ack followed him, and he led
him the way to Mr. Longmore's house. At this time Mr. Longmore's brother
coming to the door, and seeing Wood, immediately seized him, and
unhorseing him, dragged him indoors, sent for officers and charged them
with him on suspicion of the murder. From thence he was carried before
Mr. Justice Lambert, who asked him many questions in relation to the
murder; but he would confess nothing, whereupon he was committed to
Tothill Fields Bridewell. While he was there he heard the various
reports of persons concerning the murder, and from those, judging it
impossible to prevent a full discovery or evade the proofs that were
against him, he resolved to name an ample confession of the whole
affair. Mr. Lambert being acquainted with this, he with John Madun and
Thomas Salt, Esqs., two other justices of the peace, went to Tothill
Fields Bridewell, to take his examination, in which he seemed very
ingenuous and ample declaring all the particulars before mentioned, with
this addition that Catherine Hayes was the first promoter of, and a
great assistance in several parts of this horrid affair; that he had
been drawn into the commission thereof partly through poverty, and
partly through her crafty insinuations, who by feeding them with
liquors, had spirited them up to the commission of such a piece of
barbarity. He farther acknowledged that ever since the commission of the
fact he had had no peace, but a continual torment of mind; that the very
day before he came from Greenford he was fully persuaded within himself
that he should be seized for the murder when he came to town, and should
never see Greenford more; notwithstanding which he could not refrain
coming, though under an unexpected certainty of being taken, and dying
for the fact. Having thus made a full and ample confession, and signed
the same on the 27th March, his _mittimus_ was made by Justice Lambert,
and he was committed to Newgate, whither he was carried under a guard of
a serjeant and eight soldiers with muskets and bayonets to keep off the
mob, who were so exasperated against the actors of such a piece of
barbarity that without that caution it would have been very difficult to
have carried him thither alive.

On Monday, the 28th of March, after Mrs. Hayes was committed to Newgate,
being the day after Wood's apprehension, Joseph Mercer going to see
Mrs. Hayes, she told him that as he was Thomas Billings's friend as well
as hers; she desired he