at their
verdict was just, yet he continued still in the same mind, protesting
his own clearness from that bloody and detestable crime. In this
disposition of mind he suffered at Tyburn, being at that time about
forty years of age or somewhat under.

The Lives of WILLIAM MARPLE and TIMOTHY COTTON, Highwaymen

That violence with which, in this age, young people pursue the
gratification of their passions without considering how far they therein
violate the laws of God and their country, is the common and natural
source of those many and great afflictions which fall upon them; and
though they do now always bring them to such exemplary punishment as
befel the criminal whose memoirs we have undertaken to transmit to
posterity, yet they fail not of making them exceedingly uneasy and
grievously unhappy, consequences unavoidably entailed on these
destructive pleasures, so contrary to the nature of man's soul, and so
derogatory from that excellence to the attainment of which he was
created. Although one would imagine these observations must naturally
occur at some time or other to the minds of persons who ever think at
all concerning the design of their own being yet experience convinces us
that they very seldom do, and if they do, they make but very little
impression.

William Marple, the first of these criminals, was descended from parents
of very tolerable fortune, as well as unblemished reputation. Their care
had not only gone so far in providing him with useful and common
learning, but had also been careful in bestowing on him an excellent
education in schools both in town and country. The use he made of them
you will quickly hear, which cannot however be mentioned as a reflection
on his unhappy parents, who were as industrious to have him taught good,
as he was in pursuing evil.

When he grew to years capable of being put out to business, the
unsettled giddiness of his temper sufficiently appeared, for being put
out to three several trades at his own request, he could not bring
himself to any of them, but went at last to a fourth which was that of a
joiner, with whom he stayed a considerable space. But before the
expiration of his time he fell in love with a young woman and married
her, which coming with other stories to his master's ears, occasioned
such difference that they parted.

Marple was prodigiously fond of his new married wife, and what is a
pretty rare circumstance in this age, his fondness proved