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.