They call me a drunkard because I take punch to relieve me in my agony." He would not admit that, as President of the High Commission, he had done any thing that deserved reproach.

His colleagues, he said, were the real criminals; and now they threw all the blame on him.

He spoke with peculiar asperity of Sprat, who had undoubtedly been the most humane and moderate member of the board.
It soon became clear that the wicked judge was fast sinking under the weight of bodily and mental suffering.

Doctor John Scott, prebendary of Saint Paul's, a clergyman of great sanctity, and author of the Christian Life, a treatise once widely renowned, was summoned, probably on the recommendation of his intimate friend Sharp, to the bedside of the dying man.

It was in vain, however, that Scott spoke, as Sharp had already spoken, of the hideous butcheries of Dorchester and Taunton.