The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: The Second PartHead, Richard
General
The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: The Second Part
Head, Richard
Rogues and vagabonds -- England -- Fiction
by stealing Duties; neither did I care what Goods I dealt in, having
Customers of all sorts and Trades, who knowing that I drave this Trade,
employed me to buy for them, agreeing the prizes before hand: but I was
snap’d one time, and all my goods seized for not paying duties, and an
Information put into the Exchequer against me: I finding that it would
be but a folly to contend there, agreed with the Informer, and he
suffered me to cast him; so that I got off for a sum of money, but I
gained much experience thereby, so that I then began a new Trade, and
would engage many of my Friends to go and buy Goods on board of Ships,
and if they got them clear from the Ships-sides it was enough, for I
would come immediately in another Boat, as if a stranger, and seize the
Goods as forfeited for want of the payment of duties, and so secure them
from any other seizure; and if any other person came to seize them, I
then pretended it to be my business, having made the first seizure, but
if we were not met with by another, then we passed clear without any
more trouble: nay, so bold and confident was I grown in this kind of
Trade, called _Smuckling_, that I have had fifty and an hundred pound at
a time given me to go over into _Holland_ or _France_ in a Ship which
hath brought much prohibited goods, which I have seized so soon as we
came near any Port of _England_, to prevent any other seizure; and then
putting an information into the Exchequer, have suffered costs against
me, and all hath been clear. I gained not only much money by this means,
but also the esteem of a cunning subtile fellow, and was employed in
many such affairs, and sometimes in Law-suits.
I remember once I came into Company with a very fair Lady, who having an
old cross-grain’d fellow to her Husband, had not only lived from him for
some time, but was so foolish as to be married to another person, who
was a Gentleman of much worth and merit. The Ladies old Husband
(understanding thus much and more out of Covetousness of gaining money,
which he believed the Gentleman would on this occasion part from, then
any love he bore his Wife) hunted them out from one place to another,
and the young Gentleman refusing to comply with the old Knights desires,
he was resolved now to prosecute her for Life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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