The prisoner in his defence did not pretend to deny the fact, but as much as he was able endeavoured to extenuate it.  He said, that for his part he did not know anything of the mare; that the going off the pistol was merely accidental; that he did, indeed, take the money, and therefore, did not expect any other than to suffer death, but that it would be a great satisfaction to him, even in his last moments, that he neither had or ever intended to commit any murder.  But those words in the prosecutor’s evidence, I’ll give you something to carry you home, and Lie there (that is in the ditch) being mentioned in summing up the evidence to the jury, Young, with great warmth and many asseverations, denied that he made use of them.  The jury, after a very short consideration, being full satisfied with the evidence which had been offered, found him guilty.

The very same day his wife was indicted for the robbery of her mistress, when the fact was charged upon her thus:  that she on a Sunday, conveyed Young secretly upstairs in her mistress’s house, where she passed for a single woman; that he took an opportunity to break open a closet and to steal from thence ninety guineas, and ten pounds in silver; a satin petticoat value thirty shillings, and an orange crepe petticoat were also carried off; and she asking leave of her lady to go out in the afternoon, took that opportunity to go quite away, not being heard of for a long time.  Upon her husband being apprehended for the fact for which he died, somebody remembered her and the story of her robbing her mistress, caused her thereupon to be apprehended.  Not being able to prove her marriage at the time of her trial, she was convicted, and ordered for transportation.  This was a very different story from that which Young told in his relations of his wife’s adventure, but when it came to be mentioned to that unhappy man and pressed upon him, though he could not be brought to acknowledge it, yet he never denied it; which the Ordinary says, was a method of proceeding he took up, because unwilling to confess the truth, and afraid when so near death to tell a lie.

When under sentence of death, this unfortunate person began to have a true sense of his own miserable condition; he was very far from denying the crime for which he suffered, although he still continued to deny some of the circumstances of it.  The judgment which had been pronounced upon him, he acknowledged to be very just and reasonable, and was so far from being either angry or affrighted at the death he was to die that on the contrary he said it was the only thing that gave his thoughts ease.  To say truth, the force of religion was never more visible in any man than it was in this unfortunate malefactor.  He was sensible of his repentance being both forced and late, which made him attend to the duties thereof with an extraordinary fervour and application.  He said that the thoughts of his dissolution had no other effect upon him than to quicken his diligence