He was offered his
life, provided he would betray his comrades; but he told the big-
wigs, who wanted him to do so, that he would see them farther
first, and died at Tyburn, amidst the cheers of the populace,
leaving my grandmother and father, to whom he had always been a
kind husband and parent--for, setting aside the crime for which he
suffered, he was a moral man; leaving them, I say, to bewail his
irreparable loss.
"'Tis said that misfortune never comes alone; this is, however, not
always the case. Shortly after my grandfather's misfortune, as my
grandmother and her son were living in great misery in
Spitalfields, her only relation--a brother from whom she had been
estranged some years, on account of her marriage with my
grandfather, who had been in an inferior station to herself--died,
leaving all his property to her and the child. This property
consisted of a farm of about a hundred acres, with its stock, and
some money besides. My grandmother, who knew something of
business, instantly went into the country, where she farmed the
property for her own benefit and that of her son, to whom she gave
an education suitable to a person in his condition, till he was old
enough to manage the farm himself. Shortly after the young man
came of age, my grandmother died, and my father, in about a year,
married the daughter of a farmer, from whom he expected some little
fortune, but who very much deceived him, becoming a bankrupt almost
immediately after the marriage of his daughter, and himself and
family going into the workhouse.
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