The vexation at the discovery he had made that he could expect no domestic happiness created a great change in Jonathan Simpson's life. He sold his business, refused to receive his wife back into his house again, and with all the money he could scrape together that amounted to five thousand pounds, quitted Bristol, and swore he would never re-enter it.
He now led a riotous life, spending his money so freely that at the end of eighteen months all his five thousand pounds was gone, and then he took to the road to supply himself with more. After a while he was arrested for highway robbery, and was sent to the Old Bailey, tried, and condemned to be hanged.
His relatives at Launceston now exerted themselves to obtain a reprieve, and by bribery and persuasion they got one, but only at the last moment. Simpson was already under the gallows, with the rope round his neck, when it arrived, and the execution was arrested.
As he was riding back to Newgate behind one of the sheriff's officers that man asked him what he thought of a reprieve as he stood on the scaffold. "No more," answered Simpson, "than I thought of my dying day."
On reaching the prison door the turnkey refused to admit him, declaring that he could not take him in again without a fresh warrant; and as this could not well be obtained, the sheriff's officer was obliged to let him go free.
"Well," said Simpson, "what an unhappy dog am I! that both Tyburn and Newgate should in one day refuse to entertain me. I'll mend my manners for the future, and try whether I cannot merit a reception at them both the next time I am brought thither."
He was as good as his word, and after his release is believed to have committed above forty robberies in the county of Middlesex within the ensuing six weeks.
He was a good skater, and made a practice of robbing people on the ice between Fulham and Kingston Bridge, in the great frost of 1689, which held for thirteen weeks. He would kick up their heels, and search their pockets as they lay sprawling on the ice.
On one occasion a gentleman whom he stopped gave him a silk purse full of counters, which Simpson took for gold, and so did not examine them till he reached the inn where he put up. When he found that he had been outwitted he quietly pocketed the brass booty, and abided his time till he should meet the same gentleman again. This he did at the end of four months, when he waylaid him on Bagshot Heath, where, riding up to the coach, he said, as he presented a pistol at the gentleman's head, "Sir, I believe you made a mistake the last time I had the happiness to see you, in giving me these pieces. I have been troubled ever since for fear you should have wanted these counters at cards, and am glad of this opportunity to return them. But for my care I require you this moment to descend from your coach and give me your breeches, that I may search them at leisure, and not trust any more to your generosity, lest you should mistake again."
The gentleman was obliged to comply, and Simpson carried off the breeches with him to his inn, and on searching them found a gold watch, a gold snuff-box, and a purse containing ninety-eight guineas and five gold jacobuses.