William Chaloner (1650 – 22 March 1699)[1][2] was a serial counterfeit coiner and confidence trickster, who was imprisoned in Newgate Prison several times and eventually proven guilty of high treason by Sir Isaac Newton, Warden of the Royal Mint.
[1][3] Chaloner grew up in a poor family in Warwickshire, but through a career in counterfeiting and con artistry attained great wealth, including a house in Knightsbridge.
He started by forging "Birmingham Groats", then moved on to Guineas, French Pistoles, crowns and half-crowns, Banknotes and lottery tickets.
At various times he also made and sold dildos and worked as a quack doctor, soothsayer, and sham anti-Jacobite "agent provocateur" to collect government rewards.
[2][1][4] In Guzman Redivivus, a posthumous biography published anonymously in 1699, it was stated that "scorning the 'petty Rogueries of Tricking single Men', he aimed rather at 'imposing upon a whole Kingdom'.
[2][1] Thomas Levenson stated in Newton and the Counterfeiter that as early as 1660, two years after Oliver Cromwell’s death, "there were reports of imported Italian dildos being sold on St James's Street".
[1] According to the anonymous, posthumous 1699 biography Guzman Redivivus: having the best knack at Tongue-pudding", he established himself as a quack doctor and soothsayer, "pretending to tell sill' Wenches what sort of Husbands they should have, discovering Stol'n Goods &cAccording to the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography "He may have been the 'William Chaloner' who on 31 March 1684 married Katharine Atkinson at St Katharine's by the Tower, and he had several children.
He purchased a large house in the semi-rural suburb of Knightsbridge, rode in a carriage, bought plate and dressed like a gentleman.
He recruited Thomas Holloway and bought a house in Egham, Surrey, where the noise of coining and hot moulding machines would not be suspicious.
[2] An inventive coiner, Chaloner taught Thomas Holloway a new method of coining, using small, easily concealed stamps.
[2] He was released from Newgate and on 3 February[1] (or by May[2]) testified to an investigative committee of Lord Justices in Whitehall about the crimes of the "moneyers" within the Mint.
[1] Chaloner testified that: I never made a Guinea in my LifeHe claimed that the die stamps of the crypto-Jacobite chief engraver, John Roettiers the elder, were loaned out of the Tower,[1] at a time during Newton's "complete recoining" of the nation's currency, an exercise that took until 1699, when £7 million of coins had been minted.
From inside Newgate, Chaloner used a publican called Michael Gilligan to pay Holloway £20 to disappear to Scotland until the case collapsed.
[2] In 1693 he was tempted by Government rewards to act as an "agent provocateur", providing information about Jacobite activities, plots and printing presses.
[3] In August 1693, accompanied by Aubrey Price, he unsuccessfully approached the government about a sham Jacobite plot to attack Dover Castle, offering to infiltrate the network as couriers so that they could read all the mail.
In August they accused Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State of helping Sir John Fenwick's escape in 1696 by providing a false pass.
[11] he brought more Pupils [in coining] to the Gallows than all his Predecessors’, gaining some informal immunity for his own activities.Chaloner's next target was the Bank of England which started trading in 1694 by taking deposits from the wealthy to lend to the government.
[13] After Chaloner learned of these notes, he ordered similar stock delivered to his Knightsbridge home, with which he printed £100 counterfeits, an act which, surprisingly, would not become a felony until 1697.
[12] Chaloner immediately turned "King's evidence", surrendered his unused stock, named other conspirators to give him credibility, and exposed a major fraud against the bank, one presumably in which he was himself involved.
[1] He testified that blank bills on the "City orphans' fund" were cut from the cheque book in the "Chamber of London" by Aubrey Price, and the bank paid out amounts up to £1,000.
[1] In August, another coiner, David Davis, betrayed the affair to James Vernon, under-secretary to Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, whom he had attempted to blackmail in 1697, and a warrant/(bounty) was issued for Chaloner on 6 October.
[2] Chaloner immediately accused Thomas Carter, a longtime colleague, of engraving the plate and offered to surrender it in exchange for immunity.
[3] In court he resorted to insulting all parties and claiming they were committing perjury to save their own necks,[2][1] and that anyway, the charges related to acts in the City and Surrey, outside the jurisdiction of the Middlesex sessions.
[2][1] Over the following fortnight he wrote a series of letters to both Newton and Justice Railton, the Supervising Magistrate, that were in turn aggressive, blame shifting, begging, accusatory and rambling.