CHAPTER XI

THE ROMANTIC STORY OF SILAS TOLD.

Dr. Abel Stevens, in his _History of Methodism_, says, “I congratulate myself on the opportunity of reviving the memory of Silas Told;” and speaks of the little biography in which Silas himself records his adventures as “a record told with frank and affecting simplicity, in a style of terse and flowing English Defoe might have envied.”

Such a testimony is well calculated to excite the curiosity of an interested reader, especially as the two or three incidents mentioned only serve to whet the appetite for more of the like description. The little volume to which he refers has been for some years in the possession of the author of this volume. It is indeed an astonishing book; its alleged likeness to Defoe’s charmingly various style of recital of adventures by sea and by land is no exaggeration, whilst as a piece of real biography it may claim, and quite sustain, a place side by side with the romantic and adventurous career of John Newton; but the wild wonderfulness of the story of Silas seems to leave Newton’s in the shade. Like Newton, Told was also a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams, and a believer, in special providences; and well might he believe in such who was led certainly along as singular a path as any mortal could tread. The only other memorial besides his own which has, we believe, been penned of him—a brief recapitulations-well describes him as honest, simple, and tender. Silas Told accompanied, in that awful day, numbers of persons to the gallows, and attempted to console sufferers and victims in circumstances of most harrowing and tragic solemnity: he certainly furnished comfortable help and light when no others were willing or able to sympathise or to help. John Wesley loved him, and when Silas died he buried him, and says of him in his _Journal_: “On the 20th of December, 1778, I buried what was mortal of honest Silas Told. For many years he attended the malefactors in Newgate without fee or reward; and I suppose no man, for this hundred years, has been so successful in that melancholy office. God had given him peculiar talents for it, and he had amazing success therein; the greatest part of those whom he attended died in peace, and many of them in the triumph of faith.” Such was Silas Told.

But before we come to those characteristic circumstances to which Wesley refers, we must follow him through some of the wild scenes of his sailor life. He was born in Bristol in 1711; his parents were respectable and creditable people, but of somewhat faded families. His grandfather had been an eminent physician in Bunhill Row, London; his mother was from Exeter. * * *

Silas was educated in the noble foundation school of Edward Colston in Bristol. The life of this excellent philanthropist was so remarkable, and in many particulars so like his own, that we cannot wonder that he stops for some pages in his early story to recite some of the remarkable phenomena in Colston’s life. Silas’s childhood was singular, and the stories he tells are especially noticeable, because in after-life the turn of his character seems to have been especially real and practical. Thus he tells how, when a child, wandering with his sister in the King’s Wood, near Bristol, they lost their way, and were filled with the utmost consternation, when suddenly, although no house was in view, nor, as they thought, near, a dog came up behind them, and drove them clear out of the wood into a path with which they were acquainted; especially it was remarkable that the dog never barked at them, but when they looked round about for the dog he was nowhere to be seen. Careless children out for their own pleasure, they sauntered on their way again, and again lost their way in the wood—were again bewildered, and in greater perplexity than before, when, on a sudden looking up, they saw the same dog making towards them; they ran from him in fright, but he followed them, drove them out of the labyrinths, and did not leave them until they could not possibly lose their way again. Simple Silas says, “I then turned about to look for the dog, but saw no more of him, although we were now upon an open common. This was the Lord’s doings, and marvellous in our eyes.”

When he was twelve years of age, he appears to have been quite singularly influenced by the reading of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_; and late in life, when writing his biography, he briefly, but significantly, attempts to reproduce the intense enjoyment he received—the book evidently caught and coloured his whole imagination. At this time, too, he was very nearly drowned, and while drowning, so far from having any sense of terror, he had no sense nor idea of the things of this world, but that it appeared to him he rushingly emerged out of thick darkness into what appeared to him a glorious city, lustrous and brilliant, the light of which seemed to illuminate the darkness through which he had urged his way. It was as if the city had a floor like glass, and yet he was sure that neither city nor floor had any substance; also he saw people there; the inhabitants arrayed in robes of what seemed the finest substance, but flowing from their necks to their feet; and yet he was sensible too that they had no material substance; they moved, but did not labour as in walking, but glided as if carried along by the wind; and he testifies how he felt a wonderful joy and peace, and he never forgot the impression through life, although soon recalled to the world in which he was to sorrow and suffer so much. It is quite easy to see John Bunyan in all this; but while he was thus pleasantly happy in his visionary or intro-visionary state, a benevolent and tender-hearted Dutchman, who had been among some haymakers in a field on the banks of the river, was striking out after him among the willow-bushes and sedges of the stream, from whence he was brought, body and soul, back to the world again. Such are the glimpses of the childhood of Silas.

