by Daniel Defoe
In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me to a sentence of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute awhile, but somebody prompted me aloud to speak to the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me. This encouraged me, and I told them I had nothing to say to stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of the court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for the circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carried nothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goods they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (which indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the first offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before; and, in a word, I spoke with more courage than I thought I could have done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears yet not so many tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard me.
The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing and time to say all that I would, but, saying neither yes or no to it, pronounced the sentence of death upon me, a sentence to me like death itself, which confounded me. I had no more spirit left in me. I had no tongue to speak or eyes to look up either to God or man.
My poor governess was utterly disconsolate; and she that was my comforter before wanted comfort now herself, and sometimes mourning, sometimes raging, was as much out of herself as any madwoman in Bedlam. Nor was she only disconsolate as to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own wicked life, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different from mine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as well as sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister, too, a serious, pious, good man, and applied herself with such earnestness, by his assistance, to the work of a sincere repentance that I believe, and so did the minister too, that she was a true penitent; and, which is still more, she was not only so for the occasion and at that juncture but she continued so, as I was informed, to the day of her death.
It is rather to be thought of than expressed what was now my condition. I had nothing before me but death; and as I had no friends to assist me, I expected nothing but to find my name in the dead warrant, which was to come for the execution, next Friday, of five more and myself.
In the meantime my poor distressed governess sent me a minister, who at her request came to visit me. He exhorted me seriously to repent of all my sins and to dally no longer with my soul; not flattering myself with hopes of life, which, he said, he was informed there was no room to expect, but unfeignedly to look up to God with my whole soul and to cry for pardon in the name of Jesus Christ. He backed his discourses with proper quotations of Scripture encouraging the greatest sinner to repent and turn from their evil way; and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with me.
It was now that for the first time I felt any real signs of repentance. I now began to look back upon my past life with abhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of time, the things of life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time, began to look with a different aspect and quite another shape than they did before. The views of felicity, the joy, the griefs of life, were quite other things; and I had nothing in my thoughts but was so infinitely superior to what I had known in life that it appeared to be the greatest stupidity to lay a weight upon anything though the most valuable in this world.
The word “eternity” represented itself with all its incomprehensible additions, and I had such extended notions of it that I know not how to express them. Among the rest, how absurd did every pleasant thing look—I mean, that we had counted pleasant before—when I reflected that these sordid trifles were the things for which we forfeited eternal felicity.
With these reflections came in of mere course severe reproaches for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I had forfeited all hope of happiness in the eternity that I was just going to enter into; and, on the contrary, was entitled to all that was miserable; and all this with the frightful addition of its being also eternal.
I am not capable of reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but I relate this in the very manner in which things then appeared to me as far as I am able, but infinitely short of the lively impressions which they made on my soul at that time; indeed, those impressions are not to be explained by words, or if they are, I am not mistress of words to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader to make just reflections as their own circumstances may direct; and this is what every one at some time or other may feel something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come than they had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them.
But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him as far as I thought convenient in what state I found myself as to the sight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come as ordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions from prisoners for the farther detecting of other offenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom of discourse as might serve to disburthen my own mind and furnish him to administer comfort to me as far as was in his power; assured me that whatever I said to him should remain with him and be as much a secret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he desired to know nothing of me but to qualify him to give proper advice to me and to pray to God for me.
This honest, friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my passions. He broke into my very soul by it, and I unravelled all the wickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgement of this whole history; I gave him the picture of my conduct for fifty years in miniature.
I hid nothing from him, and he in return exhorted me to a sincere repentance, explained to me what he meant by repentance, and then drew out such a scheme of infinite mercy, proclaimed from Heaven to sinners of the greatest magnitude, that he left me nothing to say that looked like despair or doubting of being accepted; and in this condition he left me the first night.
He visited me again the next morning and went on with his method of explaining the terms of divine mercy, which according to him consisted of nothing more difficult than that of being sincerely desirous of it and willing to accept it; only a sincere regret for and hatred of those things which rendered me so just an object of divine vengeance. I am not able to repeat the excellent discourses of this extraordinary man; all that I am able to do is to say that he revived my heart and brought me into such a condition that I never knew anything of in my life before. I was covered with shame and tears for things past, and yet had at the same time a secret, surprising joy at the prospect of being a true penitent and obtaining the comfort of a penitent—I mean the hope of being forgiven; and so swift did thoughts circulate, and so high did the impressions they had made upon me run, that I thought I could freely have gone out that minute to execution without any uneasiness at all, casting my soul entirely into the arms of infinite mercy as a penitent.
