Upon the Dover road, two men stopped and searched a traveller, finding upon his person no more than three farthings—three-quarters of a penny. They cast this paltry booty into the dust. One of these footpads had once kept a goldsmith’s shop, sat at the tables of prosperous merchants, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than once. That man was Gilbert Langley.
Gilbert Langley quitted England in his early youth. His father, a Roman Catholic goldsmith of London, had sent him to reside with a grandfather in Derbyshire; his mother, uneasy at his being placed so far away, recalled him when he attained the age of seven. He entered Charterhouse, where he acquired the rudiments of classical learning, and was thence sent to Douai. The prior of a Benedictine college was there entrusted with his instruction, charging himself to bring up the boy in his father’s faith. The youth applied himself with sufficient success to be chosen “king of his class,” an honour to which fell the management of the school festivities.
During the Christmas holidays, Langley and three companions slipped beyond the town walls to purchase brandy at a cheaper rate. A soldier observed them filling their flasks and alerted the officers, who seized the boys with the spirits concealed beneath their cassocks. The youths offered money to obtain their release, but the officers refused. Two Franciscan friars intervened, arguing that the scholars answered to their own monastic superior rather than to the civil magistracy. The prior thereafter contested the sum demanded by way of fine. The matter concluded in an arbitration, the prior having succeeded in having the penalty brought under dispute.
During Lent, the spare diet of the college gave rise to another enterprise. Langley and five of his comrades attempted to force the kitchen. The servants surprised them in the act, and blows were exchanged between the two parties. The prior threatened the culprits with expulsion, but subsequently granted a pardon to those who would confess their fault. Brown, who had twice struck the cordwainer that raised the alarm, alone suffered banishment. His comrades swore to take revenge upon a servant who had informed against them. They lay in wait for him in the woodhouse, drew a hood over his head, and scourged him with rods, having barred the door to stifle his cries for assistance. When the bell tolled for the evening exercise, they left him bruised upon the ground and returned to the common hall. The injured wretch rushed across the cloisters, shrieking that he had been assaulted by the devil.
Father Howard encouraged him in his studies and initiated him into logic. The young man went so far as to pledge himself to enter the order, should his father grant permission. The reply received from England abruptly severed this prospect: he was recalled home. The passage proved tedious, the winds being contrary; the vessel put her passengers ashore at Gravesend instead of Dover. Langley had already squandered his purse at Calais. Pretending that he had not a single English coin left since his sojourn on the Continent, he procured a loan from a fellow traveller. On the morrow, he knocked at his father’s door.
His father bid him choose a calling. Langley spoke of medicine or the law, but the goldsmith recalled him to his own trade. The son was first placed at an academy in Chancery Lane; yet his new companions lived at an expense far exceeding his modest allowance. He took small sums from the workshop drawers, and soon purloined fragments of scrap gold, which he sold. One day, his father entrusted him with plate to be delivered. On his way, Langley caught sight of a young woman entering a shop and discovered where she lodged. The following Sunday, believing his father to be abroad, he took seven guineas from three purses and hastened to join her. They spent the night together at an inn.
His father, who had not gone to the tavern as the youth imagined, had followed in his track. Upon his return, he demanded where he had passed the previous night. Langley answered that he had attended church, and had subsequently yielded to the invitations of acquaintances. The father, knowing the tale to be false, forbade him his table until he should mend his ways. Relegated to the company of the domestics, the young man took up with a servant-maid. Out of his pilfered money, he bought her a pair of shoes adorned with gold lace. His father stepped into the room at the very moment Langley was presenting them to her; the youth instantly invented the falsehood that a gentlewoman of the neighbourhood had requested him to keep the shoes in trust. He nevertheless continued his intrigues with the household servants. A young woman presently declared herself with child by him; his father paid fifteen pounds to settle the scandal and received him back into his favour.
Upon his father’s death, Langley inherited a handsome fortune and an established trade. The first year proved prosperous. Thereafter, he drifted back to his former company and his taste for lavish expenditure. A man named Gray gave him an order for plate to the amount of one hundred pounds, plied him with drink, and promised to introduce him to an heiress of great wealth. Langley delivered the wares against a draught drawn upon a vintner; when he presented it, the vintner had removed. The merchant’s wife informed him that Gray had likewise brought about her husband’s ruin. Instead of pressing them, Langley assisted the couple in obtaining forbearance from their creditors. He then sought out Gray, but a stranger tricked him of a guinea under promise of leading him to the fugitive, only to vanish.
