The dreadful consequences of this attempt to set aside all virtue and all religion were conspicuously observable, even at the moment, in the sudden deaths of four members of these dreadful clubs; not that I mean to insinuate the Almighty interfered by miracles to shew his displeasure; on the contrary, the event was produced by natural causes inherent in each diabolical act. The hurry of the spirits, occasioned by ardent liquors and the terrors of conscience, were sufficient; Nature shrunk from the contest; and he that drank a toast too shocking to repeat fainted under the recollection; and she that had assumed the character of the Mother of Christ fell a victim to the keen horrors of remembrance in her lucid moments of repentance. It was said, that one of the clubs met at Somerset-house, where they celebrated their infamous orgies to the sound of musick during the hours of Divine service, which will account for the concluding paragraph of the Proclamation. The number of Justices who attended the Lord Chancellor's summons exceeded 100; they received his most strenuous recommendation to exert themselves in the execution of the order, but I find no recorded effects of its operation. The mob carried the same brutality more brutalised to the feet of the gallows; and even while the miserable wretches, who afforded them a spectacle, were supplicating that forgiveness which the laws of morality denied on earth, they were interrupted by shouts and execrations, and injured by stones, dirt, and filth, thrown with violence in every direction. At an execution, June 1721, several persons had their limbs broken, others their eyes almost beaten out; and Barbara Spencer, carried to Tyburn to be strangled and burnt, was beaten down by a stone when beseeching on her knees the mercy of Heaven. These wretches frequently robbed the Surgeons. The wretched manner in which the lowest description of people lodged in 1721, may be gathered from the ensuing extract from an order of the Court at a General Quarter Session, October 4. "It is now become a common practice in the extreme parts of the town, to receive into their houses persons unknown, without distinction of age or sex, on their paying one penny or more _per night_ for lying in such houses without beds or covering; and that it is frequent in those houses for 15 or 20, or more, to lie in a small room."