Moll Flanders

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They heard of it, and immediately my husband desired to see
this Mrs. Flanders that knew him so well, and was to be an
evidence against him; and accordingly I had leave given to go
to him. I dressed myself up as well as the best clothes that I
suffered myself ever to appear in there would allow me, and
went to the press-yard, but had for some time a hood over my
face. He said little to me at first, but asked me if I knew him.
I told him, Yes, very well; but as I concealed my face, so I
counterfeited my voice, that he had not the least guess at who
I was. He asked me where I had seen him. I told him between
Dunstable and Brickhill; but turning to the keeper that stood
by, I asked if I might not be admitted to talk with him alone.
He said Yes, yes, as much as I pleased, and so very civilly
withdrew.

As soon as he was gone, I had shut the door, I threw off my
hood, and bursting out into tears, 'My dear,' says I, 'do you not
know me?' He turned pale, and stood speechless, like one
thunderstruck, and, not able to conquer the surprise, said no
more but this, 'Let me sit down'; and sitting down by a table,
he laid his elbow upon the table, and leaning his head on his
hand, fixed his eyes on the ground as one stupid. I cried so
vehemently, on the other hand, that it was a good while ere I
could speak any more; but after I had given some vent to my
passion by tears, I repeated the same words, 'My dear, do you
not know me?' At which he answered, Yes, and said no more
a good while.

After some time continuing in the surprise, as above, he cast
up his eyes towards me and said, 'How could you be so cruel?'
I did not readily understand what he meant; and I answered,
'How can you call me cruel? What have I been cruel to you in?'
'To come to me,' says he, 'in such a place as this, is it not to
insult me? I have not robbed you, at least not on the highway.'

I perceived by this that he knew nothing of the miserable
circumstances I was in, and thought that, having got some
intelligence of his being there, I had come to upbraid him
with his leaving me. But I had too much to say to him to be
affronted, and told him in few words, that I was far from
coming to insult him, but at best I came to condole mutually;
that he would be easily satisfied that I had no such view,
when I should tell him that my condition was worse than his,
and that many ways. He looked a little concerned at the
general expression of my condition being worse than his, but,
with a kind smile, looked a little wildly, and said, 'How can
that be? When you see me fettered, and in Newgate, and two
of my companions executed already, can you can your condition
is worse than mine?'

'Come, my dear,' says I, 'we have along piece of work to do,
if I should be to related, or you to hear, my unfortunate history;
but if you are disposed to hear it, you will soon conclude with
me that my condition is worse than yours.' 'How is that possible,'
says he again, 'when I expect to be cast for my life the very
next sessions?' 'Yes, says I, ''tis very possible, when I shall
tell you that I have been cast for my life three sessions ago,
and am under sentence of death; is not my case worse than yours?'

Then indeed, he stood silent again, like one struck dumb, and
after a while he starts up. 'Unhappy couple!' says he. 'How
can this be possible?' I took him by the hand. 'Come, my
dear,' said I, 'sit down, and let us compare our sorrows. I am
a prisoner in this very house, and in much worse circumstances
than you, and you will be satisfied I do not come to insult you,
when I tell you the particulars.' Any with this we sat down
together, and I told him so much of my story as I thought was
convenient, bringing it at last to my being reduced to great
poverty, and representing myself as fallen into some company
that led me to relieve my distresses by way that I had been
utterly unacquainted with, and that they making an attempt at
a tradesman's house, I was seized upon for having been but
just at the door, the maid-servant pulling me in; that I neither
had broke any lock nor taken anything away, and that
notwithstanding that, I was brought in guilty and sentenced
to die; but that the judges, having been made sensible of the
hardship of my circumstances, had obtained leave to remit the
sentence upon my consenting to be transported.

