itent. It had been hinted
to him by Mr. Fea, as by others, that by his behaviour he should
endeavour to make himself an evidence against others, and to merit his
life by a ready submission, and obliging others to do the like. But Gow
was no fool, and he easily saw there were too many gone before who had
provided for their own safety at his expense, and besides that he knew
himself too deeply guilty of cruelty and murder to be accepted by public
justice as an evidence, especially where so many other less criminals
were to be had. This made him, with good reason, too, give over any
thoughts of escaping by such means as that; and perhaps seeing so
plainly that there was no room for it might be the reason why he seemed
to reject the offer, otherwise he was not a person of such nice honour
as that we should suppose he would not have secured his own life at the
expense of his comrades. Gow appeared to have given over all thoughts of
life, from the first time he came to England. Not that he showed any
tokens of his repentance, or any sense of his condition suitable to that
which was before him, but continuing sullen and reserved, even to the
very time he was brought to the bar, when he came there, he could not be
tried with the rest, for the arraignment being made in the usual form,
he refused to plead. The Court used all the arguments which humanity
dictates in such cases,[106] to prevail on him to come into ordinary
course of other people in like government, laying before him the
sentence of the law in such cases, namely that he must be pressed to
death, the only torturing execution which however they were obliged to
inflict.

But he continued inflexible, carried on his obstinacy to such a height
as to receive the sentence in form, as usual in such cases. The
execution being appointed to be done the next morning, he was carried
back to Newgate in order to it. But whether he was prevailed with by
argument and the reasons of those about him, or whether the apparatus
for the execution and the manner of the death he was to die terrified
him, we cannot say, but the next morning he yielded, and petitioned to
be allowed to plead, and he admitted to be tried in the ordinary way.
Which being granted, he was brought to the bar by himself and pleaded,
being arraigned again upon the same indictment upon which he had been
sentenced as a mute, and was found guilty.

Williams the lieutenant, who was put on board the Bristol ship (as hath