s, but they took all methods imaginable to wean him
from his vices. They corrected him severely; they offered him any
encouragements on his showing the least visible sign of amendment, they
put him to seven several trades upon liking. But all this was to no
purpose, nothing could persuade him to forsake his old trade, which
following with indefatigable industry, he made a shift to reach the
gallows of an old offender, at almost nineteen years of age.

After he, Featherby, Vaux and Levee became acquainted, they suffered no
time to be lost in perpetrating such facts as were most likely to supply
them with money, roving abroad almost every night, in quest of
adventures and returning very seldom without some considerable prey.
Perhaps my readers may be inquisitive as to what became of all this
money. Why, really, it was spent in drink, gaming and in whores, three
articles which ran so high amongst these knight-errants in low life that
Barnham and two more found a way to lavish an hundred and twenty pounds
on them in three weeks.

On one of his nocturnal expeditions, in company with Levee and
Featherby, they robbed one Mr. Brown, in Dean's Court by St. Paul's
Churchyard, of a gold watch and thirteen guineas; upon which the
gentleman thought fit, it seems, to offer in the newspapers a reward of
five guineas for restoring the watch. Not many days after, he received a
penny-post epistle from Mr. Barnham, in which he was told that if he
came to a field near Sadler's Wells, and brought the promised reward of
five guineas along with him, he should there meet a single person at
half an hour after six precisely, who would restore him his watch
without doing him any injury whatsoever. At the time appointed the
gentleman went thither, found Barnham walking alone, well dressed with a
laced hat on, who immediately came up to him, and receiving the five
guineas presented him with his watch.

Mr. Brown having no more to do with him, immediately turned round about
to go back, upon which Barnham produced a pistol ready cocked from under
his coat. _You see_, says he, _it is in my power to rob you again; but I
scorn to break my word of honour._ Levee and Featherby, it seems, were
posted pretty near and, as they all declared, intended to have shot the
gentleman if he had brought anybody with him, or had made the least
opposition or noise.

At Kingston assizes he was tried for a robbery committed in Surrey, but
for want of sufficient eviden