s
companion, _If you offer to meddle with Nicholas I'll cut the coat off
your back, for it's the woman's coat that we knocked down in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and I have as much right to it as you have._ It appeared,
also, by another witness, that Crouch pawned an old coat to pay for the
altering of this, and after taking off a cloth cape which it had at the
time of its being stolen, he caused a velvet one to be sewn on in its
room. Mr. Willis, the constable, was the last witness called for by the
prosecutor. He swore that at the time that he apprehended the prisoner
Russell, he acknowledged that the goods before-mentioned were stolen and
sold for one pound two shillings, but said he did not value it, since he
should die in the company of such brave fellows.

The jury withdrawing after hearing this evidence, returned soon after
and found them guilty, and sentence of death was passed upon them, at
one of the fullest sessions which had happened for many years at the Old
Bailey, there being twenty-two men and seven women capitally convicted.

As these unhappy men could have little hope of life, considering the
nature and notoriety of their offences; they ought certainly to have
laid aside all other thoughts and have applied themselves strictly,
beseeching pardon of God for their numberless offences against Him.
Instead of this, there appeared too much affectation of unconcernedness
in all of them, especially in Russell, who, being confined in the same
cell with Holden, said to his companion a day or two before his death,
with an air of indifference, _I'll undertake, Will, to procure a coach
to carry off our bodies from the place of execution; but I must leave it
to the care of your fraternity_ (meaning the hackney coachmen) _to
prevent their being seized on by the surgeons._ Holden heard all this
very gravely, assented to the proposition without altering his
countenance or giving any other mark of his concern for that infamous
death which shortly they were both to suffer.

Russell also took a certain pleasure in speaking of the state of
street-robbing at the time they left the world. He averred that the town
was much mistaken in imagining that the king's proclamation had
effectually crushed their fraternity, into which opinion they perhaps
might be drawn by seeing so many of them perish in so short a time;
which, he said, did not lessen their society, but would, notwithstanding
that, put all that remained of them upon bolde