Then shortly comes a dismal transition from strange providences in the wood, and enchanting visions beneath the waves, to the singularly severe sufferings of a seafaring life. The ships in that day have left a grim and ugly reputation surviving still. The term “sea-devil” has often been used as descriptive of the masters of ships in that time. Silas seems to have sailed under some of the worst specimens of this order. About the age of fourteen he was bound apprentice to Captain Moses Lilly, and started for his first voyage from Bristol to Jamaica. “Here,” he says, “I may date my first sufferings.” He says the first of his afflictions “was sea-sickness, which held me till my arrival in Jamaica;” and considering that it was a voyage of fourteen weeks, it was a fair spell of entertainment from that pleasant companion. They were short of water, they were put on short allowance of food, and when having obtained their freight, while lying in Kingston harbour, their vessel, and seventy-six sail of ships, many of them very large, but all riding with three anchors ahead, were all scattered by an astonishing hurricane, and all the vessels in Port Royal shared the same fate. He tells how the corpses of the drowned sailors strewed the shores, and how, immediately after the subsidence of the hurricane, a pestilential sickness swept away thousands of the natives. “Every morning,” he says, “I have observed between thirty and forty corpses carried past my window; being very near death myself, I expected every day to approach with the messenger of my dissolution.”

During this time he appears to have been lying in a warehouse, with no person to take care of him except a negro, who every day brought to him, where he was laid in his hammock, Jesuit’s bark.

“At length,” he says, “my master gave me up, and I wandered up and down the town, almost parched with the insufferable blaze of the sun, till I resolved to lay me down and die, as I had neither money nor friend; accordingly, I fixed upon a dunghill in the east end of the town of Kingston, and being in such a weak condition, I pondered much upon Job’s case, and considered mine similar to that of his; however, I was fully resigned to death, nor had I the slightest expectation of relief from any quarter; yet the kind providence of God was over me, and raised me up a friend in an entire stranger. A London captain coming by was struck with the sordid object, came up to me, and, in a very compassionate manner, asked me if I was sensible of any friend upon the island from whom I could obtain relief; he likewise asked me to whom I belonged. I answered, to Captain Moses Lilly, and had been cast away in the late hurricane. This captain appeared to have some knowledge of my master, and, cursing him for a barbarous villain, told me he would compel him to take proper care of me. About a quarter of an hour after this, my master arrived, whom I had not seen before for six weeks, and took me to a public-house kept by, a Mrs. Hutchinson, and there ordered me to be taken proper care of. However, he soon quitted the island, and directed his course for England, leaving me behind at his sick quarters; and, if it should please God to permit my recovery, I was commanded to take my passage to England in the _Montserrat_, Captain David Jones, a very fatherly, tender-hearted man: this was the first alleviation of my misery. Now the captain sent his son on shore, in order to receive me on board. When I came alongside, Captain Jones, standing on the ship’s gunwale, addressed me after a very humane and compassionate manner, with expressions to the following effect: ‘Come, poor child, into the cabin, and you shall want nothing that the ship affords; go, and my son shall prepare for you, in the first place, a basin of good egg-flip, and anything else that maybe conducive to your relief.’ But I, being very bad with my fever and ague, could neither eat nor drink.”

