printed and published with the first letters of those gentlemen's
names, who by their want of bravery are likely to be the cause of
all the mischief of that kind, which may happen for the future. I
cannot leave the world without a short description of that kind of
life which I have led for some years past and is exactly the same
with the rest of our wicked brethren.

Although we are generally so corrupted from our childhood as to have
no sense of goodness, yet something heavy always hangs about us. I
know not what it is, that we are never easy until we are half drunk
among our whores and companions, nor sleep sound, unless we drink
longer than we can stand. If we go abroad in the day, a wise man
would easily find us to be rogues by our faces, we have such
suspicious, fearful and constrained countenances, often turning back
and sneaking through narrow lanes and alleys. I have never failed of
knowing a brother thief by his looks, though I never saw him before.
Every man amongst us keeps his particular whore, who is however
common to us all when we have a mind to change. When we have got a
booty, if it be money, we divide it equally among our companions,
and soon squander it on our vices in those houses that receive us,
for the master and mistress and very tapster go snacks, and besides
make us pay treble reckonings. If our plunder be plate, watches,
rings, snuff-boxes and the like, we have customers in all quarters
of the town to take them off. I have seen a tankard sold, worth
fifteen pounds to a fellow in ---- Street, for twenty shillings, and
a gold watch for thirty. I have set down his name, and that of
several others in the paper already mentioned. We have setters
watching in corners, and by dead walls, to give us notice when a
gentleman goes by, especially if he be anything in drink. I believe
in my conscience, that if an account were made of a thousand pounds
in stolen goods, considering the low rates we sell them at, the
bribes we must give for concealment, the extortions of alehouse
reckonings, and other necessary charges there would not remain fifty
pounds clear to be divided among the robbers, and out of this we
must find clothes for whores, besides treating them from morning
until night, who in requital award us with nothing but treachery and
the pox, for when our mon