ot
serve him for any better purpose than his return to London as soon as be
was able. Whether he went again upon his old practices before he was
apprehended, we cannot determine, but before he had continued two months
in town, somebody seized him, and committed him to Newgate. At the next
sessions he was tried and convicted for returning from transportation,
but pleading, when he received sentence of death, the service he had
done in preventing the attempt of the other malefactors, execution was
respited until the return of the captain, and on his report the sentence
was changed into a new transportation, and leave given him also to go to
what foreign port he would. But he no sooner regained his liberty than
he put it to the same use as before, and took up the trade of snatching
hats, wigs, etc., until he got into acquaintance with Burnworth and his
gang, who taught him other methods of robbing than he had hitherto
practised. Like most of the unhappy people of his sort, he had to his
other crimes added the marriage of several wives, of which the first was
reputed a very honest and modest woman, and it seems had so great a love
for him, notwithstanding the wickedness of his behaviour, that upon her
visiting him at Newgate, the day before they set out for Kingston, she
was oppressed with so violent a grief as to fall down dead in the lodge.
Another of his wives married Emanuel Dickenson and survived them both.

His meeting Burnworth that afternoon before Ball's murder was
accidental, but the savageness of his temper led him to a quick
compliance with that wicked proposition; but after the commission of
that fact, he with his companions before mentioned went over in the
packet boat to Holland. Guilt is a companion which never suffers rest
to enter any bosom where it inhabits; they were so uneasy after their
arrival there, lest an application should be made from the Government at
home, that they were constantly perusing the English newspapers as they
came over to the coffee houses in Rotterdam, that they might gain
intelligence of what advertisements, rewards, or other methods had been
taken to apprehend the persons concerned in Ball's murder; resolving on
the first news of a proclamation, or other interposition of the State on
that occasion, immediately to quit the Dominions of the Republic. But as
Burnworth had been betrayed by the only persons from whom he could
reasonably hope assistance; Higgs seized on board a ship whe