d
for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but
since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done
something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did." The parish officers
testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary;
and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of
shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence,
she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a
distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.'

Chapter 1

In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a
distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the Standard
in Cornhill,' or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the
Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as
could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of
travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem
reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those
goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow
that ever English yeoman drew.

The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not
its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a
lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out
of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in
more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous
progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was
said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there
was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night
while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room
with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin
monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some
neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there
were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are
in every lit