Langley soon became deeply entangled in debt himself. His friends advised him to marry. He took to wife a young woman named Brown, who possessed a fortune, and forthwith borrowed all the money and jewels he could lay his hands upon, before embarking with her for Holland. His creditors took out a commission of bankruptcy against him. At Rotterdam, he sought protection from the authorities, but the magistrates were not sitting. The creditors thereupon applied to Lord Chesterfield, the British ambassador at The Hague. Langley eluded those who had traced his lodgings near Rotterdam; he left his wife behind with four hundred pounds and shifted his hiding-place from retreat to retreat.
At Rotterdam, Langley at length surrendered to his creditors, but his wife had by then departed for Antwerp in the company of an English sea-captain. Returned to England, he appeared before the commissioners of bankruptcy, and subsequently took ship for Barbados and Jamaica. He ran into debt to the amount of twenty dollars at Port Royal, leaving his sea-chest as security. A planter advanced him the money to redeem it; Langley, however, assumed the name of Englefield, entered as a midshipman on board a man-of-war, and sailed back to England. At Plymouth, he paid court to a young woman whom he might have married, but feigning an urgent summons to London, he took his leave without concluding the match.
In London, a former servant of his father informed him that the creditors had not yet divided the estate and that his wife was residing in the North. Langley lodged secretly in Southwark; he was soon arrested in Cheapside for debt and cast into the Poultry Compter. The old servant continued to afford him relief. Following an attempt to break prison with other inmates, Langley was removed to Newgate. He fell ill; his friends discharged the debt and obtained his release. A captain in the Levant trade considered taking him on a voyage, but Langley was unready to depart. Being arrested afresh, he attempted to hang himself in a bailiff’s sponging-house; the cord snapped. The bailiff and his wife being absent, he made the two maidservants drunk and made his escape. In the Borough of Southwark, he found employment for some time as a colour-grinder.
He then agreed to be transported to Jamaica under indentures. Upon his arrival, he was sold to Colonel Hill, who employed him as tutor to his children. Langley escaped aboard a vessel bound for England; being pressed into the Navy upon his return, he deserted at Plymouth in company with another seaman. Once more in London, he signed fresh indentures of transportation, this time for Pennsylvania. Before the ship had cleared the Thames, he made his escape with a Spitalfields weaver. Giving themselves out to be Protestant refugees, they reached Calais. Langley then proceeded to Lisbon and Malaga. Priests conducted him to a convent, where he was supplied with subsistence, and where he concealed his true sentiments so as to obtain a recommendation as page to a Spanish lady.
An intrigue with this lady’s niece compelled him to escape through a window. An Irish tailor procured him a passage to Gibraltar. Being too short of stature to be enlisted in the army, Langley found work upon the repair of the barracks, and subsequently as a marker in the garrison tennis-court. Falling under suspicion of espionage, he was immured for upwards of a fortnight in a dungeon. Upon his enlargement, he sailed between the ports of Spain and the Barbary coast, shifting his master and his course with every turn. At Cadiz, he met with an old schoolfellow named Mannock, who provided him with money, apparel, and victuals, and endeavoured to secure him a passage for England. Langley soon lost a book he had borrowed from his friend; Mannock discovered it exposed for sale and took out a warrant against the woman suspected of the theft. Langley at last succeeded in embarking.
Arriving in London, he learned that his creditors had received a composition, and he conceived hopes of establishing himself once more in some small trade. He applied to his wife’s mother for her daughter’s abode; she refused either to answer him or to give him assistance. He then dissipated the slender residue of his money, and set out on foot for Dover in company with Hill, intending to reach Paris. An embargo prevented all vessels from leaving the port. Being destitute of means to return to London, the two men stopped a traveller upon the highway. He had no more than three farthings about him. They took them, and cast them away.
Being apprehended that very day, they were brought to trial at the Kent Assizes and condemned to die. The judge commuted the sentence to seven years’ transportation. Langley was accordingly transported; the three copper pieces he had wrested from the traveller were already lost in the dust of the road.