To this proposition Everett readily agreeing, they immediately joined, provided proper utensils for their co-partnership, and soon after practised their trade with great success in the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey and Kent, particularly robbing the Dartford coach, from the passengers of which they took a portmanteau, wherein was contained jewels, money and valuable goods to a very great amount. But spending as fast as they got it, they were never the better for the multitude of facts they committed, but were in a continual necessity of hazarding body and soul for a very precarious subsistance.
A short time after, they robbed the Woodford stage-coach and found in it only one passenger worth plundering. From him they took a gold watch and some silver, but the gentleman expressing a great concern at the loss of his watch, they told him if he would promise faithfully to send such a sum of money to such a place, they would let him have it again. On Hounslow Heath they attacked two officers of the army, who were well mounted and guarded with servants armed with blunderbusses. They took their gold watches and money from them, though the officers endeavoured to resist, but they forced them to submit to the well-known doctrine of passive obedience before they acquitted them. The watches (pursuant to a treaty they made with them on the spot) were afterwards left at Young Man's Coffee House, Charing Cross, where the owners had them again on payment of twenty guineas, as stipulated in the said treaty between the parties.
Another robbery they committed was on Squire Amlow (of Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane), in Epsom Lane, turning up to Epsom. When he was attacked he drew a sword and made several passes at them as he sat in an open chaise; but notwithstanding his resolution in opposing them, they by force took two guineas, a silver watch, and his silver-hilted sword, and some parchment writings of a considerable value. On his submission and request for his writings, they accordingly delivered them up, let him pass and helped him to his watch again, being in the hands of Mr. Corket, a pawnbroker in Houndsditch. They also took opportunities to rob all the butchers and higlers from Epping Forest to Woodford, particularly one old woman, who wore a high crowned hat of her mother's as she said, which hat they took and searched, and out of the lining of it found three pounds and delivered her the hat again. On Acton Common they also met two chariots with gentlemen and ladies in them and robbed them in money, watches and other things to the value of forty pounds.
My readers, from these instances, must have a tolerable notion of Everett's humour, it may prove entertaining, therefore, to give them a specimen of his own manner of relating his adventures, and therefore I insert the following ones in his own words.
Soon after our last achievement, my old comrade Dick Bird, and I, stopped a coach in the evening on Hounslow Heath, in which (amongst other passengers) were two precise, but courageous Quakers, who had the assurance to call us Sons of Violence; and refusing to comply with our reasonable demands jumped out of the coach to give us battle. Whereupon we began a sharp engagement, and showed them the arm of flesh was too strong for the Spirit, which seemed to move very powerful within them. After a short contest (though we never offered to fire, for I ever abhorred barbarity, or the more heinous sin of murder) through the cowardly persuasions of their fellow-travellers they submitted, though sore against their inclinations. As they were stout fellows and men every inch of them, we scorned to abuse them, and contented ourselves with rifling them of the little Mammon of unrighteousness which they had about them, which amounted to about thirty or forty shillings and their watches. The rest in the coach, whose hearts were sunk into their breeches, Dick fleeced without the least resistance.
There was one circumstance of this affair which created a little diversion, and therefore with my readers leave, I will relate it. The Precisions for the most part, though they are plain in their dress, wear the best of commodities, and though a smart toupee[[91]] is an abomination, yet a bob-wig, or a natural of six or seven guineas' price, is a modest covering allowed by the saints. One of the prigs was well furnished in this particular, and flattering myself it would become me, I resolved to make it lawful plunder. Without any further ceremony, therefore, than alleging exchange was no robbery, I napped his poll, and dressed him immediately in masquerade with an old tie-wig, which I had the day before purchased of an antiquated Chelsea pensioner for half-a-crown. The other company, though in doleful dumps for the loss of the coriander seed, could not forbear grinning at the merry metamorphis, for our Quaker now looked more like a devil than saint. As companions in distress ever alleviate its weight, they invited him with a general laugh into their leathern convenience again, wished us a goodnight, and hoped they should have no farther molestation on the road. We gave then the watch-word, and assured them they should not, then tipped the honest coachman a shilling to drink our healths, and brushed off the ground.
About a week or ten days later, my brother Dick and I projected a new scheme more nimble than the former, to take a purse without the charge of horse hire. Millington Common was determined to be the scene of action. We sauntered for some time upon the green and suffered several to pass by without the least molestation, but at last we espied two gentlemen well-mounted coming towards us, who we imagined might be able to replenish our empty purses, so we prepared for an attack. After the usual salutation, I stopped the foremost and demanded his cash, his watch and other appurtenances thereunto belonging, and assured him I was a brother of an honourable but numerous family; that to work I had no inclination and to beg I was ashamed, and that I had at present no other way for a livelihood, if such a demand at first view ought appear a little immodest or unreasonable, I hoped he would excuse it, as necessity and not choice was the fatal inducement.
My brother Dick was as rhetorical in his apologies with the hindermost, whom he dismounted. We used them with more good manners and humanity than the common pads, who act for the most part rather like Turks and Jews than Christians, in such enterprises, to the eternal scandal of the profession. We contented ourselves with what silver and little gold they had about them, which to about three or four pounds, and their gold watches, one of which, as well I remember, was of Tompion's make, and which I afterwards pawned for five guineas to a fellow that the week after broke, and ran away with it, so that I had not the opportunity of restoring it again to the proper owner, for which I heartily beg his pardon. As we must own the gentlemen behaved well and came unto our measures without the least resistance, so they must do us the justice to acknowledge that we treated them as such and neither disrobed nor abused them. We thought it, however, common prudence to cut the girths of their horses' saddles, and secure their bridles for fear of a pursuit.
Thus flushed again with success, we made the best of our way to Brentford, and there took the ferry; but Fortune, though she is fair, yet she is a fickle mistress, her smiles are often false and very precarious. Before we had got ashore, we heard the persons had got scent of us, and our triumph had like to have ended in captivity. When we were three parts over, and out of danger of drowning, we told the ferrymen our distress, gave them ten shillings, and obliged them to throw their oars into the Thames. The agreeable reward and the fears of being thrown in themselves in case of a denial, made them readily consent. In we plunged after them, and soon made the shore. Though we looked like Hob just drawn out of the well, those that saw us only imagined it was a drunken frolic. Our expeditious flight soon dried our clothes, and without catching the least cold, we both arrived safe that night at London.
We congratulated each other, you may imagine on our happy and narrow escape, and solaced ourselves after the fatigue of the day, with a mistress and a bottle.