 It was not long after the affair with the Mercer was made up that I went out in an equipage quite different from any I had ever appeared in before. I dressed myself like a beggar woman, in the coarsest and most despicable rags I could get, and I walked about peering and peeping into every door and window I came near, and indeed I was in such a plight now that I knew as ill how to behave in, as ever I did in any. I naturally abhorred dirt and rags. I had been bred up tight and cleanly, and could be no other, whatever condition I was in, so that this was the most uneasy disguise to me that I ever put on. I said presently to myself that this would not do, for this was a dress that everybody was shy and afraid of, and I thought everybody looked at me as if they were afraid I should come near them, lest I should take something from them, or afraid to come near me, lest they should get something from me. I wandered about all the evening the first time I went out, and made nothing of it, but came home again wet, draggled, and tired. However, I went out again the next night, and then I met with a little adventure which I had liked to have cost me dear. As I was standing near a tavern door there comes a gentleman on horseback, and lights at the door, and wanting to go into the tavern he calls one of the drawers to hold his horse. He stayed pretty long in the tavern, and the drawer heard his master call and thought he would be angry with him. Seeing me stand by him he called to me, hear woman, says he, hold this horse awhile till I go in, if the gentleman comes he'll give you something. Yes, says I, and takes the horse, and walks off with him very soberly, and carried him to my governess. This had been a booty to those that had understood it, but never was poor thief more at a loss to know what to do with anything that was stolen. For when I came home my governess was quite confounded, and what to do with the creature we neither of us knew. To send him to a stable was doing nothing, for it was certain that public notice would be given in the gazette, and the horse described, so that we durst not go to fetch it again. All the remedy we had for this unlucky adventure was to go and set up the horse at an inn, and send a note by a porter to the tavern that the gentleman's horse that was lost such a time was left at such an inn, and that he might be had there, that the poor woman that held him, having led him into the street, not being able to lead him back again, had left him there. We might have waited till the owner had published and offered a reward, but we did not care to venture the receiving the reward. So this was a robbery, and no robbery, for little was lost by it, and nothing was got by it, and I was quite sick of going out in a beggar's dress. It did not answer at all, and besides I thought it was ominous and threatening. While I was in this disguise, I fell in with a parcel of folks of a worse kind than any I ever sorted with, and I saw a little into their ways, too. These were coiners of money, and they made some very good offers to me as to profit, but the part they would have had me have embarked in was the most dangerous part. I mean that of the very working the die, as they call it, which had I been taken had been certain death, and that is a stake. I say, to be burnt to death at a stake, so that though I was to appearance but a beggar, and they promised mountains of gold and silver to me to engage, yet it would not do. It is true, if I had been really a beggar, or had been desperate as when I began, I might perhaps have closed with it, for what care they to die that can't tell how to live. But at present this was not my condition. At least I was for no such terrible risks as these. Besides, the very thoughts of being burnt at a stake struck terror into my very soul, chilled my blood, and gave me the vapours to such a degree as I could not think of it without trembling. This put an end to my disguise, too, for as I did not like the proposal, so I did not tell them so, but seemed to relish it, and promised to meet again. But I durst see them no more, for if I had seen them, and not complied, though I had declined it with the greatest assurance of secrecy in the world, they would have gone near to have murdered me, to make sure work, and make themselves easy as they call it. What kind of easiness that is, they may best judge that understand how easy men are that can murder people to prevent danger. This and horse-stealing were things quite out of my way, and I might easily resolve I would have to more to say to them. My business seemed to lie another way, and though it had hazard enough in it, too, yet it was more suitable to me, and what had more of art in it, and more room to escape, and more chances for a coming off if a surprise should happen. I had several proposals made to me also about that time to come into a gang of housebreakers, but that was a thing I had no mind to venture at, neither, any more than I had the coining trade. I offered to go along with two men and a woman that made it their business to get into houses by strategy, and with them I was willing enough to venture. But there were three of them already, and they did not care to part, nor I to have too many in a gang, so I did not close with them, but declined them, and they paid dear for their next attempt. But at length I met with a woman that had often told me what adventures she had made, and with success at the water-side, and I closed with her, and we drove on our business pretty well. One day we came among some Dutch people at St. Catherine's, where we went on pretents to buy goods that were privately got on shore. I was two or three times in a house where we saw a good quantity of prohibited goods, and my companion once brought away three pieces of Dutch black silk that turned to good account, and I had my share of it. But in all the journeys I made by myself I could not get an opportunity to do anything, so I laid it aside, for I had been so often that they began to suspect something, and were so shy that I saw nothing was to be done. This balked me a little, and I resolved to push at something or other, for I was not used to come back so often without purchase, so the next day I dressed myself up fine, and took a walk to the other end of the town. I passed through the exchange in the Strand, but had no notion of finding anything to do there, when on a sudden I saw a great cluttering in the place, and all the people, shopkeepers as well as others, standing up and staring, and what should it be but some great Dutchess come into the exchange, and they said the Queen was coming. I set myself close up to a shop-side with my back to the counter, as if to let the crowd pass by, when keeping my eye upon a parcel of lace which the shopkeeper was showing to some ladies that stood beside me, the shopkeeper and her maid were so taken up with looking to see who was coming, and what shop they would go to, that I found means to slip a paper of lace into my pocket and come clear off with it, so the lady milliner paid dear enough for her gaping after the Queen. I went off from the shop, as if driven along by the throng, and mingling myself with the crowd went out at the other door of the exchange, and so got away before they could miss their lace, and because I would not be followed, I called a coach and shut myself up in it. I had scarce shut the coach doors up, but I saw the milliners made, and five or six more come running out into the street, and crying out as if they were frightened. They did not cry stop-thief, because nobody ran away, but I could hear the word robbed and laced two or three times, and saw the wench ringing her hands, and run staring to and again like one scared. The coachman that had taken me up was getting into the box, but was not quite up so that the horse had not begun to move, so that I was terrible uneasy, and I took the packet of lace and laid it ready to have dropped it out at the flap of the coach, which opens before, just behind the coachman. But to my great satisfaction, in less than a minute the coach began to move, that is to say, as soon as the coachman had got up and spoken to his horses, so he drove away without any interruption, and I brought off my purchase, which was work near twenty pounds. The next day I dressed up again, but in quite different clothes, and walked the same way again, but nothing offered till I came into St. James's Park, where I saw abundance of fine ladies in the park walking in the mall, and among the rest there was a little miss, a young lady of about twelve or thirteen years old, and she had a sister, as I suppose it was with her, that might be about nine years old. I observed the biggest had a fine gold watch on, and a good necklace of pearl, and they had a footman in livery with them, but as it is not unusual for the footman to go behind the ladies in the mall, so I observed the footman stopping at their going into the mall, and the biggest of the sister spoke to him, which I perceived was to bid him be just there when they came back. When I heard her dismiss the footman, I stepped up to him and asked him what that little lady was, and held a little chat with him about what a pretty child it was with her, and how genteel and well-carriage the lady, the eldest would be, how womanish and grave, and the fool of a fellow told me presently who she was, that she was Sir Thomas's eldest daughter of Essex, and that she was a great fortune, that her mother was not come to town yet, but she was with Sir Williams lady of Suffolk, at her lodging in Suffolk Street, and a great deal more, that they had a maid and a woman to wait on them beside Sir Thomas's coach, the coachman and himself, and that young lady was governess to the whole family, as well here as at home too, and in short, told me abundance of things enough for my business. I was very well dressed, and had my gold watch as well as she, so I left the footman, and I put myself in a rank with this young lady, having stayed till she had taken one double turn in the mall, and was going forward again. By and by I saluted her by the name, with the title of Lady Betty. I asked her when she heard from her father, when my lady her mother would be in town, and how she did. I talked so familiarly to her of her whole family that she could not suspect but that I knew them all intimately. I asked her why she would come abroad without Mrs. Chime with her, that was the name of her woman, to take care of Mrs. Judith, that was her sister. Then I entered into a long chat with her about her sister, what a fine little lady she was, and asked her if she had learned French, and a thousand such little things to entertain her, when on a sudden we saw the guards come, and the crowd ran to see the king go by to the Parliament House. The ladies ran all up to the side of the mall, and I helped my lady to stand upon the edge of the boards on the side of the mall, that she might be high up enough to see, and took the little one and lifted her quite up, during which I took care to convey the gold watch so clean away from the Lady Betty that she never felt it nor missed it, till all the crowd was gone, and she was gotten into the middle of the mall among the other ladies. I took my leave of her in the very crowd, and said to her, as if in haste, Dear Lady Betty, take care of your little sister. And so the crowd did, as it were, thrust me away from her, and that I was obliged unwillingly to take my leave. The hurry in such cases is immediately over, and the place clear as soon as the king is gone by, but as there is always a great running and clutter just as the king passes, so, having dropped the two little ladies, and done my business with them without any miscarriage, I kept hurrying on among the crowd as if I ran to see the king, and so I got before the crowd, and kept so till I came to the end of the mall, when the king going on toward the horse's guard. I went forward to the passage, which went then through against the lower end of the hay market, and there I bestowed a coach upon myself and made off, and I confessed that I had not yet been so good as my word, that is, to go and visit my Lady Betty. I was once of the mind to venture staying with Lady Betty till she missed the watch, and so have made a great outcry about it with her, and have got her into the coach and put myself in the coach with her, and have gone home with her, for she appeared so fond of me, and so perfectly deceived by my so readily talking to her of all her relations and family, that I thought it was very easy to push the thing further, and to have at least got the necklace of pearls, but when I considered that though the child would not perhaps have suspected me, other people might, and that if I was searched I should be discovered, I thought it was best to go off with what I had got and be satisfied. I came accidentally afterwards to hear that when the young lady missed her watch she made a great outcry in the park, and sent her footmen up and down to see if he could find me out, she having described me so perfectly that he knew presently that it was the same person that had stood and talked so long with him and asked him so many questions