told him that Fourbin was gone from Dunkirk, to lie in wait for the Russian fleet, which proved to be true; he both went to watch for them, and he took the great part of the fleet. Yet, though this was a single piece of intelligence that they ever brought, Harley took so little notice of it, that he gave no advertisement to the admiralty concerning it. This particular except ed, they only brought over common news, and the Paris gazetteer. These examinations lasted for some weeks: when they were ended, a full report was made of them to the House of Lords, and they ordered the whole report, with all the examinations, to be laid before the queen.' Gregg was convicted on the statute of Edward III. which declares it high treason to adhere to the king's enemics, or to give them aid either within or without the realm.' Immediately after this conviction, both houses of parliament petitioned the queen that he might be exccuted, and he was accordingly hanged at Tyburn, with Morgridge, on the 28th of April, 1708. Gregg, at the place of execution, delivered a paper to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, in which he acknowledged the justice of his sentence, declared his sincere repentance of all his sins, particularly that lately committed against the queen, whose forgiveness he devoutly implored. He likewise expressed his wish to make all possible reparation for the injuries he had done; begged pardon, in a particular manner, of Mr. Secretary Harley; and testified the perfect innocence of that gen tleman, declaring that he was no way privy, directly or indirectly, to his writing to France. He professed that he died an unworthy member of the Protestant church; and that the want of money to supply his extravagances had tempted him to commit the fatal crime which cost him his life. Gregg's ruling passion appears to have been ambition; but this was so blended with a love of inordinate pleasures, that he was induced to have recourse to the most unwarrantable practices to supply his extravagances. In both his public situations he was in the regular way to have advanced himself in the state; and prudence, vigilance, and caution, and a strict adherence to the great rule of right, would, in all human probability, have gratified the favorite wish of his heart: but, permitting himself to be seduced by the violence of his own passions, he deviated from the path of honour, and became an object of public punishment and public detestation. He acted, likewise, against his own principles; for, while he was corresponding with the enemy, and taking measures to subvert the government, he had no predilection in favour of the Pretender. On the contrary, he declared, while he was under sentence of death, that he never thought he had any right to the throne of these realms.' How strangely preposterous, then, was the conduct of this man! From his untimely fate may youth be taught that the only road to substantial honour and happiness is through the path of virtue! DEBORAH CHURCHILL, EXECUTED FOR MURDER. In this case we shall disclose one of the most consummate tricks ever played by woman to defraud her creditors; and a more effectual me thod cannot be resorted to. It is a satisfaction, however, that, during the perusal of the fate of Deborah Churchill, we know that Fleet marriages have long been declared illegal; and therefore the artifice cannot now be so easily accomplished. Formerly, within the liberties of the Fleet, the clergy could perform the marriage rites with as little ceremony as at Gretna Green, where, to the disgrace of the British cmpire, an ignorant blacksmith, or a fellow equally mean and unfit, assumes this sacred duty of the church. Though this woman's sins were great, yet we must admit some hard ship in her suffering the utmost rigour of the law for the crime for which she was found guilty, but which, at the same time, is, in the eye of the law, great as in the immediate perpetrator of a murder. Here we deem it well to observe, that any person present while murder is committing, and though he may take no part in the commission of the crime, yet, unless he does his utmost to prevent, he is considered guilty, equal with him who might have given the fatal blow. Deborah Churchill was born about the year 1678, in a village near Norwich. She had several children by her husband, Mr. Church ill; but her temper not being calculated to afford him domestic happiness, he repined at his situation, and destroyed himself by intoxica tion. Deborah, after this event, came to London, and, being much too idle and too proud to think of earning a subsistence by her industry, she ran considerably in debt; and, in order to extricate herself from her incum. brances, had recourse to a method which was formerly as common as it is unjust. Going to a public house in Holborn, she saw a soldier, and asked him if he would marry her. The man immediately answered in the affirmative, on which they went in a coach to the Fleet, where the nuptial knot was instantly tied. Mrs. Churchill, whose maiden name is unknown, having obtained a certificate of her marriage, en. ticed her husband to drink till he was quite inebriated, and then gave. him the slip, happy in this contrivance to screen herself from an arrest. A little after this she cohabited with a young fellow named Hunt, with whom she lived more than six years. Hunt appears to have been a youth of