A very pleasant captain, this seems, to have sailed with; but poor Silas had very little of his company. However, the good captain and his boatswain put their experiences together, and the poor boy was restored to health, and after some singular adventures he reached Bristol. Arriving there, however, Captain Lilly transferred him to a Captain Timothy Tucker, of whom Silas bears the pleasing testimony, “A greater villain, I firmly believe, never existed, although at home he assumed the character and temper of a saint.” The wretch actually stole a white woman from her own country to sell her to the black prince of Bonny, on the African coast. They had not been long at sea before this delightful person gave Silas a taste of his temper. Thinking the boy had taken too much bread from the cask, he went to the cabin and brought back with him his large horsewhip, “and exercised it,” says Silas, “about my body in so unmerciful a manner, that not only the clothes on my back were cut to pieces, but every sailor declared they could see my bones; and then he threw me all along the deck, and jumped many times upon the pit of my stomach, in order to endanger my life; and had not the people laid hold of my two legs, and thrown me under the windlass, after the manner they throw dead cats or dogs, he would have ended his despotic cruelty in murder.” This free and easy mode of recreation was much indulged in by seafaring officers in that time, but this Tucker appears to have been really what Silas calls him, “a blood-thirsty devil;” and stories of murder, and the incredible cruelties of the slave-trade lend their horrible fascination to the narrative of Silas Told. How would it be possible to work the commerce of the slave-trade without such characters as this Tucker, who presents much more the appearance of a lawless pirate than of the noble character we call a sailor?

Those readers who would like to follow poor Silas through the entire details of his miseries on ship-board, his hairbreadth escapes from peril and shipwreck, must read them in Silas’s own book, if they can find it; but we may attempt to give some little account of his wreck upon the American coast, in New England. Few stories can be more charming than the picture he gives of his wanderings with his companions after their escape from the wreck, not because he and they were destitute, and all but naked, but because of the pleasant glimpses we have of the simple, hospitable, home life in those beautiful old New England days—hospitality of the most romantic and free-handed description.

We will select two pictures, as illustrating something of the character of New England settlements in those very early days of their history. Silas and his companions were cast on shore, and had found refuge in a tavern seven miles from the beach; he had no clothing; but the landlord of the tavern gave him a pair of red breeches, the last he had after supplying the rest. Silas goes on: “Ebenezer Allen, Governor of the island, and who dwelt about six miles from the tavern, hearing of our distress, made all possible haste to relieve us; and when he arrived at the tavern, accompanied by his two eldest sons, he took Captain Seaborn, his black servant, Joseph and myself through partiality, and escorted us home to his own house. Between eleven and twelve at night we reached the Governor’s mansion, all of us ashamed to be seen; we would fain have hid ourselves in any dark hole or corner, as it was a truly magnificent building, with wings on each side thereof, but, to our astonishment, we were received into the great parlour, where were sitting by the fireside two fine, portly ladies, attending the spit, which was burdened with a very heavy quarter of house-lamb. Observing a large mahogany table to be spread with a fine damask cloth, and every knife, fork, and plate to be laid in a genteel mode, I was apprehensive that it was intended for the entertainment of some persons of note or distinction, or, at least, for a family supper. In a short time the joint was taken up, and laid on the table, yet nobody sat down to eat; and as we were almost hid in one corner of the room, the ladies turned round and said, ‘Poor men, why don’t you come to supper?’ I replied, ‘Madam, we had no idea it was prepared for us.’ The ladies then entreated us to eat without any fear of them, assuring us that it was prepared for none others; and none of us having eaten anything for near six and thirty hours before, we picked the bones of the whole quarter, to which we had plenty of rich old cider to drink: after supper we went to bed, and enjoyed so profound a sleep that the next morning it was difficult for the old gentleman to awake us. The following day I became the partaker of several second-hand garments, and, as I was happily possessed of a little learning, it caused me to be more abundantly caressed by the whole family, and therefore I fared sumptuously every day.

“This unexpected change of circumstances and diet I undoubtedly experienced in a very uncommon manner; but as I was strictly trained up a Churchman, I could not support the idea of a Dissenter, although, God knows, I had well-nigh by this time dissented from all that is truly good. This proved a bar to my promotion, and my strong propensity to sail for England to see my mother prevented my acceptance of the greatest offer I ever received in my life before; for when the day came that we were to quit the island, and to cross the sound over to a town called Sandwich, on the main continent, the young esquire took me apart from my associates, and earnestly entreated me to tarry with them, saying that if I would accede to their proposals nothing should be lacking to render my situation equivalent to the rest of the family. As there were very few white men on the island, I was fixed upon, if willing, to espouse one of the Governor’s daughters. I had been informed that the Governor was immensely rich, having on the island two thousand head of cattle and twenty thousand sheep, and every acre of land thereon belonging to himself. However, I could not be prevailed upon to accept the offer; therefore the Governor furnished us with forty shillings each, and gave us a pass over to the town of Sandwich.”

