In the meantime the crowd was very great, and, with his usual hypocrisy, Jonathan harangued them to this purpose. I wonder, good people, what it is you would see?  I am a poor honest man, who have done all I could do to serve people when they have had the misfortune to lose their goods by the villainy of thieves.  I have contributed more than any man living to bringing the most daring and notorious malefactors to justice.  Yet now by the malice of my enemies, you see I am in custody, and am going before a magistrate who I hope will do me justice.  Why should you insult me, therefore?  I don’t know that I ever injured any of you?  Let me intreat you, therefore, as you see me lame in body, and afflicted in mind, not to make me more uneasy than I can bear.  If I have offended against the law it will punish me, but it gives you no right to use me ill, unheard, and unconvicted.

By this time the people of the house and the Compter officers had pretty well cleared the place, upon which he began to compose himself, and desired them to get a coach to the door, for he was unable to walk.  About an hour after, he was carried before a Justice and examined, and I think was thereupon immediately committed to Newgate.  He lay there a considerable time before he was tried; at last he was convicted capitally upon the following fact, which appeared on the evidence, exactly in the same light in which I shall state it.

He was indicted on the afore-mentioned Statute, for receiving money for the restoring stolen goods, without apprehending the persons by whom they were stolen.  In order to support this charge, the prosecutrix, Catherine Stephens,[64] deposed as follows: 

On the 22nd of January, I had two persons come in to my shop under pretence of buying some lace.  They were so difficult that I had none below would please them, so leaving my daughter in the shop, I stepped upstairs and brought down another box.  We could not agree about the price, and so they went away together.  In about half an hour I missed a tin box of lace that I valued at L50.  The same night and the next I went to Jonathan Wild’s house; but meeting with him at home, I advertised the lace that I had lost with a reward of fifteen guineas, and no questions asked.  But hearing nothing of it, I went to Jonathan’s house again, and then met with him at home.  He desired me to give him a description of the persons that I suspected, which I did, as near as I could; and then he told me, that he would make enquiry, and bid me call again in two or three days.  I did so, and then he said that he had heard something of my lace, and expected to know more of the matter in a very little time.

I came to him again on that day he was apprehended (I think it was the 15th of February).  I told him that though I had advertised but fifteen guineas reward, yet I would give twenty or twenty-five guineas, rather than not have my goods. Don’t