the captain any satisfaction.  The Governor, when they were discharged from their confinement, gave them a pass in which, after reciting their names, he styled them all English thieves, which putting them in no small fright, they resolved to prevent its doing them a mischief, committed it to the flames, and then ran the hazard of travelling the country without one.  This, accordingly, they did, until they met with a Dutch ship, the master of which readily gave them a passage to Amsterdam, from whence Dalton and two or three more, found means to get over again to England, and came up to London.

On their arrival here they fell to robbing with such fury that the streets were hardly safe when the sun was set; but Dalton apprehending that this trade would not lost long, resolved to make a country expedition, in order to get out of the way.  Thereupon down he went again to his old city of refuge, Bristol.  There he did not continue long before he was apprehended for breaking open a linen-draper’s shop but the burglary not being clearly proved, the jury found him guilty of the felony only, whereupon he was once more transported to Virginia.

He did not continue long in that plantation before growing weary of labour, he thought fit to threaten his master, so that the man was glad to discharge him, and thought himself happy of getting rid of such a servant.  Upon which Dalton soon found out one Whalebone, a fellow of a like disposition with himself; and they went about stealing boats and negroes, running away with them and selling them in other colonies.  At last Dalton met with a ship which carried him for England.  By the way he was pressed on board the Hampshire man-of-war, in which he was a spectator of the last siege of Gibraltar.[95]

On his return he received his wages and lived on it for a little time.  Then he with Benjamin Branch and William Field, took to snatching of pockets.  At last they took Christopher Rawlins into their society and in a few months’ time they three snatched five hundred pockets.  Amongst the rest Dalton cut off one from a woman’s side at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, for which Branch being in company was taken and executed, although Dalton and Rawlins did all they could to have made up the affair with the prosecutor but in vain.  This trade therefore being at an end, he and his companion Rawlins fell next to robbing coaches in the streets, and being once more apprehended, he found himself under a necessity of making an information against his companions, six or seven of whom were executed upon his evidence.  He also received ten guineas to swear against Nichols the peruke-maker, but after he received the money, his conscience checked him, and though he did not return it, yet he absolutely refused to give any evidence against him.  But Neeves, who had been taken into the same plot, went through with it, and as has been said before, hanged him for a fact which he never committed.[96]