Edward Reynolds made besoms and mops, a trade by which he earned an honest competence. One night, having taken his seat in an alehouse frequented by thieves, he listened to the tales and maxims of an old waterman named Barnham, whom the author describes as a master in the art of deception. On the following evening, Reynolds passed from hearing to doing: from a man who knew his person and his habits, he took a cloak and a shilling. The charge that ensued was not the one he sought to have entertained.
The chronicler records neither the name of the victim nor the date of this first transaction. He reports, however, the explanation advanced by Reynolds when he stood indicted: the cloak and the coin had been given to him to prevent Reynolds from impeaching him with an attempt at sodomy. Reynolds persisted in this version unto his final moments and denied having obtained the goods by violence. The record notes, nevertheless, that he was found guilty of the offence laid against him.
His life had begun in humble circumstances. His parents put him to school, but, according to the account, he had no mind to make any progress therein. It is not known whether he received any other trade instruction before turning to the manufacture of brooms. He hawked them from fair to fair, an occupation that secured him at the very least a regular subsistence. The author dwells upon this circumstance to dismiss any plea of absolute want; such moral judgment belongs to the chronicler, whereas the facts he adduces are the sale of his wares and the company Reynolds subsequently kept.
The place to which he routinely resorted was the ring in Moorfields, lying between Upper and Middle Moorfields. The text depicts this precinct as a ground for games, pastimes, and wagers: cudgel-playing, wrestling, and quoits were practised there, followed by games of chance such as pitch-and-hustle and nine-holes. The chronicler generalises broadly upon the consequences of such habits, asserting that gaming led to penury, and that the quest for coin drew certain habitués into theft.
In the vicinity of the ring, Reynolds had found a petty alehouse whither he repaired each night. Several persons, according to the author, were wont to gather there before setting out upon their enterprises. Barnham, an ancient waterman and a practitioner of theft for near twenty years, held pride of place in these discourses. The others listened to him recount the changes he fancied he had observed in the trade. The text lends these tales the air of an instruction; it states that Reynolds hearkened to them attentively, not that he was immediately engaged in all the practices described.
Barnham contrasted the ancient highwaymen, whom he portrayed as decayed gentlemen, with the petty tradesmen and mechanics whom distress or an aversion to labour now impelled to demand travellers’ coin. A horse and a pair of pistols sufficed, he claimed, to preserve for a year or two the semblance of their former estate. He spoke likewise of thieves capable of carrying off a hat or a periwig in broad daylight, of whipping away a sword at dusk, or of entering dwellings despite all locks. He pretended that the ancients had even visited the houses of old misers who suffered their gold to lie dormant in iron chests, as though the theft did them a service by returning that wealth to circulation. He added that some had possessed friends powerful enough to shield them from the gallows and subsequently furnish them with a livelihood; the newcomers, in his eyes, had neither their dexterity nor their station. He traced the decline of this ancient daring to the War of Queen Anne and the Peace of Utrecht, citing Shepherd and Frazier as the few names that, in his view, still recalled the craft of former days. The company, as the liquor warmed them, related in turn the exploits they had heard ascribed to past robbers. These recollections, preserved in the notice, exalt crime by presenting it as an ancient profession of daring and address. The narrator affirms that the auditory was charmed thereby, and explains that drink and tales contributed to reshaping Reynolds’s view of theft.
Reynolds was, saith the author, a man of little judgment, and he was not long in reducing the notions he had heard into practice. He took the cloak and the shilling mentioned above. Apprehended and brought to trial, he attempted to cast upon his accuser the imputation of an infamous conduct, as though each might so tarnish the other’s character as to leave the jury in doubt. This shift did not avail him: he was condemned.
In the concluding months of his life, the author depicts him as a man of mean parts and slender education, whose frame of mind was variable. At times he began to hearken to religious instruction, notably when Smith read, and prayed for mercy and pardon. In the chapel, he conducted himself, according to the chronicle, with decency, if not with fervour. The text construes this change as the effect of his estrangement from the companions who had enticed him into his vices.
He had wedded a poor woman who maintained an unblemished reputation, and the couple had three children. Reynolds had subsequently consorted with other women, leaving his wife to provide for the little ones. Yet, when she came to visit him in prison, he complained of receiving insufficient money and spoke harshly to her. It merely displays the distance between the man who solicited his wife’s succour and the one who had left her to sustain their children alone.
Reynolds died in 1726, being upward of six-and-twenty years of age. The contrast the chronicle seeks to render visible is that of a workman possessing a trade, who chose instead to follow associations and discourses capable of lending theft the guise of dexterity. Regarding the precise affair that brought him to the tree, however, the reader remains confronted with two versions: the indictment whereof the jury found him guilty, and the dying denial he maintained unto his end.