Such passages as this show the severe experiences through which Silas passed; they illustrate the education he was receiving for that life of singular earnestness and tenderness which was to close and crown his career; but we have made the extract here for the purpose of giving some idea of that cheerful, hospitable, home life of New England in those then almost wild regions which are now covered with the population of towns.

Here is another instance, which occurred at Hanover, in the United States, through which district Silas and his companions appear to have been wending their way, seeking a return to England. “One Sunday, as my companions and self were crossing the churchyard at the time of Divine service, a well-dressed gentleman came out of the church and said, ‘Gentlemen, we do not suffer any person in this country to travel on the Lord’s day.’ We gave him to understand that it was necessity which constrained us to walk that way, as we had all been shipwrecked on St. Martin’s [Martha’s (?)] Vineyard, and were journeying to Boston. The gentleman was still dissatisfied, but quitted our company and went into church. When we had gone a little farther, a large white house proved the object of our attention. The door being wide open, we reasonably imagined it was not in an unguarded state, without servants or others; but as we all went into the kitchen, nobody appeared to be within, nor was there an individual either above or below. However, I advised my companions to tarry in the house until some person or other should arrive. They did so, and in a short time afterwards two ladies, richly dressed, with a footman following them, came in through the kitchen; and, notwithstanding they turned round and saw us, who in so dirty and disagreeable a garb and appearance might have terrified them exceedingly, yet neither of them was observed to take any notice of us, nor did either of them ask us any questions touching the cause of so great an intrusion.

“About a quarter of an hour afterwards, a footman entered the kitchen with a cloth and a large two-quart silver tankard full of rich cider, also a loaf and cheese; but we, not knowing it was prepared for us, did not attempt to partake thereof. At length the ladies coming into the kitchen, and viewing us in our former position, desired to know the reason of our malady, seeing we were not refreshing ourselves; whereupon I urged the others to join with me in the acceptance of so hospitable a proposal. After this the ladies commenced a similar inquiry into our situation. I gave them as particular an account of every recent vicissitude that befell us as I was capable of, with a genuine, relation of our being shipwrecked, and the sole reasons of our travelling into that country; likewise begged that they would excuse our impertinence, as they were already informed of the cause; we were then emboldened to ask the ladies if they could furnish us with a lodging that evening. They replied it was uncertain whether our wishes could be accomplished there, but that if we proceeded somewhat farther we should doubtless be entertained and genteelly accommodated by their brother—a Quaker—whose house was not more than a distance of seven miles. We thanked the ladies, and set forward, and at about eight o’clock arrived at their brother’s house. Fatigued with our journey, we hastened into the parlour and delivered our message; whereupon a gentleman gave us to understand, by his free and liberal conduct, that he was the Quaker referred to by the aforesaid ladies, who, total strangers as we were, used us with a degree of hospitality impossible to be exceeded; indeed, I could venture to say that the accommodations we met with at the Quaker’s house, seeing they were imparted to us with such affectionate sympathy, greatly outweighed those we formerly experienced.

“After our banquet, the gentleman took us up into a fine spacious bed-chamber, with desirable bedding and very costly chintz curtains. We enjoyed a sound night’s rest, and arose between seven and eight the next morning, and were entertained with a good breakfast; returned many thanks for the unrestrained friendship and liberality, and departed therefrom, fully purposed to direct our course for Boston, which was not more than seven miles farther. Here all the land was strewed with plenty, the orchards were replete with apple-trees and pears; they had cider-presses in the centre of their orchards, and great quantities of fine cider, and any person might become a partaker thereof for the mere trouble of asking. We soon entered Boston, a commodious, beautiful city, with seventeen spired meetings, the dissenting religion being then established in that part of the world. I resided here for the space of four months, and lodged with Captain Seaborn at Deacon Townshend’s; deacon of the North Meeting, and by trade a blacksmith.” He gives a glowing and beautiful description of the high moral and religious character of Boston; here also he met with a stroke of good fortune in receiving some arrears of salvage for a vessel he had assisted in saving before his last wreck. Such are specimens of the interest and entertainment afforded in the earlier parts of this pleasant piece of autobiography. But we must hasten past his adventures, both in the island of Antigua and among the islands of the Mediterranean.