The good gentleman was so moved with a view of the influence which he saw these things had on me that he blessed God he had come to visit me, and resolved not to leave me till the last moment.
It was no less than twelve days after our receiving sentence before any were ordered for execution, and then the dead warrant, as they call it, came down, and I found my name was among them. A terrible blow this was to my new resolutions; indeed my heart sunk within me, and I swooned away twice, one after another, but spoke not a word. The good minister was sorely afflicted for me and did what he could to comfort me with the same arguments and the same moving eloquence that he did before, and left me not that evening so long as the prison-keepers would suffer him to stay in the prison, unless he would be locked up with me all night, which he was not willing to be.
I wondered much that I did not see him all the next day, it being but the day bef
ore the time appointed for execution; and I was greatly discouraged and dejected, and indeed almost sunk for want of that comfort which he had so often and with such success yielded me in his former visits. I waited with great impatience and under the greatest oppressions of spirits imaginable till about four o’clock, when he came to my apartment; for I had obtained the favour, by the help of money, nothing being to be done in that place without it, not to be kept in the condemned hole among the rest of the prisoners who were to die, but to have a little dirty chamber to myself.
My heart leaped within me for joy when I heard his voice at the door, even before I saw him; but let any one judge what kind of motion I found in my soul when, after having made a short excuse for his not coming, he showed me that his time had been employed on my account, that he had obtained a favourable report from the recorder in my case, and, in short, that he had brought me a reprieve.
He used all the caution that he was able in letting me know what it would have been double cruelty to have concealed; for as grief had overset me before, so joy overset me now, and I fell into a more dangerous swooning than at first, and it was not without difficulty that I was recovered at all.
The good man having made a very Christian exhortation to me not to let the joy of my reprieve put the remembrance of my past sorrow out of my mind, and told me that he must leave me to go and enter the reprieve in the books and show it to the sheriffs, he stood up just before his going away, and in a very earnest manner prayed to God for me that my repentance might be made unfeigned and sincere; and that my coming back, as it were, into life again might not be a returning to the follies of life, which I had made such solemn resolutions to forsake. I joined heartily in that petition, and must needs say I had deeper impressions upon my mind all that night of the mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation of my sins from a sense of that goodness, than I had in all my sorrow before.
This may be thought inconsistent in itself and wide from the business of this book; particularly, I reflect that many of those who may be pleased and diverted with the relation of the wicked part of my story may not relish this, which is really the best part of my life, the most advantageous to myself, and the most instructive to others. Such, however, will, I hope, allow me liberty to make my story complete. It would be a severe satire on such to say they do not relish the repentance as much as they do the crime, and they had rather the history were a complete tragedy, as it was very likely to have been.
But I go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre’s, which ushered in the day. As soon as it began to toll, a dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned hole, where there lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some for one crime, some for another, and two for murder.
This was followed by a confused clamour in the house among the several prisoners, expressing their awkward sorrows for the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing one from another. Some cried for them; some brutishly huzzaed and wished them a good journey; some damned and cursed those that had brought them to it, many pitying them, and some few, but very few, praying for them.
There was hardly room for so much composure of mind as was required for me to bless the merciful Providence that had, as it were, snatched me out of the jaws of this destruction. I remained, as it were, dumb and silent, overcome with the sense of it and not able to express what I had in my heart; for the passions on such occasions as these are certainly so agitated as not to be able presently to regulate their own motions.
All the while the poor condemned creatures were preparing for death, and the ordinary, as they call him, was busy with them, disposing them to submit to their sentence—I say, all this while I was seized with a fit of trembling, as much as I could have been if I had been in the same condition as I was the day before; I was so violently agitated by this surprising fit that I shook as if it had been an ague, so that I could not speak or look but like one distracted. As soon as they were all put into the carts and gone, which, however, I had not courage enough to see—I say, as soon as they were gone, I fell into a fit of crying involuntarily, as a mere distemper, and yet so violent and it held me so long that I knew not what course to take; nor could I stop or put a check to it, no, not with all the strength and courage I had.
This fit of crying held me near two hours and, as I believe, held me till they were all out of the world, and then a most humble, penitent, serious kind of joy succeeded; a real transport it was or passion of thankfulness, and in this I continued most part of the day.
