ad experience, that the
wages of sin, though in appearance they be sometimes large and what
may promise outward pleasure, yet are they attended with such inward
disquiet as renders it impossible for those to have received them
to enjoy either quiet or ease. Work, then, hard at your employments,
and be assured that sixpence got thereby will afford you more solid
satisfaction than the largest acquisitions at the expense of your
conscience. That God may, by His grace, enable you to follow this my
last advice, and that He may bless your honest labour with plenty
and prosperity is the earnest prayer of your dying brother

William Colthouse

Till the day of his execution he had denied his being accessory to the
intended escape by forcing the prison, but when he came to Tyburn, he
acknowledged that assertion to be false, and owned that he caused the
two pistols to be provided for that purpose. He was about thirty-four
years of age at the time he suffered, which was on the 8th of February,
1722, with Burgess, Shaw and Smith.

The Life of WILLIAM BURRIDGE, a Highwayman

In the course of these lives I have more than once observed that the
vulgar have false notions of courage, and that applause is given to it
by those who have as false notions of it as themselves, and this it was
in a great measure which made William Burridge take to those fatal
practices which had the usual termination in an ignominious death. He
was the son of reputable people, who lived at West Haden in
Northamptonshire, who after affording him a competent education, thought
proper to bind him to his father's trade of a carpenter. But he, having
been pretty much indulged before that time, could not by any means be
brought to relish labour, or working for his bread.

Burridge was a well-made fellow, and of a handsome person, as well as
great strength and dexterity, which he had often exercised in wrestling
and cudgel-playing which gained him great praise amongst the country
fellows at wakes and fairs, where such prizes are usually given.
Therefore giving himself up almost wholly to such exercises, he used
frequently to run away from his parents, and lie about the country,
stealing poultry, and what else he could lay his hands on to support
himself. His father trying all methods possible to reclaim him and
finding them fruitless, as his last refuge turned him over to another
master, in hopes that having there n