ilver buckle at Windsor, she asked Wild to
recover it, and offered the hero twenty pounds for his trouble. 'Zounds,
Madam,' says he, 'you offer nothing. It cost the gentleman who took it
forty pounds for his coach, equipage, and other expenses to Windsor.'
His impudence increased with success, and in the geniality of his cups
he was wont to boast his amazing rogueries: 'hinting not without vanity
at the poor Understandings of the Greatest Part of Mankind, and his own
Superior Cunning.'

In fifteen years he claimed L10,000 for his dividend of recovered
plunderings, and who shall estimate the moneys which flowed to his
treasury from blackmail and the robberies of his gang? So brisk became
his trade in jewels and the precious metals that he opened relations
with Holland, and was master of a fleet. His splendour increased with
wealth: he carried a silver-mounted sword, and a footman tramped at
his heels. 'His table was very splendid,' says a biographer: 'he
seldom dining under five Dishes, the Reversions whereof were generally
charitably bestow'd on the Commonside felons.' At his second marriage
with Mrs. Mary D--n, the hempen widow of Scull D--n, his humour was most
happily expressed: he distributed white ribbons among the turnkeys, he
gave the Ordinary gloves and favours, he sent the prisoners of Newgate
several ankers of brandy for punch. 'Twas a fitting complaisance, since
his fortune was drawn from Newgate, and since he was destined himself, a
few years later, to drink punch--'a liquor nowhere spoken against in
the Scriptures'--with the same Ordinary whom he thus magnificently
decorated. Endowed with considerable courage, for a while he had the
prudence to save his skin, and despite his bravado he was known on
occasion to yield a plundered treasure to an accomplice who set a pistol
to his head. But it is certain that the accomplice died at Tyburn for
his pains, and on equal terms Jonathan was resolute with the best. On
the trail he was savage as a wild beast. When he arrested James Wright
for a robbery committed upon the persons of the Earl of B--l--n and the
Lord Bruce, he held on to the victim's chin by his teeth--an exploit
which reminds you of the illustrious Tiger Roche.

Even in his lifetime he was generously styled the Great. The scourge of
London, he betrayed and destroyed every man that ever dared to live
upon terms of friendship with him. It was Jonathan that made Blueskin a
thief, and Jonathan screened his