While in Newgate Shepherd had picked up a thoughtless resolution as to dying, not uncommon to those malefactors who, having been often condemned, go at last hardened to the gallows.  When he was exhorted to think seriously of making his peace with God, he replied ’twas done and he was sure of going to Heaven.

With these were executed Thomas Charnock, a young man well and religiously educated.  By his friends he had been placed in the house of a very eminent trader, and being seduced by ill-company yielded to the desire of making a show in the world.  In order to do so, he robbed his master’s counting-house, which fact made him indeed conspicuous, but in a very different manner from what he had flattered himself with.  They died tolerably submissive and penitent, this last malefactor, especially, having rational ideas of religion.

FOOTNOTES: 

    [4] William Davis, the Golden Farmer, was a notorious
        highwayman, who obtained his sobriquet from a habit of always
        paying in gold.  He was hanged in Fleet Street, December 20,
        1689.  His adventures are told at length in Smith’s History of
        the Highwaymen, edited by me and published in the same series
        as this volume.

The Life of WILLIAM BARTON, a Highwayman

This William Barton was born in Thames Street, London, and seemed to have inherited a sort of hereditary wildness and inconstancy, his father having been always of a restless temper and addicted to every species of wickedness, except such as are punished by temporal laws.  While this son William was a child, he left him, without any provision, to the care of his mother, and accompanied by a concubine whom he had long convened with, shipped himself for the island of Jamaica, carrying with him a good quantity of goods proper for that climate, intending to live there as pleasantly as the place would give him leave.  His head being well turned, both for trading and planting, it was, indeed, probable enough he should succeed.

Now, no sooner was his father gone on this unaccountable voyage, but William was taken home and into favour by his grandfather, who kept a great eating-house in Covent Garden.  Here Will, if he would, might certainly have done well.  His grandfather bound him to himself, treated him with the utmost tenderness and indulgence, and the gentlemen who frequented the house were continually making him little presents, which by their number were considerable, and might have contented a youth like him.

But William, whose imagination was full of roving as his father’s, far from sitting down pleased and satisfied with that easy condition into which Fortune had thrown him, began to dream of nothing but travels and adventures.  In short, in spite of all the poor old man, his grandfather, could say to prevent it, to sea he went, and to Jamaica in quest of his father, who he fancied must have grown extravagantly rich by this time, the common sentiments of fools, who think none poor who have the good luck to dwell in the West Indies.