to God for His
assistance and grace to comfort him under those heavy sorrows which his
follies and crimes had so justly brought upon him.

At the place of execution he did not appear at all terrified at death,
but submitted to it with the same resignation which for a long space he
had professed since his being under confinement. Immediately before he
suffered he recollected his spirits and spoke in the following terms to
that crowd which always attends on such melancholy occasions.

Good People,

I see many of you here assembled to behold my wretched end. I hope
it will induce you to avoid those evils which have brought me
hither. Sometime before my being last taken up, I had formed within
myself most steady purposes of amendment, which it is a great
comfort to me, even here that I never broke them, having lived at
Henley upon Thames, both with a good reputation, and in a manner
which deserved it. I heartily forgive and I hope God would do the
same to Dyer, whose evidence hath taken away my life. I hope he will
make a good use of that time which the price of my blood and that of
others has procured him. I heartily desire pardon of all whom I have
injured and declare that in the several robberies I have committed,
I have been always careful to avoid committing any murder.

After this he adjusted the rope about his own neck, and submitted to
that sentence which the Law directed, being at that time about
twenty-nine years of age. He suffered on the 9th of September, 1723.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The Jacobite rising of 1715.

The Life of CAPTAIN STANLEY, a Murderer

There cannot be a greater misfortune than to want education, except it
be the having a bad one. The minds of young persons are generally
compared to paper on which we may write whatever we think fit, but if it
be once blurred and blotted with improper characters, it becomes much
harder to impress proper sentiments thereon, because those which were
first there must be totally erased. This seems to have been too much the
case with the unhappy person of whom the thread of these narrations
requires that I should speak, viz., Captain Stanley.

This unhappy young gentleman was the son of an officer in the army who
married the sister of Mr. Palmer, of Duce Hill, in Essex, where she was
brought to bed of this unfortunate son John, in the year 1698. The first
rudiments he received were those of cruelty an