ter purpose. But they were inexorable, and as
they knew their surrender would bring them immediately to a shameful
death, so they declared positively they were determined to kill or to be
killed in the position in which they were.

Sir Jeremiah Murden, one of the sheriffs for the time being, was so good
as to go down upon this occasion to Newgate. The keepers had opened a
sort of trap-door in the room over the hold, and from thence discharged
several pistols loaded with small shot, but to no purpose, the criminals
retiring to the farther end of the room, continuing there safe and out
of reach; though Barton and Yates received each of them a slight wound
in crowding backwards. Sir Jeremy went himself to this place, and talked
to them for a considerable space, and one of the fellows insisting to
see his gold chain, that they might be sure they were treating with the
sheriffs themselves, his condescension was so great as to put down part
of it through the hole, upon which they consulted together, and at last
agreed to surrender. Whereupon they began immediately to remove the
stones, and as soon as the door was at liberty, one of the keepers
entered. Just as he was within it, Barton snapped a steel tobacco-box in
his face, the noise of which resembling a pistol, made him start back,
upon which Barton said, _D----n you, you was afraid._

When they were brought out, Sir Jeremy ordered the Ordinary to be sent
for, and prayers to be said in the chapel, where he attended himself.
But whether the hurry of this affair, or that stench which is natural to
so filthy a place as the condemned hold, affected the sheriff's
constitution, is hard to say, but upon his return home, he was seized
with a violent fever, which in a very short space took away his life.

But to return to Swift. When they came to Tyburn, and the minister had
performed his last office towards them, this criminal made a shift in a
faint tone to cry out, _Good People, I die as innocent of the crime for
which I suffer, as the child unborn_; which Barton, with a loud voice,
confirmed saying, _I am the man who robbed the person for which this man
dies; he was not concerned with me, but one Capell and another were
companions with me therein._ Swift, at the time of his execution, was
about twenty-seven years of age, or a little over.

The lives of EDWARD BURNWORTH, _alias_ FRAZIER, WILLIAM BLEWIT, THOMAS
BERRY, EMANUEL DICKENSON, WILLIAM MARJORAM, JOHN HIGGS, etc.,