Edward Low, the pirate commander, sought to press William Sperry into his crew following the capture of a merchant vessel; Sperry steadfastly refused. The chronicler relates that the young mariner had cautioned Low against a mutinous design, wherefore the captain set him ashore unharmed upon one of the Leeward Islands. Sperry subsequently took service aboard a King’s ship before returning to England. Having turned highwayman and footpad, he soon lay under sentence of death for a robbery committed upon Thomas Golding. Between these disparate stations, his life traversed a renewed apprenticeship in Philadelphia to noctuary descents upon the thoroughfares encircling London.
Born to parents of the meanest condition, he received scarcely any schooling. At the age of fourteen, he and his younger brother were prevailed upon by a plantation recruiter to embark for America, where they were sold for an indenture of some seven years. The chronicle names neither the vessel nor the precise circumstances of their sailing. Upon the expiration of his term, William established himself in Philadelphia. His master encouraged his inclination toward learning; Sperry applied himself diligently to his reading and was instructed in writing at his employer’s charge. He frequented a church of the Church of England, though Quakers abounded in the colony, and devoted himself to books of devotion and the divine offices.
After entering the service of another planter, he continued, according to the record, to walk near five miles to attend the church at West Chester. He subsequently signed aboard a trading vessel plying between various American ports. The sea life was much to his liking. Yet one morning at break of day, the craft was boarded by Low’s rovers and summarily taken after a brief skirmish. Low demanded that the young sailor join his company; Sperry entreated him to be excused. The chronicler attributes his preservation to his having revealed to Low a conspiracy among the mutinous hands; in consequence, the pirate captain put him ashore under cover of night upon a West Indian island.
Sperry then entered the Royal Navy. He witnessed the capture of another pirate craft and the arraignment of its company before an Admiralty court in New England. According to the notice, all were put to death, save five who were shown to have been forced into the pirate service. This dreadful spectacle did not deter Sperry, upon his return to England, from taking to the road. He had married, yet possessed no means to maintain his wife. The chronicler records neither her name nor the date of their nuptials. It is noted, however, that Sperry ascribed his descent into crime entirely to his own free election, casting no blame upon the solicitations of others.
In concert with four confederates, he learned that high play was customary at Hampstead and that considerable sums passed from hand to hand there every night. The five men took their station in a dry ditch bordering a footway, awaiting the cover of darkness to venture upon the carriage road. They had lain there but a few minutes when two officers walked past. Several of the company were minded to fall upon them, but Sperry dissuaded them. He then overheard one officer remark to the other that a gamester, designated in the chronicle solely by his initials, had won some sixty guineas that evening. The band cast off all further hesitation.
When the gamester drew near, two of the rogues stepped before him and two came up behind. They seized him beside a hedge, dragged him some dozen yards, and thrust him into the ditch. The four fell upon him to rifle his pockets. The gentleman protested that he had lost the better part of his money and had nothing about him save a silver watch, a crystal ring, and fifty shillings; the chronicler hints he might well have escaped thus lightly had his assailants not been forewarned. An elder member of the crew threatened him with an engine designed to force up whatever he might have swallowed. Terrified, the gamester drew forth a green purse containing a fifty-pound bank bill and eighteen guineas.
The robbers seized the plunder, bound their victim to a hedge-stake, and struck across the fields in quest of further booty. They tarried until past eleven o'clock, for the night was bright with the moon and too many travellers were abroad upon the road. As they made their way back, they heard a carriage approaching at high speed. The traveller was Sir W. B.; two gentlewomen sat within the coach, and the servants followed at some distance behind. Two of the footpads caught at the horses on either side, but the coachman plied his whip, urging his cattle onward with lash and voice. The men were dragged along the ground. The carriage tore away without harm to its inmates, though the robbers discharged two pistol shots in its wake.
Some three weeks later, the gang was sauntering down Drury Lane. One of their number recognised a gentleman entering a tavern in company with a woman. He knew, relates the chronicler, that this man had wed an heiress to whom the gentleman’s own father stood guardian, and that they resided near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The company devised a scheme to stir up a domestic tumult that would screen their theft. In an adjacent tavern, one of them penned an epistle alleging that a warrant had been issued against a pregnant woman whom this young gentleman had gotten with child, and who was even then lodged in Drury Lane. The pretended informant professed a desire to avert public scandal, urging the family to intervene without delay.
The letter was conveyed to the young wife under the guise of an errand delivered by mistake. The gentleman’s father, his spouse, and another guardian hurried to the tavern within half an hour. They burst inside without waiting for the chamber door to be opened and came upon the gentleman in the woman’s company. The scene instant broke into an uproar. Two of the robbers, attired in better habit than their fellows, had previously entered the adjoining room and called for a small measure of ale. They now mingled with the family on the pretext of inquiring into the cause of the affray. Availing themselves of the distraction, they eased the gentleman of twenty-five guineas, a gold watch, and two silver snuffboxes. The chronicler observes that the valuables were not missed until the tempest had blown over.
The final felony laid to Sperry’s charge was committed near Bromley upon Thomas Golding. Golding carrying no coin upon his person, Sperry stripped him of his clothes. He was apprehended upon this fact and brought to the bar at the ensuing sessions of the Old Bailey. The jury returned a verdict of guilty for the robbery. Unlike the earlier depredations executed in concert with his companions, this single offence proved sufficient to bring down the capital sentence; nor does the record suggest that the victims of his other robberies were summoned to give evidence at his trial.
Sperry had no friends of sufficient influence to intercede on his behalf, nor did he entertain any expectation of a reprieve. From the hour of his caption, and thereafter following his condemnation, the chronicler portrays him as freely confessing his guilt and acknowledging the equity of his doom. He composed himself for death without showing contempt for his approaching end, nor, as the hour drew near, any unseemly terror. The narrative, which opened by contrasting his devout observances in America with his lawless course in England, represents his closing days as marked by sincere repentance, offering no particulars regarding any efforts on his wife’s part.
On Monday, the 24th of May, 1725, at Tyburn, Sperry appeared of a cheerier temper than was his wont. He departed this life aged about three-and-twenty years, exhibiting every outward token of penitence and contrition, according to the chronicler. His recorded life preserves scenes of singularly sharp contrast: the mariner whom Low could not seduce into piracy, the colonial reader who laboured over his handwriting at Philadelphia, and the rogue whose gang turned a feigned domestic scandal to account in stripping a gentleman of his purse. The sentence executed upon him rested solely upon the theft of Golding’s apparel; his other enterprises belong to the history of his career, rather than to the indictment for which he suffered.