At the place of execution he was so faint, confused, and in such a consternation that he could not speak either to the people, or to those who were nearer at hand, dying with the greatest marks of dejection and confusion that could possibly be seen in any criminal whatever.  He was about thirty years old at the time of his execution, which was at high-water mark, Execution Dock, on the 14th of August, 1723.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [31] A detailed account of this villain is given in Johnson’s
        History of the Pirates.

   [32] Where the warrant had evidently been taken for the
        signature of the king or a minister.

The Life of HUMPHRY ANGIER, a Highwayman and Footpad

From the life of Roche, the course of those papers from which I extract these accounts leads me to mention this criminal, that the deaths of malefactors may not only terrify those who behold them dying, but also posterity, who, by hearing their crimes and the event which they brought on, may avoid falling into the one, for fear of feeling the other.

Humphry Angier was by birth of the Kingdom of Ireland, his father being a man in very ordinary circumstances in a little town a few miles distant from Dublin.  As soon as this son was able to do anything, he sent him to the city of Cork, and there bound him apprentice to a cooper.  His behaviour while an apprentice was so bad that his master utterly despaired to do any good with him, and therefore was not sorry that he ran away from him.  However, he found a way to vex him sufficiently, for he got into a crew of loose fellows, which so far frightened the old cooper that he was at a considerable expense to hire persons to watch his house for the four years that Angier loitered about that city.  At last his father even took him from thence, and brought him over into England where he left him at full liberty to do what he thought fit; resolving with himself that if his son would take to ill-courses, it should be where the fame of his villainies might not reflect upon him and his family.

He was now near eighteen years of age and being in some fear that some persons whom he had wronged might bring him into danger, he listed himself in the king’s service, and went down with a new raised regiment into Scotland, where he hoped to make something by plundering the inhabitants, it being in the time of the Rebellion[33].  But he did not succeed very well there, and on his return fell into the company of William Duce, whom we have mentioned before.  His conversation soon seduced him to follow the same course of life, and that their intimacy might be the more strongly knit, he married Duce’s sister.  Then engaging himself with all that gang, he committed abundance of robberies in their company, but was far from falling into that barbarous manner of beating the passengers which was grown customary and habitual to Mead, Butler, and some others of his and Duce’s companions.