At the place of execution, to which he was conveyed in a mourning coach, he turned pale, seemed uneasy, and complained that he was very sick, entreating a gentleman by him to support him with his hand.  He desired to be unbound that he might be at liberty to pray kneeling, which with some difficulty was granted.  He then applied himself to his devotions with much fervency, and then submitted to his fate, but when the cap was drawn over his eyes he seemed to shed tears abundantly.  Immediately before he was turned off he said his friends had provided a hearse to carry away his body and he hoped nobody would be so cruel as to deny his relations his dead limbs to be interred, adding, that unless he were assured of this, he could not die in peace.

Such was the end of a young man in person and capacity every way fitted to have made a reputable figure in the world, if either his natural principles, or his education had laid any restraint upon his vices; but as his passions hurried him beyond all bounds, so they brought a just end upon themselves, by finishing a life spent in sensual pleasures with an ignominious death, which happened at Tyburn in the twenty-fifth year of his age, on the 23rd of December, 1722.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [34] This was an open space, facing the banquetting-house of
        old Whitehall, and included part of what is now Horse Guards’
        Parade.

   [35] This was one of the sheriff’s compters—­the other was in
        the Poultry—­and served for debtors as well as criminals.  It
        stood about half-way up Wood Street, on the east side.

   [36] There were two conduits in Cheapside; the Great, which
        stood in the middle of the street, near its junction with the
        Poultry, and the Little, which was at the other end, facing
        Foster Lane and Old Change.

The Life of STEPHEN GARDINER, a Highwayman and Housebreaker

Stephen Gardiner was the son of parents of middling circumstances, living at the time of his birth in Moorfields.  This, perhaps, was the immediate cause of his ruin, since he learnt there, while a boy, to idle away his time, and to look on nothing as so great a pleasure as gaming and cudgel playing.  This took up equally his time and his thoughts, till he grew up to about fourteen years old, when his friends placed him out as an apprentice to a weaver.

While he was with his master he did so many unlucky tricks as occasioned not only severe usage at home, but incurred also the dislike and hatred of all the neighbours; so that instead of interposing to preserve him from his master’s correction, they were continually complaining and getting him beaten; nay, sometimes when his master was not ready enough to do it, would beat him themselves.  Stephen was so wearied out with this kind of treatment, notwithstanding it arose solely from his own fault, that he determined to run