The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. Volume 1

6

I do not find it in the memoirs of his adventures, but in an old volume of the Annual Register I find that, in the year 1778, one Captain Dangerous gave important evidence for the crown against poor Mr. Tremenheere, who suffered at Tyburn, for fetching and carrying between the French King and some malcontents in this country, notably for giving information as to the condition of our dockyards. – Ed.

7

Captain Dangerous was, unconsciously, of the same mind with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. – Ed.

8

In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as "Gregory" – and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in 1660-61 – as by his later title of "Jack Ketch." – J. D.

9

A woman of very mean belongings, whose parents lived, I have heard, somewhere about the Maypole in the Strand, and who was promoted to high station, being Monk's Duchess, but to her death of a coarse and brutish carriage, and shamefully given to the drinking of strong waters. – J. D.

10

A very glorious rag nevertheless. – Ed.

11

"My Flag" in the original MS.; but I put it down as a slip of the pen, and altered it – G. A. S.

12

Madam Drum, so far as I can make out the argot of the day, here insinuated that her opponent had been corrected at the cart's tail for stealing swords out of the scabbards, and conveying wigs from the heads of their owners, two crimes which have become obsolete since the Quality have ceased to wear swords and periwigs. – G. A. S.

13

See the Statutes at Large. The Black Act was repealed mainly through the exertions of Sir James Macintosh, early in the present century. Under its clauses the going about "disguised or blackened in pursuit of game" was made felony without benefit of clergy; the punishment thereof death. – Ed.

14

Captain Dangerous, it will be seen, was, in regard to our criminal code, somewhat in advance of the ideas of his age, but he was scarcely on a level with those of our own, and, I think, would have perused with some surprise the speeches of Mr. Ewart and the Vacation Thoughts on Capital Punishments of the late Mr. Commissioner Phillips. – Ed.