It is not wonderful that the great sufferings and toils of Silas should, even at a very early period of life, prostrate his health, and subject him to repeated vehement attacks of illness. He was but twenty-three when he married; still, however, a sailor, and destined yet for some wild experiences on the seas. Not long, however. A married life disposed him for a home life, and he accepted, while still a very young man, the position of a schoolmaster, beneath the patronage of a Lady Luther, in the county of Essex. He was not in this position very long. Silas, although an unconverted man, must have had strong religious feelings; and the clergyman of the parish, fond of smoking and drinking with him—and it may well be conceived what an entertaining companion Silas must have been in those days, with his budget of adventures—ridiculed him for his faith in the Scriptures and his belief in Bible theology. This so shocked Silas, that, making no special profession of religion, he yet separated himself from the clergyman’s company, and shortly after he left that neighbourhood, and again sought his fortune, but without any very cheerful prospects, in London.

It was in 1740 that a young blacksmith introduced him to the people whom he had hitherto hated and despised—the Methodists. He heard John Wesley preach at the Foundry in the Moor Fields from the text, “I write unto you, little children, for your sins are forgiven you.” This set his soul on fire; he became a Methodist, notwithstanding the very vehement opposition of his wife, to whom he appears to have been very tenderly attached, and who herself was a very motherly and virtuous woman, but altogether indisposed to the new notions, as many people considered them. He improved in circumstances, and became a responsible managing clerk on a wharf at Wapping. While there Mr. Wesley repeatedly and earnestly pressed him to take charge of the charity school he had established at the Foundry. After long hesitation he did so; and it was here that while attending a service at five o’clock in the morning, he heard Mr. Wesley preach from the text, “I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.” By a most remarkable application of this charge to himself, Silas testifies that his mind was stirred with a strange compunction, as he thought that he had never cared for, or attempted to ameliorate the condition, or to minister to the souls of the crowds of those unhappy malefactors who then almost weekly expiated their offences, very often of the most trivial description, on the gallows. It seems that the hearing that sermon proved to be a most remarkable turning-point in the life of Silas. Through it he became most eminently useful during a very remarkable and painful career; and his after-life is surrounded by such a succession of romantic incidents that they at once equal, if they do not transcend, and strangely contrast with his wild adventures on the seas.

And here we may pause a moment to reflect how every man’s work derives its character from what he was before. What thousands of sailors, in that day, passed through all the trials which Silas passed, leaving them still only rough sailor men! In him all the roughness seemed only to strike down to depths of wonderful compassion and tenderness. Singular was the university in which he graduated to become so great and powerful a preacher! How he preached we do not know, but his words must have been warm and touching, faithful and loving, judging from their results; and as to his pulpit, we do not hear that it was in chapels or churches—his audience was very much confined to the condemned cell, and to the cart from whence the poor victims were “turned off,” as it was called in those days. In this work he found his singular niche. How long it often takes for a man to find his place in the work that is given him to do; and when the place is found, sometimes, how long it takes to fit nicely and admirably into the work itself! what sharp angles have, to be rubbed away, what difficulties to be overcome! It is wonderful, with all the horrible experiences through which this man had passed, and spectacles of cruelty so revolting that they seem almost to shake our faith, not merely in man, but even in a just and overruling God, that every sentiment of religion and tenderness had not been eradicated from his nature; but it would appear that the old gracious influences of childhood—the days of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, and the wonderful vision when drowning beneath the waters, had never been effaced through all his strange and chequered career, although certainly not untainted by the sins of the ordinary sailor’s life. The work in which he was now to be engaged needed a very tender and affectionate nature; but ordinary tenderness starts back and is repelled by cruel and repulsive scenes. Told’s education on the seas, like that of a surgeon in a hospital, enabled him to look on harrowing sights of suffering without wincing, or losing in his tender interest his own self-possession.

It ought not to be forgotten that John Howard, the great prison philanthropist, belongs to the epoch of the Great Revival. Of him Edmund Burke said, “He had visited all Europe in a circumnavigation of charity, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to collect medals or to collate manuscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons and to plunge into the infections of hospitals.” About the year 1760,[13] when he began his consecrated work, Silas Told, as a prison philanthropist upon a smaller, but equally earnest scale, attempted to console the prisoners of Newgate.

Footnote 13:

See Appendix.

