An Irish Zorro
The Irish rogue, William Lamport, was a precocious young man who, by the age of 21, was able to speak at least 14 languages. After being arrested for sedition (he was distributing Catholic pamphlets in London), he fled Britain for Spain where he eventually worked his way into the service of the king. But as a result of a scandalous love affair with a Spanish noblewoman, he was exiled from court and sent to Mexico as a spy. Once there, however, he began to sympathize with the Indian slaves. His support of the independence movement and opposition of the Mexican Inquisition eventually led to his arrest for being a heretic, and he was sentenced to be burned at the stake. It is rumored that he was the inspiration for Johnston McCulley’s fictional hero, “Zorro.”
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