a rakish disposition. He behaved very ill to this unhappy woman, who, however, loved him to distraction, and at length forfeited her life in consequence of the regard that she had for him. One night, as Mr. Hunt and one of his associates were returning from the theatre, in company with Mrs. Churchill, a quarrel arose between the men, who immediately drew their swords; while Mrs. Churchill, anxious for the safety of Hunt, interposed, and kept his an. tagonist at a distance; in conse. quence of which, being off his guard, he received a wound, of which he died almost immediately. No sooner was the murder committed than Hunt effected his escape, and, eluding his pursuers, arrived safely in Holland; but Mrs. Churchill was apprehended on the spot, and, being taken before a magistrate, was committed to Newgate. November, 1708, at the sessions held at the Old Bailey, Mrs. Churchill was indicted as an accomplice on the act of the first year of King James I. called the statute of stabbing, by which it is enacted, that, if any one stabs another, who hath not at that time a weapon drawn, or hath not first stricken, the party who stabs is deemed guilty of murder, if the person stabbed dies within six months afterwards.' Mrs. Churchill, being convicted, pleaded a state of pregnancy, in bar to her execution; and a jury of matrons, being impanelled, declared that they were ignorant whether she was with child or not. Hereupon the court, willing to allow all reasonable time in a case of this nature, respited judgment for six months; at the end of which time she received sentence of death, as there was no appearance of her being pregnant. This woman's behaviour was extremely penitent; but she denied her guilt to the last moment of her life, having no conception that she had committed murder, because she did not herself stab the deceased. She suffered at Tyburn on the 17th of December, 1708. From the fatal end of this woman we may gather the following lessons of instruction. Her unhappy tem per induced her first husband to have recourse to strong liquors, which killed him. Hence let mar ried women learn to keep a guard on their tempers, and always to meet their husbands with smiles of complacency and good nature. Marriage is either a heaven or a hell upon earth, according to the behaviour of the parties towards each other. Mrs. Churchill's attachment to Hunt is a strong proof of the capriciousness of the female mind; but she is only one instance amongst thousands of a woman proving a bad wife, and entertaining an affection for a man no way worthy her regard. We wish, for the honour of the fair sex, that these instances may daily decrease; that female virtue may triumph through the land; and that every departure from it may be deemed as criminal in the eyes of the sex in general as it undoubtedly is in the sight of heaven. CHRISTOPHER SLAUGHTERFORD, EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF JANE YOUNG. THIS is a very singular case, and will excite different opinions respecting this unhappy man's com. mission of the deed for which he was executed. He was the son of a miller at Westbury Green, in Surrey, who apprenticed him at Godalming. When his time was expired, he lived in several situations, and afterwards took a malthouse at Shalford, when his aunt became his housekeeper, and he acquired a moderate sum of money by his industry. He now paid his addresses to Jane Young, and it was generally supposed he intended to marry her. The last time he was seen in her company was on the evening of the 5th of October, 1703; from which day she was not heard of for a considerable time, on which suspicions arose that Slaughterford had murdered her. About a month afterwards the body of the unfortunate girl was found in a pond, with several marks. of violence on it; and the public suspicion being still fixed on Slaughterford, he voluntarily surrendered himself to two justices of the peace, who directed that he should be discharged; but, as he was still accused by his neighbours, he went to a third magistrate, who, agreeable to his own solicitations, committed him to the Marshalsea Prison; and he was tried at the next assizes at Kingston, and acquitted. The majority of his neighbours, however, still insisted that he was guilty, and prevailed on the relations of the deceased to bring an appeal for a new trial; towards the expense of which many persons subscribed, as the father of Jane Young was in indigent circumstances. During the next term he was tried, by a Surrey jury, in the Court of Queen's Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Holt, the appeal being lodged in the name of Henry Young, brother and heir to the deceased. The evidence given on this second trial was the same in substance as on the first; yet so different were the sentiments of the two juries, that Slaughterford was now found guilty, and received sentence of death. It may be proper to mention the heads of some of the depositions, that the reader may judge of the propriety of the verdict. Elizabeth Chapman, the mistress of Jane Young, deposed that, when the young woman left her service, she said she was going to be married to the prisoner, that she had purchased new clothes on the occasion, and declared that she was to meet him on the Sunday following. That the deponent sometimes afterwards inquired after Jane Young, and, asking if she was married, was informed