By this time misfortune and remorse had taught the poor man whose life we are writing to addict himself too much to drinking, especially to strong liquors, so that the first experiment he made of the practicability of getting rid of his false money was in putting off two sixpences to a distiller for gin, in which he succeeded without being suspected.  But going to a shoemaker’s and buying there a ready-made pair of shoes, he was seized for attempting to pay the man with two bad half-crowns, which though they looked pretty well to the eye, were nevertheless much too light when they came to be weighed against the metal that it was intended they should pass for.

When carried before a Justice his heart soon failed him and almost as soon as he was asked he revealed the whole truth of the matter, impeaching both the countryman who had taught him and a person with whom they had trusted the secret here in town.  However, his confession was of little benefit to him, for at the next sessions he was capitally convicted and from thenceforward cast off all hopes of life.  As he was a man who did not lack good natural parts, during the short time he had to live he endeavoured to make his prayer to God for the forgiveness of the many errors of his life, attending also constantly at the time of public devotion.  Yet for all this he could not be persuaded that there was any great degree of guilt in what he had done, but imagined on the contrary that he was much more innocent than his fellow malefactors, regretting, however, the heavy misfortune he had brought upon himself and family, two of his children dying during the time of his imprisonment, and his wife and third child coming upon the parish.  In which sentiments he continued until the day of his execution, which was on the same with the before-mentioned John Turner, this criminal being then about fifty years of age.

The Lives of JAMES SHERWOOD, GEORGE WEEDON and JOHN HUGHS, Street Robbers and Footpads

Amongst the many artifices by which vice covers itself from our apprehension, there is no method which it more commonly takes, and yet better succeeds in, than by putting on a mask of virtue and thereby imposing the most flagitious actions upon us as things indifferent, sometimes as things which may gain applause.

This was exactly the case with the persons whose lives we are now about to write, who were all of them young men of tolerable education, but giving way to their vicious inclinations, they associated themselves together for the better carrying on those evil practices by which they supported their extravagances, into which lewd women especially had betrayed them.