by Daniel Defoe
still nobody came to tell me their thoughts, till atlast one of the keepers came to me privately, and said with a sigh,'Well, Mrs. Flanders, you will be tried on Friday' (this was but aWednesday); 'what do you intend to do?' I turned as white as a clout,and said, 'God knows what I shall do; for my part, I know not what todo.' 'Why,' says he, 'I won't flatter you, I would have you preparefor death, for I doubt you will be cast; and as they say you are an oldoffender, I doubt you will find but little mercy. They say,' added he,'your case is very plain, and that the witnesses swear so home againstyou, there will be no standing it.'
This was a stab into the very vitals of one under such a burthen as Iwas oppressed with before, and I could not speak to him a word, good orbad, for a great while; but at last I burst out into tears, and said tohim, 'Lord! Mr. ----, what must I do?' 'Do!' says he, 'send for theordinary; send for a minister and talk with him; for, indeed, Mrs.Flanders, unless you have very good friends, you are no woman for thisworld.'
This was plain dealing indeed, but it was very harsh to me, at least Ithought it so. He left me in the greatest confusion imaginable, andall that night I lay awake. And now I began to say my prayers, which Ihad scarce done before since my last husband's death, or from a littlewhile after. And truly I may well call it saying my prayers, for I wasin such a confusion, and had such horror upon my mind, that though Icried, and repeated several times the ordinary expression of 'Lord,have mercy upon me!' I never brought myself to any sense of my being amiserable sinner, as indeed I was, and of confessing my sins to God,and begging pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ. I was overwhelmedwith the sense of my condition, being tried for my life, and being sureto be condemned, and then I was as sure to be executed, and on thisaccount I cried out all night, 'Lord, what will become of me? Lord!what shall I do? Lord! I shall be hanged! Lord, have mercy upon me!'and the like.
My poor afflicted governess was now as much concerned as I, and a greatdeal more truly penitent, though she had no prospect of being broughtto trial and sentence. Not but that she deserved it as much as I, andso she said herself; but she had not done anything herself for manyyears, other than receiving what I and others stole, and encouraging usto steal it. But she cried, and took on like a distracted body,wringing her hands, and crying out that she was undone, that shebelieved there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she should bedamned, that she had been the destruction of all her friends, that shehad brought such a one, and such a one, and such a one to the gallows;and there she reckoned up ten or eleven people, some of which I havegiven account of, that came to untimely ends; and that now she was theoccasion of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to go on, when I wouldhave left off. I interrupted her there. 'No, mother, no,' said I,'don't speak of that, for you would have had me left off when I got themercer's money again, and when I came home from Harwich, and I wouldnot hearken to you; therefore you have not been to blame; it is I onlyhave ruined myself, I have brought myself to this misery'; and thus wespent many hours together.
Well, there was no remedy; the prosecution went on, and on the ThursdayI was carried down to the sessions-house, where I was arraigned, asthey called it, and the next day I was appointed to be tried. At thearraignment I pleaded 'Not guilty,' and well I might, for I wasindicted for felony and burglary; that is, for feloniously stealing twopieces of brocaded silk, value #46, the goods of Anthony Johnson, andfor breaking open his doors; whereas I knew very well they could notpretend to prove I had broken up the doors, or so much as lifted up alatch.
On the Friday I was brought to my trial. I had exhausted my spiritswith crying for two or three days before, so that I slept better theThursday night than I expected, and had more courage for my trial thanindeed I thought possible for me to have.
When the trial began, the indictment was read, I would have spoke, butthey told me the witnesses must be heard first, and then I should havetime to be heard. The witnesses were the two wenches, a couple ofhard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the thing was truth in the main,yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity, and swore I had thegoods wholly in my possession, that I had hid them among my clothes,that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the thresholdwhen they discovered themselves, and then I put t' other over, so thatI was quite out of the house in the street with the goods before theytook hold of me, and then they seized me, and brought me back again,and they took the goods upon me. The fact in general was all true, butI believe, and insisted upon it, that they stopped me before I had setmy foot clear of the threshold of the house. But that did not arguemuch, for certain it was that I had taken the goods, and I was bringingthem away, if I had not been taken.
But I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that thedoor was open, and I went in, seeing the goods lie there, and withdesign to buy. If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of themup in my hand it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them,for that I never carried them farther than the door to look on themwith the better light.
The Court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jestof my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling ofanything, and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, themaids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon itvery much; told the Court I had looked at them sufficiently, andapproved them very well, for I had packed them up under my clothes, andwas a-going with them.
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 sentenceof death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I wascarried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came toask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute awhile, but somebody that stood behind me prompted me aloud to speak tothe judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me.This encouraged me to speak, and I told them I had nothing to say tostop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy ofthe Court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case forthe circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carriednothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goodsthey were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (whichindeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the firstoffence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before;and, in a word, I spoke with more courage that I thought I could havedone, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so manytears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others totears that heard me.
The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to sayall that I would, but, saying neither Yes nor No to it, pronounced thesentence of death upon me, a sentence that was to me like death itself,which, after it was read, confounded me. I had no more spirit left inme, 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 mycomforter before, wanted comfort now herself; and sometimes mourning,sometimes raging, was as much out of herself, as to all outwardappearance, as any mad woman in Bedlam. Nor was she only disconsolateas to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own wickedlife, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different frommine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as wellas sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister, too, aserious, pious, good man, and applied herself with such earnestness, byhis assistance, to the work of a sincere repentance, that I believe,and so did the minister too, that she was a true penitent; and, whichis still more, she was not only so for the occasion, and at thatjuncture, but she continued so, as I was informed, to the day of herdeath.
It is rather to be thought of than expressed what was now my condition.I had nothing before me but present death; and as I had no friends toassist me, or to stir for me, I expected nothing but to find my name inthe dead warrant, which was to come down for the execution, the Fridayafterwards, of five more and myself.
In the meantime my poor dis
tressed governess sent me a minister, who ather request first, and at my own afterwards, came to visit me. Heexhorted me seriously to repent of all my sins, and to dally no longerwith 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 upto God with my whole soul, and to cry for pardon in the name of JesusChrist. He backed his discourses with proper quotations of Scripture,encouraging the greatest sinner to repent, and turn from their evilway, 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 ofrepentance. I now began to look back upon my past life withabhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of time, andthings of life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time,began to look with a different aspect, and quite