that she had been seen in the company of Slaughterford, but no one could tell what was become of her since, and that he himself pretended he knew nothing of her, but thought she had been at home with Mrs. Chapman; which had induced this witness to believe that some mischief had befallen her. Other witnesses proved that Jane Young was in company with the prisoner on the night that the murder was committed; and one man swore that, at three in the morning, he met a man and woman on a common, about a quarter of a mile from the place where the body was found; that the man wore light-coloured clothes, as it was proved the prisoner had done the preceding day; and that soon after he passed them he heard a shrieking, like the voice of a woman. It was sworn by a woman, that, after the deceased was missing, she asked Slaughterford what was become of his lady: to which he replied, 'I have put her off; do you know of any girl that has any money? I have got the way of putting them off now.' It was deposed by another woman that, before the discovery of the murder, she said to Mr. Slaughterford, What if Jane Young should lay such a child to you as mine is here?' at which he sighed, and said, 'It is now impossible;' and cried till the tears ran down his cheeks. In contradiction to this, the aunt of Mr. Slaughterford, and a young lad who lived in the house, deposed that the prisoner lay at home on the night that the murder was committed. Slaughterford, from the time of conviction to the very hour of his death, solemnly declared his innocence; and, though visited by several divines, who urged him by all possible arguments to confess the fact, yet he still persisted that he was not guilty. He was respited from the Wednesday till Saturday, in which interim he desired to see Mr. Woodroof, a minister of Guildford, from which it was thought he would make a confession; but what he said to him tended only to confirm his former declarations. As soon as the executioner had tied him up, he threw himself off, having previously delivered to the sheriff a paper, containing the following solemn declaration : 'Guildford, July 9, 1709. "Being brought here to die, ac cording to the sentence passed upon me at the Queen's Bench bar, for a crime of which I am wholly innocent, I thought myself obliged to let the world know, that they may not reflect on my friends and relations, whom I have left behind me much troubled for my fatal end, that I know nothing of the death of Jane Young, nor how she came by her death, directly or indirectly, though some have been pleased to cast reflections on my aunt. How ever, I freely forgive all my enemies, and pray to God to give them a due sense of their errors, and in his due time to bring the truth to light. In the mean time, I beg every one to forbear reflecting on my dear mother, or any of my relations, for my unjust and unhappy fall, since what I have here set down is truth, and nothing but the truth, as I expects alvation at the hands of Almighty God; but I am heartily sorry that I should be the cause of persuading her to leave her dame, which is all that troubles me. As witness my hand this 9th day of July.' We have already observed that the case of Slaughterford is very extraordinary. We see that he surrendered himself to the justices when he might have ran away; and common sense tells us that a murderer would endeavour to make his escape; and we find him a second time surrendering himself, as if anxious to wipe away the stain on his character. We find him tried by a jury of his countrymen, and acquitted; then again tried, on an appeal, by another jury of his neigh bours, found guilty, condemned, and executed. Here it should be observed, that after conviction on an appeal, which rarely happens, the king has no power to pardon; probably, had Slaughterford been found guilty by the first jury, as his case was dubious, he would have received royal mercy. Some of the depositions against him seem very striking; yet the testimony in his favour is equally clear. There appears nothing in the former part of his life to impeach his character; there is no proof of any animosity between him and the party murdered; and there is an apparent contradiction in part of the evidence against him. He is represented by one female witness as sneering at and highly gratified with the murder; while another proves him extremely affected, and shedding tears on the loss of Jane Young. The charitable reader must therefore be inclined to think this man was innocent, and that he fell a sacrifice to the prejudices (laudable, perhaps) of his incensed neighbours. He was visited while under sentence of death by a number of divines, yet he dies with the most sacred averment of his innocence. GRACE TRIPP, EXECUTED FOR MURDER. In the perpetration of this horrid murder, we are greatly shocked to find base perfidy added to great cruelty in the breast of a female. In order to support the extravagance of a villain with whom this wretched woman had secret amours, she be trayed her trust, and, in hopes of concealing the crime, murdered her fellow-servant. Grace Tripp was a native of Barton, in Lincolnshire, and, after living as a servant at a gentleman's house in the country, she came to London, was some time in a reputable family, and then procured a place in the house of Lord Torrington. During her stay in this last service she became connected with a |