These rescuers were in their turn arrested on other charges, and brought to trial at Rochester Assizes, with other malefactors, in March 1750. They were four notorious smugglers, Stephen Diprose, James Bartlett, Thomas Potter, and William Priggs, who were all executed on Penenden Heath, on March 30th. Bartlett, pressed to declare, after sentence, if he had been concerned in any murders, particularly in that of Mr. Castle, an excise officer who had been shot on Selhurst Common by a gang of smugglers, would not give a positive answer, and it was therefore supposed he was concerned in it. Potter described some of the doings of the gang, and told how, fully armed, they would roam the country districts at night, disguised, with blackened faces, and appear at lonely houses, where they would seize and bind the people they found, and then proceed to plunder at their leisure. In the short interval that in those days was allowed between sentence and execution Potter was very communicative, and disclosed a long career of crime; but he declared that murder had never been committed by him. He had, it was true, proposed to murder the turnkey at Newgate at the time when he and his companions rescued their friends languishing in that doleful hold: but it had not, after all, been found necessary. This, it will be conceded, was sufficiently frank and open. The official account of that rescue was that Thomas Potter and three other smugglers came into the press-yard at Newgate to visit two prisoners, Thomas Kemp and William Grey, also of the Hawkhurst Gang, when they agreed at all hazards to assist in getting them out. Accordingly the time was fixed (Kemp having no irons, and Grey having his so managed as to be able to let them fall off when he pleased), and Potter and the other three went again to the press-yard and rang the bell for the turnkey to come and let them in. When he came and unlocked the door Potter immediately knocked him down with a horse-pistol, and cut him terribly; and Kemp and Grey made their escape, while Potter and his companions got clear away without being discovered. Three other prisoners at the same time broke loose, but were immediately recaptured, having irons on. All these men were, in fact, originally smugglers, and had, from being marked down as criminals for that offence, and from being “wanted” by the law, found themselves obliged to keep in hiding from their homes. In default of being able to take part in other runs of smuggled goods, and finding themselves unable to get employment, they were driven to other, and more serious, crimes.