However, the constable kept his temper, and would not be
provoked; and then I put in and said, ‘Come, Mr. Constable,
let him alone; I shall find ways enough to fetch him before a
magistrate, I don’t fear that; but there’s the fellow,’ says I,
‘he was the man that seized on me as I was innocently going
along the street, and you are a witness of the violence with
me since; give me leave to charge you with him, and carry
him before the justice.’ ‘Yes, madam,’ says the constable;
and turning to the fellow ‘Come, young gentleman,’ says he
to the journeyman, ‘you must go along with us; I hope you
are not above the constable’s power, though your master is.’
The fellow looked like a condemned thief, and hung back,
then looked at his master, as if he could help him; and he, like
a fool, encourage the fellow to be rude, and he truly resisted
the constable, and pushed him back with a good force when
he went to lay hold on him, at which the constable knocked
him down, and called out for help; and immediately the shop
was filled with people, and the constable seized the master
and man, and all his servants.
This first ill consequence of this fray was, that the woman
they had taken, who was really the thief, made off, and got
clear away in the crowd; and two other that they had stopped
also; whether they were really guilty or not, that I can say
nothing to.
By this time some of his neighbours having come in, and,
upon inquiry, seeing how things went, had endeavoured to
bring the hot-brained mercer to his senses, and he began to
be convinced that he was in the wrong; and so at length we
went all very quietly before the justice, with a mob of about
five hundred people at our heels; and all the way I went I
could hear the people ask what was the matter, and other reply
and say, a mercer had stopped a gentlewoman instead of a
thief, and had afterwards taken the thief, and now the
gentlewoman had taken the mercer, and was carrying him
before the justice. This pleased the people strangely, and
made the crowd increase, and they cried out as they went,
‘Which is the rogue? which is the mercer?’ and especially
the women. Then when they saw him they cried out, ‘That’s
he, that’s he’; and every now and then came a good dab of
dirt at him; and thus we marched a good while, till the mercer
thought fit to desire the constable to call a coach to protect
himself from the rabble; so we rode the rest of the way, the
constable and I, and the mercer and his man.
When we came to the justice, which was an ancient gentleman
in Bloomsbury, the constable giving first a summary account
of the matter, the justice bade me speak, and tell what I had
to say. And first he asked my name, which I was very loth to
give, but there was no remedy, so I told him my name was
Mary Flanders, that I was a widow, my husband being a sea
captain, died on a voyage to Virginia; and some other
circumstances I told which he could never contradict, and
that I lodged at present in town with such a person, naming
my governess; but that I was preparing to go over to America,
where my husband’s effects lay, and that I was going that day
to buy some clothes to put myself into second mourning, but
had not yet been in any shop, when that fellow, pointing to
the mercer’s journeyman, came rushing upon me with such
fury as very much frighted me, and carried me back to his
master’s shop, where, though his master acknowledged I was
not the person, yet he would not dismiss me, but charged a
constable with me.
Then I proceeded to tell how the journeyman treated me; how
they would not suffer me to send for any of my friends; how
afterwards they found the real thief, and took the very goods
they had lost upon her, and all the particulars as before.