ngham, in the seventy-fourth year of
his age, for the murder of an infant born of his own sister, in the year
one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four. On the third day after
the birth, this brutal ruffian thrust the child into a linen bag, and
accompanied by his own brother on horseback, conveyed it to Annesley,
in Nottinghamshire, where it was next day found dead under a hay-stack.
Though this cruel rustic knew how much he lay at the mercy of his
brother, whom he had made privy to this affair, far from endeavouring
to engage his secrecy by offices of kindness and marks of affection, he
treated him as an alien to his blood; not barely with indifference, but
even with the most barbarous rigour. He not only defrauded him of
his right, but exacted of him the lowest menial services; beheld him
starving in a cottage, while he lived himself in affluence; and refused
to relieve with a morsel of charity the children of his own brother
begging at his gate. It was the resentment of this pride and barbarity
which, in all likelihood, first impelled the other to revenge. He
pretended qualms of conscience, and disclosed the transaction of the
child to several individuals. As the brother was universally hated for
the insolence and brutality of his disposition, information was given
against him, and a resolution formed to bring him to condign punishment.
Being informed of this design, he tampered with his brother, and desired
that he would retract upon the trial the evidence he had given before
the justices. Though the brother rejected this scheme of subornation,
he offered to withdraw himself from the kingdom, if he might have five
pounds to defray the expense of his removal. So sordidly avaricious was
the other, that he refused to advance this miserable pittance, though
he knew his own life depended upon his compliance. He was accordingly
apprehended, tried, and convicted on his brother's evidence; and then he
confessed the particulars of his exposing the infant. He denied, indeed,
that he had any thought the child would perish, and declared he intended
it as a present to a gentleman at whose gate it was laid; butas he
appeared to be a hardened miscreant, devoid of humanity, stained with
the complicated crimes of tyranny, fraud, rapine, incest, and murder,
very little credit is due to his declaration.--In the course of the
same month, part of Westminster was grievously alarmed by a dreadful
conflagration, which broke out in the hous