gentility lie more in the past than in the suit on his back, and woe
betide him! In spite of his protestations the gang took him, and he
was lucky indeed if, like the gentleman who narrates his experience in
the _Review_ for the both of February 1706, he was able to
convince his captors that he was foreign born by "talking Latin and
Greek."

To the people at large, whether landsmen or seafarers, the Act
exempting from the press every male under eighteen and over fifty-five
years of age would have brought a sorely needed relief had not
Admiralty been a past-master in the subtle art of outwitting the law.
In this instance a simple regulation did the trick. Every man or boy
who claimed the benefit of the age-limit when pressed, was required to
prove his claim ere he could obtain his discharge. [Footnote:
_Admiralty Records_ 7. 300--Law Officers' Opinions, 1778-83, No.
43: "It is incumbent on those who claim to be exempted to prove the
facts."] The impossibility of any general compliance with such a
demand on the part of persons often as ignorant of birth certificates
as they were of the sea, practically wiped the exemption off the
slate.

In the eyes of the Regulating Captain no man was older than he looked,
no lad as young as he avowed. Hence thousands of pressed men over
fifty-five, who did not look the age they could not prove, figured on
the books of the fleet with boys whose precocity of appearance gave
the lie to their assertions. George Stephens, son of a clerk in the
Transport Office, suffered impressment when barely thirteen; and the
son of a corporal in Lord Elkinton's regiment, one Alexander M'Donald,
was listed in the same manner while still "under the age of twelve."
[Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 583--Vice-Admiral Hunter, 10