begging the Spectators' prayers, and exhorting them not to despair in any condition … and so with all the outward marks of a sincere Penitent, submitted to his sentence, and was executed."
Dr. Lake, whose Diary has been published by the Camden Society, happened to be visiting a prisoner in the gaol when Barnes and his accomplice were brought in. The doctor says that he was "a notorious Presbyterian," and that "the evening before hee went forth to execute his design"—of robbing the carrier—"hee pray'd with his family two hours."
The authority for this story is a unique tract in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, of which the late Robert Dymond, of Exeter, made a copy, and to which he refers in his paper on "The Old Inns and Taverns of Exeter," in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 1880.
