In a state of alarm and anxiety, he lived a considerable time in the society of the most profligate and abandoned characters of the metropolis, when he was seen to pick the pocket of Mr. Le Mesurier, at Drury-lane playhouse, and was immediately apprehended. Charge of him was given to one Blandy, a constable, who, through negligence or corruption, suffered him to make his escape. The proceedings against him were carried on to an outlawry, and various methods were made use of to detect him, for nearly two years, without effect. But while the lawyers were outlawing him, and the constables endeavoring to take him, he was travelling in various disguises and characters through the northern counties of this kingdom. He visited the great towns in those parts as a quack-doctor, or as a clergyman; sometimes he went with an E. O. table, and sometimes he pretended to be a rider to a manufacturing house at Birmingham or Manchester; and travelling on horseback, with a decent deportment and grave appearance, the account which he thought proper to give of himself was credited, without any difficulty, by those who questioned him. But, in spite of all these precautions, it sometimes happened that he was known by gentlemen whom he met, once particularly in Lincolnshire; yet no one offered to molest or intercept him, until he arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where, on being recognised, he was suspected of picking pockets, and, on inquiry, was discovered to be an outlaw: upon which he was removed by a writ of habeas corpus to London, and imprisoned in Newgate, where he arrived miserable and so dejected, that on learning his circumstances, some of his friends made a subscription for him, by which he was enabled to employ counsel, and to take legal measures to have the outlawry against him reversed. This being effected, he was tried for the original offence, that of stealing Mr. Le Mesurier’s purse; but, through the absence of the Rev. Mr. Adeane, a material witness for the prosecution, he was acquitted. Being once more enlarged, he again set off for Ireland, in company with a young man of the name of Hubert, well known in town for his fraud on the duke of York. With this accomplice, he was so infatuated as to endeavor to carry on his depredations in Dublin, where it was never his fortune to remain for any length of time undetected; for, Hubert being taken in the act of picking a gentleman’s pocket, and handing the property to Barrington, he with great difficulty made his escape to England, where he rambled about for some time previously to his arrival in the capital, which he had scarcely entered, when he was taken into custody for picking Mr. Henry Hare Townsend’s pocket of a gold watch. Hubert, his accomplice, was tried at Dublin, and sentenced to transportation for seven years; but he afterwards contrived to make his escape.