The History of the WALTHAM BLACKS and their transactions to the death of RICHARD PARVIN, EDWARD ELLIOT, ROBERT KINGSHELL, HENRY MARSHALL, JOHN PINK and EDWARD PINK, and JAMES ANSELL alias PHILLIPS, at Tyburn, whose lives are also included
Such is the unaccountable folly which reigns in too great a part of the human species, that by their own ill-deeds, they make such laws necessary for the security of men's persons and properties, as by their severity, unless necessity compelled them, would appear cruel and inhuman, and doubtless those laws which we esteem barbarous in other nations, and even some which appear so though anciently practised in our own, had their rise from the same cause.
I am led to this observation from the folly which certain persons were guilty of in making small insurrections for the sake only of getting a few deer, and going on, because they found the leniency of the laws could not punish them at present, until they grew to that height as to ride in armed troops, blacked and disguised, in order the more to terrify those whom they assaulted, and wherever they were denied what they thought proper to demand, whether venison, wine, money, or other necessaries for their debauched feasts, would by letter threaten plunder and destroying with fire and sword, whomever they thought proper.
These villainies being carried on with a high hand for some time in the years 1722 and 1723, their insolence grew at last so intolerable as to oblige the Legislature to make a new law against all who thus went armed and disguised, and associated themselves together by the name of Blacks, or entered into any other confederacies to support and assist one another in doing injuries and violences to the persons and properties of the king's subjects.
By this law it was enacted that after the first day of June, 1723, whatever persons armed with offensive weapons, and having their faces blacked, or otherwise disguised, should appear in any forest, park or grounds enclosed with any wall or fence, wherein deer were kept, or any warren where hares or conies are kept, or in any highway, heath or down, or unlawfully hunt, kill or steal any red or fallow deer, or rob any warren, or steal fish of any pond, or kill or wound cattle, or set fire to any house or outhouses, stack, etc., or cut down or any otherway destroy trees planted for shelter or profit, or shall maliciously shoot at any person, or send a letter demanding money or other valuable things, shall rescue any person in custody of any officer for any such offences, or by gifts or promise, procure any one to join with them, shall be deemed guilty of felony without benefit of clergy, and shall suffer pains of death as felons so convicted.
Nor was even this thought sufficient to remedy those evils, which the idle follies of some rash persons had brought about, but a retrospect was also by the same Act had to offences heretofore committed, and all persons who had committed any crimes punishable by this Act, after the second of February, 1722, were commanded to render themselves before the 24th of July, 1723, to some Justice of his Majesty's Court of King's Bench, or to some Justice of the Peace for the county where they lived, and there make a full and exact confession of the crimes of such a nature which they had committed, the times when, and the places where, and persons with whom, together with an account of such persons' places of abode as had with them been guilty as aforesaid, in order to their being thereupon apprehended, and brought to judgment according to Law, on pain of being deemed felons, without benefit of clergy, and suffering accordingly; but were entitled to a free pardon and forgiveness in case that before the 24th of July they surrendered and made such discovery.
Justices of Peace by the said Act were required on any information being made before them by one or more credible persons, against any person charged with any of the offences aforesaid, to transmit it under their hands and seals to one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, who by the same Act is required to lay such information and return before his Majesty in Council; whereupon an order is to issue for the person so charged to surrender within forty days. And in case he refuse or neglect to surrender within that time, then from the day in which the forty days elapsed, he is to be deemed as a felon convict, and execution may be awarded as attainted of felony by a verdict.
Every person who, after the time appointed for the surrender of the person, shall conceal, aid or succour him, knowing the circumstances in which he then stands, shall suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy, and that people might the more readily hazard their persons for the apprehending such offenders, it is likewise enacted that if any person shall be wounded so as to lose an eye, or the use of any limb in endeavouring to take persons charged with the commission of crimes within this law, then on a certificate from the Justices of the Peace of his being so wounded, the sheriff of the county, if commanded within thirty days after the sight of such certificate, to pay the said wounded persons £50 under pain of forfeiting £10 on failure thereof, and in case any person should be killed in seizing such persons as aforesaid, then the said £50 is to be paid to the executors of the person to be killed.
It cannot seem strange that in consequence of so extraordinary an act of legislature, many of these presumptious and silly people should be apprehended, and a considerable number of them having upon their apprehension been committed to Winchester gaol, seven of them were by Habeas Corpus, removed for the greater solemnity of their trial to Newgate, and for their offence brought up and arraigned at the King's Bench Bar, Westminster. There being convicted on full evidence, all of them of felony, and three of murder, I shall inform ye, one by one, of what has come to my hand in relation to their crimes, and the manner and circumstances with which they were committed.