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, viz. 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
place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a
man-servant to wait on him, and had 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 had anything to charge upon him. But
it seems as he was taken with the gang, one hard-mouthed
countryman 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 hold.
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 in 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 favour of that
grant, having given security for him that he should transport
himself, and not return within the term.
This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took
afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered
wholly ineffectual, unless I would abandon him, and leave
him to go to America by himself; than which he protested he
would much rather venture, although he were certain to go
directly to the gallows.
I must now return to my case. The time of my being transported
according to my sentence was near at hand; my governess, who
continued my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it
could not be done unless with an expense too heavy for my
purse, considering that to be left naked and empty, unless I had
resolved to return to my old trade again, had been worse than
my transportation, because there I knew I could live, here I
could not. The good minister stood very hard on another
account to prevent my being transported also; but he was
answered, that indeed my life had been given me at his first
solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was
sensibly grieved at my going, because, as he said, he feared I
should lose the good impressions which a prospect of death
had at first made on me, and which were since increased by
his instructions; and the pious gentleman was exceedingly
concerned about me on that account.
On the other hand, I really was not so solicitous about it as I
was before, but I industriously concealed my reasons for it
from the minister, and to the last he did not know but that I
went with the utmost reluctance and affliction.
It was in the month of February that I was, with seven other
convicts, as they called us, delivered to a merchant that traded