I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for
one Moll Flanders, who was a famous successful thief, that
all of them had heard of, but none of them had ever seen; but
that, as he knew well, was none of my name. But I placed all
to the account of my ill fortune, and that under this name I
was dealt with as an old offender, though this was the first
thing they had ever known of me. I gave him a long particular
of things that had befallen me since I saw him, but I told him
if I had seen him since he might thing I had, and then gave
him an account how I had seen him at Brickhill; how furiously
he was pursued, and how, by giving an account that I knew
him, and that he was a very honest gentleman, one Mr.----,
the hue-and-cry was stopped, and the high constable went
back again.

He listened most attentively to all my story, and smiled at
most of the particulars, being all of them petty matters, and
infinitely below what he had been at the head of; but when I
came to the story of Brickhill, he was surprised. 'And was it
you, my dear,' said he, 'that gave the check to the mob that
was at our heels there, at Brickhill?' 'Yes,' said I, 'it was I
indeed.' And then I told him the particulars which I had
observed him there. 'Why, then,' said he, 'it was you that
saved my life at that time, and I am glad I owe my life to you,
for I will pay the debt to you now, and I'll deliver you from
the present condition you are in, or I will die in the attempt.'

I told him, by no means; it was a risk too great, not worth his
running the hazard of, and for a life not worth his saving.
'Twas no matter for that, he said, it was a life worth all the
world to him; a life that had given him a new life; 'for,' says
he, 'I was never in real danger of being taken, but that time,
till the last minute when I was taken.' Indeed, he told me his
danger then lay in his believing he had not been pursued that
way; for they had gone from Hockey quite another way, and
had come over the enclosed country into Brickhill, not by the
road, and were sure they had not been seen by anybody.

Here he gave me a long history of his life, which indeed would
make a very strange history, and be infinitely diverting. He
told me he took to the road about twelve years before he
married me; that the woman which called him brother was not
really his sister, or any kin to him, but one that belonged to
their gang, and who, keeping correspondence with him, lived
always in town, having good store of acquaintance; that she
gave them a perfect intelligence of persons going out of town,
and that they had made several good booties by her correspondence;
that she thought she had fixed a fortune for him when she brought
me to him, but happened to be disappointed, which he really
could not blame her for; that if it had been his good luck that
I had had the estate, which she was informed I had, he had
resolved to leave off the road and live a retired, sober live but
never to appear in public till some general pardon had been
passed, or till he could, for money, have got his name into
some particular pardon, that so he might have been perfectly
easy; but that, as it had proved otherwise, he was obliged to
put off his equipage and take up the old trade again.

He gave me a long account of some of his adventures, and
particularly one when he robbed the West Chester coaches
near Lichfield, when he got a very great booty; and after that,
how he robbed five graziers, in the west, going to Burford Fair
in Wiltshire to buy sheep. He told me he got so much money
on those two occasions, that if he had known where to have
found me, he would certainly have embraced my proposal of
going with me to Virginia, or to have settled in a plantation
on some other parts of the English colonies in America.

He told me he wrote two or three letters to me, directed
according to my order, but heard nothing from me. This I
indeed knew to be true, but the letters coming to my hand in
the time of my latter husband, I could do nothing in it, and
therefore chose to give no answer, that so he might rather
believe they had miscarried.

Being thus disappointed, he said, he carried on the old trade
ever since, though when he had gotten so much money, he
said, he did not run such desperate risks as he did before.
Then he gave me some account of several hard and desperate
encounters which he had with gentlemen on the road, who
parted too hardly with their money, and showed me some
wounds he had received; and he had one or two very terrible
wounds indeed, as particularly one by a pistol bullet, which
broke his arm, and another with a sword, which ran him quite
through the body, but that missing his vitals, he was cured
again; one of his comrades having kept with him so faithfully,
and so friendly, as that he assisted him in riding near eighty
miles before his arm was set, and then got a surgeon in a
considerable city, remote from that place where it was done,
pretending they were gentlemen travelling towards Carlisle
and that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen,
and that one of them had shot him into the arm and broke
the bone.

