus. [8] He maintains, also, that he had to delay for a fortnight the publication of The Second Part of the Notorious Impostor in order to be certain of its authenticity.

Finally, the importance of the Morrell narratives may be seen in terms of the realistic fiction that was to achieve fulfillment in the eighteenth-century novel. The clear presence of fictional elaboration, in The Notorious Impostor, caught the attention of both Frank Wadleigh Chandler and Ernest Bernbaum. [9] Elkanah Settle thus rightly belongs with writers, like Francis Kirkman, who masked fiction as the truth. Historians of the novel, moreover, attach significance to The Notorious Impostor in its resemblance to the novels of Defoe, Mrs. Heywood, and Smollett. Only the claim of influence on Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fatham has been investigated to any extent. In a full analysis of Smollett's novel, Chandler's strong statement will have to be taken into account: "The resemblance, indeed, between the two anti-heroes and the terms in which the accounts of their cheating are couched is so strong as to suggest actual borrowing on the part of Smollett." [10]

Spiro Peterson

Miami University Oxford, Ohio

Since writing the above, I have been informed by G. F. Osborn, archivist of the City of Westminster Public Libraries, that the registers of St. Clement Danes, in his keeping, have the following entry under 12 January 169-1/2: "William Morrell alias Bowier a man bur[ied] poor."

Notes to the Introduction

[1] See F. C. Brown, Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works (1910), pp. 22, 29, 127.

[2] The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. Andrew Clark (1892), II, 48-49.

[3] Games and Gamesters of the Restoration, ed. Cyril Hughes Hartmann (The English Library, 1930), pp. 123-137.

[4] E.g. Alfred Beasley's in The History of Banbury (1841), pp. 448-492, and G. T. Crook's in The Complete Newgate Calendar (1926), pp. 117-124.

[5] The text of The Compleat Memoirs is indeed a composite. Paragraph one of p. 1 unites a paragraph from p. 1 of Part One and a paragraph from pp. 34-35 of Part Two; pp. 1-27 are the same as pp. 5-27 of Part One; pp. 27-46: pp. 2-21 of Part Two; pp. 46-50: pp. 27-29 of Part One; pp. 50-57: pp. 22-29 of Part Two; pp. 57-65: pp. 30-36 of Part One; pp. 66-71: pp. 29-36 of Part Two.

[6] The Post Boy advertised The Compleat Memoirs from February 17 to April 23, 1698. See also W. Carew Hazlitt (Bibliographical Collections, Third Series, p. 229) for a description of a copy dated 1699.

[7] Morrell's last impersonation involving the fake will resembles Pantalon's "last Will and Testament" jest in Mabbe's The Rogue or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache (The Tudor Translations, 1924), II, 184-186.

[8] Settle's authorship of The Notorious Impostor is confirmed by his name appended to the Dedication of The Compleat Memoirs. Although Diego Redivivus occasionally resembles The Notorious Impostor, it need not necessarily be Settle's work. The similar style and the identical documentation (e.g. the will) may be due to Settle's direct use of the earlier narrative. None of its minutely-drawn description, curiously, is perpetuated in The Compleat Memoirs. The authorship of Diego Redivivus remains an unsettled question.

[9] The Literature of Roguery (1907), I, 153: The Mary Carleton Narratives (1914), p. 6.

[10] I, 153. Ernest A. Baker makes a similar statement (The History of the English Novel [1937], III, 46). With respect to the influence of The Notorious Impostor on Mrs. Eliza Haywood, he should have cited Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751)—the very book praised by Captain Minikin as "worth reading" in Ferdinand Count Fathom (Chap. XXXIX).

THE

Notorious Impostor,

Or the History of the LIFE of

William Morrell,

ALIAS

BOWYER,

Sometime of Banbury, Chirurgeon.

Who lately personated Humphrey Wickham of Swackly, in the County of Oxon, Esquire, at a Bakers House in the Strand, where he Died the third of Jan. 169-1/2

Together

With an Authentick Copy of his Will, taken out of the Prerogative Court, and the manner of his Funeral in St. Clements Church-yard.

LONDON, Printed for Abel Roper at the Mytre near Temple-Bar, 1692.

TO THE

Honourable Capt. Humph. Wickham.

