ious death for what I declare I am not guilty of, as I am to
appear before my Great Judge in a few moments, to answer for all my past
sins. I hope you and my good mistress will pray for my poor soul. I pray
God bless you and all your family._ Then he spoke to somebody to bid the
carman go on. It was remarkable that he spoke this with great
composedness and seeming cheerfulness.

At the place of execution he did not lose anything of that cheerful
sedateness which he had preserved under the course of his misfortunes,
but made the responses regular to the prayers in the cart and standing
up, addressed himself in these words to the multitude. _Good People, I
die for a fact I did not commit. I have never ceased to pray for my
prosecutors most heartily, ever since I have been under sentence. I wish
all men well. My sins have been great, but I hope for God's mercy
through the merits of Jesus Christ._ Then a Psalm was sung at his own
request. Afterwards, overhearing somebody say that his mistress was in a
coach hard by his execution, he could not be satisfied until somebody
went to search and coming back assured him she was not there. As the
cart was going away he spoke again to the people saying, _I beg of you
to pray for my departing soul. I wish I was as free from all other sins
as I am of this for which I am now going to suffer._

He desired of his friends that his body might be carried to Hand Alley
in Holborn, and from thence to St. Andrew's Church, to lie in the grave
with his brother. He suffered on the 25th of July, 1719, being then
about thirty-two years of age.

FOOTNOTES:

[86] Passed by a Parliament held at Gloucester in 1278 and
dealing with actions at law.

The Life of JOHN DYER, a most notorious thief, highwayman and
housebreaker

My readers cannot but remember the mention often made of this criminal,
in the former volumes. He was, at the time of his death, one of the
oldest offenders in England, and as he was at some pains to digest his
own story that is, the series of his villainies into writing, so what we
take from thence, will at once be authentic and entertaining to our
readers.

He was born of honest and mean parents at Salisbury, who took care,
however, to bestow on him a very tolerable education, and when he grew
up, put him out apprentice to a shoemaker, where he soon made a
beginning in those pernicious practices to which he so assiduously
afterwards addicted himself. The f