There are generally a set of people about most prisons, and especially about Newgate, who get their living by imposing on unhappy criminals, and persuading them that guilt may be covered, and Justice evaded by certain artful contrivances in which they profess themselves masters.  Some of these had got access to this unhappy woman, and had instilled into her a notion that the confession of Wood and Billings could no way affect her life.  This made her vainly imagine that there was no positive proof against her, and that circumstantials only would not convict her.  For this reason she resolved to put herself upon her trial (contrary to her first intentions; for having been asked what she would do, she had replied she would hold up her hand at the bar and plead guilty, for the whole world could not save her).  Accordingly, being arraigned, she pleaded not guilty, and put herself upon her trial.  Wood and Billings both pleaded guilty, and desired to make atonement for the same by the loss of their blood, only praying the Court would be graciously pleased to favour them so much (as they had made an ingenuous confession) as to dispense with their being hanged in chains.  Mrs. Hayes having thus put herself upon her trial, the King’s Counsel opened the indictment, setting forth the heinousness of the fact, the premeditated intentions, and inhuman method of acting it; that his Majesty for the more effectual prosecution of such vile offenders, and out of a tender regard to the peace and welfare of all his subjects, and that the actors and perpetrators of such unheard of barbarities might be brought to condign punishment, had given them directions to prosecute the prisoners.  Then Richard Bromage, Robert Wilkins, Leonard Myring, Joseph Mercer, John Blakesby, Mary Springate, and Richard Bows, were called into Court; the substance of whose evidence against the prisoner was that the prisoner being interrogated about the murder, when in Newgate, said, the devil put it into her head, but, however, John Hayes was none of the best of husbands, for she had been half starved ever since she was married to him; that she did not in the least repent of anything she had done, but only in drawing those two poor men into this misfortune; that she was six weeks importuning them to do it; that they denied it two or three times, but at last agreed; her husband was so drunk that he fell out of his chair, then Billings and Wood, carried him into the next room, and laid him upon the bed; that she was not in that room but in the fore room on the same floor when he was killed, but they told her that Billings struck him twice on the head with a pole-axe, and that then Wood cut his throat; that when he was quite dead she went in and held the candle whilst Wood cut his head quite off, and afterwards they chopped off his legs and arms; that they wanted to get him into an old chest, but were forced to cut off his thighs and arms, and then the chest would not hold them all; the body and limbs were put into blankets at several