JOHN WILLIAM, Baron of, a political adventurer, was born in the province of Groningen in the Netherlands, in 1650, and was educated in the college of the Jesuits at Cologne. A desire for power began early to be seen in his actions. He married a rich wife that he might not be hampered by poverty in the race of ambition. He assumed the creed of a Protestant to make himself eligible for government offices. A colonelcy in the army did not content him. He did not cease to show off his accomplishments until, in 1715, he was appointed ambassador to Spain. Ripperda had not been very long at the intriguing chance-directed court of Madrid before he resolved to try his hand in the game of Spanish politics. Laying down the office of Dutch ambassador in 1718, he brought all his arts into play. He secured the interest of the influential Jesuits by becoming a pious and penitent convert to the Catholic faith. He made his talents known to the king, Philip V., by drawing up schemes for the renovation of the national prosperity. Nor did his ambition hesitate to try more dangerous artifices. Returning from an embassy to Vienna in 1725, he pretended to the queen that he had effected her favourite scheme of betrothing her son Don Carlos to the eldest archduchess. His immediate elevation to a dukedom, and to the office of prime minister, compelled him to persist in this imposture. Lie was backed up by lie; the nation was impoverished to furnish him with hush-money; and he continued to try every bungling shift until, in 1726, he was convicted and disgraced. The rest of Ripperda's life was spent in a fruitless attempt to retrieve his fortune. Escaping from the castle of Segovia, he sought in vain for a place of political importance in some foreign country. The English statesmen treated him hospitably only so long as they were at variance with Spain. He could not see the slightest chance of success at any other European court. It is true that at length the land of promise seemed to have been discovered in Morocco. He was welcomed thither by the Emperor Muley Abdallah, and after qualifying himself for office by becoming a Mohammedan, was placed at the head of the administration of the country. But his ambition soon began again to be thwarted. His royal patron was driven from the throne. He himself was glad to escape with his head to Tetuan. There he could find no better employment for his restless spirit than that of asserting himself to be the last and greatest of the prophets. He died in 1737, giving out as his new creed a heterogeneous mass of Mohammedan, Jewish, and Christian doctrines. (See Lives of Alberoni, Ripperda, and Pombal, by George Moore, London, 1819.)