to place them where they would be disabled from concerting any future
scheme with him.

A convict was tried for a burglary by the same court, but was acquitted.
On the 27th another court was assembled for the trial of James Chapman,
for a burglary committed in the preceding month in the house of John
Petree, a convict, in which he stole several articles of wearing apparel.
Charles Cross and Joseph Hatton, two convicts, were also tried for
receiving them knowing them to be stolen. Chapman the principal, refusing
to plead any thing but guilty, received sentence of death. Against the
receivers it appeared in evidence, that after the burglary was committed
the property was concealed in the woods between Sydney and Parramatta, at
which place all the parties resided; that having suffered it to remain
some weeks, Chapman and Cross went from Parramatta to bring it away; and
while they were so employed, Hatton found that the watchmen were going in
pursuit of Chapman; on which he directly set off to meet and advertise
them of it, and receive the property, which, by a clear chain of
evidence, he was proved to have taken and concealed again in the woods.
Hatton was found guilty, and sentenced to receive eight hundred lashes.
Cross was acquitted. Chapman was executed the following day at noon. Half
an hour before he died, he informed the judge-advocate and the clergyman
who attended him, that a plan was formed of breaking into the
government-house, and robbing it of a large sum of money which it was
imagined the governor kept in it; and that it was to be executed by
himself and three other convicts, all of whom were, however, very far
from being of suspicious characters. But as there was no reason to
suppose that a person in such an awful situation would invent an
accusation by which he could not himself be benefited, and which might
injure three innocent people, the governor took all the precautions that
he thought necessary to guard against the meditated villainy.