Matthew was a perfect composition of all the vices that enter into low life.  He was idle, inclined to drunkenness, cruel and a coward; nor would he have had spirit enough to attack anybody on the road had it not been to supply him with money for merry meetings and dancing bouts, to which he was carried by his prevailing passion for loose women.  And these expeditions keeping him continually bare, robbing and junketting, desire of pleasure and fear of the gallows were the whole round of both his actions and his thoughts.

At last the matrimonial maggot bit his brain, and alter a short courtship, he prevailed on a young girl in the neighbourhood to go up with him to London, in order to their marriage.  When they were there, finding his stock reduced so low that he had not even money to purchase the wedding ring, he pretended that a legacy of fifteen pounds was just left him in the country, and with a thousand promises of a quick return, set out from London to fetch it.  When he left the town, full of uneasy thoughts, he travelled towards Neasden and Willesden Green, where formerly he had lived.  He intended to have lurked there till he had an opportunity of robbing as many persons as to make up fifteen pounds from their effects.  In pursuance of this resolution, he designed in himself to attack every passenger he saw, but whenever it came to the push, the natural cowardice of his temper prevailed and his heart failed him.

[Illustration:  MATTHEW CLARK CUTTING THE THROAT OF SARAH GOLDINGTON

(From the Annals of Newgate)]

While he loitered about there, the master of an alehouse hard by took notice of him and asked him how he came to idle about in haytime, when there was so much work, offering at the same time to hire him for a servant.  Upon this discourse Clark immediately recollected that all the persons belonging to this man’s house must be out haymaking, except the maid, who served his liquors and waited upon guests.  As soon, therefore, as he had parted from the master and saw he was gone into the fields, he turned back and went into his house, where renewing his former acquaintance with the maid, who as he had guessed, was there alone, and to whom he formerly had been a sweetheart, he sat near an hour drinking and talking in that jocose manner which is usual between people of their condition in the country.  But in the midst of all his expressions of affection, he mediated how to rob the house, his timorous disposition supposing a thousand dangers from the knowledge the maid had of him.

He resolved, in order absolutely to secure himself, to murder her out of the way; upon which, having secretly drawn his knife out of his sheath, and hiding it under his coat, he kissed her, designing at the same time to dispatch her; but his heart failed him the first time.  However, getting up and kissing her a second time, he darted it into her windpipe; but its edge being very dull, the poor creature made a shift to mutter his name, and endeavoured to scramble after him.  Upon which he returned, and with the utmost inhumanity cut her neck to the bone quite round; after which he robbed the house of some silver, but being confounded and astonished did not carry off much.