This, he said, his friend managed so well, that they were not
suspected at all, but lay still till he was perfectly cured. He
gave me so many distinct accounts of his adventures, that it
is with great reluctance that I decline the relating them; but I
consider that this is my own story, not his.

I then inquired into the circumstances of his present case at
that time, and what it was he expected when he came to be
tried. He told me that they had no evidence against him, or
but very little; for that of three robberies, which they were all
charged with, it was his good fortune that he was but in one
of them, and that there was but one witness to be had for that
fact, which was not sufficient, but that it was expected some
others would come in against him; that he thought indeed,
when he first saw me, that I had been one that came of that
errand; but that if somebody came in against him, he hoped
he should be cleared; that he had had some intimation, that if
he would submit to transport himself, he might be admitted
to it without a trial, but that he could not think of it with any
temper, and thought he could much easier submit to be hanged.

I blamed him for that, and told him I blamed him on two
accounts; first, because if he was transported, there might be
a hundred ways for him that was a gentleman, and a bold
enterprising man, to find his way back again, and perhaps
some ways and means to come back before he went. He
smiled at that part, and said he should like the last the best of
the two, for he had a kind of horror upon his mind at his being
sent over to the plantations, as Romans sent condemned
slaves to work in the mines; that he thought the passage into
another state, let it be what it would, much more tolerable at
the gallows, and that this was the general notion of all the
gentlemen who were driven by the exigence of their fortunes
to take the road; that at the place of execution there was at
least an end of all the miseries of the present state, and as for
what was to follow, a man was, in his opinion, as likely to
repent sincerely in the last fortnight of his life, under the
pressures and agonies of a jail and the condemned hole, as he
would ever be in the woods and wilderness of America; that
servitude and hard labour were things gentlemen could never
stoop to; that it was but the way to force them to be their own
executioners afterwards, which was much worse; and that
therefore he could not have any patience when he did but
think of being transported.

I used the utmost of my endeavour to persuade him, and joined
that known woman's rhetoric to it--I mean, that of tears. I told
him the infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater
pressure upon the spirits of a gentleman than any of the
mortifications that he could meet with abroad could be; that
he had at least in the other a chance for his life, whereas here
he had none at all; that it was the easiest thing in the world
for him to manage the captain of a ship, who were, generally
speaking, men of good-humour and some gallantry; and a
small matter of conduct, especially if there was any money
to be had, would make way for him to buy himself off when
he came to Virginia.

He looked wistfully at me, and I thought I guessed at what he
meant, that is to say, that he had no money; but I was mistaken,
his meaning was another way. 'You hinted just now, my dear,'
said he, 'that there might be a way of coming back before I
went, by which I understood you that it might be possible to
buy it off here. I had rather give #200 to prevent going, than
#100 to be set at liberty when I came there.' 'That is, my dear,'
said I, 'because you do not know the place so well as I do.'
'That may be,' said he; 'and yet I believe, as well as you know
it, you would do the same, unless it is because, as you told
me, you have a mother there.'

I told him, as to my mother, it was next to impossible but
that she must be dead many years before; and as for any other
relations that I might have there, I knew them not now; that
since the misfortunes I had been under had reduced me to the
condition I had been in for some years, I had not kept up any
correspondence with them; and that he would easily believe,
I should find but a cold reception from them if I should be
put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported
felon; that therefore, if I went thither, I resolved not to see
them; but that I had many views in going there, if it should be
my fate, which took off all the uneasy part of it; and if he
found himself obliged to go also, I should easily instruct him
how to manage himself, so as never to go a servant at all,
especially since I found he was not destitute of money, which
was the only friend in such a condition.

He smiled, and said he did not tell me he had money. I took
him up short, and told him I hoped he did not understand by
my speaking, that I should expect any supply from him if he
had money; that, on the other hand, though I had not a great
deal, yet I did not want, and while I had any I would rather
add to him than weaken him in that article, seeing, whatever
he had, I knew in the case of transportation he would have
occasion of it all.