about them, but I gone far enough out of their reach before she could come at her footmen to tell him the story. I made another adventure after this, of a nature different from all I had been concerned in yet, and this was at a gaming house near Covent Garden. I saw several people go in and out, and I stood in the passage a good while with another woman with me, and seeing a gentleman go up that seemed to be of more than ordinary fashion I said to him, Sir, pray don't they give women leave to go up. Yes, madam, he said, and to play too, if they please. I mean so, sir, said I, and with that he said he would introduce me if I had a mind, so I followed him to the door and he looking in, there madam says he are the gamesters if you have a mind to venture. I looked in and said to my comrade aloud, here's nothing but men, I won't venture among them. At which one of the gentleman cried out, you need not be afraid, madam, here's none but fair gamesters, you are very welcome to come and set where you please. So I went a little nearer and looked on, and some of them brought me a chair, and I sat down and saw the box and dice go round a pace. Then I said to my comrade, the gentleman play too high for us, come, let us go. The people were all very civil, and one gentleman in particular encouraged me, and said, come, madam, if you please to venture if you dare trust me, I'll answer for it, you shall have nothing put upon you here. No, sir, said I, smiling, I hope the gentleman would not cheat a woman. But still I declined venturing, though I pulled out a purse with money in it, that they might see I did not want money. After I had sat a while, one gentleman said to me, jeering, come, madam, I see you are afraid to venture for yourself. I always had good luck with the ladies, you shall set for me if you won't set for yourself. I told him, sir, I should be very loth to lose your money, though I added, I am pretty lucky too, but the gentleman play so high that I dare not indeed venture my own. Well, well, says he, there's ten guineas, madam, set them for me. So I took his money and set, himself looking on. I ran out nine of the guineas by one and two at a time, and then the box coming to the next man to me, my gentleman gave me ten guineas more, and made me set five of them at once, and the gentleman who had the box threw out, so there was five guineas of his money again. He was encouraged at this, and made me take the box, which was a bold venture. However, I held the box so long that I had gained him his whole money, and had a good handful of guineas in my lap, and which was the better luck, when I threw out I threw but had one or two of those that had set me, and so went off easily. When I was come this length I offered the gentleman all the gold, for it was his own, and so would have had him play for himself, pretending I did not understand the game well enough. He laughed, and said if I had but good luck it was no matter whether I understood the game or no, but I should not leave off. However, he took out the fifteen guineas that he had put in at first, and made me play with the rest. I would have told them to see how much I had got, but he said, no, no, don't tell them, I believe you are very honest, and it is bad luck to tell them. So I played on. I understood the game well enough, though I pretended I did not, and played cautiously. It was to keep a good stock in my lap, out of which I every now and then conveyed some into my pocket, but in such a manner and at such convenient times as I was sure he could not see it. I played a great while, and had very good luck for him, but the last time I held the box they set me high, and I threw boldly at all. I held the box till I gained near four score guineas, but lost above half of it back in the last throw. So I got up, for I was afraid I should lose it all back again, and said to him, Pray come, sir, now, and take it and play for yourself. I think I have done pretty well for you. He would have had me play on, but it grew late, and I desired to be excused. When I gave it up to him, I told him I hoped he would give me leave to tell it now, that I might see what I had gained, and how lucky I had been for him. When I told them there were three score and three guineas. I, says I, if it had not been for that unlucky throw, I had got you a hundred guineas. So I gave him all the money, but he would not take it till I had put my hand into it and taken some for myself, and bid me please myself. I refused it, and was positive I would not take it myself. If he had a mind to anything of that kind, it should be all his own doings. The rest of the gentlemen, seeing us striving, cried, Give it her all! But I absolutely refused that. Then one of them said, Damia Jack, have it with her. Don't you know you should always be upon even terms with the ladies? So in short he divided it with me, and I brought away thirty guineas besides about forty-three which I had stole privately, which I was sorry for afterward, because he was so generous. Thus I brought home seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any more. I knew as well as she if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and all the rest of what I had got. Fortune had smiled upon me to that degree, and I had thriftened so much, and my governess too, for she always had a share with me, that really the old gentleman began to talk of leaving off while we were well, and being satisfied with what we had got. But I know not what fate guided me, I was as backward to it now as she was when I proposed it to her before, and so in an ill hour we gave over the thoughts of it for the present, and in a word I grew more hardened and audacious than ever, and the success I had made my name as famous as any thief of my sword had ever been at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey. I had some time taken the liberty to play the same game over again, which is not according to practice, which however succeeded not amiss, but generally I took up new figures, and contrived to appear in new shapes every time I went abroad. It was not a rumbling time of the year, and the gentleman being most of them gone out of town, Tunbridge and Epsom in such places were full of people. But the city was thin, and I thought our trade felt it a little, as well as other, so that at the latter end of the year I joined myself with a gang who usually go every year to Stourbridge Fair, and from thence to Berry Fair, in Suffolk. We promised ourselves great things there, but when I came to see how things were, I was weary of it presently. For except mere picking of pockets there was little worth meddling with. Neither if a booty had been made was it so easy carrying it off, nor was there such a variety of occasion for business in our way as in London. All that I made of the whole journey was a gold watch at Berry Fair, and a small parcel of linen at Cambridge, which gave me an occasion to take leave of the place. It was on old bite, and I thought might do with a country shopkeeper, though in London it would not. I bought at a linen draper's shop, not in the fair, but in the town of Cambridge, as much fine holland and other things as came to about seven pounds. When I had done, I bade them be sent to such an inn where I had purposely taken up my being the same morning as if I was to lodge there that night. I ordered the draper to send them home to me, about such an hour, to the inn where I lay, and I would pay him his money. At the time appointed the draper sends the goods, and I placed one of our gang at the chamber door, and when the innkeeper's maid brought the messenger to the door who was a young fellow, an apprentice, almost a man, she tells him her mistress was asleep, but if he would leave the things and call in about an hour I should be awake, and he might have the money. He left the parcel very readily, and goes his way, and in about half an hour my maid and I walked off, and that very evening I hired a horse, and a man to ride before me, and went to Newmarket, and from thence got my passage in a coach that was not quite full to St. Edmondsbury, whereas I told you I could make but little of my trade, only at a little country opera house made a shift to carry off a gold watch from a lady's side, who was not only intolerably merry, but as I thought a little fuddled, which made my work much easier. I made off with this little booty to Ipswich, and from thence to Harwich, where I went into an inn, as if I had newly arrived from Holland, not doubting but I should make some purchase among the foreigners that came on shore there, but I found them generally empty of things of value, except what was in their portmanteaus in Dutch hampers, which were generally guarded by footmen. However, I fairly got one of their portmanteaus one evening out of the chamber where the gentlemen lay, the footmen being fast asleep on the bed, and I suppose very drunk. The room in which I lodged lay next to the Dutchmen's, and having dragged the heavy thing with much ado out of the chamber into mine, I went out into the street to see if I could find any possibility of carrying it off. I walked about a great while, but could see no probability either of getting out the thing, or of conveying away the goods that were in it if I had opened it, the town being so small, and I a perfect stranger in it. So I was returning with a resolution to carry it back again, and leave it where I found it. Just in that very moment I heard a man make a noise to some people to make haste, for the boat was going to be put off, and the tide would be spent. I called to the fellow, what boat is it, friend, says I, that you belong to? The Ipswich wary, madam, said he. When do you go off, says I? This moment, madam, says he. Do you want to go thither? Yes, said I, if you can stay till I fetch my things. Where are your things, madam, said he? At such an inn, said I. Well, I'll go with you, madam, said he, very civilly, and bring them for you. Come away, then, says I, and takes him with me. The people of the inn were in a great hurry, the packet boat from Holland being just come in, and two coaches just come along with passengers from London, for another packet boat that was going off for Holland, which coaches were to go back next day with the passengers that were just landed. In this hurry it was not much minded that I came to the bar and paid my reckoning, telling my landlady I had gotten my passage by sea in a wary. These wary's are large vessels, with good accommodation for carrying passengers from Harwich to London, and though they are called wary's, which is a word used in the Thames for a small boat rode with one or two men, yet these are vessels able to carry twenty passengers, and ten or fifteen tons of goods, and fitted to bear the sea. All this I had found out by inquiring the night before into the several ways of going to London. My landlady was very courteous, took my money for my reckoning, but was called away all the house being in a hurry. So I left her, took the fellow up to my chamber, gave him the trunk or portmanteau, for it was like a trunk, and wrapped it about with an old apron, and he went directly to his boat with it, and I after him, nobody asking us the least question about it. As for the drunken Dutch footmen he was still asleep, and his master, with other foreign gentlemen at supper, and very merry below, so I went clean off with it to Ipswich, and going in the night the people of the house knew nothing but that I was gone to London by the Harwich wary, as I had told my landlady. I was plagued at Ipswich with the Custom House officers, who stopped my trunk, as I called it, and would open and search it. I was willing, I told them they should search it, but husband had the key, and he was not yet come from Harwich. This I said, that if upon searching it they should find all the things be such as properly belong to a man rather than a woman, it should not seem strange to them. However, they being positive to open the trunk I consented to have it be broken open, that is to say, to have the lock taken off which was not difficult. They found nothing for their turn, for the trunk had been searched before, but they found several things very much to my satisfaction, as particularly a parcel of money in French pistols, and some Dutch ducatunes or ricks-dollars, and the rest was chiefly two periwigs, wearing linen and razors, wash-balls, perfumes, and other useful things necessary for a gentleman, which all passed for my husbands, and so I was quit to them. It was now very early in the morning, and not light, and I knew not well what course to take, for I made no doubt but I should be pursued in the morning, and perhaps be taken with the things about me, so I resolved upon taking new measures. I went publicly to an inn in the town with my trunk, as I called it, and having taken the substance out, I did not think the lumber of it worth my concern. However, I gave it the land lady of the house with the charge to take great care of it, and lay it up safe till I should come again, and away I walked into the street. When I was got into the town a great way from the inn, I met with an ancient woman who had just opened her door, and I fell into