in the Coffee House that he could turn black to white with so persuasive an argument that there was no Judge on the Bench to confute him.  But he was not omnipotent, and his zeal encountered many a serious check.  At times he failed to save the necks even of his intimates, since, when once a ruffian was notorious, Moll and the Clerk fought vainly for his release.  Thus it was that Cheney, the famous wrestler, whom Ralph had often backed against all comers, died at Tyburn.  He had been taken by the troopers red-handed upon the highway.  Seized after a desperate resistance, he was wounded wellnigh to death, and Briscoe quoted a dozen precedents to prove that he was unfit to be tried or hanged.  Argument failing, the munificent Clerk offered fifty pounds for the life of his friend.  But to no purpose:  the valiant wrestler was carried to the cart in a chair, and so lifted to the gallows, which cured him of his gaping wounds.

When the Commonwealth administered justice with pedantic severity, Briscoe’s influence still further declined.  There was no longer scope in the State for men of spirit; even the gaols were handed over to the stern mercy of crop-eared Puritans; Moll herself had fallen upon evil times; and Ralph Briscoe determined to make a last effort for wealth and retirement.  At the very moment when his expulsion seemed certain, an heiress was thrown into Newgate upon a charge of murdering a too importunate suitor.  The chain of evidence was complete:  the dagger plunged in his heart was recognised for her own; she was seen to decoy him to the secret corner of a wood, where his raucous love-making was silenced for ever.  Taken off her guard, she had even hinted confession of her crime, and nothing but intrigue could have saved her gentle neck from the gallows.  Briscoe, hungry for her money-bags, promised assistance.  He bribed, he threatened, he cajoled, he twisted the law as only he could twist it, he suppressed honest testimony, he procured false; in fine, he weakened the case against her with so resistless an effrontery, that not the Hanging Judge himself could convict the poor innocent.

At the outset he had agreed to accept a handsome bribe, but as the trial approached, his avarice increased, and he would be content with nothing less than the lady’s hand and fortune.  Not that he loved her; his heart was long since given to Moll Cutpurse; but he knew that his career of depredation was at an end, and it became him to provide for his declining years.  The victim repulsed his suit, regretting a thousand times that she had stabbed her ancient lover.  At last, bidden summarily to choose between Death and the Clerk, she chose the Clerk, and thus Ralph Briscoe left Newgate the richest squire in a western county.  Henceforth he farmed his land like a gentleman, drank with those of his neighbours who would crack a bottle with him, and unlocked the strange stores of his memory to bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate.  Still devoted to sport, he hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as his youthful imagination could never have pictured.  So he lived a life of country ease, and died a churchwarden.  And he deserved his prosperity, for he carried the soul of Falstaff in the shrunken body of Justice Shallow.