On the 26th of December, 1724, upon full evidences of eye-witnesses, the jury found him guilty, he making no other defence than great asservations of his innocence, and an obstinate denial of the fact. After his conviction, being visited in the condemned hold, instead of showing any marks of penitence or contrition, he raved against the witnesses who had been produced to destroy him, called them all perjured, and prayed God to inflict some dreadful judgment on them. Nay, he went so far as to desire that he ought himself have the executing thereof, wishing that after his death his apparition might come and terrify them to their graves. When it was represented to him how odd this behaviour was, and how far distant from that calmness and tranquillity of mind with which it became him to clothe himself before he went into the presence of his Maker, these representations had no effect; he still continued to rave against his accusers, and against the witnesses who had sworn at his trial. As death grew nearer he appeared not a bit terrified, nor seemed uneasy at all at leaving this life, only at leaving his wife, and as he phrased it, some old acquaintance in Warwickshire. However, he desired to receive the Sacrament, and said he would prepare himself for it as well as he could.
He went to the place of execution in the same manner in which he had passed the days of his confinement till that time. At Tyburn he was not satisfied with protesting his innocence to the people, but designing to have one of the Prayer Books which was made use of in the cart, he kissed it as people do when they take oath, and then again turning to the mob, declared as he was a dying man, he never gave Candy a blow in his life. Thus with many ejaculations he gave way to fate in an advanced age at Tyburn, at the same time with the malefactors last mentioned.
The Lives of JAMES CAMMEL and WILLIAM MARSHAL, Thieves and Footpads
James Cammel was born of parents in very low circumstances, and the misfortunes arising therefrom were much increased by his father dying while he was an infant, and leaving him to the care of a widow in the lowest circumstances of life. The consequence was what might be easily foreseen, for he forgot what little he had learned in his youngest days, loitering away his time about Islington, Hoxton, Moorfield, and such places, being continually drinking there, and playing at cudgels, skittles, and such like. He never applied himself to labour or honest working for his bread, but either got it from his mother or a few other friends, or by methods of a more scandalous nature--I mean pilfering and stealing from others, for which after he had long practised it, he came at last to an untimely death.