"Patrick O'Brian," says Captain Alexander Smith, "was a native of Ireland." Perhaps we might, without undue stress of mind, have guessed as much. It seems that his parents were very indigent natives of Loughrea, and so Patrick left his native land for England, and presently enlisted in the Coldstream Guards. But he was not a good soldier; or, at any rate, if good in that profession, infinitely better in the practice of all kinds of vice. He was resolved not to want money, if there were any to be obtained, no matter the means to it; but began cautiously by running into debt at public-houses and shops; and then followed up that first step by borrowing from every acquaintance, until that source was dried up.

When all these means to existence were exhausted, O'Brian went upon the road. The first person whom he met was, strange to say, another unmitigated scoundrel: none other, in fact, than the Reverend William Clewer, vicar of Croydon, who here demands a little paragraph entirely to himself.

William Clewer, who was collated to the living of Croydon in 1660, was notorious, we are told, for his singular love of litigation, unparalleled extortions, and criminal and disgraceful conduct. His character became so bad, and his ways of life so notorious, that he was eventually ejected in 1684. He must have been, indeed, pre-eminently bad, to have been ejected in that easy-going age. Dispossessed of his living, on these substantial grounds, he at last died, in 1702, and was buried in St. Bride's, Fleet Street.

We are indebted to Smith for the account of the meeting of O'Brian and this shining light of the clerical profession:

"O'Brian, meeting with Dr. Clewer, who was try'd once and burnt in the hand at the Old Bailey for stealing a silver cup, coming along the road from Acton, he demanded his money; but the reverend doctor having not a farthing about him, O'Brian was for taking his gown. At this our divine was much dissatisfied; but, perceiving his enemy would plunder him, quoth he: 'Pray, sir, let me have a chance for my gown'; so, pulling a pack of cards out of his pocket, he further said: 'We'll have, if you please, one game of all-fours for it, and if you win it, take it and wear it.' This challenge was readily accepted by the footpad; but, being more cunning than his antagonist at slipping and palming the cards, he won the game, and the doctor went contentedly home without his canonicals."

On one memorable occasion, O'Brian happened, in his lurkings upon the road, to stop a man who proved to be an acrobat, and who, when Patrick bade him "stand and deliver!" instantly jumped over his head. The ignorant and superstitious Irishman thought he had chanced upon the devil himself, come to sport with him before his time, and while he was trembling and crossing himself, the acrobat, rolling along the road in a series of somersaults and cartwheels, got clear away.

These adventures appear to have been mere tentative experiments, for we learn that O'Brian then deserted from the army and commenced highwayman in earnest. He one day stopped the carriage of none other than Nell Gwynne and addressed her thus: "Madam, I am a gentleman. I have done a great many signal services to the fair sex, and have, in return, been all my life maintained by them. Now, as I know you to be a charitable woman, I make bold to ask you for a little money; though I never had the honour of serving you in particular. However, if any opportunity shall ever fall in my way, you may depend upon it I will not be ungrateful."

Nell, we are told, made this mercenary knight-errant a present of ten guineas.

It was the same with O'Brian as with every other wicked man, says Smith; he was eager to lead others into the evil path himself had chosen. In particular, he induced a young man named Wilt to become a highwayman; and Wilt was unfortunate enough to be apprehended in his first experiment and to be hanged for it.

O'Brian was also arrested, and hanged at Gloucester. After his body had swung the usual time, it was cut down and his friends were allowed to carry it off. When it was taken indoors, it was observed to move slightly, strange to say; upon which a surgeon was hurriedly called; and, what with being bled and his limbs being exercised, O'Brian was presently restored to life.

This marvellous recovery was kept a strict secret for a time, and it was hoped the experience would have a salutary effect, the more especially as his friends were willing to contribute towards his support in some retired employment. He agreed to reform his life, and, indeed, while the memory of the bitterness of death was fresh upon him, kept his promise; but as that dreadful impression wore off by degrees, he returned to his former ways. Abandoning an honest life, he procured a horse (Smith says he purchased one, but we may be allowed our doubts upon that matter) "and other necessaries": i.e. pistols, powder and ball, and sword, and again visited the road.

This was about one year after his execution and supposed death, and the travelling public of the districts he had principally affected had long grown tired of congratulating themselves upon his disappearance, and were quite accustomed to thinking of him as a memory. It was, therefore, a bad shock to the gentleman whom he had last robbed, and for plundering whom he had been, to all appearance, satisfactorily turned off, when he was the first person to be stopped by O'Brian in this second series of his adventures.

His consternation, we are told, and may readily believe, was great. "Wher—why?" he asked, with chattering teeth, "I ther—thought you had been hanged a twelvemonth ago."

"So I was," rejoined O'Brian, "and therefore you ought to imagine that what you see now is only my ghost. However, lest you should be so uncivil as to hang my ghost too, I think the best way is to secure you." So saying, he discharged a pistol through the gentleman's head, and, alighting from his horse, in a fury hewed the body to pieces with his hanger.

Later, he committed a fearful atrocity in Wiltshire, which, although fully detailed in contemporary literature, cannot be set forth here. He carried off at the same time no less a sum of money than £2,500; but was fortunately brought to justice after a further two years of miscellaneous plundering, chiefly through the evidence of an accomplice lying under sentence of death in Bedford gaol. He was taken at his lodgings in Little Suffolk Street, by the Haymarket, and then sent down to Salisbury, to be tried for his Wiltshire enormity. Once lodged in gaol there, he confessed a series of crimes, for which he was executed on April 30th, 1689, aged thirty-one.