de such a confused noise that I could not hear the
words of the exhortation when spoken, though they are as follows:

All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who are
now going to their deaths; for whom this great bell doth toll.

You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears. Ask
mercy of the Lord for the salvation of your own souls through the
merits, death and passion of Jesus Christ, Who now sits at the right
hand of God, to make intercession for as many of you as penitently
return unto Him.

Lord, have mercy upon you! Christ have mercy upon you!

Which last words the Bell-man repeats three times.

All the way up to Holborn the crowd was so great as at every twenty
or thirty yards to obstruct the passage; and wine, notwithstanding a
late good order against this practice, was brought to the
malefactors, who drank greedily of it, which I thought did not suit
well with their deplorable circumstances. After this the three
thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned,
grew most shamefully wanton and daring, behaving, themselves in a
manner that would have been ridiculous in men in any circumstances
whatever. They swore, laughed, and talked obscenely, and wished
their wicked companions good luck with as much assurance as if their
employment had been the most lawful.

At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking, and
the clergyman who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of
their serious attention. The Psalm was sung amidst the curses and
quarrelling of hundreds of the most abandoned and profligate of
mankind, upon them (so stupid are they to any sense of decency) all
the preparation of the unhappy wretches seems to serve only for
subject of a barbarous kind of mirth, altogether inconsistent with
humanity. And as soon as the poor creatures were half dead, I was
much surprised to see the populace fall to hauling and pulling the
carcasses with so much earnestness as to occasion several warm
rencounters and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of
the persons executed, or such as, for the sake of to-night, chose to
appear so: as well as some persons sent by private surgeons to
obtain bodies for dissection. The contests between these were fierce
and bloody, and frightful to look at; so