Picking pockets being rather new amongst the gentry of Ireland, their want of precaution rendered them a more easy prey to Mr. Barrington and his accomplice, who found means to retire to Cork on the setting in of winter, with a booty of nearly one thousand pounds. In this city they found it convenient to fix their residence, at least till the next spring. And now it was that Barrington first determined within himself to become what has been called a gentleman pickpocket, and to affect both the airs and importance of a man of fashion. In this desperate career of vice and folly, it was the fate of Price, the preceptor of Barrington, to be first detected in the act of picking the pocket of a gentleman of high rank, for which he was tried, convicted, and in a very short period sentenced to transportation, for the term of seven years, to America. Barrington, naturally alarmed at the fate of his iniquitous preceptor, without loss of time converted all his movable property into cash, and taking horse, made as precipitate a journey to Dublin as he possibly could. On his arrival there, he lived rather in a private and retired manner, only lurking in the darkest evenings about the playhouses, where he occasionally picked up a few guineas or a watch. But he was soon weary of the sameness, and disgusted with the obscurity of a life of comparative retirement, such as that he led in the Irish capital; so that when the spring and the fine weather that accompanied it returned, he embarked on board the Dorset yacht, which was then on the point of sailing with the duke of Leinster for Parkgate; and before the expiration of a week, he found himself for the first time of his life on English ground. With Sir Alexander Schomberg, who commanded the Dorset yacht, there were three other persons embarked, and of some distinction, from whence it appeared that the connection which our adventurer formed with them had considerable effect afterwards in the course of the long succession of transactions in which he was engaged. A young captain was one of the three who was most conspicuous, and, as it will appear, a striking, though an innocent cause of Barrington’s success in his projects of depredation.