1 68 The Post and the Paddock, 



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 "eleven^^^;? 

 hundred" instead of eleven, he '' could have physicked 

 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 ArnuU almost tumbled backwards 

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

 market lads ; yoit see I can't shake hands with yon. 

 Good-bye r 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 aK: 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 



