WHEREAS I William Margarets the younger, was, at the last Assizes for the County of Cambridge, convicted upon an indictment, for an attempt to raise the price of Corn in Ely-market, upon the 24th day of September, 1757, by offering the sum of Six Shillings a Bushel for Wheat, for which no more than Five Shillings and Ninepence was demanded; And whereas, on the earnest solicitation and request of myself and friends, the prosecutor has been prevailed upon to forbear any further prosecution against me, on my submitting to make the following satisfaction, viz. upon my paying the sum of £50 to the poor inhabitants of the town of Ely; and the further sum of £50 to the poor inhabitants of the town of Cambridge, to be distributed by the Minister and Church-wardens of the several parishes in the said town; and the full costs of the prosecution; and upon my reading this acknowledgment of my offence publicly, and with a loud voice, in the presence of a Magistrate, Constable, or other peace officer of the said town of Ely, at the Market-place there, between the hours of twelve and one o’clock, on a public market-day, and likewise subscribing and publishing the same in three of the Evening Papers, printed at London, and in the Cambridge Journal, on four different days; and I have accordingly paid the two sums of £50, and Costs; and do hereby confess myself to have been guilty of the said offence, and testify my sincere and hearty sorrow in having committed a crime, which, in its consequences, tended so much to increase the distress of the poor, in the late calamitous scarcity: And I do hereby most humbly acknowledge the lenity of the prosecutor, and beg pardon of the public in general, and of the town of Ely in particular. This paper was read by me at the public Market-place at Ely, in the presence of Thomas Aungier, Gentleman, chief constable, on the 2d Day of June, 1759, being a public Market-day there; and is now, as a further proof of the just sense I have of the heinousness of my crime, subscribed and published by me
William Margarets.
Witness, James Day,
Under Sheriff of Cambridgeshire.
Longevity.
On the 2d of June, 1734, John Rousey, of the isle of Distrey, in Scotland, died at one hundred and thirty-eight years of age. The son who inherited his estate, was born to him while in his hundredth year.[194] A similar instance of fatherhood, at this advanced period of life, is recorded of the “old, old, very old man, Thomas Parr.”
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 57·85.