handkerchiefs
to their friends, he seemed wrapped up in a profound meditation, out of
which he drew himself as soon as prayers began and assisted with much
cheerfulness and attention. When they were ended he stood up and
desiring the Ordinary to repeat after him the following speech, which he
dictated word for word as I have transcribed it, seeming most
passionately affected with the reflection the world had cast on himself
and daughter, as my readers will perceive from the speech itself. After
the making of which, he was immediately turned off, on the sixteenth of
July, 1722.

The last speech of Matthias Brinsden

I was born of kind parents, who gave me learning, and went
apprentice to a fine-drawer. I had often jars which might increase a
natural waspishness in my temper. I fell in love with Hannah, my
late wife, and after much difficulty won her, she having five
sisters at the same time. We had ten children (half of them dead)
and I believe we loved each other dearly, but often quarrelled and
fought. Pray good people mind, I had no malice against her, nor
thought to kill her, two minutes before the deed, but I designed
only to make her obey me thoroughly, which the Scripture says all
wives should do. This I thought I had done, when I cut her skull on
Monday, but she was the same again by Tuesday.

Good people, I request you to observe that though the world has
spitefully given out that I carnally and incestuously lay with my
eldest daughter, I here solemnly declare, as I am entering into the
presence of God, I never knew whether she was man or woman, since
she was a babe. I have often taken her in my arms, often kissed her,
sometimes given her a cake or a pie, when she did any particular
service beyond what came to her share, but never lay with her, or
carnally knew her, much less had a child by her. But when a man is
in calamities and is hated like me, the women will make surmises
into certainties. Good Christians pray for me, I deserve death, I am
willing to die, for though my sins are great, God's mercies are
greater.

The Life of EDMUND NEAL, a Footpad

Of all the unhappy wretches whose ends I have recorded that their
examples may be of the more use to mankind, there is none perhaps which
be more useful, if well considered, than this of Edmund Neal Though
there be nothing in it very extraordinary, yet it