Chapter
18
The surprise of the
thing only struck deeper into my thoughts, any gave me stronger reflections
than all that had befallen me before. I grieved day and night for him, and the
more for that they told me he was the captain of the gang, and that he had
committed so many robberies, that Hind, or Whitney, or the Golden
Farmer were fools to him; that he would surely be hanged if there were no
more men left in the country he was born in; and that there would abundance of
people come in against him.
I was overwhelmed with
grief for him; my own case gave me no disturbance compared to this, and I
loaded myself with reproaches on his account. I bewailed his misfortunes, and
the ruin he was now come to, at such a rate, that I relished nothing now as I
did before, and the first reflections I made upon the horrid, detestable life I
had lived began to return upon me, and as these things returned, my abhorrence
of the place I was in, and of the way of living in it, returned also; in a
word, I was perfectly changed, and become another body.
While I was under these
influences of sorrow for him, came notice to me that the next sessions
approaching there would be a bill preferred to the grand jury against me, and
that I should be certainly tried for my life at the Old-Baily:
My temper was touched before, the hardened, wretched boldness of spirit which I
had acquired abated, and conscious in the prison, guilt began to flow in upon
my mind. In short, I began to think, and to think is one real advance from hell
to heaven. All that hellish, hardened state and temper of soul, which I have
said so much of before, is but a deprivation of thought; he that is restored to
his power of thinking, is restored to himself.
As soon as I began, I
say, to think, the first think that occurred to me broke out thus: ‘Lord! what will become of me? I shall certainly die! I shall be
cast, to be sure, and there is nothing beyond that but death! I have no
friends; what shall I do? I shall be certainly cast! Lord, have mercy upon me!
What will become of me?’ This was a sad thought, you will say, to be the first,
after so long a time, that had started into my soul of that
kind, and yet even this was nothing but fright at what was to come;
there was not a word of sincere repentance in it all. However, I was indeed
dreadfully dejected, and disconsolate to the last degree; and as I had no
friend in the world to communicate my distressed thoughts to, it lay so heavy
upon me, that it threw me into fits and Swoonings
several times a day. I sent for my old Governess, and she, give her her due, acted the part of a true friend. She left no
stone unturned to prevent the grand jury finding the bill. She sought out one
or two of the jurymen, talked with them, and endeavour’d
to possess them with favourable dispositions, on account that nothing was taken
away, and no house broken, etc.; but all would not do, they were
over-ruled by the rest; the two wenches swore home to the fact, and the jury
found the bill against me for robbery and house-breaking, that is, for felony
and burglary.
I sunk down when they
brought me news of it, and after I came to myself again, I thought I should
have died with the weight of it. My governess acted a true mother to me; she
pitied me, she cried with me, and for me, but she could not help me; and to add
to the terror of it, ’twas the discourse all over the house that I should die
for it. I could hear them talk it among themselves very often, and see them
shake their heads and say they were sorry for it, and the like, as is usual in
the place. But still nobody came to tell me their thoughts, till at last one of
the keepers came to me privately, and said with a sigh, ‘Well, Mrs. Flanders,
you will be tried on Friday’ (this was but a Wednesday); ‘what do
you intend to do?’ I turned as white as a clout, and said, ‘God knows what I
shall do; for my part, I know not what to do.’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘I won’t
flatter you, I would have you prepare for death, for I doubt you will be cast;
and as they say you are an old offender, I doubt you will find but little
mercy. They say,’ added he, ‘your case is very plain, and that the
witnesses swear so home against you, there will be no standing it.’
This was a stab into the
very vitals of one under such a Burthen as I was oppressed with before, and I
could not speak to him a word, good or bad, for a great while; but at last I
burst out into tears, and said to him, ‘Lord! Mr.—, what must I do?’ ‘Do!’ says
he, ‘send for the ordinary; send for a minister and talk with him; for,
indeed, Mrs. Flanders, unless you have very good friends, you are no
woman for this world.’
This was plain dealing
indeed, but it was very harsh to me, at least I thought it so. He left me in
the greatest confusion imaginable, and all that night I lay awake. And now I
began to say my prayers, which I had scarce done before since my last husband’s
death, or from a little while after. And truly I may well call it saying my
prayers, for I was in such a confusion, and had such
horror upon my mind, that though I cried, and repeated several times the
ordinary expression of ‘Lord, have mercy upon me!’ I never brought
myself to any sense of my being a miserable sinner, as indeed I was, and of
confessing my sins to God, and begging pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ. I
was overwhelmed with the sense of my condition, being tried for my life, and
being sure to be condemned, and then I was as sure to be executed, and on this
account I cried out all night, ‘Lord, what will become of me? Lord! what shall I do? Lord! I shall be hanged! Lord, have mercy
upon me!’ and the like.
