CARDSELLERS, TOUTS, AND AUGURS. 175 



was, that " those who lay in bed in a morning at 

 Newmarket did no good for themselves;" and he 

 had such confidence in his peculiar powers, that if 

 Lord Foley's string had consisted of " eleventeen 

 hundred" instead of eleven, he "could have physickad 

 them all." Lord Foley, to whom he made several 

 disclosures after his sentence, tried hard to save his 

 life : but the Home Secretary of that day was inexor- 

 able, and on August 8, 1812, the white cap was 

 drawn over his face on the top of Cambridge gaol. 

 Several persons drove over from Newmarket to have 

 a last look at him, and were admitted into the gaol 

 yard, as a special favour. They were talking in a 

 cluster by an iron-studded door, when it opened, and 

 the poor pinioned criminal came so suddenly upon 

 them, that Will Arnull almost tumbled backwards 

 into his arm. " Good bye ; God bless you ! my New- 

 market lads ; yitu see I can't shake hands with you. 

 Good bye I 3 ' was all the former could say, as he tot- 

 tered towards the scaffold ; and the governor after- 

 wards assured his visitors that they had totally 

 unmanned him by this unexpected interview. 



A few years before this " Nobbier King" ascended 

 the drop, a taste for operations during Newmarket 

 Races had brought the career of the notorious pick- 

 pocket Barrington to a close. He had thrown aside his 

 clerical guise, his regimentals, and the full-dress coat, 

 sword, bag-wig, and pink powder, in which it was his 

 wont to honour Ranelagh, and was smoking his pipe 

 and talking the broadest Doric, after the labours of the 

 day, in the chimney-corner of the Swan at Bottisham, 

 about two miles from the Beacon Post, when one of 

 the Cambridge race-goers recognised him under his 

 carter's smock frock disguise. He blanched palpably at 

 last, under the long searching stare which he received, 

 and being too weary to run over such an open country., 

 slunk out only to try and hide himself in an outhouse, 

 from whence he was shortly afterwards gazetted to 



