Confidence Trickster
In April 1593, Skeres was called before the Court of Star Chamber as a witness in the case of Smith vs Wolfall, in which the skinner Wolfall was accused of obtaining money under false pretences. Skeres had lured Smith into Wolfall's clutches, a role he admitted to having undertaken many times before over the past ten or twelve years. Wolfall's victims apparently included Matthew Royden, George Chapman and Thomas Lodge. In fact Skeres's association with loan sharks seems to have even gone back to his early teens, although he claimed that he had only ever done this under duress. A month after this appearance, however, he was engaged in exactly the same activity on behalf of Ingram Frizer, and his gulling of a young man called Drew Woodleff.
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Famous quotes containing the word confidence:
“I see advertisements for active young men, as if activity were the whole of a young man’s capital. Yet I have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this to pay me!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)