In the evening the good minister visited me again and fell to his usual good discourses. He congratulated my having a space yet allowed me for repentance, whereas the state of those six poor creatures was determined, and they were now past the offers of salvation; he pressed me to retain the same sentiments of the things of life that I had when I had a view of eternity, and at the end of all, told me that I should not conclude that all was over, that a reprieve was not a pardon, that he could not answer for the effects of it; however, I had this mercy: that I had more time given me, and it was my business to improve that time.
This discourse left a kind of sadness on my heart, as if I might expect the affair would have a tragical issue still, which, however, he had no certainty of; yet I did not at that time question him about it, he having said he would do his utmost to bring it to a good end, and that he hoped he might, but he would not have me be secure; and the consequence showed that he had reason for what he said.
It was about a fortnight after this that I had some just apprehensions that I should be included in the dead warrant at the ensuing sessions; and it was not without great difficulty, and at last an humble petition for transportation, that I avoided it, so ill was I beholding to fame and so prevailing was the report of being an old offender; though in that they did not do me strict justice, for I was not in the sense of the law an old offender, whatever I was in the eye of the judge, for I had never been before them in a judicial way before; so the judges could not charge me with being an old offender, but the recorder was pleased to represent my case as he thought fit.
I had now a certainty of life indeed, but with the hard conditions of being ordered for transportation, which was, I say, a hard condition in itself, but not when comparatively considered; and therefore I shall make no comments upon the sentence nor upon the choice I was put to. We all shall choose anything rather than death, especially when ’tis attended with an uncomfortable prospect beyond it, which was my case.
The good minister, whose interest, though a stranger to me, had obtained me the reprieve, mourned sincerely for his part. He was in hopes, he said, that I should have ended my days under the influence of good instruction, that I might not have forgot my former distresses, and that I should not have been turned loose again among such a wretched crew as are thus sent abroad, where, he said, I must have more than ordinary secret assistance from the grace of God if I did not turn as wicked again as ever.
I have not for a good while mentioned my governess, who had been dangerously sick, and being in as near a view of death by her disease as I was by my sentence, was a very great penitent; I say, I have not mentioned her, nor indeed did I see her in all this time; but being now recovering and just able to come abroad, she came to see me.
I told her my condition and what a different flux and reflux of fears and hopes I had been agitated with; I told her what I had escaped and upon what terms; and she was present when the minister expressed his fears of my relapsing again into wickedness upon my falling into the wretched company that are generally transported. Indeed I had a melancholy reflection upon it in my own mind, for I knew what a dreadful gang was always sent away together, and said to my governess that the good minister’s fears were not without cause. “Well, well,” says she, “but I hope you will not be tempted with such a horrid example as that.�
� And as soon as the minister was gone, she told me she would not have me discouraged, for perhaps ways and means might be found to dispose of me in a particular way, by myself, of which she would talk farther with me afterward.
I looked earnestly at her and thought she looked more cheerful than she usually had done, and I entertained immediately a thousand notions of being delivered, but could not for my life imagine the methods or think of one that was feasible; but I was too much concerned in it to let her go from me without explaining herself, which though she was very loath to do, yet as I was still pressing, she answered me in a few words, thus: “Why, you have money, have you not? Did you ever know one in your life that was transported and had a hundred pound in his pocket? I’ll warrant ye, child,” says she.
I understood her presently, but told her I saw no room to hope for anything but a strict execution of the order, and as it was a severity that was esteemed a mercy, there was no doubt but it would be strictly observed. She said no more but this: “We will try what can be done”; and so we parted.
I lay in the prison near fifteen weeks after this. What the reason of it was I know not, but at the end of this time I was put on board of a ship in the Thames, and with me a gang of thirteen as hardened, vile creatures as ever Newgate produced in my time; and it would really well take up a history longer than mine to describe the degrees of impudence and audacious villainy that those thirteen were arrived to and the manner of their behaviour in the voyage, of which I have a very diverting account by me, which the captain of the ship who carried them over gave me and which he caused his mate to write down at large.
It may perhaps be thought trifling to enter here into a relation of all the little incidents which attended me in this interval of my circumstances; I mean, between the final order for my transportation and the time of going on board the ship; and I am too near the end of my story to allow room for it; but something relating to me and my Lancashire husband I must not omit.