Though the nearness of my approaching death ought to shut out from my thoughts all temporal concerns, yet I could not compose my mind into that quietness with which I hope to pass from this sinful world into the presence of the Almighty, before I had thus exorted you to take particular warning from my death, which the intent of the Law to deter others from wickedness hath decreed to be in a public and ignominious manner.  Amidst the terrors which the frailty of human nature (shocked with the prospect of so terrible an end) makes my afflicted heart to feel, even these sorrows are increased, and all my woes doubled by a story which is spread, I hope without the least grounds of truth, that ye, as well as I, have lived by taking away by force the property of others.

Let the said examples of my poor brother, who died by the hand of Justice, and of me, who now follow him in the same unhappy course, deter you not only from those flagrant offences which have been so fatal unto us, but also from those foolish and sinful pleasures in which it is but too frequent for young persons to indulge themselves.  Remember that I tell you from a sad experience, that the wages of sin, though in appearance they be sometimes large and what may promise outward pleasure, yet are they attended with such inward disquiet as renders it impossible for those to have received them to enjoy either quiet or ease.  Work, then, hard at your employments, and be assured that sixpence got thereby will afford you more solid satisfaction than the largest acquisitions at the expense of your conscience.  That God may, by His grace, enable you to follow this my last advice, and that He may bless your honest labour with plenty and prosperity is the earnest prayer of your dying brother

    William Colthouse

Till the day of his execution he had denied his being accessory to the intended escape by forcing the prison, but when he came to Tyburn, he acknowledged that assertion to be false, and owned that he caused the two pistols to be provided for that purpose.  He was about thirty-four years of age at the time he suffered, which was on the 8th of February, 1722, with Burgess, Shaw and Smith.

The Life of WILLIAM BURRIDGE, a Highwayman

In the course of these lives I have more than once observed that the vulgar have false notions of courage, and that applause is given to it by those who have as false notions of it as themselves, and this it was in a great measure which made William Burridge take to those fatal practices which had the usual termination in an ignominious death.  He was the son of reputable people, who lived at West Haden in Northamptonshire, who after affording him a competent education, thought proper to bind him to his father’s trade of a carpenter.  But he, having been pretty much indulged before that time, could not by any means be brought to relish labour, or working for his bread.