g the truth of that
charge which had been laid against him, acknowledging the justice of the
Law in this sentence, and disposing himself to submit to it with much
cheerfulness and alacrity.

This great change in his circumstance and manner of living, added to
his own uneasy reflections upon those misfortunes into which vanity and
ostentation had brought him, soon reduced him by sickness to so weak a
state that he was incapable, almost, of coming to chapel alone.
Notwithstanding this, he continued to frequent it, some of the people
about the prison being so kind as to help him upstairs. As his vices
arose rather from the imitation of those fine gentlemen on whom he had
waited while a lad, so he did not carry them to that height which most
of these unhappy persons are wont to do; on the contrary he was very
sober, little addicted to gambling, and never followed the common women
of the town. But dress, dancing bouts, and the necessary entertainments
for carrying on his amours were the follies which involved him in these
expenses, for the supply of which he thus hazarded his soul and
forfeited his life.

When the death warrant came down his sickness had brought him so low
that Nature seemed inclined to supersede the severity of the Law; but
too short a time which intervened between it and its execution, and so
he came to suffer a violent death at Tyburn a day or two before,
perhaps, he would otherwise have yielded up his breath in his bed.
Little could be expected of a person in his weak condition, at the place
of execution, where, when he arrived he was utterly unable to stand up.
However, with a faint voice he desired the prayers both of the minister
who attended them and of the spectators of his execution, which happened
on the 20th of November, 1727, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.

The Life of JOHN JOHNSON, a Coiner

In excuse of taking base measures to procure money there is no plea so
often urged as necessity, and the desire of providing for a family
otherwise in danger of want. The reason of this is pretty evident, since
nothing could be a greater alleviation of such a crime. But the word
necessity is so equivocal that it is hard to fix its true meaning, and
unless that can be done, it will be as hard to judge of the
reasonableness of such an excuse.

John Johnson, the criminal on whose life we are next to cast an eye, was
born of a very honest and reputable family in the county of Nottingham,
and