Both he and Mytton were very heavily fined, and the Mayor was
good enough to compliment me on the part I had played.
As we were leaving the court, a tipstaff came up to Joe Punchard,
and formally arrested him as a runaway 'prentice; at the instance,
I doubt not, of Vetch himself. But the matter ended in a triumph
for Joe, for Captain Benbow accompanied him before the Mayor and
declared that as a mariner in the King's navy he was immune from
civil action. Whether the plea was good in law I know not. The
Mayor did not know either, and the clerk, to judge by his
countenance, was in an equal state of puzzlement. But Benbow was
clearly not a man to be trifled with, and Joe had certainly had a
part in bringing the Mohocks to book, and for one reason or another
he was given the benefit of the doubt. When he left the court he
was mightily cheered by a mob of 'prentices among the crowd, and
would have accepted the invitations to drink pressed upon him but
for the peremptory orders of his captain, who was no wine bibber
himself, being therein unlike many of the navy men of his time.
The fines levied on Mytton and Vetch were the least part of their
punishment. The incident of the dust bin brought on them open
ridicule; they became the laughingstock of Shrewsbury. The school
wag, who afterwards became famous for his elegant Greek verses at
Cambridge, pilloried them in a lampoon which the whole town got by
heart, and for days afterwards they could not show their faces
without being greeted by some lines from it by every small boy who
thought himself beyond their reach.
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