We contented ourselves with what silver and little gold they had about them, which to about three or four pounds, and their gold watches, one of which, as well I remember, was of Tompion’s make, and which I afterwards pawned for five guineas to a fellow that the week after broke, and ran away with it, so that I had not the opportunity of restoring it again to the proper owner, for which I heartily beg his pardon.  As we must own the gentlemen behaved well and came unto our measures without the least resistance, so they must do us the justice to acknowledge that we treated them as such and neither disrobed nor abused them.  We thought it, however, common prudence to cut the girths of their horses’ saddles, and secure their bridles for fear of a pursuit.

Thus flushed again with success, we made the best of our way to Brentford, and there took the ferry; but Fortune, though she is fair, yet she is a fickle mistress, her smiles are often false and very precarious.  Before we had got ashore, we heard the persons had got scent of us, and our triumph had like to have ended in captivity.  When we were three parts over, and out of danger of drowning, we told the ferrymen our distress, gave them ten shillings, and obliged them to throw their oars into the Thames.  The agreeable reward and the fears of being thrown in themselves in case of a denial, made them readily consent.  In we plunged after them, and soon made the shore.  Though we looked like Hob just drawn out of the well, those that saw us only imagined it was a drunken frolic.  Our expeditious flight soon dried our clothes, and without catching the least cold, we both arrived safe that night at London.

    We congratulated each other, you may imagine on our happy and
    narrow escape, and solaced ourselves after the fatigue of the day,
    with a mistress and a bottle.

I have copied these pages from Mr. Everett’s book that my readers might have a clear and just idea of those notions which these unhappy men entertain of the life they lead, and hope they may be of some use in giving such youths as are too apt to be taken with their low kind of jests, a just abhorrence of committing villainy, merely to divert the mob, and make themselves the sole topic of discourse in alehouses and cellars.

But to return to Everett.  He was taken up on suspicion and committed to New Prison, where he continued three years, behaving himself so well in the prison that the justices ordered him his liberty, and he was thereupon made turnkey of that place.  In this post he continued to act so honestly that he got a tolerable reputation, taking the Red Lion alehouse, in Turnmill Street, Cow Cross, in order to live the better; resigning his place as turnkey as soon as he was settled in it.