Although it states that the contents were "noted by himself during his passage to America" and it is likely that facts were supplied by Carew, the author was probably Robert Goadby, a printer in Sherborne, Dorset, who published an early edition in 1749.

Some editions of the Life suggest that Carew reflected with sadness on how 'idly' he had spent his life—perhaps making a racy story more acceptable by adding a moral ending.

Carew, consulting “the secrets of his arts” for a fee of 20 guineas, informed her it was under a laurel tree but that she should not seek it until a particular day and hour.

He masqueraded as a shipwrecked sailor (a popular way to claim alms), a clergyman, and defrauding “Squire Portman” twice in one day, first as a rat-catcher and then a woman whose daughter had been killed in a fire (another staple of fraudulent beggars).

The ceremony described reproduces one from Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors, via the popular play Beggars' Bush by Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger in which Clause is a character.

On 5 May 1739, Carew (described as ‘the noted Dog-stealer’ who upon his arraignment ‘behaved to the Justices in a most insulting manner’)[3] was convicted of being an idle vagrant and sentenced to be transported to Maryland.

[4] Having embarked for England, he escaped being pressed to serve in the Navy by pricking his hands and face, and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox (such tricks were commonplaces in rogue literature).

On returning to England, he claims, he found his wife and daughter and then travelled to Scotland by 1745 in time to accompany Bonnie Prince Charlie to Carlisle and Derby.