chat with her, and asked her a great many wild questions of things all remote to my purpose and design, but in my discourse I found by her how the town was situated, that I was in a street that went out towards Haley, but that such a street went toward the water-side, such a street toward Colchester, and so the London road lay there. I had soon my ends of this old woman, for I only wanted to know which was the London road, and the way I walked as fast as I could, not that I intended to go on foot, either to London or to Colchester, but I wanted to get quietly away from Epswich. I walked about two or three miles, and then I met a plain countryman, who was busy about some husbandry work, I did not know what, and I asked him a great many questions first, not much to the purpose, but at last told him I was going for London, and the coach was full, and I could not get a passage, and asked him if he could tell me where to hire a horse that would carry double, and an honest man to ride before me to Colchester, that so I might get a place there in the coaches. The honest clown looked earnestly at me, and said nothing for above half a minute, when scratching at his pole. A horse, say you, and to Colchester to carry double? Why yes, mistress, a lack a day you may have horses enough for money. Well, friends, says I, that I take for granted, I don't expect it without money. Why, but mistress, says he, how much are you willing to give? Nay, says I again, friend, I don't know what your rates are in the country here, for I am a stranger, but if you can get one for me, get it as cheap as you can, and I'll give you somewhat for your pains. Why, that's honestly said too, said the countryman. Not so honest, neither, said I to myself, if thou knewest all. Why, mistress, says he, I have a horse that will carry double, and I don't much care if I go with myself with you, and the like. Will you, says I? Will I believe you are an honest man? If you will, I shall be glad of it. I'll pay you in reason. Why, look ye, mistress, says he, it won't be out of reason with you then. If I carry you to Colchester, it will be worth five shillings for myself and my horse, for I shall hardly come back to-night. In short, I hired the honest man and his horse, but when we came to a town upon the road, I do not remember the name of it, but it stands upon a river. I pretended myself very ill, and I could go no further that night, but if he would stay there with me, because I was a stranger, I would pay him for himself and his horse with all my heart. This I did, because I knew the Dutch gentlemen and their servants would be riding upon the road that day, either in the stagecoaches or the riding-post, either in the stagecoaches or the riding-post, and I did not know but the drunken fellow, or somebody else that might have seen me in Harwich, might see me again, and so I thought that in one day's stop they would be all gone by. We lay all that night there, and the next morning it was not very early when I set out, so that it was near ten o'clock by the time I got to Colchester. It was no little pleasure that I saw the town where I had so many pleasant days, and I made many inquiries after the good old friends I had once had there, but could make little out they were all dead or removed. The young ladies had all been married or gone to London. The old gentleman and the old lady that had been my early benefactress all dead, and which troubled me most, the young gentleman my first lover, and afterwards my brother-in-law, was dead, but two sons, men grown, were left of him, but they too were transplanted to London. I dismissed my old man here, and stayed incognito for three or four days in Colchester, and then took a passage in a wagon, because I would not venture being seen in the Harwich coaches. But I needed not have used so much caution, for there was nobody in Harwich but the woman of the house could have known me, or was it rational to think that she, considering the hurries she was in, and that she never saw me but once, and that by candlelight, should ever have discovered me. I was now returned to London, and though by the accident of the last adventure I got something considerable, yet I was not fond of any more country rambles, nor should I have ventured abroad again if I had carried the trade on to the end of my days. I gave my governess a history of my travels. She liked the Harwich journey well enough, and in discoursing of these things between ourselves she observed that a thief being a creature that watches the advantages of other people's mistakes, it is impossible but that to one that is vigilant and industrious many opportunities must happen, and therefore she thought that one so exquisitely keen in the trade as I was would scarce fail of something extraordinary wherever I went. On the other hand, every branch of my story, if duly considered, may be useful to honest people, and afford to do caution to people of some sort or other to guard against the like surprises, and to have their eyes about them when they have to do with strangers of any kind, for it is very seldom that some snare or other is not in their way. The moral indeed of all my history is left to be gathered by the senses and judgment of the reader. I am not qualified to preach to them. Let the experience of one creature completely wicked and completely miserable be a storehouse or useful warning to those that read. I am drawing now towards a new variety of the scenes of life. On my return, being hardened by a long race of crime and success unparalleled, at least in the reach of my own knowledge, I had, as I have said, no thoughts of laying down a trade which, if I was to judge by the example of others, must, however, end at last in misery and sorrow. It was on the Christmas Day following, in the evening, that to finish a long train of wickedness I went abroad to see what might offer my way. When going by a working silversmith's in Foster Lane I saw a tempting bait indeed, and not be resisted by one of my occupation, for the shop had nobody in it, as I could see, and a great deal of loose plate lay in the window, and at the seat of the man, who usually, as I supposed, worked at one side of the shop. I went boldly in, and was just going to lay my hand on a piece of plate, and might have done it, and carried it clear off for any care that the men who belonged to the shop had taken of it, but an officious fellow in a house, not a shop, on the other side of the way, seeing me go in, and observing that there was nobody in the shop, comes running over the street and into the shop, and without asking me what I was or who, seizes upon me, and cries out for the people of the house. I had not, as I said above, touched anything in the shop, and seeing a glimpse of somebody running over to the shop, I had so much presence of mind as to knock very hard with my foot on the floor of the house, and was just calling out, too, when the fellow laid his hands on me. However, as I always had most courage when I was in most danger, so when the fellow laid hands on me, I stood very high upon it, that I came in to buy half a dozen of silver spoons, and to my good fortune it was a silversmith that sold plate, as well as worked plate for other shops. The fellow laughed at that part, and put such a value upon the service that he had done his neighbor, that he would have it be that I came not to buy but to steal, and raising a great crowd. I said to the master of the shop, who by this time was fetched home from some neighboring place, that it was in vain to make noise, and to enter into talk there of the case. The fellow had insisted that I came to steal, and he must prove it, and I desired we might go before a magistrate without any more words, for I began to see I should be too hard for the man that had seized me. The master and mistress of the shop were really not so violent as the man from the other side of the way, and the man said, Mistress, you might come into the shop with a good design for ought I know, but it seemed a dangerous thing for you to come into such a shop as mine is when you see nobody there, and I cannot do justice to my neighbor, who was so kind to me as not to acknowledge he had reason on his side, though upon the whole I do not find you attempted to take anything and I really know not what to do in it. I pressed him to go before a magistrate with me, and if anything could be proved on me that was like a design of robbery I should willingly submit, but if not I expected reparation. Just when we were in this debate, and a crowd of people gathered about the door came by Sir T. B., an alderman of the city, and justice of the peace, and the goldsmith hearing of it goes out, and entreated his worship to come in and decide the case. Give the goldsmith his due, he told his story with a great deal of justice and moderation, and the fellow that had come over and seized upon me told his with as much heat and foolish passion which did me good still rather than harm. It came then my turn to speak, and I told his worship that I was a stranger in London, being newly come out of the north, that I was lodged in such a place, that I was passing this street, and went into the goldsmith's shop to buy half a dozen of spoons. By great luck I had an old silver spoon in my pocket which I pulled out, and told him I had carried that spoon to match it with half a dozen of new ones, that it might match some I had in the country. That seeing nobody in the shop I knocked with my foot very hard to make the people here, and had also called aloud with my voice. To his true there was loose plate in the shop, but that nobody could say I had touched any of it, or gone near it, that a fellow came running into the shop out of the street and laid hands on me in a furious manner, in the very moments while I was calling for the people of the house, that if he had really had a mind to have done his neighbour any service he should have stood at a distance and silently watched to see whether I touched anything or no, and then have clapped in upon me, and taken me in the fact. That is very true, said Mr. Alderman, and turning to the fellow that stopped me he asked him if it was true that I knocked with my foot. He said yes, I had knocked, but that might be because of his coming. Nay said the Alderman, taking him short, now you contradict yourself, for just now you said she was in the shop with her back to you, and did not see you till you came upon her. Now it was true that my back was partly to the street, but yet as my business was of a kind that required me to have my eyes every way, so I really had a glance of him running over, as I said before, though he did not perceive it. After a full hearing the Alderman gave it as his opinion that his neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent, and the Goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and so I was dismissed. But as I was going to depart Mr. Alderman said, but hold, madam, if you were designing to buy spoons I hope you will not let my friend here lose his customer by the mistake. I readily answered, no sir, I'll buy the spoon still, if he can match my odd spoon, which I brought for a pattern. And the Goldsmith showed me some of the very same fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to five and thirty shillings, so I pulled out my purse to pay him, in which I had near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum about me whatever might happen, and I found it of use at other times as well as now. When Mr. Alderman saw my money he said, well, madam, now I am satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved you should buy the spoons, and stayed till you had bought them, for if you had not had money to pay for them I should have suspected that you did not come into the shop with an interest to buy. For indeed the sort of people who come upon these designs that you have been charged with are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I see you are. I smiled, and told his worship that I owed something of his favour to my money, but I hoped he saw reason also in the justice he had done me before. He said yes he had, but this having confirmed his opinion he was fully satisfied now with my having been injured, so I came off with flying colours, though from an affair in which I was at the very brink of destruction. It was but three days after this, that not at all made cautious by my former danger as I used to be, and still pursuing the art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into a house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself as I thought verily without being perceived with two pieces of flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silks, very rich. It was not a mercer's shop, nor the warehouse of a mercer, but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the mercers, like a broker or a factor. That I may make short of this black part of the story, I was attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just as I was going out the door, and one of them pulled me back into the room, while the other shut the door upon me. I would have given them good words, but there was no room for it. Two fiery dragons could