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 be
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, detes-
table 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 became 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 certainly be tried for my life at the Old Bailey. My temper was touched before; the hardened wretched boldness of spirit which I had acquired in the prison abated, and conscious guilt began to flow in upon my mind. In short, I began to think (and to think, indeed, is one real advance from hell to heaven) all that 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.

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 on 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."

66

Why," says he, "I will not flatter you; I would have you prepare for death, for I doubt not you will be cast, and as they say you are an old offender, I doubt not 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 a word to him, good or bad, for a great while; but at last I burst out into tears, and I 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

As soon as I began, I say, to think, the first thing 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 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 My poor afflicted governess was now as much her her due, acted the part of a true friend. She concerned as I, and a great deal more truly left me no stone unturned to pervert the grand penitent, though she had no prospect of being jury; finding out one or two of the jurymen, brought to trial and sentence, not but that she talking with them, and endeavoured to possess deserved it as much as I, and so she said herself; them with favourable dispositions, on account but she had not done anything herself for many that nothing was taken away, and no house years, other than receiving what I and others broken, &c.; but all would not do they were overruled by the rest. stole, and encouraging us to steal it. But she The two wenches swore cried and took on like a distracted body, wringhome to the fact, and the jury found the billing her hands, and crying out that she was unagainst 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, it was the discourse all over the house that I

like.

done; 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 one, and such one to the gallows; and there she reckoned up ten or eleven people, some of whom I have given an 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, 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.

The

to me, the first bringing me to a sentence of death, and the last would have done no more. 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 awhile; 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 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 than I thought I could have done, and in such a mov. Iing tone, and though with tears, yet not with so many tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard me.

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 forty-six pounds, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and for breaking open his doors; whereas I knew very well that they could not pretend to prove I had broken the doors, or so much as lifted up the latch.

On the Friday I was brought to my trial. had exhausted ny spirits with crying for two or three days before, 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, and 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 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 the 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 that I was bringing them away if I had not been taken.

But I had 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 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 off with them.

In short, Iwas found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort

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 spirits 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 wo man 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 be. fore 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 war- | rant which was to come down for the execution the Friday afterwards of five more and myself.

In the meantime my poor distressed gover ness 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

sinners to repent, and turn from their evil way, and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with me.

into my very soul by it, and I unravelled all the wickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgment of this whole history; I gave him the picture of my conduct for fifty years in miniature.

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 I had nothing from him, and he in return exhaving a kind of view into the other side of time, horted me to a sincere repentance, explained to the things of life, as I believe they do with every-me what he meant by repentance; and then body at such a time, began to look with a differ- drew out such a scheme of infinite mercy, proent aspect, and quite another shape, than they claimed from heaven to sinners of the greatest did before. The greatest and best things, the magnitude, that he left me nothing to say that views of felicity, the joy, the griefs of life, were looked like despair or doubting of being acceptquite other things; and I had nothing in my ed, and in this condition he left me the first thought but what was so infinitely superior to night. 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.

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 The word "eternity" represented itself with all that of being sincerely desirous of it, and willing its incomprehensible additions, and I had such to accept it; only a sincere regret for and haextended notions of it, that I know not how to tred of those things I had done, which rendered express them. Among the rest, how vile, how me so just an object of divine vengeance. I I am gross, how absurd did every pleasant thing look; not able to repeat the excellent discourses of this I mean, that we had accounted pleasant before; extraordinary man. It is all I am able to do or especially when I reflected that these sordid tri-say, that he revived my heart, and brought me fles were the things for which we forfeited eternal into such a condition that I never knew any felicity. thing 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 being a true penitent, I mean the hope of being forgiven; and so swift did such 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.

With these reflections came in, of mere course, severe reproaches of my own mind for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I had forfeited all hope of 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.

The good man 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 sunk 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.

But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him, as far as I thought 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 is to extort confession from prisoners for private ends, or for the farther detecting of other offenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom of discourse as might serve I wondered much that I did not see him all the me to disburthen my own mind, and furnish him next day, it being but the day before the time to administer comfort to me, as far as was in his appointed for execution, and I was greatly dispower; and assured me, that whatever I said to||couraged and dejected in my mind, and indeed 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

almost sunk for want of that 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 oppression 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 myself.

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 emotion 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 used 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 great diffi. culty that I was recovered at all.

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 providence that had, as it were, snatched me out of the jaws of this destruction; I remained as it were dumb and silent, overcome with the sense of it, and not able to express what I had in my heart; for the passions on such occasions as these are certainly so agitated as not to be able presently to regulate their own motions.

