This unfortunate man, who, in the course of his life, made some noise in
the world, was the son of honest and reputable parents at Hitchen, in
Hertfordshire. They gave their son all the education necessary to
qualify him for such business as he thought proper to put him to, which
was that of a salesman; but before his time was expired he went over to
Flanders, and served in the late War there, in several sieges and
battles; where he behaved so well as to be preferred to the post of a
serjeant in the Honourable General How's regiment of foot. But returning
to England upon the peace, and being quartered at Worcester he there
purchased his discharge.
Coming up to London he betook himself, for bread, to the office of a
bailiff in Whitechapel Court, in which station he continued for about
seven years until he fell into misfortunes, chiefly through the means of
one C----th. To shelter himself from a gaol, which threatened him at
that time, he was forced to go into the Foot Guards, where he served in
the company commanded by the right Honourable the Earl of Albemarle; but
unluckily for him, having commenced an acquaintance with Richard Bird at
the aforesaid Mr. C----th's, Bird told him he perceived they were much
in a case, that is, they both wanted money, and that therefore looking
upon him (Everett) to be a man who could be trusted, he would propose to
him an easy method for supply. This method was neither better nor worse
than robbing on the highway.
To this proposition Everett readily agreeing, they immediately joined,
provided proper utensils for their co-partnership, and soon after
practised their trade with great success in the counties of Middlesex,
Essex, Surrey and Kent, particularly robbing the Dartford coach, from
the passengers of which they took a portmanteau, wherein was contained
jewels, money and valuable goods to a very great amount. But spending as
fast as they got it, they were never the better for the multitude of
facts they committed, but were in a continual necessity of hazarding
body and soul for a very precarious subsistance.
A short time after, they robbed the Woodford stage-coach and found in it
only one passenger worth plundering. From him they took a gold watch and
some silver, but the gentleman expressing a great concern at the loss of
his watch, they told him if he would promise faithfully to send such a
sum of money to such a place, they would let him have it again. On
Hounslow Heath they attacked two officers of the army, who were well
mounted and guarded with servants armed with blunderbusses. They took
their gold watches and money from them, though the officers endeavoured
to resist, but they forced them to submit to the well-known doctrine of
passive obedience before they acquitted them. The watches (pursuant to a
treaty they made with them on the spot) were afterwards left at Young
Man's Coffee House, Charing Cross, where the owners had them again on
payment of twenty guineas, as stipulated in the said treaty between the
parties.
Another robbery they committed was on Squire Amlow (of Bream's
Buildings, Chancery Lane), in Epsom Lane, turning up to Epsom. When he
was attacked he drew a sword and made several passes at them as he sat
in an open chaise; but notwithstanding his resolution in opposing them,
they by force took two guineas, a silver watch, and his silver-hilted
sword, and some parchment writings of a considerable value. On his
submission and request for his writings, they accordingly delivered them
up, let him pass and helped him to his watch again, being in the hands
of Mr. Corket, a pawnbroker in Houndsditch. They also took opportunities
to rob all the butchers and higlers from Epping Forest to Woodford,
particularly one old woman, who wore a high crowned hat of her mother's
as she said, which hat they took and searched, and out of the lining of
it found three pounds and delivered her the hat again. On Acton Common
they also met two chariots with gentlemen and ladies in them and robbed
them in money, watches and other things to the value of forty pounds.
My readers, from these instances, must have a tolerable notion of
Everett's humour, it may prove entertaining, therefore, to give them a
specimen of his own manner of relating his adventures, and therefore I
insert the following ones in his own words.
Soon after our last achievement, my old comrade Dick Bird, and I,
stopped a coach in the evening on Hounslow Heath, in which (amongst
other passengers) were two precise, but courageous Quakers, who had
the assurance to call us Sons of Violence; and refusing to comply
with our reasonable demands jumped out of the coach to give us
battle. Whereupon we began a sharp engagement, and showed them the
arm of flesh was too strong for the Spirit, which seemed to move
very powerful within them. After a short contest (though we never
offered to fire, for I ever abhorred barbarity, or the more heinous
sin of murder) through the cowardly persuasions of their
fellow-travellers they submitted, though sore against their
inclinations. As they were stout fellows and men every inch of them,
we scorned to abuse them, and contented ourselves with rifling them
of the little Mammon of unrighteousness which they had about them,
which amounted to about thirty or forty shillings and their watches.
The rest in the coach, whose hearts were sunk into their breeches,
Dick fleeced without the least resistance.
There was one circumstance of this affair which created a little
diversion, and therefore with my readers leave, I will relate it.
The Precisions for the most part, though they are plain in their
dress, wear the best of commodities, and though a smart toupee[91]
is an abomination, yet a bob-wig, or a natural of six or seven
guineas' price, is a modest covering allowed by the saints. One of
the prigs was well furnished in this particular, and flattering
myself it would become me, I resolved to make it lawful plunder.
Without any further ceremony, therefore, than alleging exchange was
no robbery, I napped his poll, and dressed him immediately in
masquerade with an old tie-wig, which I had the day before purchased
of an antiquated Chelsea pensioner for half-a-crown. The other
company, though in doleful dumps for the loss of the coriander seed,
could not forbear grinning at the merry metamorphis, for our Quaker
now looked more like a devil than saint. As companions in distress
ever alleviate its weight, they invited him with a general laugh
into their leathern convenience again, wished us a goodnight, and
hoped they should have no farther molestation on the road. We gave
then the watch-word, and assured them they should not, then tipped
the honest coachman a shilling to drink our healths, and brushed off
the ground.
About a week or ten days later, my brother Dick and I projected a
new scheme more nimble than the former, to take a purse without the
charge of horse hire. Millington Common was determined to be the
scene of action. We sauntered for some time upon the green and
suffered several to pass by without the least molestation, but at
last we espied two gentlemen well-mounted coming towards us, who we
imagined might be able to replenish our empty purses, so we prepared
for an attack. After the usual salutation, I stopped the foremost
and demanded his cash, his watch and other appurtenances thereunto
belonging, and assured him I was a brother of an honourable but
numerous family; that to work I had no inclination and to beg I was
ashamed, and that I had at present no other way for a livelihood, if
such a demand at first view ought appear a little immodest or
unreasonable, I hoped he would excuse it, as necessity and not
choice was the fatal inducement.
My brother Dick was as rhetorical in his apologies with the
hindermost, whom he dismounted. We used them with more good manners
and humanity than the common pads, who act for the most part rather
like Turks and Jews than Christians, in such enterprises, to the
eternal scandal of the profession. We contented ourselves with what
silver and little gold they had about them, which to about three or
four pounds, and their gold watches, one of which, as well I
remember, was of Tompion's make, and which I afterwards pawned for
five guineas to a fellow that the week after broke, and ran away
with it, so that I had not the opportunity of restoring it again to
the proper owner, for which I heartily beg his pardon. As we must
own the gentlemen behaved well and came unto our measures without
the least resistance, so they must do us the justice to acknowledge
that we treated them as such and neither disrobed nor abused them.
We thought it, however, common prudence to cut the girths of their
horses' saddles, and secure their bridles for fear of a pursuit.
Thus flushed again with success, we made the best of our way to
Brentford, and there took the ferry; but Fortune, though she is
fair, yet she is a fickle mistress, her smiles are often false and
very precarious. Before we had got ashore, we heard the persons had
got scent of us, and our triumph had like to have ended in
captivity. When we were three parts over, and out of danger of
drowning, we told the ferrymen our distress, gave them ten
shillings, and obliged them to throw their oars into the Thames. The
agreeable reward and the fears of being thrown in themselves in case
of a denial, made them readily consent. In we plunged after them,
and soon made the shore. Though we looked like Hob just drawn out of
the well, those that saw us only imagined it was a drunken frolic.
Our expeditious flight soon dried our clothes, and without catching
the least cold, we both arrived safe that night at London.
We congratulated each other, you may imagine on our happy and
narrow escape, and solaced ourselves after the fatigue of the day,
with a mistress and a bottle.
I have copied these pages from Mr. Everett's book that my readers might
have a clear and just idea of those notions which these unhappy men
entertain of the life they lead, and hope they may be of some use in
giving such youths as are too apt to be taken with their low kind of
jests, a just abhorrence of committing villainy, merely to divert the
mob, and make themselves the sole topic of discourse in alehouses and
cellars.
But to return to Everett. He was taken up on suspicion and committed to
New Prison, where he continued three years, behaving himself so well in
the prison that the justices ordered him his liberty, and he was
thereupon made turnkey of that place. In this post he continued to act
so honestly that he got a tolerable reputation, taking the Red Lion
alehouse, in Turnmill Street, Cow Cross, in order to live the better;
resigning his place as turnkey as soon as he was settled in it.
He who succeeded him was a footman to the Duchess of Newcastle's and not
being very well acquainted with the nature of his new office, he was
very industrious to prevail with Everett to return to his former
condition, and accept the key from him. Promises and entreaties were not
long made in vain. Everett was sensible there was money to be got,[92]
and therefore, upon the fair promises of the new keeper, became turnkey
again. But when he had shown his master the art of governing such a
territory as his was; when he had instructed him in the secrets of
raising money, and shown him the methods of managing the several sorts
of prisoners that were committed to its care, his superior quickly gave
him to understand that he had now done all he wanted, and the next kind
office would be to quit this place; for it is with those sort of people
as with some in a higher station, though they at first caress men who
are better acquainted with affairs than themselves, in order to improve
their own knowledge, yet no sooner do they think themselves qualified to
go on without their assistance, but they grow uneasy at such services,
and are never quiet until they are rid of men whose abilities are their
greatest faults.
A little after Everett was turned out to make room for the keeper's
brother, he had the additional misfortune to keep an account with a
person who too hastily demanded his money, and John, not being able to
pay it, therefore upon arrested him, and threw him into gaol. He
quickly turned himself over to the Fleet, where he first took the
rules, and then got into the Thistle and Crown Alehouse, in the Old
Bailey. There he lived for a while and afterwards took the Cock in the
same place, where he lived for three years with an indifferent
reputation, until he was prevailed on to take the Fleet Cellar[93], and
became very busy in the execution of the then Warden's project, until
the committee of the House of Commons thought fit to commit both of them
to Newgate.
This effectually undid him, for while he was a prisoner there, the
brewer made a seizure of his whole stock of beer, to the value of three
hundred pounds, and this it was, as he himself said, which posted him
out upon the highway again. Whether we may depend upon those
protestations he had made that he should never otherwise have gone upon
the road again, but have lived and died free, at least from that sort of
wickedness which indeed he had reason to dislike, since he had saved his
life by impeaching Bird his companion, who was hanged at Chelmsford at
the assizes held there for the County of Essex. When he had once taken
this resolution in his head, it was not long before he equipped himself
with necessaries for his employment.
The first robbery he committed was upon a lady in a chariot, and the
lady desiring that he would put up his pistol for fear of frightening a
child of six years old in the coach with her, he did so, and took from
her a guinea and some silver, without touching her gold watch, or any
other valuable things that she had about her. He had scarce committed
the robbery, before the lady's husband and another gentleman and his
company came up, and the accident being related to them, they
immediately pursued him as hard as their horses could gallop; and came
so close up with him, that he was hardly got into the Globe Tavern, in
Hatton Garden, and sent away his horse, before they passed by the door.
As soon as he thought they were out of sight, he slipped away with all
the precaution he was able, and got into a little blind alehouse in
Holborn, where he had scarce lit a pipe, and called for a tankard of
drink, before he perceived both the gentlemen looking very earnesty
about, though he now looked upon himself as out of all danger.
It was a very short time after, that he committed the last fact, which
was the robbing of Mrs. Manley[94], and a lady, who was in a chariot
with her, a black boy being behind in the coach. He got safe enough off
and into town, after this robbery; but how it was I cannot tell, his
neighbours suspected him, and talked of him as a highwayman, and
reported very confidently that he was taken up, as it seems he was, but
was discharged again for want of evidence. He was speedily seized again,
and being committed to Newgate, was brought to his trial at the Old
Bailey for the said fact.
Mrs. Ellis deposed that the prisoner was the person who robbed the
coach, and that she observed him follow it when they came out of town.
Mrs. Manley deposed also to his being the person who robbed them, and
William Coffee, a negro boy, who was behind the coach, swore positively
to his face. Several men who were present at his being apprehended,
swore that he had a pistol, dagger, six bullets, a flint and powder horn
about him, under a red rug coat.
His defence was very trivial, and the jury upon a short consultation,
found him guilty. Under sentence of death, he behaved very
indifferently, sometimes appearing tolerably cool, at others in a
grievous passion, especially at the keepers, if they refused him such
liberties as he thought fit to ask. When he was first condemned, he
flattered himself with hopes of life, if it were possible for him to
prevail on the ladies whom he had robbed to petition in his favour; in
order to induce them to which, he wrote the following letter, though to
no purpose, for the death warrant came down suddenly and he was included
with the before-mentioned prisoners.