1 THE DA NEB UR Y CONFEDERA CY ' 4 1 



celebrate the praises of humanity, it is no less necessary 

 to expose the vices that deform it. In enumerating the 

 excellences of men, we present a model to imitate ; in 

 detecting their depravity, we hold out an example to 

 deter.' 



The men, some incidents of whose career I shall now 

 set forth, are examples whose practices should be rather 

 shunned than followed. Messrs. Gully, Hill, Pedley, 

 Arnold and Turner were known at one time as ' The 

 Danebury Confederacy.' Certainly the most prominent 

 and remarkable of the group was Mr. John Gully, ex- 

 prizefighter and erstwhile legislator. Mr. Gully was a 

 Gloucestershire man. He was born at the Crown Inn, 

 Wick, midway between Bath and Bristol kept by his 

 parents. Afterwards his father became a butcher at 

 Bath, if Gully himself did not, for some time, take an 

 active part in the same business. The first public 

 action I can remember to have heard told of him, was 

 his soundly thrashing a big bully at Bristol for unfairly 

 setting his dog at a bull they were then baiting. Gully, 

 to his great surprise and delight, afterwards heard that 

 his defeated opponent was a prize-fighter, the terror of 

 the neighbourhood. 



Not improbably this initial success gave him the love 

 for 'the Noble Art,' for shortly afterwards we hear of 

 his entering the gladiatorial arena; although in a 

 measure he was induced to do so through the force of 

 circumstances. For certain liabilities incurred and for- 

 gotten, or which could not be met, he found himself in 

 a debtors' prison, from which he was released for a 

 special purpose, through the kindness of the celebrated 

 Colonel Hellish. Gully's greatest friend at the time 

 was Pierce, alias ' the Game Chicken,' a Bristol man. 

 Pierce used to visit him in gaol, and, for exercise and 



