Mr Holcroft may now be considered as having commenced regular author; or in other words, he now began to write constantly for the booksellers. He was employed by them to write a pamphlet, under the name of Wm. Vincent, Esq. of Gray’s Inn, containing an account of the riots in 1780. For this purpose he had attended the trials at the Old Bailey, where he was the means of saving the life of an innocent man, who was brought there as a prisoner. I have heard Mr Holcroft mention this circumstance, with tears of pleasure at the recollection. One of his most habitual feelings was a strong sense of the value of human life; and his having been in more than one instance an instrument in saving it, was a subject of the most grateful reflection to him. A young man was brought to the bar, and tried as one of the rioters. The witness against him swore, that as he was standing in a shop, where he had taken refuge, at the bottom of Holborn, he saw the prisoner coming down Holborn Hill, at the head of a body of rioters, with a drawn sword in his hand, which he brandished furiously in the air. The witness swore positively to the facts, and there is little doubt that the prisoner would have been found guilty, if by great good fortune Mr Holcroft, who was taking notes of the evidence, had not recollected the prisoner’s face. He felt himself much agitated while the evidence was giving; and when it was over, he addressed the judge, and begged that he might be admitted as an evidence, for that he had something very material to depose to the prisoner’s innocence. He then declared that he had been present at the real transaction; that he had been standing at the corner of one of the streets near the bottom of Holborn, when the rioters passed; that the prisoner was not one of them, but that some time after they were gone by, he had seen the prisoner, who was walking quietly along the street, pick up a sword, which had probably been dropped in some scuffle by one of the rioters, and carry it away with him. This he said was the whole of the transaction, and that the circumstances of his marching at the head of the mob, and brandishing the sword in a threatening manner, were utterly false. This evidence was so clear and satisfactory, that the man was acquitted. Loughborough was the judge on this occasion. Mr Holcroft used to mention another anecdote which happened at the same time, when the prisoners were tried and convicted in that wholesale way, and upon such slender evidence, that it was not easy for them to escape, whether guilty or not. A man with a strong, stern, sensible countenance, after sentence of condemnation had been passed upon him, muttered to himself, in a scarcely audible voice, and evidently without intending to excite any one’s notice; ‘Short and sweet—innocent by G—d!’ CHAPTER II