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 The good man having made a very christian cold fit of an ague, so that I could not speak or exhortation to me not to let the joy of my re- look but like one distracted. As soon as they prieve put the remembrance of my past sorrow were all put into the carts and gone, which, howout of my mind, and having told me that he must ever, I had not courage enough to see,-I say, as leave me to go and enter the reprieve in the soon as they were gone I fell into a fit of erying books and show it to the sheriffs, stood up just be- involuntarily and without design, but as a mere fore his going away and in a very earnest manner distemper, and yet so violently, and it held me so prayed to God for me, that my repentance might || long, that I knew not what course to take, nor be made unfeigned and sincere, and that my could I stop or put a check to it, no, not with all coming to back, as it were, into life again, might the strength and courage I had. 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 for the mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation of my past sins, from a sense of that 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 advanta geous 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 will go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad scene truly in the pri

son.

The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell at St Sepulchre's, as they call it, which ushered in the|| day. As soon as it began to toll a dismal groan- || ing and crying was heard from the condemned hole, where there lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some for 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 awkwark sorrows for the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing one from another; some cried for thein, some huzzaed and wished them a good journey, some damned and curst those that had

This fit of crying held me near two hours, and as I believe, till they were all out of this 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 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 last an 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.

esteemed a mercy, there was no doubt but it would be strictly observed. She said no more than this-" We will try what can be done," and so we parted.

I lay in the prison for fifteen weeks after this order for transportation was signed. What the reason of it was I know not; but at the end of this time I was put on board of a ship in the

I had now a certainty of life indeed, but with the hard conditions of being ordered for trans-Thames, and with me a gang of thirteen as portation, which indeed was a 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 it is 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 might not have forgot my former distresses, and 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.

hardened vile creatures as ever Newgate produced in my time; and it would really well take up a history longer than mine to describe the degrees of impudence and audacious villainy that those thirteen were arrived to, and the manner of their behaviour on the voyage, of which I have a very diverting account by me, which the captain of the ship who carried them over gave me the minutes of, and which he caused his mate to write down at large.

It may, perhaps, be thought trifling to enter here into a relation of all the little incidents which attended me in this interval of my circumstances; I mean between the final order for my transportation and the time of my going on board the ship, and I am too near the end of my story to allow room for it; but something relating to me and my Lancashire husband I must not omit.

He had, as I have observed already, been I had not for a good while mentioned my carried from the master's side of the ordinary governess, who had been dangerously sick, and prison into the press-yard with three of his being in as near a view of death by her disease comrades, for they found another to add to them as I was by my sentence, was a very great peni- || after some time. Here, for what reason I know tent. I say I have not mentioned her, nor, in- not, they were kept in custody without being deed, did I see her in all this time; but being brought to trial almost three months. It seems now recovering, and just able to come abroad, they found means to bribe or buy off some of she came to see me. those who were expected to come in against them, and they wanted evidence some time to convict them. After some puzzle on this account, at first they made shift to get proof enough against two of them to carry them off; but the other two, of which my Lancashire husband was one, lay still in suspense. They had, I think, one positive evidence against each of them; but the law strictly obliging them to have two witnesses, they could make nothing of it; yet it seems they were resolved not to part with the men neither, not doubting but a farther evidence would at last come in; and in order to this, I believe publication was made that such prisoners being taken, any one who had been robbed by them might come to the prison and see them.

I told her my condition, and what a different flux and reflux of fears 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 again into wickedness; upon my falling into the wretched company 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 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 so horrid example as that;" and as soon as the minister was gone she told me she would not have me discovered, for, perhaps, ways and means might be found to dispose of me in a particular way by myself, of which she would talk to me afterwards.

I looked earnestly at her, and 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, imagine the methods, or think of one that was feasible. But I was too much concerned in it to let her go from me without explaining herself, which, though she was very loath to do, yet, as 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 pound in pocket? I'll warrant ye, child," says she

||

I took this opportunity to satisfy my curiosity, pretending that I had been robbed in the Dunstable coach, and that I would go to see the two highwaymen; but when I came into the pressyard I so disguised myself, and muffled my face up so, that he could see little of me, and consequently knew nothing of who I was; and when I came back I said publicly that I knew them very well.

Immediately it was rumoured all over the prison that Moll Flanders would turn evidence against one of the highwaymen, and that I was to come off by it from the sentence of transhisportation.

I understood her presently, but told her I saw no room to hope for anything but a strict execution of the order; and as it was a severity that was

They heard of it, and immediately my husband desired to see this Mrs Flanders, that knew him so well and was to be an evidence against him, and accordingly I had leave given to go to him