power to bestow,
and strained his circumstances to the utmost to put him apprentice to a
silversmith. James had hardly lived with him six months when his roving
inclination pushed him upon running away and going to sea, which he did,
with one Captain Douglass in a man-of-war.

Here he was better used than most young people are at the first setting
out in a sailor's life. The captain being a person of great humanity and
consideration, treated James with much tenderness, taking him to wait on
himself, and never omitting any opportunity to either encourage or
reward him. But even then Butler could not avoid doing some little
thieving tricks, which very much grieved and provoked his kind
benefactor, who tried by all means, fair and foul, to make him leave
them off. One day, particularly, when he had been caught opening one of
the men's chests and a complaint was thereupon made to the captain, he
was called into the great cabin, and everybody being withdrawn except
the captain, calling him to him, he spoke in these terms.

_Butler, I have always treated you with more kindness and indulgence
than perhaps anybody in your station has been used with on board any
ship. You do, therefore, very wrong by playing such tricks as make the
men uneasy, to put it out of my power to do you any good. We are now
going home, where I must discharge you, for as I had never any
difference with the crew since I commanded the_ Arundel, _I am
determined not to let you become the occasion of it now. There is two
guineas for you, I will take care to have you sent safe to your mother._

The captain performed all his promises, but Butler continued still in
the same disposition, and though he made several voyages in other ships,
yet still continued light-fingered, and made many quarrels and
disturbances on board, until at last he could find nobody who knew him
that would hire him. The last ship he served in was the _Mary_, Capt.
Vernon commander, from which ship he was discharged and paid off at
Portsmouth, in August, 1721.

Having got, after this, into the gang with Dyer, Duce, Rice and others,
they robbed almost always on the King's Road, between Buckingham House
and Chelsea. On the 27th of April, 1723, after having plundered two or
three persons on the aforesaid road, they observed a coach coming
towards them, and a footman on horseback riding behind it. As soon as
they came in sight Dyer determined with himself to attack them, and
forced his co