ibe in their youth as to
love and women. This unhappy person, Matthew Clark, of whom we are now
to speak, was a most remarkable instance of the truth of this
observation. He was born at St. Albans, of parents in but mean
circumstances, who thought they had provided very well for their son
when they had procured his admission into the family of a neighbouring
gentleman, equally distinguished by the greatness of his merit and
fortune.

In this place, certainly, had Matthew been inclined in any degree to
good, he might have acquired from the favour of his master all the
advantages, even of a liberal education; but proving an incorrigible,
lazy and undutiful servant, the gentleman in whose service he was, after
bearing with him a long time, turned him out of his family. He then went
to plough and cart, and such other country work, but though he had been
bred to this and was never in any state from which he could reasonably
hope better, yet was he so restless and uneasy at those hardships which
he fancied were put upon him, that he chose rather to rob than to
labour; and leaving the farmer in whose service he was, used to skulk
about Bushey Heath, and watch all opportunities to rob passengers.

Matthew was a perfect composition of all the vices that enter into low
life. He was idle, inclined to drunkenness, cruel and a coward; nor
would he have had spirit enough to attack anybody on the road had it not
been to supply him with money for merry meetings and dancing bouts, to
which he was carried by his prevailing passion for loose women. And
these expeditions keeping him continually bare, robbing and junketting,
desire of pleasure and fear of the gallows were the whole round of both
his actions and his thoughts.

At last the matrimonial maggot bit his brain, and alter a short
courtship, he prevailed on a young girl in the neighbourhood to go up
with him to London, in order to their marriage. When they were there,
finding his stock reduced so low that he had not even money to purchase
the wedding ring, he pretended that a legacy of fifteen pounds was just
left him in the country, and with a thousand promises of a quick return,
set out from London to fetch it. When he left the town, full of uneasy
thoughts, he travelled towards Neasden and Willesden Green, where
formerly he had lived. He intended to have lurked there till he had an
opportunity of robbing as many persons as to make up fifteen pounds from
their effects. In pursu