A cruise aboard the Romney then took him to Newfoundland. He played cards and cheated aboard ship, and acquired so bad a character that it was plainly intimated the Navy was not his vocation and he had better leave it. He accordingly left the service and soon found himself deserted by his friends and without a stiver in his breeches pockets.
Realising his wild nature, his father thought it best to secure him some post that should take him abroad for at least a few years, by which time his hot blood might have cooled down. To this end, he procured him a billet with the Royal African Company, on the West Coast of that then very Dark Continent; but the scapegrace was soon back in England, having quarrelled with the governor of James Fort on the Gambia River, to whom he had been accredited. He landed even more destitute, if possible, than before, and of necessity lived the simple life, by existing for four whole days on three half-penny worth of bread. The public fountains supplied him freely with water, wherewith to wash down those frugal meals.
WILLIAM PARSONS.
He dared make no more applications to his father for assistance, for that father was then smarting at having paid £70 to redeem his honour over a discreditable affair that had taken place in Africa, where the reckless youth had forged a letter purporting to come from his aunt, the Duchess, saying she would be answerable for any debts her nephew might incur, up to that amount. It was folly of the worst, and most unremunerative, kind, for that aunt, with whom he had originally been a favourite, revoked the will she had made in his favour, and left the £25,000, that would have come to him, to his sister.
It is evident that William Parsons was what would be called in modern times a "degenerate." In 1740 he borrowed a large sum of money by a pretence that he was his elder brother, who was the prospective owner of a considerable legacy. He then succeeded in making a respectable appearance for a time, and married a young lady of good family and fortune. By that marriage he acquired a sum of £4,000, but his wife's trustees, being not quite satisfied with him, took care to secure the bulk of her property in such a manner that he could not touch it. Entering the Army in 1741, as an ensign in a foot regiment, he embarked upon an extravagant manner of living: obtained a quantity of gold and silver plate from confiding tradesmen, and kept a large number of servants. He could never resist the gaming-tables, and although himself a rogue and a swindler, always found others there who proved more finished than himself, and thoroughly fleeced him.
He would then turn to forgery, and successfully negotiate forged bills under well-known names. The Duke of Cumberland's signature was used for £500. Nothing came amiss to his perverse ingenuity; and he would even, as an army officer, call upon tailors and pretend to having a contract for the supply of uniforms. He would pocket a handsome commission and receive the goods and sell them for what they would fetch. To be his friend was to be marked down for being defrauded, and often to be placed in the most embarrassing situations. Thus in 1745, when the Jacobite rebellion was disturbing the country, he borrowed a horse of a brother officer and rode away with it, intending to desert to the rebels. But, thinking better of it, he went no further than Clerkenwell, where he sold the horse. The late owner was, in consequence, arrested on charges of desertion and high treason, and things might quite conceivably have gone hard with him.
Accounts of Parsons' next doings do not quite agree. By one of them we learn that he went to Florida as a lieutenant, but according to another and a more probable version, he was shipped to the plantations in Virginia as a convict, who had been found guilty of forgery at Maidstone Assizes, and sentenced to be transported. Family influence had no doubt prevented his being hanged.
Working as a slave in the plantations belonging to Lord Fairfax, he attracted the attention of that nobleman, who took him from the gang of convicted malefactors, with whom, under strict supervision, he hoed and delved under the blazing sun, and befriended him. It did not pay to befriend William Parsons. He stole one of the best horses belonging to his benefactor, and, going upon those early colonial roads, soon accumulated, as a highwayman, a sufficient sum to buy himself a passage back to old England.