ghwaymen carries off the mail-bag

(_From the Annals of Newgate_)]

FOOTNOTES:

[95] On Feb. 22, 1727, when the Spaniards attacked with 20,000
men and were repulsed with a loss of 5,000. The English lost 300.

[96] See page 463.

The Life of HUGH HOUGHTON, _alias_ AWTON, _alias_ NORTON, who robbed
the Bristol Mail

This unfortunate person was the son of honest and reputable people of
Lancaster, who took care to give him a very good education, sufficient
to have fitted him for any trade whatever. Afterwards they bound him out
apprentice to a wine-cooper, to whom he served out his time very
carefully and honestly, and appeared in his temper and disposition to be
a civil, good-natured young man. For some time after his coming out of
his time, he followed his trade of a wine-cooper, but being pressed on
board a man-of-war, during the French War in the late Queen's time, he
behaved himself so well on board that he acquired the goodwill of all
his officers, attained to the degree of a midshipman, and was afterwards
gunner's mate, receiving also a title to five pound _per annum_, out of
the Pension Chest at Chatham.

After this he came to London, married a wife and was a housekeeper in
town; and for his better support got himself into the Horse Guards,
where he served with reputation, until some small time before his death,
when some clothes of value being taken away, and he being strongly
suspected on that score was dismissed the service, whereby he fell into
great difficulties for want of money.

It seems that for many months before his death he had frequented the
house of one Mr. Marlow, and was indebted to him for a considerable sum
of money, but one day he came and discharged it, having for that purpose
changed a twenty pound bank-note at a brewer's not far distant. But the
Bristol mail happening about that time to be robbed, and the bank-note,
after various circulations, being discovered to be one of those taken
out of it, Houghton was thereupon seized and committed, being at the
next sessions brought to his trial at the Old Bailey for the fact, when
the course of the evidence appeared against him as follows. He was
arraigned on an indictment for dealing from Stephen Crouches, on the
King's highway, after putting him in fear, a sorrel gelding value five
pounds, the property of Thomas Ostwich, a mail value four pounds, and
fifty leather bags, value five pounds, the property of our Sovereign