in themselves, lost all
he had.

His behaviour was pretty much of a piece with the rest of his
companions, that is, he was so unaffected either with the shamefulness
of his death or the danger of his soul that perhaps never any creatures
went to death in a more odd manner than these did, whose behaviour
cannot for all that be charged with any rudeness or want of decency. But
religion and repentance were things so wholly new to them, and so
unsuited to their comprehension, that there needed a much greater length
of time than they had to have given them any true sense of their duty,
to which it cannot be said they were so averse, as they were ignorant
and incapable.

William Elisha was another of these wretches, but he seemed to have had
a better education than most of them, though he made as ill use of it as
any. He was once an evidence at Croydon assizes, where he convicted two
of his companions, but the sight of their execution, and the
consciousness of having preserved his own life merely by taking theirs,
did not in the least contribute to his amendment, for he was no sooner
at liberty but he was engaged in new crimes, until at last with those
malefactors before mentioned, and with eight others, he was executed at
Kingston, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, April 4th, 1724.

The Life of THOMAS BURDEN, a Robber

Thomas Burden was born in Dorsetshire, of parents in tolerable
circumstances, who being persons getting their living by seamen, they
bred up their son to that profession, and sent him very young to sea. It
does not appear that he ever liked that employment, but rather that he
was hurried into it when he was very young by the choice of his parents,
and therefore in no condition to choose better for himself. He was up in
the Straits several years, and while there in abundance of fights, at
which time he had so much religion as to apply himself diligently to God
in prayer for his protection, and made abundance of vows and resolutions
of amendment, if it pleased the providence of God to preserve his life.
But no sooner was the danger over, but all these promises were forgotten
until the next time he was in jeopardy.

At this rate he went on until the war was over, and notwithstanding the
aversion he always had to a military kind of life, yet such was his
unconquerable aversion to labour, that he rather enlisted himself in the
land service than submit thereto. Going, however, one day to Hounslow t