not have been more furious than they were. They tore my clothes, bullied and roared as if they would have murdered me. The mistress of the house came next, and then the master, and all outrageous for a while especially. I gave the master very good words, told him the door was open, and things were a temptation to me, that I was poor and distressed, and poverty was, when many could not resist, and begged him with tears to have pity on me. The mistress of the house was moved with compassion, and inclined to have let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband to it also. But the saucy wenches were run even before they were sent, and had fetched a constable. And then the master said he could not go back. I must go before a justice, and answered his wife that he might come into trouble himself if he should let me go. The sight of the constable indeed struck me with terror, and I thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into faintings, and indeed the people themselves thought I would have died when the woman argued again for me, and entreated her husband, seeing that they had lost nothing, to let me go. I offered to pay him for the two pieces, whatever the value was, though I had not got them, and argued that as he had his goods, and had lost really nothing, it would be cruel to pursue me to death, and have my blood for the bare attempt of taking them. I put the constable in mind that I had broke no doors, nor carried anything away, and when I came to the justice, and pleaded that I had neither broken anything to get in, nor carried anything out, the justice was inclined to have released me. But the first saucy jade that stopped me, affirming that I was going out with the goods but that she stopped me and pulled me back as I was upon the threshold, the justice upon that point committed me, and I was carried to Newgate. That horrid place, my very blood chills at the mere mention of its name, the place where so many of my comrades had been locked up, and from whence they went to the fatal tree, the place where my mother suffered so deeply, where I was brought into the world, and from whence I expected no redemption but by an infamous death, to conclude the place that had so long expected me, and which with so much art and success I had so long avoided. I was not fixed indeed. It is impossible to describe the terror of my mind when I was first brought in, and when I looked around upon all the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of but going out of the world, and that with the utmost infamy, the hellish noise, the roaring, swearing, and clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful crowd of afflicting things that I saw there, joined together to make the place seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of entrance into it. Now I reproached myself with the many hints I had had, as I have mentioned above, from my own reason, from the sense of my good circumstances, and of the many dangers I had escaped, to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all and hardened my thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by an inevitable and unseen fate to this day of my misery, and that now I was to expiate all my offences at the gallows, that I was now to give satisfaction to justice with my blood, and that I was come to the last hour of my life and of my wickedness together. These things poured themselves in upon my thoughts in a confused manner, and left me overwhelmed with melancholy and despair. Them I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no, not in the least, because as I said to myself it was repenting after the power of further sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the fact as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but I mourned that I was to be punished for it. I was a penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took away all the comfort and even the hope of my repentance in my own thoughts. I got no sleep for several nights or days after I came into that wretched place, and glad I would have been for some time to have died there, though I did not consider dying as it ought to be considered neither. Indeed, nothing could be filled with more horror to my imagination than the very place. Nothing was more odious to me than the company that was there. Oh, if I had been sent away to any place in the world and not to Newgate, I should have thought myself happy. In the next place, how did the hardened wretches that were there before me triumph over me? What, Mrs. Flanders come to Newgate at last? What, Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Molly, and after that plain, maul Flanders? They thought the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long. They expected me there many years ago, and was I come at last? Then they flouted me with my dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy, bid me have a good heart not to be cast down. Things might not be so bad as I feared, and the like, then called for Brandy and drank to me, but put it all up to my score, for they told me I was but just come to the college, as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket, though they had none. I asked one of this crew how long she had been there. She said four months. I asked her how the place looked to her when she first came into it. Just as it did now to you, says she, dreadful and frightful, that she thought she was in hell, and I believe so still adds she, but it is natural to me, so I don't disturb myself about it. I suppose, says I, you are in no danger of what's to follow. Nay, says she, for you are mistaken there, I assure you. I am under sentence, only I pleaded my belly, but I am no more with child than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next sessions. This calling down is calling to their former judgment when a woman has been respited for her belly, but proves not to be with child, or if she has been with child and been brought to bed. Well, says I, are you thus easy? I, said she, I can't help myself. What signifies being sad? If I'm hanged, there's an end of me, says she, and away she turns dancing, and sings as she goes the following piece of Newgate wit. If I swing by the string, I shall hear the bell ring, and then there's an end of poor Jenny. I mention this, because it would here be the worthy observation of any prisoner, who shall hereafter fall into the same misfortune, and come to that dreadful place of Newgate, how time, necessity, and conversing with the wretches that are there, familiarizes the place to them. How at last they become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest dread upon their spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful and merry in their misery as they were when out of it. I cannot say, as some do, this devil is not so black as he has painted, for indeed no colours can represent the place to the life, not any soul conceive a right of it but those who have been sufferers there. But how hell should become by degree so natural, and not only tolerable but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have experienced it as I have. The same night that I was sent to Newgate, I sent the news of it to my old governess, who was surprised at it you may be sure, and spent the night almost as ill out of Newgate as I did in it. The next morning she came to see me. She did what she could to comfort me, but she saw it was to no purpose. However, as she said, to sink under the weight was but to increase the weight. She immediately applied herself to all the proper methods to prevent the effects of it, which we feared, and first she found out the two fiery jades that had surprised me. She tampered with them, offered them money, and in a word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution. She offered one of the wenches one hundred pounds to go away from her mistress, and not to appear against me. She was so resolute that though she was but a servant maid at three pounds a year wages or thereabouts, she refused it, and would have refused it, as my governess said she believed, if she had offered her five hundred. Then she attacked the other maid. She was not so hard-hearted in appearance as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to be merciful, but the first wench kept her up, and changed her mind, and would not so much as let my governess talk with her, but threatened to have her up for tampering with the evidence. Then she applied to the master, that is to say, the man whose goods had been stolen, and particularly to his wife, who, as I told you, was inclined at first to have some compassion for me. She found the woman the same still, but the man alleged he was bound by the justice that committed me to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his recognizance. My governess offered to find friends that should get his recognizance as off of the file, as they called it, and that he should not suffer. But it was not possible to convince him that it could be done, or that he could be safe, anyway in the world, but by appearing against me. So I was to have three witnesses of fact against me, the master and his two maids, that is to say, I was as certain to be cast for my life as I was certain that I was alive, and I had nothing to do but think of dying, and prepare for it. I had but a sad foundation to build upon, as I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only the effect of my fear of death, not a sincere regret for the wicked life that I had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me for the offending my creator, who was suddenly to be my judge. I lived many days here in the utmost horror of my soul. I had death as it were in view, and thought of nothing night and day, but of gibbets and halters, evil spirits and devils. It is not to be expressed by words how I was harassed between the dreadful apprehensions of death, and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my horrible past life. The ordinary of Newgate came to me, and talked a little in his way, but all his divinity ran upon confessing my crime, as he called it, though he knew not what I was in for, making a full discovery and the like, without which he told me God would never forgive me, and he said so little to the purpose that I had no manner of consolation from him, and then to observe the poor creature preaching confession and repentance to me in the morning, and find him drunk with brandy and spirits by noon, this had something in it so shocking that I began to nauseate the man more than his work, and his work too by degrees, for the sake of the man, so that I desired him to trouble me no more. I know not how it was, but by the indefatigable application of my diligent governess, I had no probe preferred against me at the first sessions, I mean to the grand jury, at Guildhall, so I had another month, or five weeks before me, and without doubt this ought to have been accepted by me, as so much time given me for reflection upon what was past, and preparation for what was to come, or in a word, I ought to have seemed it as a space given me for repentance, and have employed it as such, but it was not in me. I was sorry, as before, for being in Newgate, but had very few signs of repentance about me. On the contrary, like the waters in the cavities and hollows of mountains, which petrify and turn into stone whatever they are suffered to drop on, so the continual conversing with such a crew of hellhounds as I was had the same common operation upon me as upon other people. I degenerated into stone, I turned first stupid and senseless, then brutish and thoughtless, and at last raving mad as any of them were, and in short I became as naturally pleased and easy with the place as if indeed I had been born there. It is scarce possible to imagine that our natures should be capable of so much degeneracy as to make that pleasant and agreeable that in itself is the most complete misery. Here was a circumstance that I think it scarce possible to mention a worse. I was as exquisitely miserable as, speaking of common cases, it was possible for anyone to be that had life and health and money to help them as I had. I had weight of guilt upon me, enough to sink any creature who had the least power of reflection left, and had any sense upon them of the happiness of this life, of the misery of another. Then I had at first remorse indeed, but no repentance. I had now neither remorse nor repentance. I had a crime charged on me, the punishment of which was death by our law, the proof so evident that there was no room for me so much as to plead not guilty. I had the name of an old offender, so that I had nothing to expect but death in a few weeks' time, neither had I myself any thoughts of escaping, and yet a certain strange lethargy of soul possessed me. I had no trouble, no apprehensions, no sorrow about me. The first surprise was gone. I was, I may well say, I know not how. My senses, my reason, nay my conscience were all asleep. My course of life for forty years had been a horrid complication of wickedness, whoredom, adultery, incest, lying, and theft, and in a word, everything but murder and treason had been my practice from the age of