it was a very meritorious thing to profess his sentiments, notwithstanding they were directly opposite to those of persons then in power.  Some declarations of this sort occasioned his being confined in Newgate, and prosecuted for speaking seditious words in the beginning of King George the First’s reign.  His Newgate acquaintances taught him quickly their arts of living, and he was no sooner at liberty than he put them into execution, he and his brother living like gentlemen on their expeditions on the road; till unfortunately committing a robbery on Hounslow Heath together, they were both closely pursued, the other taken, and William narrowly escaped by creeping into a hollow tree.

After the execution of his brother, Colthouse being terribly affected therewith, retired to Oxford, and there worked as a journeyman joiner, determining with himself to live honestly for the future, and not by a habit of ill-actions go the same way as one so nearly related to him had done before.  But as his brother’s death in time grew out of his remembrance, so his evil inclinations again took place, and he came up to London with a full purpose of getting money at an easier rate than working.

Soon after his arrival his Jacobite principles brought him into a great fray at an alehouse in Tothill Fields, Westminster, where some soldiers were drinking, and who on some disrespectful words said of the Prince, caught up Colthouse and threw him upon a red-hot gridiron, thereby making a scar on his cheek and under his left eye.  By this he came to be taken for a person who murdered a farmer’s son in Philpot Lane, in Hampshire, when he was charged with which he not only denied, but by abundance of circumstances rendered it highly probable that he did not commit it, there being, indeed, no other circumstance which occasioned that suspicion but the likeness of the scar in his face, which happened in the manner I told you.

While he lay under condemnation, a report reached his ear that his two brothers in the country were also said to be highwaymen; he complained grievously of the common practice that was made by idle people raising stories to increase the sorrows of families which were so unhappy as to have any who belonged to them come to such a death as his was to be.  As to his brothers, he declared himself well satisfied that the younger was a sober and religious lad, and as for the elder, though he might have been guilty of some extravagance, yet he hoped and believed they were not of the same kind with those which had brought him to ruin.  However, that he might do all the good which his present sad circumstance would allow, he wrote the following letter to his brethren in the country.

    Dear Brothers,