round will be best understood by some figures of death
sentences for the March Assizes, 1792:--Hertford 2, Cambs. 4, Bedford
4, Northampton 5, Chelmsford 4, Oxford 2, Thetford 2, Bury 6, York 17,
Exeter 16, East Grinstead 3, Derby 2, Nottingham 2, Leicester 2,
Gloucester 6, Taunton 3, Kingston 12. At one only of the above Assizes
the number of prisoners of all kinds for trial was 85. In June, 1785,
twenty-five persons were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, and 15
of them were hung together the next week. In 1788 there were 81
capital convicts awaiting execution in Newgate, and in 1792 thirteen
prisoners were sentenced to death for horse-stealing and lesser
offences at a single sessions in London!

At the Herts. Assizes in 1802, John Wood, a carpenter, of Royston, was
ordered to be transported for fourteen years for having some forged
bank notes concealed in his workshop. In the same year, {89} at the
Cambs. Assizes, William Wright, a native of Foxton, was sentenced to
death and executed at Cambridge, for uttering forged Bank of England
notes. At the Hertford Assizes, in 1801, William Cox, for getting fire
to a hovel of wheat at Walkern, was sentenced to death. Among other
oddly sounding capital offences, I find that a man named Horn was
sentenced to death at the Hertfordshire Assizes in 1791 for stealing
some money from the breeches pocket of a man with whom he had slept.
At the Cambs. Assizes, in 1812, Daniel Dawson was tried for an offence
of poisoning a mare the property of William Adams, of Royston, and was
sentenced to death, and executed at Cambridge about a fortnight
afterwards.

Sheep-stealing, horse-stealing and highway robberies, were the chief
offences with which capital punishment was connected, and associations
were formed to prosecute offenders. The parishes of North Herts. were
especially notable for sheep-stealing cases. In 1825, at the Herts.
Spring Assizes, a man named Hollingsworth was indicted for stealing 55
sheep and 17 lambs, the property of William Lilley, at Therfield. The
jury found the prisoner guilty and "the awful sentence of the law was
pronounced upon him," so says the Chronicle--and at the July Assizes in
the same year, Francis Anderson, for stealing one ewe lamb, the
properly of Edward Logsden, at Therfield, was found guilty and
"sentence of death was recorded." At the Cambs. Assizes in 1827,
George Parry was indicted for sheep-stealing at Hauxton, and the judge
"passed