m, and for which
he was to die.

Notwithstanding that the most earnest entreaties were made use of to
induce him to a plain and sincere confession, yet he continued always to
assert his innocence as to thieving, letting fall sharp and invidious
expressions against the evidence of Doyle whom he charged with swearing
against him only to preserve another guilty person from punishment, whom
Wileman intended to prosecute and had it is his power to convict. The
effects of his former good education were very serviceable to him in
this his great and last misfortune, for he seemed to have very just
notions of those duties which were incumbent upon him in his miserable
state; therefore, especially towards the latter part of his time, he
appeared gravely at chapel and prayed fervently in his cell until the
boy James Grundy, whom we have mentioned before, put it in to his head
to make his escape; for the attempting which they were all carried (as
we have said before) into the old condemned hold and there stapled down
to the ground.

As there is no courage so reasonable as that which is founded on
Christian principles, so neither constitutional bravery nor that
resolution which arises either from custom, from vanity, or from other
false maxims preserves that steady firmness at the approach of death
which gives true quiet and peace of mind in the last moments of life,
taking away through the certainty of belief, those terrors which are
otherwise too strong for the mind, and which human nature is unable to
resist. Wileman's conduct under his misfortunes, fully verified this
observation in its strongest sense; he only retained just notions of
religion and this enabled him to support his affliction after a very
different manner from that in which it affected his two companions; or
as it had done himself before, from a just contemplation of the mercy of
God, and the merits of his Saviour, he had brought himself to a right
idea of the importance of his soul, and thereby took himself off from
the superfluous consideration of this world and stifled those uneasy
sensations with which men are naturally startled at the approach of
death. Yet he did not in all this time alter a jot in his confession,
but asserted calmly that he was innocent, and that Doyle had perjured
himself in order to take away his life.

At the place of execution his wife came to him, embraced him with great
tenderness, and all he said there in relation to the world was