coming to London, which he did accordingly, and worked
at whatsoever employment he could get both with fidelity and diligence;
but a fleet being then setting out for the Mediterranean, press-warrants
were granted for the manning thereof, and the diligence that was used in
putting them in execution gave great uneasiness to Wood, who, having no
settled business, was afraid of falling into their hands. Whereupon he
bethought himself of his countryman, Mr. Hayes, to whom he applied for
his advice and assistance. Mr. Hayes kindly invited him to live with
them in order to avoid that danger, and he accordingly lay with Mr.
Billings, as has been before related. Mr. Hayes was moreover so desirous
of doing him service that he applied himself to finding out such persons
as wanted labourers in order to get him into business, while Mrs. Hayes,
in the meantime, made use of every blandishment to seduce the fellow
into following her wicked inclinations. Perceiving that both Billings
and he had religious principles then in common with ordinary persons,
she artfully made even those persons' dispositions subservient to her
brutal and inhuman purpose.

It seems that Mr. Hayes had fallen, within a few years of his death,
into the company of some who called themselves Free-thinkers and fancy
an excellency in their own understandings because they are able to
ridicule those things which the rest of the world think sacred. Though
it is no great conquest to obtrude the belief of anything whatsoever on
persons of small parts and little education, yet they triumph greatly
therein and communicate the same honour of boasting in their pupils. Mr.
Hayes now and then let fall some rather rash expression, as to his
disbelief of the immortality of the soul, and talked in such a manner on
religious topics that Mrs. Hayes persuaded Billings and Wood that he was
an Atheist, and as he believed his own soul of no greater value than
that of a brute beast, there could be no difference between killing him
and them. It must be indeed acknowledged that there was no less oddity
in such propositions than in those of her husband; however, it
prevailed, it seems, with these unfortunate men; and as she had already
persuaded them it was no sin, so when they were intoxicated with liquor
she found it less difficult than at any other time, to deprive them also
of the humanity, and engage them in perpetrating a fact so opposite not
only to religion but to the natural tendern