Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/517

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BAMPFYLDE-MOORE CAREW
429

this. He went in a collier from Dartmouth to Newcastle, and there he fell in love with a Miss Grey, daughter of a respectable surgeon-apothecary of the town. He pretended to be mate of the collier, and the captain was not ashamed to corroborate this statement. He gained the young lady's affections, and as the father naturally objected to such a match, he induced the unfortunate girl to elope with him and come to Dartmouth, where only did she find out that he was a professional mumper or beggar, and that his only respectable trade was that of rat-catcher. But she had taken an irrevocable step in running away with him, and she consented to marry him, and the ceremony was performed at Bath, where for a few weeks they lived in high style, till his money was gone, when he was obliged again to return to his impositions and frauds. From Bath the young couple went to Porchester, where they were kindly received by an uncle of Bampfylde, and he most urgently strove to turn the scoundrel from his mode of life, promising that if he would reform, he and the family would obtain for him some situation in which he could earn his livelihood in an honest manner, and live in a way befitting his birth. But this did not suit Carew. He employed his time with his uncle, who was a clergyman, in studying his demeanour, manner of speech, etc., and leaving him supplied himself with cassock, bands, a black gown, and started "mumping" as a Jacobite incumbent of Aberystwyth, who had been ejected from the living for his political sentiments, and "this and his thorough Knowledge of those Persons whom it was proper to apply to, made this stratagem succeed even beyond his own expectations."

He, however, exchanged his disguise; for having heard that a vessel containing many Quakers bound for