the company of a set of giddy young people who were totally addicted to
merry-making and dancing, which when he had once got into the road of,
he so neglected his business that his master, after abundance of
reproofs, was obliged to part with him.

He had not at that time any designs of doing anything like the fact for
which he afterwards suffered, but continuing still to frequent his
dancing-mates' company, they promised to put him into a road to supply
him with money enough to live without working, provided he had courage
to do as they would have him; and he, without considering what he did,
giving consent to their motions, went out one evening with David
Anderson, Country Will and Jenny Austin, and after a while they stripped
one Thomas Collier, and robbed him of his coat and waistcoat, hat, and a
pair of silver buckles and other things, with a half guinea in gold, and
twenty-five shillings in silver. For this offence he was quickly after
committed, apprehended, and sent to Newgate, where, upon a plain proof
of the fact, he was convicted and ordered for execution.

When the poor man was under sentence of death, he sufficiently repented
those idle hours he had consumed in dancing, and in the other merriments
into which he had been led by his companions. He was now sensible how
easily he might have lived if he had taken the advice of his kind
master, who with so much pains endeavoured not only to instruct him in
his profession, but also to reclaim him from those follies in which he
saw him engaged. The thoughts of death threw him into violent agonies
from whence his natural sense (of which he had a great deal) at last in
some measure recovered him; and when upon the coming down of the death
warrant, he saw there were no hopes left for him in this life, he
applied himself with very great ardency to secure happiness in the next.

He declared that the fact for which he died was the first he ever
committed, and that the depositions against him were not exactly
conformable to truth. A day or two before his death, he appeared to be
very calm and very cheerful, submitted with a perfect resignation to the
lot which had befallen him, and at the place of execution exhorted the
people not to let their curiosity only be satisfied in the sight of his
wretched death, but he warned them also from the commission of such
crimes as might bring them to a like fate. He suffered on the 3rd of
November, 1726, at Tyburn, being then about