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SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. |
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" I hope your hearts have been long since softened to a proper degree of contrition for these things; and that you have already made a due preparation for the sentence I am now to pass upon you.
" If you have not, pray lose not one moment more. Let not company, or the habit of drinking, or the hopes of life divert you from it; for Christian charity obliges me to tell you that your time in this world will be very short.
" Nothing now remains but that I pass that sentence upon you which the Law of your Country, in conformity to the Law of God, and to the practice of all ages and nations, has already pronounced upon the crime you have been guilty of. This court doth therefore award that you, Benjamin Tapner, William Carter, John Hammond, John Cobby, Eichard Mills the elder, Richard Mills the younger, and William Jackson, and each of you shall be conveyed from hence to the prison from whence you came, and from thence you shall be led to the place of execution, where you shall be severally hanged by the neck, until you shall be dead, and the Lord have mercy upon your souls." |
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Having now completed the trials of these seven bloody criminals, I shall next give you the short Appendix which has been published by three of the clergymen who attended them after their conviction, and who have signed their names to the same, after which I shall give a much fuller account of their wicked lives and behaviour.
After sentence, the prisoners were carried back to Chichester gaol. The court were pleased to order them all for execution the very next day, and that the bodies of Jackson, Carter, Tapner, Cobby, and Hammond, the |
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