ts both of
circumstances and inclination to have given him a very good education if
he would have received it. The unsettledness of his temper was
heightened by that indulgence with which he was treated by his
relations, who permitted him to make trial of several trades, though he
could not be brought to like any. Indeed, he stayed so long with a
forger of gun-locks, as to learn something of his art, which sometimes
he practised and thereby got money; but generally speaking he chose
rather to acquire it by easier means.

I cannot take upon me to say at what time he began to rob upon the road,
or take to any other villainy of that sort, but 'tis certain that if he
himself were to be believed, it was in a great measure owing to a bad
wife; for when he, by his labour, got nine shillings a week, and used to
return home very weary in the evening, he generally found nobody there
to receive him, or to get ready his supper, but everything in the
greatest confusion, without any person to take care of what little he
had. This, as he would have had it believed, was the source of his
misfortunes and necessities, as it was also the occasion of his taking
such fatal methods to relieve them.

The Hampstead Road was that in which he chiefly robbed, and he could not
be persuaded that there was any great crime in taking away the
superfluous cash of those who lavish it in vanity and luxury, or from
those who procure it by cheating and gaming; and under these two classes
Shaw pretended to rank all who frequented the Wells or Belsize, and it
is to be much feared that in this respect he was not very far out.
Amongst the many adventures which befell him in his expeditions on the
road, there are one or two which it may not be improper to take notice
of.

One evening, as he was patrolling thereabouts, he came up to a chariot
in which there was a certain famous justice, who happened to have won
about four hundred pounds at play, and Count Ui----n, a famous foreign
gamester, that has made many different figures about this town. No
sooner was the coach stopped by Shaw and another person on horseback,
but the Squire slipped the money he had won behind the seat of the
coach, and the Count having little to lose, seemed not very uneasy at
the accident. The highwaymen no sooner had demanded their money, but the
Count gave two or three pieces of foreign gold, and the gentleman, in
hopes by this means of getting rid of them, presented them with twenty