My poor afflicted
governess was now as much concerned as I, and a great deal more truly penitent,
though she had no prospect of being brought to trial and sentence. Not but that
she deserved it as much as I, and so she said herself; but she had not done
anything herself for many years, other than receiving what I and others stole,
and encouraging us to steal it. But she cried, and took on like a distracted
body, wringing her hands, and crying out that she was undone, that she believed
there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she should be damned, that she had
been the destruction of all her friends, that she had brought such a one, and
such a one, and such a one to the gallows; and there she reckoned up ten or
eleven people, some of which I have given account of, that came to untimely
ends; and that now she was the occasion of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to
go on, when I would have left off. I interrupted her there. ‘No, mother, no,’ said
I, ‘don’t speak of that, for you would have had me left off when I got the
mercer’s money again, and when I came home from Harwich, and I would not
hearken to you; therefore you have not been to blame; it is I only have ruined
myself, I have brought myself to this misery’; and thus we spent many hours
together.
Well, there was no
remedy; the prosecution went on, and on the Thursday I was carried down
to the sessions-house, where I was arraigned, as they called it, and the next
day I was appointed to be tried. At the arraignment I pleaded ‘Not guilty,’ and
well I might, for I was indicted for felony and burglary; that is, for
feloniously stealing two pieces of brocaded silk, value
On the Friday I
was brought to my trial. I had exhausted my spirits with crying for two or
three days before, so that I slept better the Thursday night than I
expected, and had more courage for my trial than indeed I thought possible for
me to have.
When the trial began,
the indictment was read, I would have spoke, but they told me the witnesses
must be heard first, and then I should have time to be heard. The witnesses
were the two wenches, a couple of hard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the
thing was truth in the main, yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity,
and swore I had the goods wholly in my possession, that I had hid them among my
clothes, that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the threshold
when they discovered themselves, and then I put t’ other over, so that I was
quite out of the house in the street with the goods before they took hold of
me, and then they seized me, and brought me back again, and they took the goods
upon me. The fact in general was all true, but I believe, and insisted upon it,
that they stopped me before I had set my foot clear of the threshold of the
house. But that did not argue much, for certain it was that I had taken the
goods, and I was bringing them away, if I had not been taken.
But I pleaded that I had
stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that the door was open, and I went in,
seeing the goods lie there, and with design to buy.
If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of them up in my hand it could
not be concluded that I intended to steal them, for that I never carried them
farther than the door to look on them with the better light.
The Court would not
allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jest of my intending to buy the
goods, that being no shop for the selling of anything, and as to carrying them
to the door to look at them, the maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and
spent their wit upon it very much; told the Court I had looked at them
sufficiently, and approved them very well, for I had packed them up under my
clothes, and was a-going with them.
In short, I was found
guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort to
me, the first bringing me to a sentence of death, and the last would have done
no more. The next day I was carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and
when they came to ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I
stood mute a while, but somebody that stood behind me prompted me aloud to speak
to the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me. This
encouraged me to speak, and I told them I had nothing to say to stop the
sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of the Court; that I
hoped they would allow something in such a case for the circumstances of it;
that I had broken no doors, had carried nothing off; that nobody had lost
anything; that the person whose goods they were was pleased to say he desired
mercy might be shown (which indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst,
it was the first Offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice
before; and, in a word, I spoke with more courage that I thought I could have
done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many tears
as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard
me.
The judges sat grave and
mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say all that I would, but, saying
neither Yes nor No to it, pronounced the sentence of death upon me, a sentence
that was to me like death itself, which, after it was read, confounded me. I
had no more spirit left in me, I had no tongue to
speak, or eyes to look up either to God or man.
My poor governess was
utterly disconsolate, and she that was my comforter before, wanted comfort now
herself; and sometimes mourning, sometimes raging, was as much out of herself,
as to all outward appearance, as any mad woman in Bedlam. Nor was she only
disconsolate as to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own
wicked life, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different from
mine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as well as
sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister, too, a serious, pious,
good man, and applied herself with such earnestness, by his assistance, to the
work of a sincere repentance, that I believe, and so did the minister too, that
she was a true penitent; and, which is still more, she was not only so for the
occasion, and at that juncture, but she continued so, as I was informed, to the
day of her death.
