is impossible for us to know, and must be left to be decided by the Great Judge to whom the secrets of all hearts are open.  However, at his death he appeared tolerably composed and cheerful, and turning to the people said, You see, they who contrived to burn the house and the people in it escaped, but I, who never consented to any such thing, die as you see. Some discourse there was of his having buried a portmanteau and about fourteen hundred pounds; he was spoke to about it, and did not deny he had it.  He said he hid it upon Finchley Common and that by the arms, which was the Spread Eagle, he took to be an ambassador’s.  As to the diamond ring he had been seen to wear, he did not affirm he came very honestly by it, but would not give any direct answer concerning it, and seemed uneasy that he should have such questions put to him at the very point of death.  He suffered the 15th of June, 1724, about thirty years of age.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [39] See note, page 49.

   [40] An old-fashioned play on the words “awl” and “all,” and
        means, of course, packing up all his possessions.

   [41] A busy market for fish and vegetables, which occupied the
        site on which the present Mansion House stands.  The market was
        moved, in 1737, to Farringdon Street.

The Life of LUMLEY DAVIS, a Highwayman

Such is the frailty of human nature that neither the best examples nor the most liberal education can warrant an honest life, or secure to the most careful parents the certainty of their children not becoming a disgrace to them, either in their lives or by their deaths.

This malefactor, of whom the course of our memoirs now obliges us to make mention, was the son of a man of the same name, viz., Lumley Davis, who was, it seems, in circumstances good enough to procure his sons being brought up in one of the greatest and best schools in England.  There his proficiency procured him an election upon the establishment, and he became respected as a person whose parts would do honour even to that remarkable seminary of learning where he had been bred.  But unaccountably growing fond, all on a sudden, of going to some trade or employment and absolutely refusing to continue any longer at his studies, his friends were obliged to comply with the ardency of his request and accordingly put him apprentice to an eminent vintner at the One Tun Tavern, in the Strand.

He continued there but a little while before he was as much dissatisfied with that as he had been with learning, so that leaving his master, and leading an unsettled kind of life, he fell into great debts, being unable to satisfy which, when demanded, he was arrested and thrown into the Marshalsea.  There for some time he continued in a very deplorable condition, till by the charitable assistance of a friend, his debt was paid and the fees of the prison discharged.