“John Wilkes,—Your sister desiring me to make application to some person in power, to get you reprieved for transportation, I take this first opportunity of informing you that I was once concerned in saving a young man from the gallows, because he was condemned for his first offence, which was robbing his master of money, and that I had no thanks, but many upbraidings for my pains; the poor creature having turned out very bad, done much mischief before he left England, and being spared, I fear, only to hurt his fellow-creatures, and fill up the measure of his iniquities.
“Besides, you know, John, that your crimes are of the most capital nature. You are not only a housebreaker, but a highwayman, and a very notorious offender. You know you have committed crimes enough to hang two or three men, perhaps half-a-dozen. And so far as I can gather from a variety of circumstances, you are the very person that broke open my house over the way, and robbed the poor widow who lives in it. If you committed that robbery, I desire you to confess it before you leave this world; for ‘he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall obtain mercy;’ while he that tells lies to conceal them, pulls down double vengeance upon his guilty head.
“But whether you committed that robbery or not, I earnestly desire that you will submit to your sentence. I neither can nor will meddle in that affair; nor have I any probability of success if I did. Apply then yourself, night and day, to the King of heaven for grace and mercy. If you cry to Him from the bottom of your heart, as a condemned dying man, who deserves hell as well as the gallows; if you sincerely confess your crimes, and beg the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to intercede for you, it is not too late to get your soul reprieved. He will speak for you to God Almighty; He will pardon all your sins; He will wash you in His most precious blood; He will stand by you in your extremity; He will deliver you out of the hands of the hellish executioner; and, though you have lived the life of the wicked, He will help you to die the death of the penitent. He can feel for poor condemned thieves; for He himself was condemned to be hanged on a tree; not indeed for His own sins, for He never transgressed, but for your crimes and mine.”
“On Saturday, March 27,” continues Fletcher in his narrative, “I gave a few lines for the keeper of Stafford jail, to Sarah Wilkes, the malefactor’s sister, and to Elizabeth Childs, a serious woman, whom she had got to bear her company; and, when I had recommended in prayer the condemned criminals to the Redeemer’s compassion, and their feeble visitors to the protection of Him Who can give wisdom to the simple, they set out to see John Wilkes, and administer some spiritual comfort to him before he launched into eternity.”
The poor women met with a rough reception at Stafford prison. The jailer, a fair specimen of officials in other prisons, at that period, said, “What do you want with John Wilkes? to preach him a sermon, and sing psalms? I know very well what you are, a parcel of canting hypocrites.”
Sarah Wilkes and Elizabeth Childs showed themselves to be apt pupils of the Vicar of Madeley. In the Journal of their nine days’ visit they wrote:—
“We were much discouraged at the jailer’s behaviour. So we agreed to lay the matter before God in prayer, and beg of Him that He would touch the jailer’s heart, and cause him to let us in. The next morning, which was Sunday, after begging hard for grace, wisdom, and courage, we went to the prison; and, to our great surprise, the turnkey opened the door, and, without speaking a word, took us straight to the condemned men, and let us be with them as long as we thought proper; a liberty which we were allowed twice a day till they suffered.”
John Wilkes confessed to the two women that he had robbed the house at Madeley, in which the poor widow lived. He became a penitent. The nine days’ Journal of his sister and Elizabeth Childs concludes thus:—
“Saturday, April 3, the day of his execution, John Wilkes was exceeding happy, and employed in breathing out prayers and praises to God. In the morning, we spent about two hours with him and his fellow-prisoner, praying and praising together in their dungeon, with much brokenness of heart, and many tears of joy and sorrow; for we were both persuaded that John Wilkes had saving faith, and an unshaken well-grounded confidence that God would take him to glory.
“About two hours before the execution, which was between four and five in the afternoon, his sister asked, ‘Dost thou find thyself happy in the Lord?’ To which he answered, ‘Yes, I do, I do, more and more.’