In the meantime the crowd was very great, and, with his usual hypocrisy, Jonathan harangued them to this purpose. _I wonder, good people, what it is you would see? I am a poor honest man, who have done all I could do to serve people when they have had the misfortune to lose their goods by the villainy of thieves. I have contributed more than any man living to bringing the most daring and notorious malefactors to justice. Yet now by the malice of my enemies, you see I am in custody, and am going before a magistrate who I hope will do me justice. Why should you insult me, therefore? I don't know that I ever injured any of you? Let me intreat you, therefore, as you see me lame in body, and afflicted in mind, not to make me more uneasy than I can bear. If I have offended against the law it will punish me, but it gives you no right to use me ill, unheard, and unconvicted._ By this time the people of the house and the Compter officers had pretty well cleared the place, upon which he began to compose himself, and desired them to get a coach to the door, for he was unable to walk. About an hour after, he was carried before a Justice and examined, and I think was thereupon immediately committed to Newgate. He lay there a considerable time before he was tried; at last he was convicted capitally upon the following fact, which appeared on the evidence, exactly in the same light in which I shall state it. He was indicted on the afore-mentioned Statute, for receiving money for the restoring stolen goods, without apprehending the persons by whom they were stolen. In order to support this charge, the prosecutrix, Catherine Stephens,[64] deposed as follows: On the 22nd of January, I had two persons come in to my shop under pretence of buying some lace. They were so difficult that I had none below would please them, so leaving my daughter in the shop, I stepped upstairs and brought down another box. We could not agree about the price, and so they went away together. In about half an hour I missed a tin box of lace that I valued at £50. The same night and the next I went to Jonathan Wild's house; but meeting with him at home, I advertised the lace that I had lost with a reward of fifteen guineas, and no questions asked. But hearing nothing of it, I went to Jonathan's house again, and then met with him at home. He desired me to give him a description of the persons that I suspected, which I did, as near as I could; and then he told me, that he would make enquiry, and bid me call again in two or three days. I did so, and then he said that he had heard something of my lace, and expected to know more of the matter in a very little time.