He expressed himself in a most tender manner upon that head.
He told me what money he had was not a great deal, but that
he would never hide any of it from me if I wanted it, and that
he assured me he did not speak with any such apprehensions;
that he was only intent upon what I had hinted to him before
he went; that here he knew what to do with himself, but that
there he should be the most ignorant, helpless wretch alive.

I told him he frighted and terrified himself with that which
had no terror in it; that if he had money, as I was glad to hear
he had, he might not only avoid the servitude supposed to be
the consequence of transportation, but begin the world upon
a new foundation, and that such a one as he could not fail of
success in, with the common application usual in such cases;
that he could not but call to mind that is was what I had
recommended to him many years before and had proposed it
for our mutual subsistence and restoring our fortunes in the
world; and I would tell him now, that to convince him both
of the certainty of it and of my being fully acquainted with the
method, and also fully satisfied in the probability of success,
he should first see me deliver myself from the necessity of
going over at all, and then that I would go with him freely,
and of my own choice, and perhaps carry enough with me to
satisfy him that I did not offer it for want of being able to live
without assistance from him, but that I thought our mutual
misfortunes had been such as were sufficient to reconcile us
both to quitting this part of the world, and living where
nobody could upbraid us with what was past, or we be in any
dread of a prison, and without agonies of a condemned hole
to drive us to it; this where we should look back on all our
past disasters with infinite satisfaction, when we should
consider that our enemies should entirely forget us, and that
we should live as new people in a new world, nobody having
anything to say to us, or we to them.

I pressed this home to him with so many arguments, and
answered all his own passionate objections so effectually that
he embraced me, and told me I treated him with such sincerity
and affection as overcame him; that he would take my advice,
and would strive to submit to his fate in hope of having the
comfort of my assistance, and of so faithful a counsellor and
such a companion in his misery. But still he put me in mind
of what I had mentioned before, namely, that there might be
some way to get off before he went, and that it might be
possible to avoid going at all, which he said would be much
better. I told him he should see, and be fully satisfied, that I
would do my utmost in that part too, and if it did not succeed,
yet that I would make good the rest.

We parted after this long conference with such testimonies of
kindness and affection as I thought were equal, if not superior,
to that at our parting at Dunstable; and now I saw more plainly
than before, the reason why he declined coming at that time
any farther with me toward London than Dunstable, and why,
when we parted there, he told me it was not convenient for
him to come part of the way to London to bring me going, as
he would otherwise have done. I have observed that the
account of his life would have made a much more pleasing
history than this of mine; and, indeed, nothing in it was more
strange than this part, viz. that he carried on that desperate
trade full five-and-twenty years and had never been taken,
the success he had met with had been so very uncommon, and
such that sometimes he had lived handsomely, and retired in
place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a
man-servant to wait on him, and had often sat in the
coffee-houses and heard the very people whom he had robbed
give accounts of their being robbed, and of the place and
circumstances, so that he could easily remember that it was
the same.

In this manner, it seems, he lived near Liverpool at the time
he unluckily married me for a fortune. Had I been the fortune
he expected, I verily believe, as he said, that he would have
taken up and lived honestly all his days.

He had with the rest of his misfortunes the good luck not to
be actually upon the spot when the robbery was done which
he was committed for, and so none of the persons robbed
could swear to him, or had anything to charge upon him. But
it seems as he was taken with the gang, one hard-mouthed
countryman swore home to him, and they were like to have
others come in according to the publication they had made;
so that they expected more evidence against him, and for that
reason he was kept in hold.

However, the offer which was made to him of admitting him to
transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession
of some great person who pressed him hard to accept of it before
a trial; and indeed, as he knew there were several that might
come in against him, I thought his friend was in the right, and
I lay at him night and day to delay it no longer.

At last, with much difficulty, he gave his consent; and as he
was not therefore admitted to transportation in court, and on
his petition, as I was, so he found himself under a difficulty
to avoid embarking himself as I had said he might have done;
his great friend, who was his intercessor for the favour of that
grant, having given security for him that he should transport
himself, and not return within the term.

