y of the Court among the
Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in the Dock as though we had
been a Galantee Show. It is some years now since I have entered a Court
of Criminal Justice, and I do hope that this Indecent and Uncivil
Behaviour of well-bred Women coming to gaze on Criminals for their
diversion has utterly given way before the Benevolence and good taste of
a polite Age.

When, at the last, I was told to plead, and at the bidding of an Officer
of the Court, who stood underneath me, had pleaded Not Guilty, and had
been asked how I would be tried, and had answered, likewise at his
bidding, "By God and my Country," and when after that the Clerk of the
Arraigns had prayed Heaven--and I am sure I needed it, and thanked him
heartily at the time, kind Gentleman, thinking that he meant it, and not
knowing that it was a mere Legal Form--to send me a good
Deliverance,--the Judge bids me, to my great surprise, to Stand By. I
thought at first that they were going to have Mercy on me, and would
have down on my knees in gratitude to them. But it was not so; and the
sleepy old Judge, suddenly waking up, told me that there were two
Indictments against me, and that I should have the honour of being tried
separately. Goodness save us! I was looked upon as one of the most
desperate of the Gang, and was to be tried, not only under the Black
Act, but that, not having the fear of God before my eyes, but being
moved by the instigation of the Devil, I had, against the peace of our
Sovereign Lord the King, attempted feloniously to kill, slay, and murder
one John Foss, a Corporal in his Majesty's Regiment of Grenadier
Footguards, by striking him, the said John Foss, over the back, breast,
hips, loins, shoulders, thighs, legs, feet, arms, and fingers, with a
certain deadly and lethal weapon, to wit, with a demijohn of Brandy.

I was put back and kept all day in the prison. At evening came in my
comrades, and from them I learnt that the case had gone dead against
them from the beginning, that the Jury had found them guilty under the
Statute without leaving the box; and that, as the felony was one without
the benefit of Clergy, Judge Blackcap had put on a wig as black as his
name, and sentenced every man Jack of them to be hanged on the Monday
week next following.

So then it came to my turn to be tried. The ordeal on the first
Indictment was very short; for, at the Judge's bidding, the Jury
acquitted me of trying to murder Corpo