Cotton was more tender and more penitent, expressed great sorrow for his numerous offences, and besought Almighty God to accept of a sincere, though late repentance.  They both of them protested that their wives had not anything to do with their affairs, that they never advised them, nor were so much as privy to the offences they had committed.  Then both of them suffered with much penitence and resignation, on the 24th of March, 1729, Marple being about thirty, and Cotton near twenty-five years of age.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [84] See page 182.

The Life of JOHN UPTON, a Pirate; including also the history of that sort of people, particularly the crew under Captain Cooper, in the Night Rambler

No laws in any civilized nations are more severe than those against piracy, nor are they less severely executed, and the criminals who suffer by them are usually the least pitied, or rather the most detested of all who come to die an ignominious death by the sentence of the Law.  Of old they were styled hostes humani generis, and the oldest systems we have of particular institutions have treated them with a rigor suitable to their offence.  With respect to those who fall into the hands of British justice, it must be remarked that they usually plead as an excuse for what they have done their being forced into pirates’ service, and as it is well known that numbers are really forced into crimes they detest, so the lenience of our judicators generally admit whatever proofs are probable in such a case.  But where the contrary appears, and the acts of piracy plainly arise from the wicked dispositions of the offenders, the Royal Mercy is less frequently extended to them than to any other sort of criminal whatever.

As to the prisoner of whom we are to speak, John Upton was born at Deptford, of very honest parents who gave him such an education as fitted their station, and that in which they intended to breed him.  When grown up to be a sturdy youth, they put him out apprentice to a waterman, with whom he served out his time faithfully, and with a good character.  Afterwards he went to sea and served for twenty-eight years together on board a man-of-war, in the posts of either boatswain or quartermaster.  Near the place of his birth he married a woman, took a house and lived very respectably with her during the whole course of her life, but she dying while he was at sea, and finding at his return that his deceased wife had run him greatly in debt, clamours coming from every quarter, and several writs being issued out against him, he quitted the service in the man-of-war, and went immediately in a merchantman to Newfoundland.  There by agreement he was discharged from the ship and entered himself for eighteen pounds per annum into the service of a planter in that country in order to serve him in fishing and furring, the chief trade of that place; for Newfoundland abounding with excellent harbours, there is no country in the world which affords so large and so plentiful a fishery as this does.  However its climate renders it less desirable, it being extremely hot in the summer and as intensely cold in the winter, when the wild beasts roam about in great numbers, and furnish thereby an opportunity to the inhabitants of gaining considerably by falling them, and selling their furs.