The soldiers that at that time were placed on the road, passed for a great security amongst people in town, but those who had occasion to pass that way found no great benefit from their protection, for robberies were as frequent as ever, and the ill-usage of persons when robbed more so, because the rogues thought themselves in greater danger of being taken, and therefore bound or disabled those they plundered, for fear of their pursuing them.
For a fact of this kind it was that Shaw came to his death, for one Philip Pots, being robbed on horseback by several footpads and knocked off his horse near the tile kilns by Pancras, and wounded in several places of his body with his own sword, which one of the villains had taken from him, some persons who passed by soon after took him up, and carried him to the Pinder of Wakefield.[[17]] There, on the Monday following (this accident happening on Saturday night) he in great agonies expired. For this murder and another robbery between Highgate and Kentish Town, Shaw was taken up and soon after convicted. At first he denied all knowledge of the murder, but when his death grew near, he did acknowledge being privy to it, though he persisted in saying he had no hand in its commission.
At the time he was under condemnation, the afore-mentioned John Smith, William Colthouse, and Jonah Burgess were in the same condition. They formed a conspiracy for breaking out of the place where they were confined and to force an escape against all those who should oppose them. For this purpose they had procured pistols, but their plot being discovered, Burgess in great rage, cut his own throat and pretended that Shaw designed to have dispatched himself with one of the pistols. But Shaw, himself, absolutely denied this, and affirmed on the contrary that when Burgess said his enemies should never have the satisfaction (as they had bragged they would have) of placing themselves upon Holborn Bridge, to see him go by Tyburn, he (Shaw) exhorted him never to think of self-murder, and by that means give his enemies a double revenge in destroying both body and soul.
As Shaw had formerly declared his wife's ill-conduct had been the first occasion of his falling into those courses which had proved so fatal to him, he still retained so great an antipathy to her on that account, as not to be able to pardon her, even in the last moments of his life, in which he would neither confess, nor positively deny the murder for which he died. He was then about twenty-eight years of age, and died the same day with the last-mentioned malefactor, Smith.
This discourse between the magistrates is obscure. I have been unable to clear it.
This was the public-house at the Battle Bridge (King's Cross) end of Gray's Inn Road.