eighteen, or thereabouts, to three score. And now I was engulfed in the misery of punishment, and had an infamous death just at the door, and yet I had no sense of my condition, no thought of heaven or hell at least, that went any further than a bare flying touch, like the stitch or pain that gives a hint and goes off. I had neither a heart to ask God's mercy, nor indeed to think of it, and in this I think I have given a brief description of the completest misery on earth. All my terrifying thoughts were passed, the horror of the place were become familiar, and I felt no more uneasiness at the noise and clamours of the prison than they did who made that noise. In a word I was become a mere Newgate bird, as wicked and as outrageous as any of them. Nay, I scarce retained the habit and custom of good-breeding in manners, which all along till now ran through my conversation, so thorough a degeneracy had possessed me, that I was no more the same thing that I had been, than if I had never been otherwise than what I was now. In the middle of this hardened part of my life I had another sudden surprise, which called me back a little to that thing called sorrow, which indeed I began to be past the sense of before. They told me one night that there was brought into the prison late the night before three highwaymen, who had committed robberies somewhere on the road to Windsor, Hounsloe Heave, I think it was, and were pursued to Uxbridge by the country, and were taken there after a gallant resistance in which I know not how many of the country people were wounded and some killed. It is not to be wondered that we prisoners were all desirous enough to see these brave-topping gentlemen that were talked up to be such as their fellows had not been known, and especially because it was said that they would in the morning be removed to the press-yard, having given money to the headmaster of the prison, to be allowed the liberty of that better part of the prison. So we that were women placed ourselves in the way that we would be sure to see them, but nothing could express the amazement and surprise I was in, when the very first man that came out I knew to be my Lancashire husband, the same who lived so well at Dunstable, and the same who I afterwards saw at Brick Hill when I was married to my last husband, as has been related. I was struck dumb at the sight, and knew neither what to say nor what to do. He did not know me, and that was all the present relief I had. I quitted my company, and retired as much as that dreadful place suffers anybody to retire, and cried vehemently for a great while. A dreadful creature that I am, said I, how many poor people have I made miserable? How many desperate wretches have I sent to the devil? He had told me at Chester he was ruined by that match, and his fortunes were made desperate on my account. For that thinking I had been a fortune, he was run into debt more than he was able to pay, and that he knew not what course to take, that he would go into the army and carry a musket, or buy a horse, and take a tour as he called it, and though I never told him that I was a fortune, and so did not actually deceive him myself, yet I did encourage the having it thought that I was so, and by that means I was the occasion originally of his mischief. The surprise of the thing only struck deeper into my thoughts, and gave me stronger reflections than all that had befallen me before. I grieved day and night for him, and the more for that they told me he was the captain of the gang, and that he had committed so many robberies that Hind or Whitney or the Golden Farmer were fools to him, that he would surely be hanged if there were no more men left in the country he was born in, and that there would be abundance of people coming against him. I was overwhelmed with grief for him. My own case gave me no disturbance compared to this, and I loaded myself with reproaches on his account. I bewailed his misfortunes, and the ruin he was now come to at such a rate that I relished nothing now as I did before, and the first reflections I made upon the horrible detestable life I had lived began to return upon me, and as these things returned, my abhorrence of the place I was in, and of the way of living in it, returned also, in a word I was perfectly changed, and became another body. While I was under these influences of sorrow for him, came notice to me that the next sessions approaching there would be a bill preferred to the grand jury against me, and that I would certainly be tried for my life at the old Bailey. My temper was touched before, the hardened retchend boldness of spirit which I had acquired abated, and conscious in the prison guilt began to flow in upon my mind. In short, I began to think, and to think is one real advance from hell into heaven. All that hellish hardened state and temper of soul which I have said so much of before is but a deprivation of thought, he that is restored to his power of thinking is restored to himself. As soon as I began I say to think, the first think that occurred to me broke out thus. Lord, what will become of me? I shall certainly die. I shall be cast to be sure, and there is nothing beyond that but death. I have no friends. What shall I do? I shall certainly be cast. Lord, have mercy upon me. What will become of me?" This was a sad thought, you will say, to be the first, after so long a time, that had started into my soul of that kind, and yet even this was nothing but fright at what was to come. There was not a word of sincere repentance in it at all. However I was indeed dreadfully dejected, and disconsolate to the last degree, and as I had no friend in the world to communicate my distressed thoughts to, it lay so heavy upon me that it threw me into fits and swoonings several times a day. I sent for my old governess, and she, give her her due, acted the part of a true friend. She left no stone unturned to prevent the grand jury finding the bill. She sought out one or two of the jury men, talked with them, and endeavored to possess them with favourable dispositions, on account that nothing was taken, and no house broken, etc. But all would not do. They were overruled by the rest. The two wenches swore home to the fact, and the jury found the bill against me for robbery and house-breaking. That is, for felony and burglary. I sunk down when they brought me news of it, and after I came to myself again I thought I should have died with the weight of it. My governess acted a true mother to me. She pitted me, she cried with me, and for me, but she could not help me, and to add to the terror of it was the discourse all over the house that I should die for it. I could hear them talk it among themselves very often, and see them shake their heads and say they were sorry for it and the like as is usual in the place, but still nobody came to tell me their thoughts, to let last one of the keepers came to me privately, and said with a sigh, Well, Mrs. Flanders, you will be tried on Friday. This was but a Wednesday. What do you intend to do? I turned as white as a cloud and said, God knows what I shall do. For my part I know not what to do. Why, says he, I won't flatter you. I would have you prepare for death, for I doubt you will be cast. And as they say you are an old offender, I doubt you will find but little mercy. They say, added he, your case is very plain, and that the witnesses swear so home against you there will be no standing it. This was a stab into the very vitals of one under such a burden as I was oppressed with before, and I could not speak to him a word good or bad for a great while, but at last I burst out into tears and said to him, Lord, Mr., what must I do? Do, says he, send for the ordinary, send for a minister and talk with him, for indeed Mrs. Flanders, unless you have very good friends you are no woman for this world. It was plain dealing indeed, but it was very harsh to me, at least I thought it so. He left me in the greatest confusion imaginable, and all that night I lay awake. And now I began to say my prayers, which I had scarce done before since my last husband's death, or from a little while after. Truly I may well call it saying my prayers, for I was in such a confusion, and had such horror upon my mind, that though I cried, and have repeated several times the ordinary expression of Lord have mercy on me, I never brought myself to any sense of my being a miserable sinner, as indeed I was, and of confessing my sins to God, and begging pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my condition, being tried for my life, and sure to be condemned, and then I was as sure to be executed, and on this account I cried all night, Lord what will become of me, Lord what shall I do, Lord I shall be hanged, Lord have mercy on me, and the like. My poor afflicted governess was now as much concerned as I, and a great deal more truly penitent, though she had no prospect of being brought to trial and sentence. Not but that she deserved it as much as I, and so she said herself, but she had not done anything herself for many years, other than receiving what I and others stole, and encouraging us to steal it. But she cried, and took on like a distracted body, wringing her hands and crying out that she was undone, that she believed there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she should be damned, that she had been the destruction of all her friends, that she had brought such a one, and such a one, and such a one to the gallows, and there she reckoned up ten or eleven people, some of which I have given account of, that came to untimely ends, and that now she was the occasion of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to go on, when I would have left off. I interrupted her there. No mother, no, said I. Don't speak of that, for you would have had me left off when I got the Mercer's money again, and when I came home from Harwich, and would not hearken to you. Therefore you have not been to blame. It is I only have ruined myself. I have brought myself to this misery. And thus we spent many hours together. Well, there was no remedy. The prosecution went on, and on the Thursday I was carried down to the Sessions' house, where I was arraigned, as they called it, and the next day I was appointed to be tried. At the arraignment I pleaded not guilty, and well I might, for I was indicted for felony and burglary, that is, for feloniously stealing two pieces of brocaded silk, value forty-six pounds, the goods of Anthony Johnson's, and for breaking open his doors, whereas I knew very well they could not pretend to prove I had broken the doors, or so much as lifted up a latch. On the Friday I was brought to my trial. I had exhausted my spirits with crying for two or three days before, so that I slept better the Thursday night than I expected, and had more courage for my trial than indeed I thought possible for me to have. When the trial began, the indictment was read. I would have spoke, but they told me the witnesses must be heard first, and then I should have time to be heard. The witnesses were the two wenches, a couple of hard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the thing was truth in the main, yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity, and swore I had the goods wholly in my possession, that I had hid them among my clothes, that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the threshold when they discovered themselves, and then I put the other over so that I was quite out of the house in the street with the goods before. They took hold of me, and then they seized me, and brought me back again, and they took the goods upon me. The fact in general was all true, but I believe, and insisted upon it, that they stopped me before I had set my foot clear of the threshold of the house, but that did not argue much, for certain it was that I had taken the goods, and I was bringing them away if I had not been taken. But I pleaded that I had still nothing, they had lost nothing, the door was open, and I went in, seeing the goods lie there, and with design to buy. If seeing nobody in the house I had taken any of them up in my hand, it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them, for that I never carried them farther than the door, to look on them with the better light. The court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of jest of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of anything, and as to carrying them to the door to look upon them, the maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it very much, told the court I had looked on them sufficiently, and approved them very well, for I had packed them up under my clothes, and was going with them. In short, I was found guilty of the felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me a sentence of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute awhile, but somebody that stood behind me prompted me aloud to speak to the judges, for that they could represent things favorably for me. This encouraged me to speak, and I told them I had nothing to say to stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of the court, that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for the circumstances