The initial evidence brought against James Sherwood concerned neither a purloined purse nor a stolen horse, but twelve Gloucester cheeses carried off from a dwelling-house in the dead of night. Yet this modest spoil inaugurated a long train of indictments wherein three young men, arraigned together, were by no means all convicted of the same offences.
James Sherwood, the eldest, went also by the name of Hobbs. His parents, people of modest station, had applied themselves to affording him as decent an education as their means permitted; having grown to manhood, he was bound apprentice to a waterman, served his term, and subsequently went to sea aboard a man-of-war. The chronicle asserts that he thereafter fell in with idle youths and women whom the author characterizes in the severe moralizing terms peculiar to the era. He was soon apprehended alongside his early confederates. Turning king’s evidence against them, he preserved his own life and was subsequently transported beyond the seas. The record fails to specify the place of this banishment. It relates that he found it difficult to subsist abroad without labor—an exertion to which it describes him as exceedingly averse—and that he seized the earliest occasion to return to his native land.
Upon his return, Sherwood resumed his former courses. He lodged with Sarah Payne, whom the chronicler portrays as a woman adept at enticing young men into felonious ways only to denounce them thereafter. Such a portrait belongs to the moralizing judgment of the chronicler; the legal proceedings on record establish the respective parts played by witnesses and prisoners, but they do not demonstrate that Payne single-handedly directed their conduct. It was through her, and through Sherwood according to the narrative, that George Weedon was introduced into the confederacy.
Weedon was the son of parents whom the source describes as thoroughly respectable. His mother had bred him with tender solicitude; yet, but a few days prior to his apprehension, he deserted the maternal roof to take up lodgings with Payne. The narrative imputes this remove to the influence of a woman with whom he had allegedly become infatuated, and the subsequent necessity of procuring money to defray his expenses. These motives are supplied by the chronicler, not derived from any extant deposition from Weedon himself. One must therefore not confound the didactic accounting of causes with the evidence adduced at the sessions, where the prosecutions were strictly distinguished by dwelling and by victim. What the judicial record preserves with greater fidelity are the localities and the specific chattels named in the indictments.
John Hughs, otherwise called Hews, subsequently joined the two men. His father had bred him to the trade of a shoemaker. The chronicle charges him with having practiced pocket-picking and other petty larcenies for several years past, though without imputing to him any capital robbery prior to his association with Sherwood and Weedon. The confederates were wont to repair to Moorfields and other quarters in the vicinity of the town to lie in wait for passengers, according to the recorded accusation; when such occasions failed them, they turned their hands to housebreaking. The booty, says the account, was equally divided and then squandered at Payne’s lodgings. The author maintains that their undertakings were followed by a great number of robberies within a brief space, yet cites, among the detailed prosecutions, but a few instances. No precise itineraries nor any daily particulars of these excursions have been preserved in the record.
Information having reached the authorities, the three men were apprehended and committed to Newgate. At the ensuing sessions, several bills of indictment were preferred against them. The first concerned the nocturnal burglary of the dwelling-house of William Meak and the theft of twelve Gloucester cheeses. The indictment named all three associates, yet the proof was deemed conclusive only against Sherwood, alias Hobbs. He alone was convicted on this charge; the other two were acquitted. This distinction is worthy of note: the circumstance of being jointly indicted had not sufficed to establish that each had taken part in the burglary.
A second indictment concerned the house of Daniel Elvingham, whence quantities of brandy and tobacco had been carried off after a nocturnal entry. On this occasion, the chronicle records the evidence to have been very full against Sherwood and Weedon, who were both convicted. Hughs is not recorded as having been found guilty upon this charge. The source does not transcribe the substance of each witness’s testimony nor the physical circumstances of the entry; it does not permit these omissions to be supplied with tales of forced doors, lookouts, or flights which no deponent in the record describes.
The third prosecution related to the house of Elizabeth Cogdal, whence eight pewter dishes and twenty pewter plates had been taken. All three prisoners were found guilty of this burglary and felony. The succession of trials thus delineated a domestic inventory of goods carried off in the dark: cheese from Meak, liquor and tobacco from Elvingham, and pewter tableware from Cogdal. These chattels did not carry equal weight in the eyes of the court: the twelve cheeses sufficed to condemn Sherwood alone, whereas the goods taken from Cogdal brought down condemnation upon all three men. Yet the culpability of each varied from one indictment to the next. Sherwood stood convicted upon all three charges; Weedon upon those concerning Elvingham and Cogdal; Hughs solely upon that of Cogdal, according to the verdicts enumerated by the chronicler.
Sherwood and Weedon were further convicted of a robbery upon the highway. The evidence, the account specifies, was supplied by Sarah Payne, their landlady. It is not recorded what manner of goods had been taken, where the assault occurred, nor how Payne came to possess knowledge enabling her to testify. It is known only that her deposition procured their conviction on this indictment. She appears, therefore, both in the narrative of the associations that brought the accused together and in the list of witnesses who helped bring about their doom; these two functions, however, do not suffice to substantiate the text’s general portrayal of her as a seductress and criminal instigator.
Lying under sentence of death, the three men, according to the source, expressed deep contrition for their past lives. The chronicler proceeds to weigh their respective frames of mind—a moral distinction whose inner veracity we have no means of testing. Weedon, he observes, appeared more grave than his fellows and retained more of the religious principles instilled in his youth. Of Sherwood, he affirms that he had followed diverse manners of thieving for nigh eighteen years, and that long custom in crime rendered his repentance less manifest. Hughs is reported to have declared that he had committed petty thefts for several years prior to joining the other two, attributing this alliance to his own inclinations rather than to any enticement from his companions. The chronicle records these assertions without appending any formal examination that might allow them to be verified.
As the day of their death drew on, the chronicle continues, the three condemned men appeared more deeply affected, remaining in that disposition until the final hour. Sherwood was twenty-six years of age, Hughs twenty-three, and Weedon twenty-two. They were executed on February 12, 1728. This conclusion terminates the source’s dossier, which records neither the circumstances of the hanging nor the ultimate fate of the other persons mentioned in the case.
The first indictment had sundered the accused at the very moment the narrative had presented them as confederates: Meak’s cheeses brought condemnation upon Sherwood alone. The subsequent verdicts established different configurations of guilt, culminating in their common execution. Such are the facts established by the summarized legal proceedings; the moralizing portrait that envelops them must remain attributed to the chronicler who penned it.