popular fictions of that day, which made heroes of highwaymen and
burglars, and created a false sympathy for the vicious and criminal.

With this purpose, the author chose for the subject of his story a
woman named Catherine Hayes, who was burned at Tyburn, in 1726, for
the deliberate murder of her husband, under very revolting
circumstances. Mr. Thackeray's aim obviously was to describe the
career of this wretched woman and her associates with such fidelity
to truth as to exhibit the danger and folly of investing such
persons with heroic and romantic qualities.



CHAPTER I. Introducing to the reader the chief personages of this
narrative.



At that famous period of history, when the seventeenth century
(after a deal of quarrelling, king-killing, reforming,
republicanising, restoring, re-restoring, play-writing, sermon-
writing, Oliver-Cromwellising, Stuartising, and Orangising, to be
sure) had sunk into its grave, giving place to the lusty eighteenth;
when Mr. Isaac Newton was a tutor of Trinity, and Mr. Joseph Addison
Commissioner of Appeals; when the presiding genius that watched over
the destinies of the French nation had played out all the best cards
in his hand, and his adversaries began to pour in their trumps; when
there were two kings in Spain employed perpetually in running away
from one another; when there was a queen in England, with such
rogues for Ministers as have never been seen, no, not in our own