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the house of one of the staff officers of his regiment, and not finding
him at home, but only a corporal who had been left at the house to give
answers, with this corporal he sat chatting and talking until night; so
that being obliged to stay there until the next morning, a discourse
somehow or other happened between him and the person who entertained
him, about William Zouch, an old man who lived alone on the common. And
Burden having been drinking, it came into his head, how easily he might
rob such an old man. Upon which, he immediately went to his house, and
finding him sitting on the bench at his door, he began to talk with and
ask him questions. The old man answered him with great mildness, until
at last Burden drew an iron instrument out of his cane, threatening him
with death if he did not reveal where his money was. Zouch thereupon
brought it him in a pint pot, being but one-and-thirty shillings. Then
tying the old man in his chair, Burden left him. But it seems he did not
tie him so fast but that he easily got loose, and alarming the town,
Burden was quickly taken, having fled along the Common, which was open
to the eye for a long way, instead of taking into the town or the woods,
which if he had, in all probability he might have escaped. When
Whittington and Greenbury apprehended him, he did not deny the fact, but
on the contrary offered them money to let him go.

After his conviction he manifested vast uneasiness at the thoughts of
death, appearing wonderfully moved that he who had lived so long in the
world with the reputation of an honest man, should now die with that of
a thief, and in the manner of a dog. But as death grew nearer, and he
saw there was no remedy, he began to be a little more penitent and
resigned, especially when he was comforting himself with the hopes that
his temporal punishment here might preserve him from feeling everlasting
misery. With these thoughts having somewhat composed himself, he
approached the place where he was to suffer, with tolerable temper and
constancy, entreating the people who were there in very great numbers to
pray for him, and begging that all by his example would learn to stifle
the first motions of wickedness and sin, since such was the depravity of
human nature that no man knew how soon he might fall. At the same place
he delivered a paper in which he much extenuated the crime for which he
suffered, and from whence he would feign have insinuated that it was a