Some few days before his execution, talking to one of his friends, he said, I am perfectly convinced that it is false courage to avoid the just sentence of the Law, by executing the rash dictates of one’s rage by one’s own head.  I am heartily sorry for the rash expression I have been guilty of, of that sort, and am determined to let the world see my courage fails me no more in my death than it has done in my life; and, my dear friend, added he, I never felt so much ease, quiet and satisfaction in all my life, as I have experienced, since my coming to this resolution.

But though he sometimes expressed himself in a serious and religious manner yet passion would sometimes break in upon him to the last and make him burst out into frightful and horrid speeches.  Then again he would grow calm and cool, and speak with great seeming sense of God’s providence in his afflictions.

He was particularly affected with two accidents which happened to him not long before his death, and which struck him with great concern at the time they happened.  The first of these was a fall from his horse under Tyburn, in which he was stunned so that he could not recover strength enough to remount, but was helped on his horse again by the assistance of two friends.  Not long after which, he had as bad an accident of the same kind under Newgate, which he said, made such an impression on him, that he did not go abroad for many mornings afterwards, without recommending himself in the most serious manner to the Divine protection.

Another story he also told, with many marks of real thankfulness for the narrow escape he then made from death, which happened thus.  At a cider-cellar in Covent Garden he fell out with one Captain Chickley, and challenging him to fight in a dark room, they were then shut up together for some space.  But a constable being sent for by the people of the house, and breaking the door open, delivered him from being sent altogether unprepared out of the world, Chickley being much too hard for him, and having given him a wound quite through the body, himself escaping with only a slight cut or two.

As the day of execution drew near, Mr. Stanley appeared more serious and much more attentive to his devotions than hitherto he had been.  Yet could he not wholly contain himself even then, for the Sunday before he died, after sermon, at which he had behaved himself decently and modestly, he broke out into this wild expression, that he was only sorry he had not fired the whole house where he killed Mrs. Maycock.  When he was reproved for these things he would look ashamed, and say, ’twas true, they were very unbecoming, but they were what he could not help, arising from certain starts in his imagination that hurried him into a short madness, for which he was very sorry as soon as he came to himself.