It may not be amiss to take notice here how common a thing it is for such wicked old sinners as this woman was, to set up houses of resort for lewd and abandoned women of the town, who, first getting young men into their company on amorous pretences, by degrees bring them on from one wickedness to another, till at last they end their lives at the gallows, and thereby leave these wretches at liberty to bring others to the same miserable fate.  These agents to the Prince of Darkness are usually women who have an artful way of flattering and a pleasing deceitfulness in their address.  By this means they, without much difficulty, draw in young lads at their first giving way to the current of their lewd inclinations, and before they are aware, involve them in such expenses as necessarily lead to housebreaking or the highway for a supply.  When once they have made a step of this kind, by which their lives are placed in the power of those old practitioners in every kind of wickedness, they are from thenceforward treated as slaves and forced to continue, whether they will or no, in a repeated course of the like villainies until they are arrested by the hand of Justice.  Then, none so ready to become evidences against them as those abominable wretches by whom they were at first seduced.

Such was the fate that befell these three unhappy young men, of whose courses information being given, they were all apprehended and committed close prisoners to Newgate, and at the next ensuing sessions not a few indictments were found against them.  The first indictment they were all three arraigned upon was for felony and burglary in breaking open the house of one William Meak, in the night-time, and taking from thence twelve Gloster cheeses.  But the evidence appearing clear only against Sherwood, alias Hobbs, he alone was convicted and the other two acquitted.  They were then indicted a second time for breaking open the house of Daniel Elvingham, in the night-time, and taking out of it several quantities of brandy and tobacco; upon which both Sherwood and Weedon were, from very full evidence, convicted.  On a third indictment for breaking into the house of Elizabeth Cogdal, and taking thence eight pewter dishes and twenty pewter plates, they were all found guilty; Sherwood and Weedon also being a fourth time convicted for a robbery on the highway, which was proved upon them by the testimony of their landlady, Sarah Payne.

Under sentence of death they all testified great sorrow for the offences of their misspent lives.  Weedon was of a better temper than the two other, retained a greater sense of the principles of religion upon which he had been brought up in his youth and exceeded his companions in seriousness and steadiness in his devotions.  Sherwood had been a much longer proficient in all kinds of wickedness than the other two, having practised several kinds of thefts for nearly eighteen years together, and this had habituated him so much to sin that he showed much less penitence than either of his companions.  Hughs had been a thief in a low degree for some years before he fell into the confederacy of Sherwood and Weedon, to which, as he frankly owned, he was drawn by his own previous inclination rather than the persuasions of any of his companions.