Shortly after hearing that sermon to which we have alluded, a messenger came to him at the school to tell him that there were ten malefactors lying under sentence of death in Newgate, some of them in a state of considerable terror and alarm, and imploring him to find some one to visit them. Here was the call to the work. The coincidences were remarkable: John Wesley’s sermon, his own aroused and tender state of mind produced by the sermon, and the occasion for the active and practical exercise of his feeling. So opportunities would meet us of turning suggestions into usefulness, if we watched for them.

The English laws were barbarous in those days; truly it has been said that a fearfully heavyweight of blood rests upon the conscience of England for the state of the law in those times. Few of those who have given such honour to the noble labours of John Howard and the loving ministrations of Elizabeth Fry ever heard of Silas Told. In a smaller sphere than the first of these, and in a much more intensely painful manner than the second, he anticipated the labours of both. He instantly responded to this first call to Newgate. Two of the ten malefactors were reprieved; he attended the remaining eight to the gallows. He had so influenced the hearts of all of them in their cell that their obduracy was broken down and softened—so great had been his power over them, that locked up together in one cell the night before their execution, they had spent it in prayer and solemn conversation. “At length they were ordered into the cart, and I was prevailed upon to go with them. When we were in the cart I addressed myself to each of them separately. The first was Mr. Atkins, the son of a glazier in the city, a youth nineteen years of age. I said to him, ‘My dear, are you afraid to die?’ He said, ‘No, sir; really I am not.’ I asked him wherefore he was not afraid to die? and he said, ‘I have laid my soul at the feet of Jesus, therefore I am not afraid to die.’ I then spake to Mr. Gardner, a journeyman carpenter; he made a very comfortable report of the true peace of God which he found reigning in his heart. The last person to whom I spoke was one Thompson, a very illiterate young man; but he assured me he was perfectly happy in his Saviour, and continued so until his last moments. This was the first time of my visiting the malefactors in Newgate, and then it was not without much shame and fear, because I clearly perceived the greater part of the populace considered me as one of the sufferers.”

The most remarkable of this cluster was one John Lancaster—for what offence he was sentenced to death does not appear; but the entire account Silas gives of him, both in the prison and at the place of execution, exhibits a fine, tender, and really holy character. The attendant sheriff himself burst into tears before the beautiful demeanour of this young man. However, so it was, that he was without any friend in London to procure for his body a proper interment; and the story of Silas admits us into a pretty spectacle of the times. After the poor bodies were cut down, Lancaster’s was seized by a surgeons’ mob, who intended to carry it over to Paddington. It was Silas’s first experience, as we have seen; and he describes the whole scene as rather like a great fair than an awful execution. In this confusion the body of Lancaster had been seized, the crowd dispersed—all save some old woman, who sold gin, and Silas himself, very likely smitten into extraordinary meditation by a spectacle so new to him—when a company of eight sailors appeared on the scene, with truncheons in their hands, who said they had come to see the execution, and gazed with very menacing faces on the vacated gallows from whence the bodies had been cut down. “Gentlemen,” said the old woman, “I suppose you want the man that the surgeons have got?” “Ay,” said the sailors, “where is he?” The old woman gave them to understand that the body had been carried away to Paddington, and she pointed them to the direct road. Away the sailors hastened—it may be presumed that Lancaster was a sailor, and some old comrade of these men. They demanded his body from the surgeons’ mob, and obtained it. What they intended to do with it scarcely transpires; it is most likely that they had intended a rescue at the foot of the gallows, and arrived too late. However, hoisting it on their shoulders, away they marched with it off to Islington, and thence round to Shoreditch; thence to a place called Coventry’s Fields. By this time they were getting fairly wearied out with their burden, and by unanimous consent they agreed to lay it on the step of the first door they came to: this done, they started off. It created some stir in the street, which brought down an old woman who lived in the house to the step of the door, and who exclaimed, as she saw the body, in a loud, agitated voice, “Lord! this is my son John Lancaster!” It is probable that the old woman was a Methodist, for to Silas Told and the Methodists she was indebted for a decent and respectable burial for her son in a good strong coffin and decent shroud. Silas and his wife went to see him whilst he was lying so, previous to his burial. There was no alteration of his visage, no marks of violence, and says Told, “A pleasant smile appeared on his countenance, and he lay as in sweet sleep.” A singularly romantic story, for it seems the sailors did not know at all to whom he belonged; and what an insight into the social condition of London at that time!