of it, that I had broken no doors, had carried nothing off, that nobody had lost anything, that the person whose goods they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown, which indeed he very honestly did, that at the worst it was the first offense, and that I had never before been in any court of justice before. And in a word I spoke with more courage than I thought I could have done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard me. The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say all that I would, but saying neither yes nor no to it pronounced the sentence of death upon me, a sentence that was to me like death itself, which after it was read confounded me. I had no more spirit left in me, I had no tongue to speak, nor eyes to look up, either to God nor man. My poor governess was utterly disconsolate, and she that was my comforter before wanted comfort now herself, and sometimes mourning, sometimes raging, was as much out of herself as to all outward appearance as any madwoman in bedlam. Nor was she only disconsolate as to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own wicked life, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different from mine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as well as sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister too, a serious, pious good man, and applied herself with such earnestness by his assistance to the work of a sincere repentance that I believe, and so did the minister too, that she was a true penitent, and which is still more. She was not only sought for the occasion, and at that juncture, but she continued so as I was informed to the day of her death. It is rather to be thought of than expressed what was now my condition. I had nothing before me but present death, and as I had no friends to assist me, or to stir for me, I expected nothing but to find my name in the dead warrant, which was to come down for the execution, the Friday afterwards, of five more, and myself. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. He exhorted me seriously to repent of all my sins, and to dally no longer with my soul, not flattering myself with hopes of life, which, he said, he was informed there was no room to expect, but unfainably to look up to God with my whole soul and to cry for pardon in the name of Jesus Christ. He backed his discourses with proper quotations of Scripture, encouraging the greatest sinner to repent and turn from their evil way, and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with me. It was now that for the first time I felt any real signs of repentance. I now began to look back upon my past life with abhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of time and things of life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time, began to look with a different aspect and quite another shape than they did before. The greatest and best things, the views of felicity, the joy, the griefs of life, were quite other things, and I had nothing in my thoughts but what was so infinitely superior to what I had known in life, that it appeared to me to be the greatest stupidity in nature to lay any weight upon anything, though the most valuable in this world. The word eternity represented itself with all its incomprehensible additions, and I had such extended notions of it that I know not how to express them. Among the rest, how vile, how gross, how absurd, did every pleasant thing look. I mean that we had counted pleasant before, especially when I reflected that those sordid trifles were the things for which we forfeited eternal felicity. With these reflections game, of mere course, severe reproaches of my own mind, my wretched behavior in my past life, that I had forfeited all hope of any happiness in the eternity that I was just going to enter into, and on the contrary, was entitled to all that was miserable or had been conceived of misery, and all this with the frightful addition of its being also eternal. I am not capable of reading lectures, of instruction, to anybody, but I relate this in the very manner in which things then appear to me, as far as I am able, but infinitely short, of the lively impressions which they made on my soul at that time. Indeed, those impressions are not to be explained in words, or if they are, I am not mistress of words enough to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader to make just reflections on them as their own circumstances may direct, and without question this is what every one at some time or other may feel something of. I mean a clearer sight into things to come than they had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them, but I go back to my own gaze. The minister impressed me to tell him, as far as I thought convenient, in what state I found myself as to the sight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come, as ordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions from prisoners, for private ends or for the further detecting of other offenders, that his business was to move me to such freedom of discourse as might serve to disburden my own mind and furnish him to administer comfort to me as far as was in his power, and assured me that whatever I said to him should remain with him and be as much a secret as if it was known only to God and myself, and that he desired to know nothing of me but as above to qualify him to apply proper advice and assistance to me and to pray to God for me. This honest friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my passions. He broke into my very soul by it, and I unraveled all the wickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgment of this whole history. I gave him a picture of my conduct for fifty years in miniature. I hid nothing from him, and he in return exhorted me to sincere repentance, explained to me what he meant by repentance, and then drew out such a scheme of infinite mercy, proclaimed from heaven to sinners of the greatest magnitude, that he left me nothing to say that looked like despair or doubting of being accepted, and in this condition he left me the first night. He visited me again the next morning and went on with his method of explaining the terms of divine mercy, which according to him consisted of nothing more or more difficult than that of being sincerely desirous of it and willing to accept it, only a sincere regret for and hatred of those things I had done which rendered me so just an object of divine vengeance. I am not able to repeat the excellent discourses of this extraordinary man, to his all that I am able to do to say that he revived my heart, and brought me into such a condition that I never knew anything of in my life before. I was covered with shame and tears for things past, and yet had at the same time a secret surprising joy at the prospect of being a true penitent and obtaining the comfort of a penitent. I mean the hope of being forgiven and so swift to thoughts circulate, and so I did the impressions they had made upon me run that I thought I could freely have gone out that minute to execution without any uneasiness at all, casting my soul entirely into the arms of infinite mercy as a penitent. The good gentleman was so moved also in my behalf with a view of the influence which he saw these things had on me, that he blessed God, he had come to visit me, and resolved not to leave me to the last moment, that is, not to leave visiting me. It was no less than twelve days after our receiving sentence before any were ordered for execution, and then upon a Wednesday the dead warrant, as they call it, came down, and I found my name was among them. A terrible blow this was to my new resolutions, indeed my heart sank within me, and I swooned away twice one after another, but spoke not a word. The good minister was sorely afflicted for me, and did what he could to comfort me with the same arguments, and the same moving eloquence that he did before, and left me not that evening so long as the prison keepers would suffer him to stay in the prison, unless he would be locked up with me all night, which he was not willing to be. I wondered much that I did not see him all the next day, it being the day before the time appointed for execution, and I was greatly discouraged and dejected in my mind, and indeed almost sank for want of the comfort, which he had so often, and with such success, yielded me on his form of visits. I waited with great impatience, and under the greatest oppressions of spirits imaginable, till about four o'clock, when he came to my apartment, for I had obtained the favor by the help of money nothing being done in that place without it, not to be kept in the condemned hole, as they call it, among the rest of the prisoners who were to die, but to have a little dirty chamber to myself. My heart leapt within me for joy when I heard his voice at the door, even before I saw him, but let anyone judge what kind of motion I found in my soul, when after having made a short excuse for his not coming, he showed me that his time had been employed on my account, that he had obtained a favorable report from the recorder to the Secretary of State in my particular case, and in short that he had brought me a reprieve. He used all the caution that he was able in letting me know a thing which it would have been a double cruelty to have concealed, and yet it was too much for me. For his grief had overset me before, so did joy overset me now, and I fell into a much more dangerous swooning than I did at first, and it was not without a great difficulty that I was recovered at all, the good man having made a very Christian exhortation to me, not to let the joy of my reprieve but the remembrance of my past sorrow out of my mind, and having told me that he must leave to go and enter the reprieve in the books, the most advantageous to myself and the most instructive to others. Such, however, will, I hope, allow me to liberty to make my story complete. It would be a severe satire on such to say they do not relish the repentance as much as I do the crime, and that they had rather the history were a complete tragedy as it was very likely have been. But I go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the doling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre, as I call it, which ushered in the day, as soon as it began to toll that dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned old, where there lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some from one crime, some for another, and two of them for murder. This was followed by a confused glamour in the house, among the several sorts of prisoners expressing their awkward sorrows of the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing one from another. Some cried for them, some as odd, and wished them a good journey, some damned and cursed those that had brought them to it, that is, meaning the evidence or prosecutors, many pitying them in some few, but very few, praying for them. There was hardly room for so much composure of mind as was required for me to bless the merciful providence that had, as it were, snatched me out of the jaws of this destruction. I remained, as it were, dumb and silent, overcome with a sense of it, and not able to express what I had in my heart, for the passions on such occasions as these are certainly so agitated as not to be able presently to regulate their own motions. All the while the pork and damned creatures were preparing to their death and the ordinary, as they call him, was busy with them, disposing them to submit to their sentence. I say all this while I was seized with a fit of trembling, as much as I could have been if I had been in the same condition as to be sure the day before I expected to be. I was so violently agitated by this uprising fit that I shook as if I had been in the cold fit of an egg, so that I could not speak or look but like one distracted. As soon as they were all put into cuts and gone, which, however, I had not courage enough to see, I say as soon as they were gone, I fell into a fit of crying involuntarily and without design. But as a mere distemper and yet so violent and it held me so long that I knew not what course to take, nor could I stop or put a check to it. No, not with all the strength and courage I had. This fit of crying held me near two hours and, as I believe, held me till they were all out of the world. And then a most humble, penitent, serious kind of joy succeeded, a real transport it was, or a passion of joy and thankfulness, but still unable to give me vent to it by words, and in this I continued most part of the day. In the evening the good minister visited me again and then failed to his usual good discourses. He congratulated my having his face yet allowed me for repentance whereas the state of those six poor creatures was determined and they were now past the offers of salvation. He earnestly pressed me to retain the same sentiments of the things of life that I had when I had a view of eternity. And at the end of all told me I should not conclude that all was over, that a reprieve was not a pardon, that he could not yet answer for the effects of it. However I had this mercy, that I had more time given me and