He had not at that time any designs of doing anything like the fact for which he afterwards suffered, but continuing still to frequent his dancing-mates’ company, they promised to put him into a road to supply him with money enough to live without working, provided he had courage to do as they would have him; and he, without considering what he did, giving consent to their motions, went out one evening with David Anderson, Country Will and Jenny Austin, and after a while they stripped one Thomas Collier, and robbed him of his coat and waistcoat, hat, and a pair of silver buckles and other things, with a half guinea in gold, and twenty-five shillings in silver.  For this offence he was quickly after committed, apprehended, and sent to Newgate, where, upon a plain proof of the fact, he was convicted and ordered for execution.

When the poor man was under sentence of death, he sufficiently repented those idle hours he had consumed in dancing, and in the other merriments into which he had been led by his companions.  He was now sensible how easily he might have lived if he had taken the advice of his kind master, who with so much pains endeavoured not only to instruct him in his profession, but also to reclaim him from those follies in which he saw him engaged.  The thoughts of death threw him into violent agonies from whence his natural sense (of which he had a great deal) at last in some measure recovered him; and when upon the coming down of the death warrant, he saw there were no hopes left for him in this life, he applied himself with very great ardency to secure happiness in the next.

He declared that the fact for which he died was the first he ever committed, and that the depositions against him were not exactly conformable to truth.  A day or two before his death, he appeared to be very calm and very cheerful, submitted with a perfect resignation to the lot which had befallen him, and at the place of execution exhorted the people not to let their curiosity only be satisfied in the sight of his wretched death, but he warned them also from the commission of such crimes as might bring them to a like fate.  He suffered on the 3rd of November, 1726, at Tyburn, being then about twenty-two years of age.

The Life of ANTHONY DRURY, a Highwayman

This unfortunate man, whose fate made a great noise in the town at the time it happened, was born of parents neither mean in family nor fortune, in the county of Norfolk, where he received his education, on which no little pains and expense were bestowed.  As to the particular circumstances of his life in his most early years, as no exact accounts have come to my hands, so I do not think myself obliged to frame any adventures for the entertainment of my readers, a practice very common, yet I think unjustifiable in itself.  All that I can is that it appears he lived at Oxford and Bicester before he came to Wendover, at which place he had a house and family at the time of his death.