The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: The Fourth PartHead, Richard
General
The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants: The Fourth Part
Head, Richard
Rogues and vagabonds -- England -- Fiction
_Christian People, the greatness of my sins have cry’d loud to Heaven
for Vengeance a long time, but Mercy hath interceded for the
prolongation of my life, to give me a long and fair opportunity for
Repentance, but this long forbearance hath but hardned my heart, and
made it obdurate; so that my black and horrid Sins grew so numerous that
they awakened divine Justice (which hitherto seemed to sleep) to find me
out, and bring me to this shameful and condign punishment. As I am here
before you a sad spectacle of misery, so I hope you will beg of God
mercy for my poor sinful soul, which from my Cradle to this time hath
been polluted not with Crimes of a common Die, but such as were
conceived in the Womb of Hell, and Midwiv’d by me into this wicked
world. What Tragical unpattern’d Mischiefs they have acted on the
Theatre of my native Countrey, my tongue (that cursed Accessary in the
ruine of some Families) shall not conceal from you, since I cannot hide
them from the knowledge of God Allmighty._
_When I was so young I wanted power to perpetrate Villany, I had strong
inclinations to the acting thereof; I was no sooner wean’d, but I had
like to have killed that Mother who gave me life, by pricking her in the
naked breast with a Bodkin I took out of her Head-cloaths, she being
then half asleep, holding me in her Lap, when I arrived to the age of
fifteen, the boiling of my blood would not let me rest till I had
somewhat qualified its heat in the unlawful reception of a young man,
after which sinful act I found my self with Child, to prevent the shame
whereof I murdered it, thinking to hide one smaller sin by the greatness
of another; the death I am about to suffer should have been the reward
of that execrable murder; and I now wish it had been so, for then I had
not strangled in the very birth (to abscond my whoredom from my Husband)
a Child, the product of my insatiate lust with a_ Blackmoor, _who
afterwards lost his own life in the destructions of my Husbands; neither
had I been the cause of the death of two more, had I not been the basely
obscene Prostitute to them both._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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