that it was my business to improve that time. This discourse, though very sensible, left a kind of sadness on my heart as if I might expect the affair would have a tragical issue still which, however, he had no certainty of and I did not indeed at that time question him about it. He having said that he would do his utmost to bring it to a good end and that he hoped he might, but he would not have me be secure and the consequence proved that he had reason for what he said. It was about a fortnight after this that I had some just apprehensions that I should be included in the next dead warrant at the ensuing sessions and that it was not without great difficulty and at last a humble petition for transportation that I avoided it. So ill was I beholding to fame and so prevailing was the fatal report of being an old offender. Though in that they did not do me strict justice for I was not in the sense of the law an old offender, whatever I was in the eye of the judge for I had never been before them in a judicial way before. So the judges could not charge me with being an old offender but the recorder was pleased to represent my case as he thought fit. I had now a certainty of life indeed but with the hard conditions of being ordered for transportation which indeed was hard condition in itself but not when comparatively considered and therefore I shall make no comments upon the sentence nor upon the choice I was put to. We shall all choose anything rather than death especially when tis attended by an uncomfortable rosbeck beyond it which was my case. The good minister whose interest though a stranger to me had obtained me the reprieve mourned sincerely for this part. He was in hopes he said that I should have ended my days under the influence of good instruction that I should not have been turned loose again among the wretched crew as they generally were thus sent abroad where as he said I must have more than ordinary secret assistance from the grace of God if I did not turn as wicked again as ever. I have not for a good while mentioned my governess who had during most if not all of this part been dangerously sick and being in as near a view of death by her disease as I was by my sentence was a great penitent I say I have not mentioned her nor indeed did I see her in all this time but being now recovering and just able to come abroad she came to see me. I told her my condition and what different flux and reflux of tears and hopes I had been agitated with I told her what I had escaped and upon what terms and she was present when the minister expressed his fears of my relapsing into wickedness upon my falling into the wretched companies that are generally transported indeed I had a melancholy reflection upon it in my own mind for I knew what a dreadful gang was always sent away together and I said to my governess that a good minister's fears were not without cause well well says she but I hope you will not be tempted with such a hard example as that and as soon as the minister was gone he told me she would not have me discouraged for perhaps ways and means might be found out to dispose of me in a particular way by myself of which he would talk further to me afterward I looked earnestly at her and I thought she looked more cheerful than she usually had done and I entertained immediately a thousand notions of being delivered but could not for the life image the methods or think of one that was the least feasible but I was too much concerned in it to let her go from me without explaining herself which though she was very loath to do yet my importunity prevailed and while I was still pressing she answered me in a few words thus why you have money have you not did you ever know one in your life that was transported net a hundred pounds in his pocket I'll warrant you child says she I understood her presently but don't I would leave all that and I saw no room to hope for anything but a strict execution of the order and as it was a severity that was esteemed a mercy there was no doubt but it would be strictly observed she said no more than this we will try what we can be done and so we parted for that night I lay in the prison near 15 weeks after this order for transportation was signed what the reason of it was I know not but at the end of this time I was put on board a ship in the Thames and with me a gang of 13 as hardened vial of creatures as ever new gate produced in my time and it would really well take up a history longer than mine to describe the degrees of impudence and audacious villainy that those 13 were arrived to and the manner of their behavior in the voyage of which I have a very diverting account by me which the captain of the ship who carried them over gave me the minutes of and which he caused his mate to write down at large it may perhaps be thought trifling to enter here into a relation of all the little incidents which attended me in this interval of my circumstances I mean between the final order of my transportation and the time of my going on board the ship and I am too near the end of my story to allow room for it but something relating to me in my Lancashire husband I must not admit he had as I have observed already been carried from the master side of the ordinary prison into the press yard with three of his comrades for they found another to add to them after some time here for what reason I knew not they were kept in custody without being brought to trial almost three months it seems they found means to bribe or buy off some of those who were expected to come in against them and they were wanted evidence for some time to convict them after some on this account at first they made a shift to get proof enough against two of them to carry them off but the other two of which my Lancashire husband was one lay still in suspense they had I think one positive evidence against each of them but the law strictly obliging them to have two witnesses they could make nothing of it yet it seems they were resolved not to part with the men neither not doubting but a further evidence would at last come in and in order this I think publication was made that such prisoners being taken any one that had been robbed by them might come to the prison and see them I took this opportunity to satisfy my curiosity pretending that I had been robbed in the Dunstable coach and that I would go to see the two I women but when I came into the pressure I so disguised myself and muffled my face up so that he could see little of me and consequently knew nothing of who I was and when I came back I said publicly that I knew them very well immediately it was rumored all over the prison that my flanders would do an evidence against one of the I women and that I was to come off by it from the sentence of transportation they out of it and immediately my husband desired to see this Mrs. Flanders that knew him so well and was to be an evidence against him and accordingly I had leave given to go to him I dressed myself up as well as the best clothes that I had suffered myself ever to appear in there would allow me and went to the pressure and had for some time a hood over my face he said little to me at first and asked me if I knew him I told him yes very well but as I concealed my face so I counterfeited my voice that he had not the least guess at who I was he asked me where I had seen him I told him between Dunstable and Brick Hill but turning to the keeper that stood by I asked if I might not be admitted to talk with him alone he said yes yes as much as I pleased and so very civilly withdrew as soon as he was gone I had shut the door I threw off my hood and bursting out into tears my dear says I do not know me he turned pale and stood speechless like one thunder struck and not able to conquer the surprise said no more but this let me sit down and sitting down by a table he laid his elbow on the table and leaning his head on his hand fixed his eyes on the ground as one stupid I cried so vehemently on the other hand that it was a good whileer I could speak anymore and after I had given some vent to my passion by tears I repeated the same words my dear do you not know me at which he answered yes and said no more a good while after some time continuing in the surprise is above he cast up his eyes towards me and said how could you be so cruel I did not readily understand what he meant and I answered how can you call me cruel what have I been cruel do you in to come to me says he in such a place as this is it not to insult me I have not robbed you at least not on the highway I perceived by this that he knew nothing of the miserable circumstances I was in and thought that having got some intelligence of his being there I had come to operate him with his leaving me but I had too much to say to him to be affronted and told him in few words that I was far from coming to insult him but at best I came to condole mutually that he would be easily satisfied that I had no such view when I should tell him that my condition was worse than is and that many ways he looked a little concerned at the general expression of my condition being worse than is but with a kind smile looked a little wildly and said how can that be when you see me fettered and a new gate and two of my companions executed already can you say your condition is worse than mine come my dear says I we have a long piece of work to do if I should be to relate or you to hear my unfortunate history but if you are disposed to hear it you will soon conclude with me that my condition is worse than yours how is that possible says he again when I expect to be cast for my life the very next sessions yes as I it is very possible when I shall tell you that I have been cast for my life three sessions ago and am under sentence of death is not my case worse than yours then indeed he stood silent again like one struck dumb and after a while he starts up unhappy couple says he how can this be possible I took him by the hand come my dear said I sit down and let us compare our sorrows I am a prisoner in this very house and in much worse circumstances than you and you will be satisfied I do not come to insult you when I tell you the particulars and with this we sat together and I told him so much of my story as I thought was convenient bringing it at last am I being reduced to great poverty and representing myself has fallen into some company that led me to relieve my distresses by way that I had been utterly unacquainted with and that they making an attempt at a tradesman's house I was seized upon for having been but just at the door the maid servant pulling me in that I neither had broken in lock nor taken anything away and that not withstanding that I was brought in guilty in sentence to die but that the judges having been made sensible of the hardship of my circumstances had obtained leave to remit the sentence upon my consenting to be transported I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for one mall flanders who was a famous successful thief that all of them had heard of but none of them had ever seen but that as he knew well was none of my name but I placed all to the account of my ill fortune and that under this name I was dealt with as an old offender though this was the first thing they had ever known of me I gave him a long particular of things that had be fallen me since I saw him but I told him if I had seen him since he might think I had and then gave him an account oh I had seen him at Brickale how furiously he was pursued and Al by giving an account that I knew him and that he was a very honest gentleman one mister the you and cry was stopped in the high constable went back again he listened most attentively to all my story and smiled at most of the particulars being all of them petty matters and infinitely below what he had been at that of but when I came to the story of Brickale he was surprised and was it you my dear city they gave the check to the mob that was at our heels there at Brickale yes that I it was I indeed and then I told him the particulars which I had observed in there why then he said it was you that saved my life at that time and I am glad I owe my life to you for I will pay the debt to you now and I'll deliver you from the present condition you are in or I will die in the attempt I told him by no means it was a risk do great not worth his running the hazard of and for a life not worth his saving it was no matter for that he said it was a life worth all the world a life that had given him a new life for says he I was never in real danger of being taken but that time till the last minute when I was taken indeed he told me his danger then lay in his believing he had not been pursued that way for they had gone from hockey quite another way and had come over the enclosed country into Brickale not by the road and were sure they had not been seen by anybody here he gave me a long history of his life which indeed would make a very strange history and be infinitely diverting he told me he took to the road about 12 years before he married me that the woman which called him brother was not really his sister or any kind to him but one that belonged to their gang and who keeping correspondence with him lived always in down having good