It is rather to be
thought of than expressed what was now my condition. I
had nothing before me but present death; and as I had no friends to assist me,
or to stir for me, I expected nothing but to find my name in the dead warrant,
which was to come down for the execution, the Friday afterwards, of five
more and myself.
In the meantime my poor
distressed governess sent me a minister, who at her request first, and at my
own afterwards, came to visit me. He exhorted me seriously to repent of all my
sins, and to dally no longer with my soul; not flattering myself with hopes of
life, which, he said, he was informed there was no room to expect, but unfeignedly to look up to God with my whole soul, and to
cry for pardon in the name of Jesus Christ. He backed his discourses with
proper quotations of Scripture, encouraging the greatest sinner to repent, and
turn from their evil way, and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with
me.
It was now that, for the
first time, I felt any real signs of repentance. I now began to look back upon
my past life with abhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of
time, and things of life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time,
began to look with a different aspect, and quite another shape, than they did
before. The greatest and best things, the views of felicity, the joy, the griefs of life, were quite other things; and I had nothing
in my thoughts but what was so infinitely superior to what I had known in life,
that it appeared to me to be the greatest stupidity in nature to lay any weight
upon anything, though the most valuable in this world.
The word eternity
represented itself with all its incomprehensible additions, and I had such
extended notions of it, that I know not how to express them. Among the rest,
how vile, how gross, how absurd did every pleasant thing look!—I mean, that we
had counted pleasant before—especially when I reflected that these sordid
trifles were the things for which we forfeited eternal felicity.
With these reflections
came, of mere course, severe reproaches of my own mind for my wretched
Behaviour in my past life; that I had forfeited all hope of any happiness in
the eternity that I was just going to enter into, and on the contrary was
entitled to all that was miserable, or had been conceived of misery; and all
this with the frightful addition of its being also eternal.
I am not capable of
reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but I relate this in the very manner
in which things then appeared to me, as far as I am able, but infinitely short
of the lively impressions which they made on my soul at that time; indeed,
those impressions are not to be explained by words, or if they are, I am not
mistress of words enough to express them. It must be the work of every sober
reader to make just reflections on them, as their own circumstances may direct;
and, without question, this is what every one at some time or other may feel
something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come than they had here,
and a dark view of their own concern in them.
But I go back to my own
case. The minister pressed me to tell him, as far as I
though convenient, in what state I found myself as to the sight I had of things
beyond life. He told me he did not come as ordinary of the place, whose
business it is to extort confessions from prisoners, for private ends, or for
the further detecting of other offenders; that his business was to move me to
such freedom of discourse as might serve to disburthen
my own mind, and furnish him to administer comfort to me as far as was in his
power; and assured me, that whatever I said to him should remain with him, and
be as much a secret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he
desired to know nothing of me, but as above to qualify him to apply proper
advice and assistance to me, and to pray to God for me.
This honest, friendly
way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my passions. He broke into my
very soul by it; and I unravell’d all the wickedness
of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an Abridgement of this whole history;
I gave him a picture of my conduct for fifty years in miniature.
I hid nothing from him,
and he in return exhorted me to sincere repentance, explained to me what he
meant by repentance, and then drew out such a scheme of infinite mercy,
proclaimed from heaven to sinners of the greatest magnitude, that he left me
nothing to say, that looked like despair, or doubting of being accepted; and in
this condition he left me the first night.
He visited me again the
next morning, and went on with his method of explaining the terms of divine
mercy, which according to him consisted of nothing more, or more difficult,
than that of being sincerely desirous of it, and willing to accept it; only a
sincere regret for, and hatred of, those things I had done, which rendered me
so just an object of divine vengeance. I am not able to repeat the excellent
discourses of this extraordinary man; ’tis all that I am able to do, to say
that he revived my heart, and brought me into such a condition that I never
knew anything of in my life before. I was covered with shame and tears for
things past, and yet had at the same time a secret surprising joy at the
prospect of being a true penitent, and obtaining the comfort of a penitent—I
mean, the hope of being forgiven; and so swift did thoughts circulate, and so
high did the impressions they had made upon me run, that I thought I could
freely have gone out that minute to execution, without any uneasiness at all,
casting my soul entirely into the arms of infinite mercy as a penitent.
