FOOTNOTES: 

   [33] The Jacobite rising of 1715.

The Life of CAPTAIN STANLEY, a Murderer

There cannot be a greater misfortune than to want education, except it be the having a bad one.  The minds of young persons are generally compared to paper on which we may write whatever we think fit, but if it be once blurred and blotted with improper characters, it becomes much harder to impress proper sentiments thereon, because those which were first there must be totally erased.  This seems to have been too much the case with the unhappy person of whom the thread of these narrations requires that I should speak, viz., Captain Stanley.

This unhappy young gentleman was the son of an officer in the army who married the sister of Mr. Palmer, of Duce Hill, in Essex, where she was brought to bed of this unfortunate son John, in the year 1698.  The first rudiments he received were those of cruelty and blood, his father at five years old often parrying and thrusting him with a sword, pricking him himself and encouraging other officers to play with him in the same manner, so that his boy, as old Stanley phrased it, might never be afraid of a point—­a wretched method of bringing up a child and which was highly likely to produce the sad end he came to.

He served afterwards in the army with his father in Spain and Portugal, where he suffered hardships enough, but they did not very much affect him, who acquired by his hopeful education so savage a temper as to delight in nothing so much as trampling on the dead carcasses in the fields after an engagement.

Returning into England with his father, old Stanley had the misfortune to slab a near relation of my Lord Newbury’s, in the Tilt Yard,[34] for which he was committed prisoner to Newgate.  Afterwards being released and commanded into Ireland, he carried over with him this son John and procured for him an ensign’s commission in a regiment there.  Poor young Stanley’s sprightly temper gained him abundance of acquaintance and (if it be not to profane the name) of friends amongst the young rakes in Ireland, some of whom were persons of very great quality, and had such an affection for him as to continue their visits and relieve his necessities when under his last misfortunes in Newgate.  But such company involving him at that time in expenses he was no way able to support, he was obliged shortly to part for ready money with his ensign’s commission, which gave his father great pain and uneasiness.

Not long after, he came again into England and to London, where he pursued the same methods, though his father importuned him to apply to General Stanhope, as a person he was sure would assist him, having been always a friend to their family, and particularly to old Stanley himself.  But Jack was become a favourite with the ladies, and had taken an easier road to what he accounted happiness, living either upon the benevolence