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But Hofmann's grandest scheme was to forge what was perhaps the most famous missing document in American colonial history, the ''[[Oath of a Freeman]]''. The one-page ''Oath'' had been printed in 1639, the first document to be printed in [[Thirteen Colonies|Britain's American colonies]], but only about fifty copies had been made, and none of them were extant. A genuine example was probably worth over US$1 million in 1985, and Hofmann's agents began to negotiate a sale to the [[Library of Congress]].[{{cite book |last=Innes |first=Brian |title=Fakes & Forgeries: The true crime stories of history's greatest deceptions |publisher=Reader's Digest |year=2005 |place=Pleasantville, New York}}]{{rp|132–34}} |
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But Hofmann's grandest scheme was to forge what was perhaps the most famous missing document in American colonial history, the ''[[Oath of a Freeman]]''. The one-page ''Oath'' had been printed in 1639, the first document to be printed in [[Thirteen Colonies|Britain's American colonies]], but only about fifty copies had been made, and none of them were extant. A genuine example was probably worth over US$1 million in 1985, and Hofmann's agents began to negotiate a sale to the [[Library of Congress]].[{{cite book |last=Innes |first=Brian |title=Fakes & Forgeries: The true crime stories of history's greatest deceptions |publisher=Reader's Digest |year=2005 |place=Pleasantville, New York}}]{{rp|132–34}} |
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Despite the considerable amounts of money Hofmann had made from document sales, he was deeply in debt, in part because of his increasingly lavish lifestyle and his purchases of genuine first-edition books.{{efn|For instance, Hofmann paid US$22,500 for a first edition of ''[[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]]'' to add to a collection he was building for his wife.[{{rp|147}} }} In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to broker a sale of the "McLellin collection" – a supposedly extensive group of documents written by [[William E. McLellin]], an early Mormon apostle who eventually broke with the LDS Church. Hofmann hinted that the McLellin collection would provide revelations unfavorable to the LDS Church. It was already known that McLellin had written various letters and papers dealing with controversial subjects in Joseph Smith's life; in 1879 the RLDS Church printed a letter from McLellin to Joseph Smith III stating that the elder Smith's wife, [[Emma Hale|Emma]], knew and disapproved of her husband's [[adultery]]. When McLellin was visited by this same Joseph Smith III, McLellin asserted: "Emma Smith told him [McLellin] that Joseph was both a polygamist and an adulterer."][{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Joseph Fielding |author1-link=Joseph Fielding Smith |title=The Life of Joseph F. Smith, Sixth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints |date=1938 |publisher=Deseret News Press |isbn=978-1-258-00505-4 |location=Salt Lake City |pages=238–40 |language=en}}] |
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Despite the considerable amounts of money Hofmann had made from document sales, he was deeply in debt, in part because of his increasingly lavish lifestyle and his purchases of genuine first-edition books.{{efn|For instance, Hofmann paid US$22,500 for a first edition of ''[[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]]'' to add to a collection he was building for his wife.[{{rp|147}} }} In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to broker a sale of the "McLellin collection" – a supposedly extensive group of documents written by [[William E. McLellin]], an early Mormon apostle who eventually broke with the LDS Church. Hofmann hinted that the McLellin collection would provide revelations unfavorable to the LDS Church. It was already known that McLellin had written various letters and papers dealing with controversial subjects in Joseph Smith's life; in 1879 the RLDS Church printed a letter from McLellin to Joseph Smith III stating that the elder Smith's wife, [[Emma Hale|Emma]], knew and disapproved of her husband's [[adultery]]. When McLellin was visited by this same Joseph Smith III, McLellin asserted: "Emma Smith told him [McLellin] that Joseph was both a polygamist and an adulterer."][{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Joseph Fielding |author1-link=Joseph Fielding Smith |title=The Life of Joseph F. Smith, Sixth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints |date=1938 |publisher=Deseret News Press |isbn=978-1-258-00505-4 |location=Salt Lake City |pages=238–40 |language=en}}] |
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