The good gentleman was
so moved also in my behalf with a view of the influence which he saw these
things had on me, that he blessed God he had come to visit me, and resolved not
to leave me till the last moment; that is, not to leave visiting me.
It was no less than
twelve days after our receiving sentence before any were ordered for execution,
and then upon a Wednesday the dead warrant, as they call it, came
down, and I found my name was among them. A terrible blow this was to my new
resolutions; indeed my heart sank within me, and I swooned away twice, one
after another, but spoke not a word. The good minister was sorely afflicted for
me, and did what he could to comfort me with the same arguments, and the same
moving eloquence that he did before, and left me not that evening so long as
the Prison-keepers would suffer him to stay in the prison, unless he would be
locked up with me all night, which he was not willing to be.
I wondered much that I
did not see him all the next day, it being the day before the time appointed
for execution; and I was greatly discouraged, and dejected in my mind, and
indeed almost sank for want of the comfort which he had so often, and with such
success, yielded me on his former visits. I waited with great impatience, and
under the greatest oppressions of spirits imaginable, till about four o’clock
he came to my apartment; for I had obtained the Favour, by the help of money,
nothing being to be done in that place without it, not to be kept in the
condemned hole, as they call it, among the rest of the prisoners who were to
die, but to have a little dirty chamber to my self.
My heart leaped within
me for joy when I heard his voice at the door, even before I saw him; but let
any one judge what kind of motion I found in my soul, when after having made a
short excuse for his not coming, he showed me that his time had been employed
on my account; that he had obtained a favourable report from the Recorder to
the Secretary of State in my particular case, and, in short, that he had
brought me a reprieve.
He us’d
all the caution that he was able in letting me know a thing which it would have
been a double cruelty to have concealed; and yet it was too much for me; for as
grief had overset me before, so did joy overset me now, and I fell into a much
more dangerous swooning than I did at first, and it was not without a great
difficulty that I was recovered at all.
The good man having made
a very Christian exhortation to me, not to let the joy of my reprieve put the
remembrance of my past sorrow out of my mind, and having told me that he must
leave me, to go and enter the reprieve in the books, and show it to the
sheriffs, stood up just before his going away, and in a very earnest manner
prayed to God for me, that my repentance might be made unfeigned and sincere;
and that my coming back, as it were, into life again, might not be a returning
to the follies of life which I had made such solemn resolutions to forsake, and
to repent of them. I joined heartily in the petition, and must needs say I had
deeper impressions upon my mind all that night, of the mercy of God in sparing
my life, and a greater detestation of my past sins, from a sense of the
goodness which I had tasted in this case, than I had in all my sorrow before.
This may be thought
inconsistent in itself, and wide from the business of this book; particularly,
I reflect that many of those who may be pleased and diverted with the relation
of the wild and wicked part of my story may not relish this, which is really
the best part of my life, the most advantageous to myself, and the most
instructive to others. Such, however, will, I hope, allow me the liberty to
make my story complete. It would be a severe satire on such to say they do not
relish the repentance as much as they do the crime; and that they had rather
the history were a complete tragedy, as it was very likely to have been.
But I go on with my
relation. The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The
first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell
at St. Sepulchres, as they call it, which ushered in the day. As soon as
it began to toll, a dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned
hole, where there lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some
from one crime, some for another, and two of them for murder.
This was followed by a
confused Clamour in the house, among the several sorts of prisoners, expressing
their awkward sorrows for the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner
extremely differing one from another. Some cried for them; some huzza’d, and wished them a good journey; some damned and
cursed those that had brought them to it—that is, meaning the evidence, or
prosecutors—many pitying them, and some few, but very few, praying for them.
There was hardly room
for so much composure of mind as was required for me to bless the merciful
All the while the poor
condemned creatures were preparing to their death, and the ordinary, as they
call him, was busy with them, disposing them to submit to their sentence—I
say, all this while I was seized with a fit of trembling, as much as I could
have been if I had been in the same condition, as to be sure the day before I
expected to be; I was so violently agitated by this surprising fit, that I
shook as if it had been in the cold fit of an ague, so that I could not speak
or look but like one distracted. As soon as they were all put into carts and
gone, which, however, I had not courage enough to see—I say, as soon as
they were gone, I fell into a fit of crying involuntarily, and without design,
but as a mere distemper, and yet so violent, and it held me so long, that I
knew not what course to take, nor could I stop, or put a check to it, no, not
with all the strength and courage I had.
