There is all the reason imaginable to suppose that he did not take the most honest ways of supporting himself and his mistress.  However, he fell into no trouble nor is there any direct evidence of his having been guilty of any dishonesty within the reach of the Law, until he ran away with a mare from a man in town, as to which he excused himself by saying that she had formerly been his own, and that there having nothing more than a verbal contract between them, he thought fit to carry her off and sell her again.  Sometime afterwards, going down to Newcastle Fair (for he still continued to carry on some dealing in horse-flesh) he fell there into the company of some merchants in the same way, who found means to get gains and sell very cheap, by paying nothing at the first hand.  Among these, there was a country man of his who went by the name of Brown, with whom Murrel had formerly had an acquaintance.  This fellow knowing the company in general to be persons of the same profession, began to talk very freely of his practices in that way (viz., of horse stealing), and amongst other stories related this.  He said he once rode away with an officer’s horse, who had just bought it with an intent to ride him up to London; he carried the creature into the West, and having made such alterations in his mane and tail as he thought proper, sold him there to a parson for thirteen guineas, which was about seven less than the horse was worth.  But knowing the doctor had another church about eight miles from the parish in which he lived, and that there was a little stable at one angle of the churchyard, where the horse was put up during service, he resolved to make bold with it again.  Accordingly, when the people were all at church, having provided himself with a red coat and a horse-soldier’s accoutrements, he picked the stable door, clapped them on the priest’s beast, and rode him without the least suspicion as hard as conveniently he could to Worcester.  There he laid aside the habit of a cavalier, and transforming himself into the natural appearance of a horse-courser, he sold the horse to a physician, telling him at the time he bought it, that it would be greatly the better for being suffered to run at grass a fortnight or so. No doubt on it, said he; but I had some design of so doing.

Yet they were much sooner executed than at first they were intended to have been, by an accident which happened the very day after the beast came into the hands of the physician; for one evening as Brown was taking a walk in the skirts of the city, who should he perceive but his old Cornish parson and his footman, jogging into town.  Guilt struck him immediately with apprehensions at their errand relating to him, so that walking up and down, nor daring to go into the town for fear of being taken up and at last supposing it the only way to rid him of danger, he caught the horse once more in the doctor’s close, and having stolen a saddle and bridle out of the inn where he lodged, he rode on him as far as Essex.