According to Johnson,[9] Every changed his name and lived unostentatiously, while trying to sell the jewels he had amassed.

The merchant in whose hands he had placed them, suspecting how they had been come by, threatened him.
Every fled to Ireland, leaving his jewels in the merchant's hands, and finally died in Devonshire in extreme poverty.

But the authority for this, as for most of the popular accounts of Every, is extremely doubtful.

That he was cheated out of some of his ill-gotten gains is probable enough, but it is in the highest degree improbable that he was known to be living in poverty, and yet that the large reward offered for his apprehension was not earned.

What is alone certain is that he was never apprehended, and that in a few months he carried off an amount of plunder such as never before was taken out of the Indian seas by a single rover.