SIR,

When this following 'Paper makes thus bold to be your Addressor, the only Encouragement for the Presumption is, that your borrow'd Name has fill'd up so large a Sheet in our History, as justly entitles You to this Presentation. And truly as a considerable part of it has already furnisht you with no small Jest at your Laughing Hours, we hope the Life of our English Guzman, your late Adopted Name-sake, will be no undiverting Entertainment. His Life, 'tis true, has been little else than a continued Scene of Masquerade; and if to finish his last Act, he had occasion of borrowing a Face and Character of Quality and consequently fixt upon Captain Wickham; alas, you must consider he wanted Worth and Honour, and can you blame him for looking for 'em where they were to be found? You stood fair for him, and the World, however, it may censure his Impudence, at least it cannot but commend his Choice. And the Reason (if you have any) to complain, is, that whereas the World is but a Stage, and Life but a Play, and Captain Wickham was only personated to Cheat a poor Baker of a

Fortnights Lodging and Bread. 'Tis pity your Name, that much better deserved, was only drawn in to the filling up of a Farce. But, as great a Thief as he was to steal a Title of Honour, whatever hard Charge the poor suffering Baker has against him, yet considering how little you have lost by him, we hope your excusing Goodness will not load him higher than Petty Larceny. And truly if he can feel it in his Grave, he has sufficiently felt the Lash for it. His Last Will and Testament, I confess, has very bountifully cantoned out your Estate; all the sorrow is, that the Gaping Executors, and the rest of the Inheritors, have no shorter a Walk than into Fairy-Land to receive their Legacies; a longer Journey, 'tis to be feared, than either the Bright Bay, or Dappled Grey, will ever be able to carry 'em.

And now to do our last Office, viz. to speak a good word of the Dead (for truly he had no Funeral Sermon to do it) they may talk of Monuments and Epitaphs for preserving of Memories; but our quondam Operator of Banbury, tho' with plainer Funeral Ceremonies, has taken care for a lasting Renown, when much finer Dust under Statues and Marble shall sleep forgotten: And whereas there are famous Examples of old, that have perpetuated their Names at no less price than the burning of Temples, his better Husbandry, to his Glory be it recorded, has purchased Immortality much cheaper; where we'll leave him, and beg your Pardon for this Boldness

Of

Your unknown Humble Servant.

THE

Notorious Impostor:

OR THE

HISTORY

OF THE

LIFE

OF

William Morrell alias Bowyer, &c.

This Famous Rover, from the Multitude of his Titles, to begin with his right Name William Morrell, was by Profession a Chyrurgion, and more than twenty Years ago, for many Years together, a Practitioner of good Credit in Banbury, where his Industry honestly got him, by his Practice, near two Hundred a Year, with which he maintained himself, his Wife and Family very handsomely, till about eighteen Years ago he began to be very Lazy, and much addicted to hanker after the Conversation of the Gentry thereabouts; and being a Person very Facetious, and his Company not disacceptable, he screwed himself into the Society of the best Quality round about, and would be a Month or two a Guest at several Great Mens Houses; more particularly he some time since insinuated himself into the Favor of a Worthy Gentleman near Banbury, viz. Humphry Wickham of Swakely Esq; whose Person and Character he pretended to represent, and in which Imposture he made his last Exit.

But to begin our History in order; From his Conversing with Gentlemen and Herding with Quality, Business began to fall off: His many Rambles from home, soon made his Practice flag; when the Glass and the Bottle came into play, the Salvatory and Playster-box went out. And his Patients could not well stay for the Setting of a Broken Limb, or Tenting a Green Wound, till our Esculapius was to be called, the Lord knows where, and found the Devil knows when. This Trade continuing, the other fell to decay, till at last Poverty began to peep in at his Window, and Duns to hover about his Door. In these little Exigencies and Necessities (for the Gentleman's Tables abroad would not fill the Bellies at home, nor would Hunting or Hawking pay Landlords Rent) his Wants put him upon Shifts and Artifices for his Subsistence; and what with a Natural Wit and a pretty large Talent of Confidence, the pressing Hand of Fortune threw him upon several Tricks and Frauds to hold his Head above-board. But not to trouble you with any of his lesser Diminutive Exploits, the Infancy and Nonage of his Activity, we

do not think fit to treat you with these pettier Adventures, but e'en set out in one of his noblest Atchievements, and paint our new German in some of his boldest and fairest Colours.