die at Tyburn, did acknowledge that he knew nothing of
Nichols, nor had ever seen him before his being committed at the
Justice's, and begged that God would pardon his crying sin of perjury
and murder in taking the life of an innocent man.

These malefactors suffered on the 20th of May, 1728; Rawlins being
twenty-two, Ashley, twenty-six; Rouden, twenty-four; Benson,
twenty-four; Gale, seventeen; Crowder, twenty-two; Toon, twenty-five;
Hornby, twenty-one; Sefton, twenty-six; and Nichols, forty years of age.

FOOTNOTES:

[79] A Portuguese gold coin current in England, worth about 23s.

[80] See page 463.

The Lives of RICHARD HUGHS and BRYAN MACGUIRE, Highwaymen and Footpads

Idleness, lewd women and bad company are the sum total of those excuses
urged by criminals when they come to be punished, even for the most
flagrant offences. With just reason Richard Hughs exclaimed on them all,
for from youth upwards he had ever addicted himself to laziness and a
dislike to that business to which he was bred, viz., that of a
bricklayer. Following loose women was the thing in which he took most
delight, and was probably the occasion of his subsequent misfortunes.
The immediate cause of them was his acquaintance with William Sefton
before-mentioned, with whom he joined in a confederacy to rob on the
highway, a thing to which his necessities in some measure drove him,
since he had squandered all he had in the world on those abandoned women
with whom he conversed, and had contracted so bad a reputation that he
found it hard to be employed in his business.

Into this wretched confederacy entered also the other offender, Bryan
Macguire, an Irishman born in the county of Wicklow. He had been bred a
sawyer, but was never very well pleased with the trade which required so
much hard labour. However, he worked at it some time after he came to
England, but some of his countrymen persuading him that it was much
easier to live by sharping, a practice they very well understood, he
readily fell into their sentiments and soon struck out a new method of
cheating, which brought them in more and with less hazard than any of
the ways pursued by his associates. The artifice was this: by repeated
practice he found a way to pull his tongue so far back into his throat
that he really appeared to have none at all, and by going to
coffee-houses and other places of public resort for the better sort of
people, he, by pretending to be dumb