This fit of crying held
me near two hours, and, as I believe, held me till they were all out of the
world, and then a most humble, penitent, serious kind of joy succeeded; a real
transport it was, or passion of joy and thankfulness, but still unable to give
vent to it by words, and in this I continued most part of the day.
In the evening the good
minister visited me again, and then fell to his usual good discourses. He
congratulated my having a space yet allowed me for repentance, whereas the
state of those six poor creatures was determined, and they were now past the
offers of salvation; he earnestly pressed me to retain the same sentiments of
the things of life that I had when I had a view of eternity; and at the end of
all told me I should not conclude that all was over, that a reprieve was not a
pardon, that he could not yet answer for the effects of it; however, I had this
mercy, that I had more time given me, and that it was my business to improve
that time.
This discourse, though
very seasonable, left a kind of sadness on my heart, as if I might expect the
affair would have a tragical issue still, which,
however, he had no certainty of; and I did not indeed, at that time, question
him about it, he having said that he would do his utmost to bring it to a good
end, and that he hoped he might, but he would not have me be secure; and the
consequence proved that he had reason for what he said.
It was about a fortnight
after this that I had some just apprehensions that I should be included in the
next dead warrant at the ensuing sessions; and it was not without great
difficulty, and at last a humble petition for transportation, that I avoided
it, so ill was I beholding to fame, and so prevailing was the fatal report of
being an old offender; though in that they did not do me strict justice, for I
was not in the sense of the law an old offender, whatever I was in the eye of
the judge, for I had never been before them in a judicial way before; so the
judges could not charge me with being an old offender, but the Recorder was
pleased to represent my case as he thought fit.
I had now a certainty of
life indeed, but with the hard conditions of being ordered for transportation,
which indeed was hard condition in itself, but not when comparatively
considered; and therefore I shall make no comments upon the sentence, nor upon
the choice I was put to. We shall all choose anything
rather than death, especially when ’tis attended with an uncomfortable prospect
beyond it, which was my case.
The good minister, whose
interest, though a stranger to me, had obtained me the reprieve, mourned
sincerely for this part. He was in hopes, he said, that I should have ended
my days under the influence of good instruction, that I should not have been
turned loose again among such a wretched crew as they generally are, who are
thus sent abroad, where, as he said, I must have more than ordinary
secret assistance from the grace of God, if I did not turn as wicked again as
ever.
I have not for a good
while mentioned my governess, who had during most, if not all, of this part
been dangerously sick, and being in as near a view of death by her disease as I
was by my sentence, was a great penitent—I say, I have not mentioned her, nor
indeed did I see her in all this time; but being now recovering, and just able
to come abroad, she came to see me.
I told her my condition,
and what a different flux and reflux of tears and hopes I had been agitated
with; I told her what I had escaped, and upon what terms; and she was present
when the minister expressed his fears of my relapsing into wickedness upon my
falling into the wretched companies that are generally transported. Indeed I
had a melancholy reflection upon it in my own mind, for I knew what a dreadful
gang was always sent away together, and I said to my governess that the good
minister’s fears were not without cause. ‘Well, well,’ says she, ‘but I
hope you will not be tempted with such a horrid example as that.’ And as soon
as the minister was gone, she told me she would not have me discouraged, for
perhaps ways and means might be found out to dispose of me in a particular way,
by myself, of which she would talk further to me
afterward.
I looked earnestly at
her, and I thought she looked more cheerful than she usually had done, and I
entertained immediately a thousand notions of being delivered, but could not
for my life image the methods, or think of one that was in the least feasible;
but I was too much concerned in it to let her go from me without explaining
herself, which, though she was very loth to do, yet
my importunity prevailed, and, while I was still pressing, she answered me in a
few words, thus: ‘Why, you have money, have you not? Did you ever know
one in your life that was transported and had a hundred pounds in his pocket,
I’ll warrant you, child?’ says she.
I understood her
presently, but told her I would leave all that to her, but I saw no room to
hope for anything but a strict execution of the order, and as it was a severity
that was esteemed a mercy, there was no doubt but it would be strictly
observed. She said no more but this: ‘We will try what can be done,’ and
so we parted for that night.
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