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 I 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 #46, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and for breaking
open his doors; whereas I knew very well they could not
pretend to prove I had broken up 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 t’ 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 stole nothing, they had lost nothing,
that 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 a 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 at them, the maids made their impudent mocks
upon that, and spent their wit upon it very much; told the
Court I had looked at them sufficiently, and approved them
very well, for I had packed them up under my clothes, and
was a-going with them.
In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the
burglary, which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing