But His Holiness would not receive him, said the Cardinal he approached, unless he came with a relic. Dudley then procured a very singular one, cut from the dead body of a criminal who had just been executed, and, returning to the Vatican, pretended he had come with no less a relic than the beard of St. Peter, which he said he had purchased at a great price from the fathers at the Holy Sepulchre. The Cardinal to whom he first showed the "relic" admired it, said that, if true, it was a jewel worth a kingdom, and admitted Dudley to audience with the Pope, who, kissing the object, said they had the skull of St. Peter already, but he had no idea his beard was preserved. What he could not understand, however, was why there should be so much hair on one side, and so little on the other.
"Oh," said our sham pilgrim, "your Holiness well knows St. Peter was a Jew by birth, and used to play much on the Jews' Harp, so that by often rubbing and twanging it with his fingers, he rubbed off the hair from the right side of his face."
This explanation being deemed satisfactory, the "beard of St. Peter"—that priceless relic—was purchased for one hundred ducats: a bargain, and if the story be true, it is probably in the Vatican still.
Soon after his return, Dudley met a Justice of the Peace on the road to Horsham, and requested his purse. But the courageous magistrate made a very stout resistance, and shot Dudley's horse under him, being, in return, wounded in the arm. Obliged at last to surrender, his pockets yielded twenty-eight guineas, a gold watch, and a silver tobacco-box. Dudley, then securing his horse, said, "Since your Worship has grievously broken the peace, in committing a most horrid and barbarous murder on my prancer, which with my assistance was able to get his living in any ground in England, I must make bold to take your horse, by way of reprisal. However, I'll not be so uncivil as to let a man of your character go home on foot. I'll make one Justice of the Peace carry another."
So, stepping into a field where an ass was grazing, he brought the animal into the road, and seated the Justice on his back, tying his legs under.
"I know I offend against the laws of heraldry," he said, "in putting metal upon metal, but as there is no general rule without an exception, I doubt not but all the heralds will excuse this solecism committed in their art, which I look upon to be as great a bite and cheat as astrology."
He then whipped up the animal, and it carried the magistrate into the streets of Petworth, where his worship attracted as much attention as though he had been a royal procession.
At last, Dick Dudley, as he is familiarly styled by Alexander Smith, attempting to rob the Duke of Lauderdale, as he was riding over Hounslow Heath, was captured instead, and committed to Newgate. No fewer than eighty indictments were preferred against him, and, being found guilty on some of these, he was executed at Tyburn, February 22nd, 1681, aged forty-six.