Told did not give up his connection with his school at the Foundry, but he devoted himself, sanctioned by John Wesley and his Church fellowship, to the preaching and ministering to all the poor felons and malefactors in London, including also, in this exercise of love, the work-houses for twelve miles round London; he believed he had a message of tender sympathy for those who were of this order, “sick and in prison.” It seems strange to us, who know how much he had suffered himself, that the old sailor possessed such a loving, tender, and affectionate heart; and yet he tells how, in the earlier part of these very years, he was haunted by irritating doubts and alarms: then came to him old mystical revelations, such as those he had known when drowning, reminding us of similar instances in the lives of John Howe and John Flavel; and the noble man was strengthened.

He went on for twenty years in the way we have described; and the interest of his autobiography compels the wish that it were much longer; for, of course, the largest amount of his precious life of labour was not set down, and cannot be recalled; and readers who are fond of romance will find his name in connection with some of the most remarkable executions of his time.

A singular circumstance was this: Four gentlemen—Mr. Brett, the son of an eminent divine in Dublin; Whalley, a gentleman of considerable fortune, possessed of three country-seats of his own; Dupree, “in every particular,” says Silas, “a complete gentleman;” and Morgan, an officer on board one of His Majesty’s ships of war—after dinner, upon the occasion of their being at an election for the members for Chelmsford, proposed to start forth, and, by way of recreation, rob somebody on the highway. Away they went, and chanced upon a farmer, whom they eased of a considerable sum of money. The farmer followed them into Chelmsford; they were all secured, and next day removed to London; they took their trials, and were sentenced, and left for execution. Told visited them all in prison. Morgan was engaged to be married to Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, the sister of the Duke of Hamilton. She repeatedly visited her affianced husband in the cell, and Told was with them at most of their interviews. It was supposed that, from the rank of the prisoners, and the character of their offence, there would be no difficulty in obtaining a reprieve; but the King was quite inexorable; he said, “his subjects were not to be in bodily fear in order that men might gratify their drunken whims.” Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, however, thrust herself several times before the King; wept, threw herself on her knees, and behaved altogether in such a manner that the King said, “Lady Betsy, there is no standing your importunity any further; I will spare his life, but on one condition—that he is not acquainted therewith until he arrives at the place of execution;” and it was so. The other three unfortunates were executed, and Lady Elizabeth, in her coach, received her lover into it as he stepped from the cart. It is a sad story, but it must have been a sweet satisfaction to the lady.

Far more dreadful were some cases which engaged the tender heart of Silas. A young man, named Coleman, was tried for an aggravated assault on a young woman. The young woman herself declared that Coleman was not the man; but he had enemies who pressed apparent circumstances against him, and urged them on the young woman, to induce her to change her opinion. She never wavered; yet, singular to say, he was convicted and executed. A short time after the real criminal was discovered, by his own confession; he was also tried, condemned, and executed, and the perjured witnesses against poor Coleman sentenced to stand in the pillory.

But one of the most pitiful and dreadful cases in Silas Told’s experience was that of Mary Edmondson, a sweet young girl, tried upon mere circumstantial evidence, and executed on Kennington Common, for the supposed murder of her aunt at Rotherhithe. She appears to have been most brutally treated; the mob believed her to be guilty, and received her with shocking execrations. Whether Silas had a prejudice against her or not, we cannot say; it is not likely that he had a prejudice against any suffering soul; but it so happened, he says, as he had not visited her in her imprisonment, so he entertained no idea of seeing her suffer. But as he was passing through the Borough, a pious cheesemonger, named Skinner, called him into his shop, tenderly expressed deep interest in her present and future state, and besought him to see her; so his first interview with her was only just as she was going forth to her sad end.

