All this put Blueskin at last into such a passion that though this discourse happened upon the leads at the Old Bailey; in the presence of the Court then sitting, Blake could not forbear taking a revenge for what he took to be an insult on him.  And therefore, without ado, he clapped one hand under Jonathan’s chin, and with the other, taking a sharp knife out of his pocket, cut him a large gash across the throat, which everybody at the time it was done judged mortal.  Jonathan was carried off, all covered with blood, and though at that time he professed the greatest resentment for such usage, affirming that he had done all that lay in his power for the man who had so cruelly designed against his life; yet when he afterwards came to be under sentence of death, he regretted prodigiously the escape he had made then from death, often wishing that the knife of Blake had put an end to his life, rather than left him to linger out his days till so ignominious a fate befell him.

But it was not only Blake who had entertained notions of putting him to death.  He had disobliged almost the whole group of villains with whom he had concern, and there were numbers of them who had taken it into their heads to deprive him of life.  His escapes in the apprehending such persons were sometimes very narrow; he received wounds in almost every part of his body, his skull was twice fractured, and his whole constitution so broken by these accidents and the great fatigue he went through, that when he fell under the misfortunes which brought him to his death, he was scarce able to stand upright, and was never in a condition to go to chapel.

But we have broke a little into the thread of our history, and must therefore go back in order to trace the causes which brought on Jonathan’s last adventures, and finally his violent death.  This we shall now relate in the clearest and concisest manner that the thing will allow; being well furnished for that purpose, having to personal experience added the best intelligence that could be procured, and that, too, from persons the most deserving of credit.

The practices of this criminal in the manner we have before mentioned continued long after the Act of Parliament; and in so notorious a manner, at last, that the magistrates in London and Middlesex thought themselves obliged by the duty of their office to take notice of him.  This occasioned a warrant to be granted against him by a worshipful alderman of the City, upon which Mr. Wild being apprehended somewhere near Wood Street, he was carried into the Rose Sponging-house.  There I myself saw him sitting in the kitchen at the fire, waiting the leisure of the magistrate who was to examine him.