ing-boots.

There was a paltry parcel of books at the Stag o' Tyne, and these I read
over and over again at my leisure. There was a History of the
Persecutions undergone by the Quakers, and Bishop Sprat's Narrative of
the Conspiracy of Blackhead and the others against him. There was Foxe's
Martyrs, and God's Revenge against Murder (a very grim tome), and Mr.
Daniel Defoe's Life of Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack. These, with two
or three Play-books, and a Novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn (very scurrilous), a
few Ballads, and some ridiculous Chap-books about Knights and Fairies
and Dragons, made up the tattered and torn library of our house in
Charlwood Chase. 'Twas good enough, you may say, for a nest of
Deerstealers. Well, there might have been a worse one; but these, I can
aver, with English and Foreign newspapers and letters, and my Bible in
later life, have been all the reading that John Dangerous can boast of.
Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who,
because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs
sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who
has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way
through it to Fortune and Honour.

I was in the twelfth year of my age, when a great change overtook me in
my career. Moved, as it would seem, to exceeding Anger and implacable
Disgust by the carryings-on of Captain Night and his merry men in
Charlwood Chase, the King's Ministers put forth a Proclamation against
us, promising heavy Blood Money to any who would deliver us, or any one
member of the Gang, into the hands of Authority. This Proclamation came
at first to little. There was no sending a troop of horse into the
Chase, and the husbandmen of the country-side were too good Friends of
ours to play the Judas. We were not Highway Robbers. Not one of our band
had ever taken to or been taken from the Road. Rascals of the Cartouche
and Macheath kidney we Disdained. We were neither Foot-pads nor
Cut-purses, nay, nor Smugglers nor Rick-burners. We were only
Unfortunate Gentlemen, who much did need, and who had suffered much for
our politics and our religion, and had no other means of earning a
livelihood than by killing the King's Deer. Those peasants whom we came
across Feared us, indeed, as they would the very Fiend, but bore us no
malice; for we always treated them with civility, and not rarely gave
them the Umbles and other inferior parts