When unjust laws had harsh judges for their administrators no one could tell to what lengths judicial cruelty might go. One of the more touching cases of legal murder in those bad times, was that of 'one Anderson, a poor labouring man, whose character until now was unimpeachable, touching his industry, sobriety, and honesty.' He was a loving husband and father; but becoming the victim of a harsh creditor, he 'was totally destitute of money, clothes, and a spot where to lay their heads.' Being without work, one morning, Anderson said to his wife: 'My dear, I have a strong inclination to go down upon the quays: it may be the Lord will provide for me a loaf of bread, or some employment, whereby we may sustain ourselves a little longer, or else we shall perish with hunger.' Hardly knowing what he did, he met two women in Hoxton-Fields, and asking if they had money, he took sixpence from them. For this, his first offence, Anderson was tried, condemned, and hanged. Referring to his many years experience among prisoners in Newgate, Silas Told says: 'I have not seen such meet, loving, and tender spirits as appeared in the countenance and deportment of this poor man and his wife. Indeed, they were naturally inclined to few words; but the woman frequently seating herself by her husband's side, and throwing her arms round his neck, they would shed floods of tears to mitigate the anguish which overwhelmed their united hearts; but it is impossible to do justice to their exquisite sensibility and tender affection.'

He gives accounts of several who were condemned for forgery, persons of considerable station in the world. One of these was named Powell, and Told sat with him in the coach on the way to Tyburn, and afterwards went to the other malefactors, who were conveyed in carts.' One of the more noteworthy examples was a youth named Slocomb, 'who was executed for defrauding his father of £300 in the stock of the South Sea House.' The youth might have escaped the gallows; but, come what would, the worthless father refused to bear the loss. Thus Slocomb was condemned, and then, as Told remarks, 'the lump of adamant, his father, then retired to the country, nor would he after that see or hear from his son; neither did he once write to him, nor give him any kind of advice, or remit him any relief, notwithstanding he lay a long time under sentence, before he was ordered for execution.' He was an amiable youth, and seems to have benefited by Told's attentions. Thus went on this succession of judicial murders until, with the execution of Thomas Maynard, on the last day of 1829, the iniquity of hanging for forgery came to an end.

The last case to which Silas Told refers, the particulars of which he gives at length, is that of Mrs. Brownrigg, who was hanged in 1767 for what was held to be the murder of her maid-servant, Mary Clifford. This woman appears to have been a Christian backslider, and though her beating the girl cannot be defended, it is evident that murder was never intended. Told visited her repeatedly

in Newgate, he accompanied her in the cart to Tyburn, and he believed that as a penitent she was saved. We have some vivid glimpses which enable us in some measure to realise what an eighteenth-century street scene was like during the progress of any notorious offender from the Old Bailey to Tyburn. 'I may say with the greatest truth,' remarks Told, 'nothing could have equalled them but the spirits let loose from the infernal pit; and, to be brief, this was the spirit of the wicked multitude all the way to the place of execution.'

This comprehensive work, carried on in Newgate and elsewhere, shows how the Revival entered places where it would seem converts were least likely to be found. The devotion which the visitors showed in the service was characteristic of early Methodism. Silas Told died in December 1779, but the work to which he had put his hand, and in course of which he had so greatly distinguished himself, was destined still to go on. Not very long before John Wesley had reorganised the Christian Community, a mission founded by the Huguenots soon after their settlement in this country in the seventeenth century, and which still continues to carry on service of this character in workhouses and hospitals.

CHAPTER IX

BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL

HE best-remembered apparition of the

TH

eighteenth century was the Cock Lane Ghost, and that was an imposture, although it was an imposition of an ingenious and interesting kind. Mr. and Mrs. William Parsons and their daughter were the agents, and the sensation they caused seems to have been brought about by a ventriloquist. They were eventually sentenced to imprisonment, while Parsons himself was subjected to the additional penalty of the pillory. What strikes one is the remarkable fact that the offenders had the sympathy of the public, e.g.:

'The father appearing to be out of his mind at the time he was to stand in the pillory, the execution of that part of the sentence was deferred to another day, when, as well as on the other days of his standing there, the populace took so much compassion of him, that, instead of using him ill, they made a handsome collection for him.'

It will be evident to everyone that the times were so different from our own, that the people seemed to be naturally more credulous. They

were probably less so, however, than was the case in the seventeenth century, when even a writer like Bunyan seemed capable of believing anything in the way of the supernatural if it only tended to illustrate a point he was enforcing.

That Wesley was a firm believer in supernatural appearances everybody knows who has read his Diary; but in going so far as he did in this direction he probably believed no more than many of his followers at the present day. Here, again, the times of the beginning of the Revival were so different from our own, that we can hardly put ourselves in the place of those who were then living. The phenomena at the services were such, that not to have believed in people being possessed with evil spirits would have been regarded by Wesley as showing want of faith. When at Oxford in December 1738, he met with a case which would confirm him in his settled belief: 'At St. Thomas's was a young woman, raving mad, screaming and tormenting herself continually. I had a strong desire to speak to her. The moment I began she was still. The tears ran down her cheeks all the time I was telling her, "Jesus of Nazareth is able and willing to deliver you." O where is faith upon earth?'

It was just about this time that he directs attention to the subject of dreams. I believe it was no less a philosopher than Dr. Watts who was not disposed to give too much attention to dreams, and at the same time would not utterly neglect them. Was there not a man who, while taking