These practices quickly broke the man with whom he lived, and his breaking turned Edmund upon the wide world, equally destitute of money, friends and capacity, not knowing what to do, and having but two shillings in his pocket. He took a solitary walk to that end of the town which went out upon the London Road, and there by chance he met a woman who asked him to go with her to London. He not knowing what to do with himself accepted her offer, and without any more words to the bargain they set out together. The woman was very kind to him on the road, and poor Edmund flattered himself that money was so plentiful in London as to render it impossible for him to remain without it. But he was miserably mistaken when he arrived there. He went to certain public-houses of persons whom he had known in the country, who instead of using him civilly, in a day or two's time were thrusting him out of doors. Some common whores, also, finding him to be a poor country fellow, easily seduced him and kept him amongst them for a stallion, until, between their lust and their diseases, they had put him in a fair road to the grave. Tired out with their vices, which were even too gross for a mind so corrupted as his was, he chose rather to go and live with a brewer and carry out drink. But after living for some time with two masters of that occupation, his mind still roving after an easier and pleasanter life, he endeavoured to get it at some public-house; which at last he with much ado effected at Sadlers Wells.[21] This appeared so great a happiness that he thought he should never be tired of a life where there was so much music and dancing, to which he had been always addicted; and, as he phrased it himself, he thought he was in another world when he got with a set of men and maids in a barn with a fiddle among them. However, he at last grew tired of that also; and resolving to betake himself to some more settled and honest employment, he hired himself to a man who kept swine, and there behaved himself both with honesty and diligence. But his master breaking a little time after he had been with him, though as he affirmed without his wronging him in the least, he was reduced to look for some new way of maintaining himself. This being about the time of the late Rebellion,[22] and great encouragement being then offered for those who would enter themselves in the late king's service at sea, Neal accepted thereof, and shipped himself on board the _Gosport_ man-of-war, which sailed to the Western Islands of Scotland. What between the cold and the hard fare he suffered deeply, and never, as be said, tasted any degree of comfort till he returned to the West of England The Rebellion being then over, Neal with very great joy accepted his discharge from the service, and once more in search of business came up to London.