Stepped aside

[George Thompson]

This is from a very entertaining rant by a newspaper editor who was
told a tale by a villain, and fell for it.

        Did ye ever hear of such a piece of Impudence!  The former part
of our Account came out on Monday, but before Tuesday-night he was
march'd off, or in other terms Step'd aside.  Only the ungrateful
Varlet, had first exercised a faculty of his (which ye shall presently
hear of) on the Money and other purloinables, of such Friends as had
civilly Entertained him.  His very Shirt (being Stolen, you must note)
had the Courage to take a Thief by the Throat.
        Boston News-Letter, #82, November 5, 1705, p. 2, cols. 1-2

The passive voice (he was marched off or stepped aside) makes it seem
that this means "arrested", a sense not in the OED, but it's clear from
the article as a whole that the villain was still at large.  The OED
has only from English sources.

OED (step, verb, 39b, to abscond) 1620 in Crt. & Times Jas. I (1848)
II. 210 Sir John Samms is stept aside and gone for
Bohemia,..being..ready to sink under the burthen of his debts. 1689
LUTTRELL Brief Rel. (1857) I. 595 The cook was sent to Newgate, but the
lord Griffin himself, hearing of it, is stept aside. a1715 BURNET Own
Time (1823) II. 153 They did not know whether he might not have stepped
aside for debt.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.