hese agents to the Prince of Darkness are
usually women who have an artful way of flattering and a pleasing
deceitfulness in their address. By this means they, without much
difficulty, draw in young lads at their first giving way to the current
of their lewd inclinations, and before they are aware, involve them in
such expenses as necessarily lead to housebreaking or the highway for a
supply. When once they have made a step of this kind, by which their
lives are placed in the power of those old practitioners in every kind
of wickedness, they are from thenceforward treated as slaves and forced
to continue, whether they will or no, in a repeated course of the like
villainies until they are arrested by the hand of Justice. Then, none so
ready to become evidences against them as those abominable wretches by
whom they were at first seduced.

Such was the fate that befell these three unhappy young men, of whose
courses information being given, they were all apprehended and committed
close prisoners to Newgate, and at the next ensuing sessions not a few
indictments were found against them. The first indictment they were all
three arraigned upon was for felony and burglary in breaking open the
house of one William Meak, in the night-time, and taking from thence
twelve Gloster cheeses. But the evidence appearing clear only against
Sherwood, _alias_ Hobbs, he alone was convicted and the other two
acquitted. They were then indicted a second time for breaking open the
house of Daniel Elvingham, in the night-time, and taking out of it
several quantities of brandy and tobacco; upon which both Sherwood and
Weedon were, from very full evidence, convicted. On a third indictment
for breaking into the house of Elizabeth Cogdal, and taking thence eight
pewter dishes and twenty pewter plates, they were all found guilty;
Sherwood and Weedon also being a fourth time convicted for a robbery on
the highway, which was proved upon them by the testimony of their
landlady, Sarah Payne.

Under sentence of death they all testified great sorrow for the offences
of their misspent lives. Weedon was of a better temper than the two
other, retained a greater sense of the principles of religion upon which
he had been brought up in his youth and exceeded his companions in
seriousness and steadiness in his devotions. Sherwood had been a much
longer proficient in all kinds of wickedness than the other two, having
practised several kinds of thefts for nearly e