‘Aram’s sentence was a just one, and he submitted to it with that stoicism he so much affected; and the morning after he was condemned, he confessed the justness of it to two clergymen (who had a licence from the judge to attend him), by declaring that he murdered Clark. Being asked by one of them what his motive was for doing that abominable action, he told them, ‘he suspected Clark of having an unlawful commerce with his wife; that he was persuaded at the time, when he committed the murder, he did right, but, since, he had thought it wrong.’
‘After this, pray,’ said Aram, ‘what became of Clark’s body, if Houseman went home (as he said upon my trial) immediately on seeing him fall?’
One of the clergymen replied, ‘I’ll tell you what became of it. You and Houseman dragged it into the cave, stripped and buried it there; brought away his clothes, and burnt them at your own house.’
To which he assented. He was asked whether Houseman did not earnestly press him to murder his wife, for fear she should discover the business they had been about. He hastily replied,
‘He did, and pressed me several times to do it.’
Aram’s wife lived some years after his execution; indeed, she did not die until 1774. She lived in a small house near Low Bridge, within sight of her husband’s gibbet; and here she sold pies, sausages, &c. It is said that she used to search under the gibbet for any of her husband’s bones that might have fallen, and then bury them.
Aram, by his wife, had six children, who survived their childhood—three sons and three daughters. All these children, save one, Sally, took after their mother; but Sally resembled her father, both physically and mentally. She was well read in the classics, and Aram would sometimes put his scholars to the blush, by having Sally in their class. Her father was very fond of her, and she was living with him at Lynn when he was arrested, and she clung to him when in prison at York. On his death, she went to London, and, after a time, she married, and, with her husband, kept a public-house on the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge.
Houseman went back to Knaresborough, where he abode until his death. He was naturally mobbed, and never dared stir out in the day time, but sometimes slunk out at night. Despised and detested by all, his life must have been a burden to him, and his punishment in this world far heavier than Aram was called upon to bear.