me to him, but happened to be disappointed, which he really
could not blame her for; that if it had been his good luck that
I had had the estate, which she was informed I had, he had
resolved to leave off the road and live a retired, sober live 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 up 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 Lichfield, when he got a very great booty; and after that,
how he robbed five graziers, in the west, going to Burford 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.
Then he gave me some account of several hard and desperate
encounters which he 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 eighty
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 travelling towards Carlisle
and that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen,
and that one of them had shot him into the arm and broke
the bone.
This, he said, his friend managed so well, that they were not
suspected at all, but lay still till he was perfectly cured. He
gave me so many distinct accounts of his adventures, that it
is with great reluctance that I decline the relating them; but I
consider that this is my own story, not his.
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 that 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 had 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; but that if somebody came in against him, he hoped
he should be cleared; that he had had some intimation, that if
he would submit to transport himself, he might be admitted
to it without a trial, but that he could not think of it with any
temper, and thought he could 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