The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

But I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that the

door was open, and I went in, seeing the goods lie there, and with

design to buy. If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of them

up in my hand it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them,

for that I never carried them farther than the door to look on them

with the better light.

The Court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jest

of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of

anything, and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, the

maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it

very much; told the Court I had looked at them sufficiently, and

approved them very well, for I had packed them up under my clothes, and

was a-going with them.

In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary,

which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me to a sentence

of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was

carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to

ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute a

while, but somebody that stood behind me prompted me aloud to speak to

the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me.

This encouraged me to speak, and I told them I had nothing to say to

stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of

the Court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for

the circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carried

nothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goods

they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (which

indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the first

offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before;

and, in a word, I spoke with more courage that I thought I could have

done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many

tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to

tears that heard me.

The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say

all that I would, but, saying neither Yes nor No to it, pronounced the

sentence of death upon me, a sentence that was to me like death itself,

which, after it was read, confounded me. I had no more spirit left in

me, I had no tongue to speak, or eyes to look up either to God or man.