The Speech of a Notoriously-wicked Woman
at her Execution.
Christian People, the greatness of my sins have cry’d loud to Heaven for Vengeance a long time, but Mercy hath interceded for the prolongation of my life, to give me a long and fair opportunity for Repentance, but this long forbearance hath but hardned my heart, and made it obdurate; so that my black and horrid Sins grew so numerous that they awakened divine Justice (which hitherto seemed to sleep) to find me out, and bring me to this shameful and condign punishment. As I am here before you a sad spectacle of misery, so I hope you will beg of God mercy for my poor sinful soul, which from my Cradle to this time hath been polluted not with Crimes of a common Die, but such as were conceived in the Womb of Hell, and Midwiv’d by me into this wicked world. What Tragical unpattern’d Mischiefs they have acted on the Theatre of my native Countrey, my tongue (that cursed Accessary in the ruine of some Families) shall not conceal from you, since I cannot hide them from the knowledge of God Allmighty.
When I was so young I wanted power to perpetrate Villany, I had strong inclinations to the acting thereof; I was no sooner wean’d, but I had like to have killed that Mother who gave me life, by pricking her in the naked breast with a Bodkin I took out of her Head-cloaths, she being then half asleep, holding me in her Lap, when I arrived to the age of fifteen, the boiling of my blood would not let me rest till I had somewhat qualified its heat in the unlawful reception of a young man, after which sinful act I found my self with Child, to prevent the shame whereof I murdered it, thinking to hide one smaller sin by the greatness of another; the death I am about to suffer should have been the reward of that execrable murder; and I now wish it had been so, for then I had not strangled in the very birth (to abscond my whoredom from my Husband) a Child, the product of my insatiate lust with a Blackmoor, who afterwards lost his own life in the destructions of my Husbands; neither had I been the cause of the death of two more, had I not been the basely obscene Prostitute to them both.
But one more remarkable murder then any yet I have related, I must not conceal, the burden whereof lies like a mountain on my already over-loaded Conscience. Passing one time for a maid, though then a common debauched whore, this Inn-keeper, (my fellow-sufferer, and justly so, since he was my Co-partner and Complotter in a thousand Roguish Contrivances) courted me to be his Wife: being informed of his wealth I easily condescended, not regarding his goodness so much as his Goods, and lest he might find what I was on our Nuptial Night; I caused a pure, but poor Virgin whom I hired to lye in my place for that time, but over-sleeping her prefixt time I had appointed for my exchanging places with her, I was forc’d to fire the house, in which confusion she running down to a Well in the yard to get water, I pursued her, and partly to be revenged, and partly to be secured from her future discovery, I tumbled her into the Well, and there she perished: As to the last murther of this Gentlemen, I must needs confess my Husband, though superlatively wicked, had no inclination thereunto, had I not perswaded him; nay, upbraided him with pusillanimity and cowardize if he would not be my Coadjutor and Assistant therein. Now do I wish from the bottom of my disconsolate Soul, I had as many lives as deaths I have occasioned, to offer up as a Sacrifice which might expiate so many crying sins of murder, as I have committed in my life time, this one is too small a satisfaction for the loss of so many. And had I not forfeited it to the Law, yet I ought not to live, considering the debauched course of life I ever liv’d, being no more than a rank stinking weed, which hindred, nay choak’d the growth of wholesom herbs and flowers, which otherwise might have proved delightful in their fragrancy.
And now to conclude, if you intend to escape this shameful punishment, and not to be made an example to others, as I am now to you, shun all these Vices and Debaucheries which have dragged me to this accursed end, and do not promise to your selves a better conclusion, if from the beginning thereof you continue the prosecution of vicious and debauched Courses; I was as confident as any he or she here, that hanging was too ignominious a death for such a piece of Gallantry as I was, but assure your self Heaven has no respect of persons; the Sword of Justice spares no more the shining Gallant and huffing Bravo, than the meanest smutty Tinker; And so desiring the Prayers of the Spectators for her, having rendred her private Applications for her eternal concern, she gave the sign to the Hangman, and she was so turned off.
This speech of the dying person Mistress Dorothy rehearsed to me, with so much passion, giving each word so becoming an accent, that I must confess to you it wrought wonderfully on me, nay it so startled me, that I now began to consider what would become of me since laying aside murder, (having never imbrewed my hands in blood) I was more notorious in all manner of Vice than the narrowness of a female Soul could be capable of imagining much less of acting, why should I then humor myself into a fancy of escaping, since I have seen so many dismal Examples of this nature, some whereof I have told you, and more I shall of my intimates in the prosecution of my Story, who notwithstanding they have craftily endeavoured to conceal their nefarious actions and projections, yet have been found out by the omnipotent, nay then when they thought him to sleep over their hainous transgressions, which puts me in mind of an excellent passage of Juvenal, though he be a Heathen, in his Satyr 13.
——————— Fatebere tandem
Nec surdum, nec tiresiam, quenquam esse Deorum.