We resolved to be going the next day, but about six o'clock
at night we were alarmed with a great uproar in the street, and
people riding as if they had been out of their wits; and what
was it but a hue-and-cry after three highwaymen that had
robbed two coaches and some other travellers near Dunstable
Hill, and notice had, it seems, been given that they had been
seen at Brickhill at such a house, meaning the house where
those gentlemen had been.
The house was immediately beset and searched, but there were
witnesses enough that the gentlemen had been gone over three
hours. The crowd having gathered about, we had the news
presently; and I was heartily concerned now another way. I
presently told the people of the house, that I durst to say those
were not the persons, for that I knew one of the gentlemen to
be a very honest person, and of a good estate in Lancashire.
The constable who came with the hue-and-cry was immediately
informed of this, and came over to me to be satisfied from my
own mouth, and I assured him that I saw the three gentlemen
as I was at the window; that I saw them afterwards at the
windows of the room they dined in; that I saw them afterwards
take horse, and I could assure him I knew one of them to be
such a man, that he was a gentleman of a very good estate, and
an undoubted character in Lancashire, from whence I was just
now upon my journey.
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