[1] i.e. imitation gold-lace.
The last adventure of Withers was that in which he and a companion, William Edwards by name, near Beaconsfield beset a nobleman and his servant. Withers' horse was shot in the resistance they made, and, mounting behind his friend, they took to flight. But the horse with two riders was no match for the others, not so heavily burdened; and, being hard pressed along the road, the two fugitives dismounted and ran across country in the direction of London. Sleeping in the hedges overnight, the next morning they continued their flight. Meeting, one mile on the London side of Uxbridge, with a penny postman, they robbed him of eight shillings; and Withers, to prevent their being identified, drew a large butcher's knife he carried, and barbarously cut his throat. They then ripped up his body, filled his stomach with stones, and flung him into the little stream that here flows across the road. The burial registers of Hillingdon church bear witness to this and to another murder they appear to have committed at, or near, the same place; "1702, November 13. Will Harrison, Postman, murdered near the Great Bridge between Hillingdon and Uxbridge. November 28. Edward Symonds, Drover, murdered at the same time, and about the same place, and by the same hands."
Withers and Edwards were arrested the following January in Norfolk, for a highway robbery committed there, and were tried and executed at Thetford, April 16th, 1703.
PATRICK O'BRIAN
"Patrick O'Brian," says Captain Alexander Smith, "was a native of Ireland." Perhaps we might, without undue stress of mind, have guessed as much. It seems that his parents were very indigent natives of Loughrea, and so Patrick left his native land for England, and presently enlisted in the Coldstream Guards. But he was not a good soldier; or, at any rate, if good in that profession, infinitely better in the practice of all kinds of vice. He was resolved not to want money, if there were any to be obtained, no matter the means to it; but began cautiously by running into debt at public-houses and shops; and then followed up that first step by borrowing from every acquaintance, until that source was dried up.
When all these means to existence were exhausted, O'Brian went upon the road. The first person whom he met was, strange to say, another unmitigated scoundrel: none other, in fact, than the Reverend William Clewer, vicar of Croydon, who here demands a little paragraph entirely to himself.
William Clewer, who was collated to the living of Croydon in 1660, was notorious, we are told, for his singular love of litigation, unparalleled extortions, and criminal and disgraceful conduct. His character became so bad, and his ways of life so notorious, that he was eventually ejected in 1684. He must have been, indeed, pre-eminently bad, to have been ejected in that easy-going age. Dispossessed of his living, on these substantial grounds, he at last died, in 1702, and was buried in St. Bride's, Fleet Street.
We are indebted to Smith for the account of the meeting of O'Brian and this shining light of the clerical profession: