. Let your heart, then, be set to obey your Maker and
yield a ready submission to all His laws. Learn that Charity, Love and
Meekness which our blessed religion teaches, and let your mother's
unhappy death excite you to a sober and godly life. The hopes of thus
are all I have to comfort me in this miserable state, this deplorable
condition to which my own rash folly has reduced me._

The sorrow expressed both by her husband and by her child was very great
and lively and scarce inferior to her own, but the ministers who
attended her fearing their lamentations might make too strong an
impression on her spirits, they took their last farewell, leaving her to
take care of her more important concern, the eternal welfare of her
soul.

Some malicious people (as is too often the custom) spread stories of
this unfortunate woman, as if she had been privy to the murder of one
Mr. Hanson, who was killed in the Farthing-Pie House fields[3]; and
attended this with so many odd circumstances and particulars, which
tales of this kind acquire by often being repeated, that the then
Ordinary of Newgate thought it became him to mention it to the prisoner.
Mrs. Griffin appeared to be much affected at her character being thus
stained by the fictions of idle suspicions of silly mischievous persons.
She declared her innocence in the most solemn manner, averred she had
never lived near the place, nor had heard so much as the common reports
as to that gentleman's death.

Yet, as if folks were desirous to heap sorrow on sorrow, and to embitter
even the heavy sentence on this poor woman, they now gave out a new
fable to calumniate her in respect to her chastity, averring on report
of which the first author is never to be found, that she had lived with
Mr. Griffin in a criminal intimacy before their marriage. The Ordinary
also (though with great reluctance) told her this story. The unhappy
woman answered it was false, and confirmed what she said by undeniable
evidence, adding she freely forgave the forgers of so base an
insinuation.

When the fatal day came on which she was to die, Mrs. Griffin
endeavoured, as far as she was able, to compose herself easily to submit
to what was not now to be avoided. She had all along manifested a true
sense of religion, knowing that nothing could support her under the
calamities she went through but the hopes of earthly sufferings atoning
for her faults, and becoming thereby a means of eternal salvation. Yet
th