This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took
afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered
wholly ineffectual, unless I would abandon him, and leave
him to go to America by himself; than which he protested he
would much rather venture, although he were certain to go
directly to the gallows.

I must now return to my case. The time of my being transported
according to my sentence was near at hand; my governess, who
continued my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it
could not be done unless with an expense too heavy for my
purse, considering that to be left naked and empty, unless I had
resolved to return to my old trade again, had been worse than
my transportation, because there I knew I could live, here I
could not. The good minister stood very hard on another
account to prevent my being transported also; but he was
answered, that indeed my life had been given me at his first
solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was
sensibly grieved at my going, because, as he said, he feared I
should lose the good impressions which a prospect of death
had at first made on me, and which were since increased by
his instructions; and the pious gentleman was exceedingly
concerned about me on that account.

On the other hand, I really was not so solicitous about it as I
was before, but I industriously concealed my reasons for it
from the minister, and to the last he did not know but that I
went with the utmost reluctance and affliction.

It was in the month of February that I was, with seven other
convicts, as they called us, delivered to a merchant that traded
to Virginia, on board a ship, riding, as they called it, in
Deptford Reach. The officer of the prison delivered us on
board, and the master of the vessel gave a discharge for us.

We were for that night clapped under hatches, and kept so
close that I thought I should have been suffocated for want
of air; and the next morning the ship weighed, and fell down
the river to a place they call Bugby's Hole, which was done,
as they told us, by the agreement of the merchant, that all
opportunity of escape should be taken from us. However,
when the ship came thither and cast anchor, we were allowed
more liberty, and particularly were permitted to come up on
the deck, but not up on the quarter-deck, that being kept
particularly for the captain and for passengers.

When by the noise of the men over my head, and the motion
of the ship, I perceived that they were under sail, I was at first
greatly surprised, fearing we should go away directly, and that
our friends would not be admitted to see us any more; but I
was easy soon after, when I found they had come to an anchor
again, and soon after that we had notice given by some of the
men where we were, that the next morning we should have
the liberty to come up on deck, and to have our friends come
and see us if we had any.

All that night I lay upon the hard boards of the deck, as the
passengers did, but we had afterwards the liberty of little
cabins for such of us as had any bedding to lay in them, and
room to stow any box or trunk for clothes and linen, if we
had it (which might well be put in), for some of them had
neither shirt nor shift or a rag of linen or woollen, but what
was on their backs, or a farthing of money to help themselves;
and yet I did not find but they fared well enough in the ship,
especially the women, who got money from the seamen for
washing their clothes, sufficient to purchase any common
things that they wanted.

When the next morning we had the liberty to come up on the
deck, I asked one of the officers of the ship, whether I might
not have the liberty to send a letter on shore, to let my friends
know where the ship lay, and to get some necessary things
sent to me. This was, it seems, the boatswain, a very civil,
courteous sort of man, who told me I should have that, or any
other liberty that I desired, that he could allow me with safety.
I told him I desired no other; and he answered that the ship's
boat would go up to London the next tide, and he would order
my letter to be carried.

Accordingly, when the boat went off, the boatswain came to
me and told me the boat was going off, and that he went in it
himself, and asked me if my letter was ready he would take
care of it. I had prepared myself, you may be sure, pen, ink,
and paper beforehand, and I had gotten a letter ready directed
to my governess, and enclosed another for my fellow-prisoner,
which, however, I did not let her know was my husband, not
to the last. In that to my governess, I let her know where the
ship lay, and pressed her earnestly to send me what things I
knew she had got ready for me for my voyage.

When I gave the boatswain the letter, I gave him a shilling
with it, which I told him was for the charge of a messenger
or porter, which I entreated him to send with the letter as
soon as he came on shore, that if possible I might have an
answer brought back by the same hand, that I might know
what was become of my things; 'for sir,' says I, 'if the ship
should go away before I have them on board, I am undone.'

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