r exploits than ever, to
show that they were yet unhanged. In which conjecture he was not very
much out. However, he said, gentlemen might now safely walk the streets
without fear of having their pockets picked, for that Benjamin Branch,
who died the last sessions, and Isaac Ashley, who was to suffer with
him, were the two neat masters in that way, and were capable of earning
fifteen or sixteen shillings by it in two or three hours' time; sorting
the fruits of their industry into several parcels, from the value of
sixpence to half a crown apiece as dexterously as any milliner in
London.

After the coming out of the death warrant Russell laid aside much of his
boldness, appeared with more gravity at prayers and expressed greater
sorrow for his misspent life than he had done before. Crouch carried
himself very quietly all along, but could not forbear being unseasonably
merry and jocose upon several occasions, smiling at chapel and affecting
to talk with greater gaiety than became his condition. He himself owned
that this was very unbecoming in a person so near an ignominious death,
but he said it was in his temper, and he could not help it. He frankly
acknowledged the enormity of that course of life which for some years
past he had led, acknowledged that on the coming out of the king's
proclamation he had resolved on a four years' voyage to sea, but was
prevented from putting it in execution by Dalton's information. As the
time of their death drew near he became more and more sensible of his
miserable condition and the danger there was of losing his soul as well
as his body.

William Holden at first denied very strongly his being in any degree
guilty of the fact for which he died; but when he heard that Russell had
owned it and at the same time confessed that he was concerned in it,
thinking it no further use to adhere to that denial he retracted it and
acknowledged that he had been a great sinner, and had committed several
thefts before that for which he died. In a word, these three, as they
had been companions together in wickedness and fellow-sufferers in the
punishment which their crimes had drawn upon them, so they appeared to
be all of them sensibly touched with sorrow and remorse for that
multitude of crimes which they had committed, endeavouring to merit the
pardon of God by hearty prayers and a sincere repentance. Russell,
however, declared but a day or two before his execution that Dalton, the
evidence, had pr