The executioner was already upon the road to Tyburn when he was stopped and apprehended. John Meff, who sat waiting within the condemned cart, was not to die that day. The Crown granted him and his fellow convicts a reprieve, commuting their sentence to transportation beyond the seas. For him, the punishment merely shifted its guise: the gallows receded, yet his liberty remained forfeit.
A felon banished overseas who dared to reappear upon English soil was liable to the capital penalty. The chronicle deems this severity indispensable, observing that the transported could scarcely resign themselves to regard their homecoming as a felony. It was a rigor Meff was destined to face, having once before eluded Tyburn tree.
John Meff, whom the narrative also styles Merth, was born in London of French parents who had sought asylum in England, having fled their native country during the persecutions directed against the Protestants under Louis XIV. His father, the chronicle relates, took great pains to instill his faith in the boy, placing him in apprenticeship to a weaver. Meff served his master faithfully and, his term expired, took a wife. Yet his honest labor failed to sustain his household, and he turned to housebreaking. Having forced an entrance into a dwelling, he was detected, apprehended, and condemned to death. This initial conviction had carried him all the way to the cart of Tyburn, before the unforeseen arrest of the hangman stayed the rope.
Once aboard the transport ship, Meff found means to ingratiate himself with the master. Prior to embarking, he had formed pious resolutions of repentance, vowing to lead an upright life even at the cost of the harshest toil. Yet the ocean crossing soon undermined these good intentions; the chronicler remarks that the profane example of his fellow convicts and the seamen lent him little support. The prisoners repeatedly questioned the sailors concerning the fate that awaited them upon the plantations, wondering whether their overseers would treat them with the cruelty reported in England; they consoled themselves with the hope of a more commodious existence. For a time, favorable winds sped the vessel onward, and the voyage seemed an ordeal they might well endure.
However, while cruising in the vicinity of the Bermudas, two pirate sloops intercepted and boarded the transport. The buccaneers found little valuable plunder aboard; nevertheless, the able-bodied convicts promised a welcome reinforcement. Most of them readily joined the freebooters and signed their articles of agreement. Meff and eight others steadfastly refused. The pirates wasted no further breath in persuasion: all nine men were summarily marooned upon an uninhabited isle.
They found themselves destitute of shelter and bereft of fire. To protect themselves against the cold and the elements, they rubbed two sticks of dry wood together until a spark was struck, subsequently gathering enough branches to sustain a fire. Their first subsistence consisted of sea-fowl, snared with nooses fashioned from the horsehair of an old periwig. The flesh was tough and tasted strongly of fish. After a few days, the birds grew wary and avoided the snares. The castaways then hunted a creature that burrowed into the earth after the manner of a rabbit. Its flesh made them violently ill, so that five of the nine men could scarcely walk.
Nothing remained to them but such fish as they could take from the shallows. These were small, scarce, and, according to the chronicle, of an unwholesome flavor. The days dragged on without any prospect of deliverance. One morning, they descried a canoe coming in from the open sea, bearing seven souls whom the narrative designates as Indians. The castaways concealed themselves behind the rocks. Once the newcomers had struck inland, Meff and his companions hastened down to the craft. Discovering a store of salted provisions within, they seized the boat and committed their fortunes to the waves.
Two days later, the canoe carried them safely to an English settlement. Meff had thus escaped the wilderness of the isle, yet he could not reconcile himself to a settled, lawful life. He chose the sea. Shipping as a mariner, he made several voyages to Barbados, Jamaica, and other British islands, and subsequently visited New England, Virginia, South Carolina, and neighboring colonies. The chronicler conjectures that this seafaring existence yielded him small contentment, seeing in his restlessness the true motive for his return. At last he set foot once more in England. He had not been home a month before he resumed his ancient trade; one of his very first housebreakings led to his capture and commitment to Newgate. He contrived to break jail with the assistance of a bricklayer, fleeing thence to Hatfield in Hertfordshire, where he lay hid. Meff later alleged that this same bricklayer betrayed him for the reward; the chronicler notes that this account was widely credited. He was recaptured, carried back to Newgate, and confined with the utmost rigor. Thus, after the desolate isle and his ocean voyages, he found himself returned to dry land and a prison cell; neither exile nor sea had cured him of his propensity for theft.
At his trial, a point of law was raised: was not the offense for which he stood indicted covered by the recent Act of Indemnity? The clerk thereupon produced the formal record of his earlier conviction. The court accordingly ordered a fresh indictment to be preferred against him for returning from transportation without lawful warrant. Upon this new charge he was convicted, on what the chronicle styles the most conclusive evidence, and received sentence of death.
He had refused the pirate articles, survived the desolate isle, crossed the seas, and made his way back to London, only to be condemned for that single, fatal step: setting foot upon his native soil. The dusty ledger of a forgotten judgment had overtaken him at the end of all his wanderings.
While awaiting execution, Meff exhibited, according to the chronicler, a sincere penitence for his past misdeeds. He devoted his hours to prayer and reading alongside his fellow inmates, notably James Reading, who was likewise ordered for death. The history of their crimes remained distinct. Reading confessed to an acquaintance with the murder of Mr. Philpot, a surveyor of the window tax, stating that three men had perpetrated the deed; he declared he knew two of them, though he could not identify the third. He had also been convicted, together with two accomplices, of robbing George Brownsworth of a watch and other valuables between Islington and the turnpike. Reading was thirty-five years of age and had long belonged to those organized gangs of thieves whose associates he now impeached to save himself. Meff was in his fortieth year. On September 11, 1721, both men were launched into eternity at Tyburn.