Barton was a fellow rather of too much than too little courage.  He wanted no encouragements of this sort to egg him to such proceedings; the hopes of living idly and in the enjoyment of such lewd pleasures as he had addicted himself to, were sufficient to carry him into an affair of this sort.  He therefore soon yielded to their suggestions, and went into such measures as they had before followed, especially housebreaking, which was the particular branch of villainy to which he had addicted himself.  At this he became a very dextrous fellow, and thereby much in favour with his wicked associates, amongst whom to be impious argues a great spirit, and to be ingenious in mischief is the highest character to which persons in their miserable state can ever attain.

Amongst the rest of Barton’s acquaintance there was one Yorkshire Bob, who was reckoned the most adroit housebreaker in town.  This fellow one day invited Barton to his house, which at that time was not far from Red Lion Fields, and proposed to him two or three schemes by which some houses in the neighbourhood might be broke open.  Barton thought all the attempts too hazardous to be made, but Bob, to convince him of the possibility with which such things might be done, undertook to rob without assistance a widow lady’s house of some plate, which stood in the butler’s room at noon-day.

Accordingly thither he went dressed in the habit of a footman belonging to a family which were well acquainted there; the servants conversed with him very freely, as my Lady Such-a-one’s new man, while he entertained them with abundance of merry stories, until dinner was upon the table.  Then taking advantage of that clutter in which they were, he slily lighted a fire-ball at the fire-side, clapped it into a closet on the side of the stairs in which the foul clothes were kept, and then perceiving the smoke, cried out with the utmost vehemence, Fire, fire. This naturally drew everybody downstairs, and created such a confusion that he found little or no difficulty in laying hold of the silver plate which he aimed at.  He carried it away publicly, while the smoke confounded all the spectators, and until the next morning nobody had the least suspicion of him; but upon sending to the lady for the plate which her new servant carried away the night before, and she denying that she had any servant in the house that had not lived with her a twelvemonth, they then discovered the cheat, though at a time too late to mend it.

Barton, however, did not like his master’s method entirely, choosing rather to strike out a new one of his own, which he fancied might as little mischief him as that audacious impudence of the other did in his several adventures.  For which reason, he was very cautious of associating with this fellow who was very dextrous in his art, but was more ready in undertaking dangerous exploits than any of the crew at that time about town.  John’s way was by a certain nack of shifting the shutters, whereby