store of acquaintance that she gave them a perfect intelligence of persons going out of down and that they had made several good booties by her correspondence that she thought she had fixed a fortune for him when she brought me to him but happened to be disappointed which he really could not blame her for that if it was his good luck that I had had the estate which he was informed I had he had resolved to leave off the road and livery tired sober life but never to appear in public till some general pardon had been passed or till he could for money have got his name into some particular pardon that so he might have been perfectly easy but that as it had proved otherwise he was obliged to put off his equipage and take on the old trade again he gave me a long account of some of his adventures and particularly one when he robbed the west Chester coaches near Litchfield when he got a very great booty and after that how he robbed five gracious in the west going to bird fair in Wiltshire to buy sheep he told me he got so much money on those two occasions that if he had known where to have found me he would certainly have embraced my proposal of going with me to Virginia or to have settled in a plantation on some other parts of the English colonies in America he told me he wrote two or three letters to me directed according to my order but heard nothing from me this I indeed knew to be true but the letters coming to my hand in the time of my latter husband I could do nothing in it and therefore chose to give no answer that so he might rather believe they had miscarried being thus disappointed he said he carried on the old trade ever since though when he had gotten so much money he said he did not run such desperate risks as he did before and he gave me some accounts of several hard and desperate encounters which he had had with gentlemen on the road who parted too hardly with their money and showed me some wounds he had received and he had one or two very terrible wounds indeed as particularly one by a pistol bullet which broke his arm and another with a sword which ran him quite through the body but that missing his vitals he was cured again one of his comrades having kept with him so faithfully and so friendly as that he assisted him in riding near 80 miles before his arm was set and then got a surgeon in a considerable city remote from that place where it was done pretending they were gentlemen traveling towards Carlisle and that they had been attacked on the road by highway men and that one of them had shot him in the arm and broke the bone this he said his friend managed so well that they were not suspected at all but they still till he was perfectly cured he gave me so many distinct accounts of his adventures that it is with great reluctance that I declined the relating them but I consider that this is my story not is I then inquired into the circumstances of his present case at that time and what it was he expected when he came to be tried he told me they had no evidence against him or but very little for that of three robberies which they were all charged with it was his good fortune that he was but in one of them and that there was but one witness to be add for that fact which was not sufficient but that it was expected some others would come in against him that he thought indeed when he first saw me that I had been one that came of that errand and that if somebody came in against him he hoped he should be cleared that he had some intimation that if he would submit to transport himself he might be admitted to it without a trial and that he could not think of it with any temper and thought he couldn't much easier submit to be hanged I blamed him for that and told him I blamed him on two accounts first because if he was transported there might be a hundred ways for him that was a gentleman and a bold enterprising man to find his way back again and perhaps some ways and means to come back before he went he smiled at that pot and said he should like the last the best of the two for he had a kind of a horror upon his mind at his being sent over to the plantations as Roman sent condemned slaves to work in the mines that he thought the passage into another state let it be what it would much more tolerable at the gallows and that this was the general notion of all the gentleman who were driven by the exigence of their fortunes to take the road that at the place of execution there was at least an end of all the miseries of the present state and as for what was to follow a man was in his opinion as likely to repent sincerely in the last fortnight of his life under the pressures and agonies of a jail in the condemned whole as he would ever be in the woods and wilderness of America that servitude and odd labor what things gentlemen could never stoop to that it was but the way to force them to be their own executioners afterwards which was much worse and that therefore he could not have any patience when he did but think of being transported I used the utmost of my endeavor to persuade him and joined that known woman's rhetoric to it I mean that of tears I told him the infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater pressure upon the spirits of a gentleman than any of the mortifications that he could meet with abroad could be that he had at least in the other a chance for his life whereas here he had none at all that it was the easiest thing in the world for him to manage the captain of a ship who were generally speaking men of good humor and some gallantry and a small matter of conduct especially if there was any money to be add would make way for him to buy himself off when he came to Virginia he looked wistfully at me and I thought I guessed at what he meant that is to say that he had no money but I was mistaken his meaning was another way you hinted just now my dear said he that there might be a way of coming back before I went by which I understood you that I might be possible to buy it off here I had rather give two hundred pounds to prevent going than a hundred pounds to be set at liberty when I came there that is my dear said I because you do not know the place as well as I do that may be said he and yet I believe as well as you know it you would do the same unless it is because as you told me you have a mother there I told him as to my mother it was next to impossible but that she must be dead many years before and as for any other relations that I might have there I knew them not now that since the misfortunes I had been under had reduced me to the condition I had been in for some years I had not kept up any correspondence with them and that he could easily believe I should find but a cold reception from them if I should be put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported felon that therefore if I went there I resolved not to see them but that I had many views in going there if it should be my fate which took off all the uneasy part of it and if he found himself obliged to go also I should easily instruct him how to manage himself so as never to go as a servant at all especially since I found he was not destitute of money which was the only friend in such a condition he smiled and said he did not tell me yet money I took him up short and told him I hoped he did not understand by my speaking that I should expect any supply from him if he had money that on the other hand though I had not a great deal yet I did not want and while I had any I would rather add to him than weaken him in that article seeing whatever he had I knew in the case of transportation he would have occasion of it all he expressed himself in a most tender manner upon that ed he told me what many had was not a great deal but that he would never hide any of it from me if I wanted it and that he assured me he did not speak with any such apprehensions that he was only intent upon what I had hinted to him before he went that here he knew what to do with himself but that there he should be the most ignorant helpless wretch alive I told him he frightened and terrified himself with that which had no terror in it that if he had money as I was glad to hear he had he might not only avoid the servitude supposed to be the consequence of transportation but begin the world upon a new foundation and that such a one as he could not fail of success in with the common application usual in such cases that he could not but call to mind that what I had recommended to him many years before and had proposed it for our mutual substance and restoring our fortunes in the world and I would tell him now that to convince him both of the certainty of it and am I being fully acquainted with the method and also fully satisfied in the probability of success he should first see me deliver myself from the necessity of going over at all and then that I would go with him freely and of my own choice and perhaps carry enough with me to satisfy him that I did not offer it for want of being able to live without assistance from him but that I thought our mutual misfortunes had been such as were sufficient to reconcile us both to quitting this part of the world and living where nobody could upgrade us with what was passed or we be in any dread of a prison and without agonies of a condemned hold to drive us to it this where we should look back on all our past disasters with infinite satisfaction when we should consider that our enemies should entirely forget us and that we should live as new people in the new world nobody having anything to say to us or we to them I pressed this home to him with so many arguments and answered all his own passionate objection so effectively that he embraced me and told me I treated him with such sincerity and affection as overcame him that he would take my advice and would strive to submit to his fate in hope of having the comfort of my assistance and if so faithful a counselor and such a companion in his misery but still he put me in mind what I had mentioned before namely that there might be some way to get off before he went and that he might be possible to avoid going at all which he said would be much better I told him he should see and be fully satisfied that I would do my utmost in that part too and if it did not succeed yet that I would make good the rest we parted after this long conference with such testimonies of kindness and affection as I thought were equal if not superior to that of our parting at Dunstable and now I saw more plainly than before the reason why he declined coming at that time any farther with me toward London and Dunstable and why when we parted there he told me it was not convenient for him to come part of the way to London to bring me going as he would otherwise have done I have observed that the account of his life would have made a much more pleasing history than this of mine and indeed nothing in it was more strange than this part that he carried on that desperate trade full five and twenty years and had never been taken the success he had met with had been so very uncommon and such that sometimes he had lived handsomely and retired in a place for a year or two at a time keeping himself in a man's oven to wait on him and it often sat in the coffee houses and heard the very people whom he had robbed give accounts of their being robbed and of the place and circumstances so that he could easily remember that it was the same in this manner it seems he lived near Liverpool at the time he unluckily married me for a fortune had I been the fortune he expected I verily believe as he said that he would have taken up and lived honestly all his days he had with the rest of his misfortunes the good luck not to be actually upon the spot when the robbery was done which he was committed for and so none of the persons robbed could swear to him or add anything to charge upon him but it seems as if he were taken with the gang one hard mouthed countrymen swore home to him and they were like to have others come in according to the publication they had made so that they expected more evidence against him and for that reason he was kept in old however the offer which was made to him of admitting him to transportation was made as I understood upon the intercession of some great person who pressed him hard to accept of it before a trial and indeed as he knew there were several that might come in against him I thought his friend was in the right and I lay at him night and day to delay it no longer at last with much difficulty he gave his consent and as he was not therefore admitted to transportation court and on his petition as I was so he found himself under a difficulty to avoid embarking himself as I had said he might have done his great friend who was his intercessor for the favor of that grant having given security for him that he should transport himself and not return within the term this archip broke all my measures for the steps I took afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered holy ineffectual unless I would abandon him and leave him to go to America by himself then which he protested he wouldn't much rather venture although he were certain to go directly to the gallows end of section 21 all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain