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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

29. Setting Up Patsies

The arrest of Sir John Fenwick, an English Jacobite conspirator. Age Photo Stock

In one of Chaloner’s agent provocateur scams, he got an accomplice named Coppinger to write a treasonous Jacobite satire. The scheme was to use that to ensnare a printer into printing it. Then Chaloner could make a beeline for the authorities and turn in the printer, now guilty of printing illegal Jacobite materials, in exchange for a generous reward.

There being little honor among thieves, however, Chaloner’s accomplice tried to hog the entire reward for himself by getting Chaloner out of the way. Coppinger snitched on Chaloner’s counterfeiting scheme, and had him sent to Newgate Prison. However, Chaloner managed to talk his way out of it. He even turned the tables on his erstwhile accomplice, and got Coppinger hanged for writing the Jacobite satire.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.