the Post Master General, and laid them down in the box-house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, being afraid to go with them to the office, because a great reward was offered for the robber.  And that he, having changed a twenty-pound bank-note, paid five pounds of it away to his landlord, Mr. Marlow.  He reflected also very severely on the evidence given against him by Mr. Burton, which he said was the very reverse of the truth.  Burton having often solicited him to go upon the highway as the shortest method of easing his misfortunes and bringing them both money.

As he persisted in averring the confession he made to be the truth, it was objected to him that it was a story, the most improbable in the world, that when a man had hazarded his life to rob the Bristol mail, he should then throw away all the booty, and leave it in such a place as Covent Garden, for any stranger to take up as he came by; yet neither this nor anything else that could be said to him had so much weight as to move him to a free confession of his guilt, but on the contrary, he gave greater and more evident signs of a sullen, morose and reserved disposition, spoke little, desired not to be interrupted, made general confessions of his sins, pleased himself with high conceits of the Divine Mercy, and endeavoured as much as possible to avoid conferences with anybody, and especially declined speaking of that offence for which he was to die.

When he first came to Newgate, the keepers had, it seems, a strong apprehension that he would attempt something against his own life, and upon this suspicion they were very careful of him, and enjoined a barber who shaved him in prison to be so, lest he should take that occasion to cut his throat.  Yet nothing of this happened until the day of his execution, when the keepers coming to him in the morning, found him praying very devoutly in his cell; but about twenty minutes after, going thither again, they perceived he had fastened his sword belt which he wore always about him to the grate of the window which looked out of his cell, to the end of which he tied his handkerchief, and having then adjusted that about his neck, he strangled himself with it, and was dead when the keepers opened the doors to look in.

The Ordinary makes this remark upon his exit, that it is to be feared he was a hypocrite and that little of what he said can be believed.  For my part, I am far from taking upon me either to enter into the breasts of men or pretend to set bounds to the mercy of God, and therefore without any further remarks, shall conclude his life with informing my readers that at the time he put an end to his own being, he was about forty-eight years of age, and a man in his person and behaviour very unlikely to have been such a one as it is to be feared (notwithstanding all his denials) he really was.

The Life of JOHN DOYLE, a Highwayman