ook a great deal of pains and made much
interest to be discharged. At last he effected it, and a gentleman
kindly taking him to live with him as a footman, he there recovered part
of that education which he had lost while in the army. There, also, he
addicted himself for some time to a sober and quiet life, but soon after
giving way to his old roving disposition, he went away from his master,
and listed himself again in the army in one of the regiments of Guards.

His behaviour the last time of his being in the service was honest and
regular, his officers giving him a very good character, and nobody else
a bad one; but happening to be one day commanded on a party to mount
guard at the Admiralty Office, by Charing Cross, they met a man and
woman. The man's name was John Ransom, and this Hawksworth stepping up
to the woman and going to kiss her, Ransom interposed and pushed him
off, upon which Hawksworth knocked him down with the butt end of his
piece, by which blow about nine o'clock that evening he died.

The prisoner insisted continually that as he had no design to kill the
man it was not wilful murder. He and Tyrrell died with less confusion
and seeming concern than most malefactors do. Tyrrell was about thirty
and Hawksworth in the twenty-eighth year of his age, on the 17th of
June, 1723.

The Life of WILLIAM DUCE, a Notorious Highwayman and Footpad

However hardened some men may appear during the time they are acting
their crimes and while hopes of safety of life remains, yet when these
are totally lost and death, attended with ignominy and reproach, stares
them in the face, they seldom fail to lay aside their obstinacy; or, if
they do not, it is through a stupid want of consideration, either of
themselves or of their condition.

William Duce, of whom we are now to speak, was one of the most cruel and
abandoned wretches that ever went on the road. He was born at
Wolverhampton, but of what parents, or in what manner he lived until his
coming up to London, I am not able to say. He had not been long here
before he got in debt with one Allom, who arrested him and threw him
into Newgate, where he remained a prisoner upwards of fifteen months;
here it was that he learnt those principles of villainy which he
afterwards put in practice.

His companions were Dyer, Butler, Rice and some others whom I shall have
occasion to mention. The first of December, 1722, he and one of his
associates crossing Chelsea Fields