At last, when money ran low, Dyer’s love on a sudden went all out.  He dismissed his mistress and not finding another quickly to his mind, took up a sudden resolution to marry and live honest.  It was not long before he prevailed on an honest woman, and accordingly they were joined together in wedlock.  Dyer thereupon provided himself with a cobbler’s stall in Leather Lane, worked hard and lived well.  But as his inclinations were always dishonest, he could not long confine himself to honesty and labour, but in a short space meeting with a young man in the neighbourhood, who was very uneasy in his circumstances, and on ill terms with ms friends, and very much disordered in his mind on account of the misfortunes under which he laboured, Dyer began immediately to cast eyes upon him as one who would make him a fit companion.

It seems the other had exactly the same thoughts, and one day as they were walking together in the fields, says the stranger to him, I’ll tell you what; if you knew how affairs stand with me, you would advise me.  I must either go upon the highway, or into gaol.  That’s a hard choice, replied Dyer; but did you ever do anything of that kind?  No, said the other, indeed, not hitherto.  Well, then, says his tutor again, have you any pistols?  No, replied he, but I intend to pawn my watch and buy some. The bargain was soon made between them.  One night they robbed a man by the Old Spa,[88] the same night they robbed another by Sadler’s Wells.  Two or three days after, they robbed a chariot, and took from persons in it thirty pounds.  The young practitioner in thieving thought this a rare quick way of getting money and therefore followed it very industriously in the company of his assistant.  In Lincoln’s Inn Fields they were hard put to it, for after they had committed a robbery, abundance of watchmen gathered about them, whom they suffered to advance very near them, but then firing two or three pistols over their heads they all ran, and suffered the robbers to go which way they would.  A multitude of other facts they committed, until Dyer got into that gang who robbed on Blackheath, of whom we have given some account.

It is observable that Dyer, in his own narrative, gives not the least account of his turning evidence and hanging a great number of his associates, many of whom, as has been said in the former volume,[89] charged him with having first drawn them into the commission of crimes and then betrayed them.  It seems this was among the circumstances of his life which did not afford him any mirth, a thing to which throughout the course of his memoirs he is egregiously addicted.  However it was, I must inform my reader that he remained for near seven years a prisoner in Newgate after his being an evidence, until at last he found means to get discharged at the same time with one Abraham Dumbleton, who was his companion in his future exploits, and suffered with him at the same time.  When they