Silas shall tell the story himself: “When she was brought into the room, she stood with her back against the wainscot, but appeared perfectly resigned to the will of God. I then addressed myself to her, saying, ‘My dear, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for the sake of your own precious soul, do not die with a lie in your mouth; you are, in a few moments, to appear in the presence of the holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Oh, consider what an eternity of misery must be the position of all who die in their sins!’ She heard me with much meekness and simplicity, but answered that she had already advanced the truth, and must persevere in the same spirit to her last moments.” Efforts were made to prevent Told from accompanying her any farther, and the rioters were so exasperated against her that Told seems only to have been safe by keeping near to the sheriff along the whole way. The sheriff also told him that he would be giving a great satisfaction to the whole nation, could he only bring her to a confession. “Now, as we were proceeding on the road, the sheriff’s horse being close to the cart, I looked up at her from under the horse’s bridle, and I said, ‘My dear, look to Jesus.’ This quickened her spirit, insomuch that although she had not looked about her before, she turned herself round to me, and said, ‘Sir, I bless God I can look to Jesus—to my comfort.’”

Arrived at the place of execution, he spoke to her again solemnly, “Did you not commit the act? Had you no concern therein? Were you not interested in the murder?” She said, “I am as clear of the whole affair as I was the day my mother brought me into the world.” She was very young, she had all the aspects of innocence about her. The sheriff burst into tears, and turned his head away, exclaiming, “Good God! it is a second Coleman’s case!”

At this moment her cousin stepped up into the cart, and sought to kiss her. She turned her face away, and pushed him off. She had before charged him with being the murderer—and he was. When subsequently taken up for another crime, he confessed the committal of this. Her aunt had left to Mary, in the event of her death, more money than to this wretch. The executioner drew the cart away, and Mary’s body—leaning the poor head, in her last moments, on Silas’s shoulder—dear old Silas, her only comfort in that terrible hour—fell into the arms of death. But he tells how she was cold and still before the cart was drawn away.

But perhaps a still more pitiful case was that of poor Anderson, who was hanged for stealing sixpence: he was a labouring man, and had been of irreproachable character. He and his wife—far gone with child—were destitute of money, clothes, and food. He said to his wife, “My dear, I will go out, down to the quays; it may be that the Lord will provide me with a loaf of bread.” All his efforts were fruitless, but passing through Hoxton Fields, he met two washerwomen. He did not bid them stop, but he said to one, “Mistress, I want money.” She gave him twopence. He said to the other, “You have money, I know you have.” She said, “I have fourpence.” He took that. Insensible of what might follow, as of what he had done, he walked down into Old Street: there, the two women having followed him gave him in charge of a constable. He was tried, sentenced to death, and for this he died. “Never,” says Told, “through the years I have attended the prisoners, have I seen such meek, loving, patient spirits as this man and his wife.” Told attended him to execution, and sought to comfort the poor fellow by promising him to look after his wife; and most tenderly did Told and his wife redeem the promise, for they took her for a short time into their own home. Told obtained a housekeeper’s situation for her, and she became a creditable and respected woman. He bound her daughter apprentice to a weaver, and she, probably, turned out well, although he says, “I have never seen her but twice since, which is many years ago.”

Our readers will, perhaps, think that it is time we drew these harrowing stories to a close; but there are many more of them in this brief, but most interesting, although forgotten autobiography. They are recited with much pathos. We have the story of Harris, the flying highwayman; of Bolland, a sheriff’s officer, who was executed for forging a note, although he had refunded the money, and twice afterwards paid the sum of the bill to secure himself. A young gentleman, named Slocomb, defrauded his father of three hundred pounds; his father would not in any way stir, or remit his claim, to save him. Told attended him and thought highly of him, not only because he expressed himself with so much resignation, but because he never indulged a complaint against him whom Told calls “that lump of adamant, his father.” With him was executed another young gentleman, named Powell, for forgery. Silas Told also attended that cruel woman, Elizabeth Brownrigg, who was executed for the atrocious murder of her apprentices. And of all the malefactors whom he attended she seems to us the most unsatisfactory.

We trust our readers will not be displeased to receive these items from the biography of a very remarkable, a singularly romantic and chequered, as well as singularly useful career. References to Silas Told will be found in most of the biographies of Wesley. Southey passes him by with a very slight allusion. Tyerman dwells on his memory with a little more tenderness; but, with the exception of Stevens, none has touched with real interest upon this extraordinary though obscure man, and his romantic life and labours in a very strange path of Christian benevolence and usefulness. He was known, far and near, as the “prisoners’ chaplain,” although an unpaid one. He closed his life in 1778, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. As we have seen, John Wesley appropriately officiated at his funeral, and pronounced an affectionate encomium over the remains of his honoured old friend and fellow-labourer.