His Prayer
Look down in mercy, O God, I beseech Thee, upon me a miserable, lost, and undone sinner. Number not my transgressions nor let my iniquities rise up in judgment against me. Wash me and I shall be clean; purge me and I shall be free from offence. Though my sins be as scarlet, they shall be whiter than snow if Thou pleasest but to receive me amongst those whom Thou hast redeemed, that I may sing praises to the Most High and extol Thy Holy Name in the courts of Heaven for ever and ever more. Amen.
He suffered on the 27th of March, 1728, being then about eight-and-twenty years of age.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Trinkets and such trifles, not children’s playthings.
The Lives of WILLIAM RUSSELL, ROBERT CROUCH and WILLIAM HOLDEN, Street-Robbers, Footpads
Although the insolency of those street-robbers to whose gang the malefactors we are now speaking of belong be at present too recent a fact to be questioned, yet possibly in future times ’twill be thought an exaggeration of truth to say that even at noon-day, and in the most open places in London, persons were stopped and robbed. The offenders for many months escaped with impunity, until those crimes became so frequent and the terrors of passengers so great that the Government interposed in an extraordinary manner, a royal proclamation being issued offering one hundred pounds reward for apprehending any offender, and also promising pardon to any who submitted and revealed their accomplices. This brought numbers of young rash youths who had engaged in this wicked course of life to a violent and ignominious death.