Transcriber's Note:

This book was published in two volumes, of which this is the first. The second volume was released as Project Gutenberg ebook #53112, available at [ http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53112]

HALF-HOURS WITH THE HIGHWAYMEN

WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER

The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.

The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

The Bath Road: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway.

The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway.

The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.

The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road: Sport and History on an East Anglian Turnpike.

The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: The Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols.

The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.

The Hastings Road and the "Happy Springs of Tunbridge."

Cycle Rides Round London.

A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.

Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols.

The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of "The Ingoldsby Legends."

The Hardy Country: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

The Dorset Coast.

The South Devon Coast.

The North Devon Coast.

The Old Inns of Old England. Two Vols.

Love in the Harbour: a Longshore Comedy.

Rural Nooks Round London (Middlesex and Surrey).

The Manchester and Glasgow Road; This way to Gretna Green. Two Vols.

Haunted Houses; Tales of the Supernatural.

The Somerset Coast. [In the Press.]

MULLED SACK.

I walke the Strand, and Westminster; and scorne

to march i'th' Cittie, though I beare the Horne.

My Feather, and my yellow Band accord

to proue me Courtier: My Boote, Spurr, and sword

My smokinge Pipe, Scarfe, Garter, Rose on shoe;

showe my brave minde t'affect what Gallants doe.

I singe, dance, drinke, and merrily passe the day,

and like a Chimney sweepe all care away

HALF-HOURS WITH THE HIGHWAYMEN

PICTURESQUE BIOGRAPHIES AND TRADITIONS OF THE "KNIGHTS OF THE ROAD"

By CHARLES G. HARPER

VOL. I

Illustrated by Paul Hardy and by the Author, and from Old Prints

London

CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited

1908

All rights reserved

PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

Preface

In a series of books designed to tell the story of the roads, and not only of the roads, but of all subjects connected with road-travel in all ages, a book on the Highwaymen was sooner or later inevitable. We have had in this series the story of the rise and progress towards perfection of coaching, and of the decay of stage-coach and mail when the era of steam came in; and we have had two volumes on the Old Inns of Old England, to which the travellers of a bygone age came, wearied, when the day's tedious travel was done. The story of the highwaymen, who robbed those travellers, is now told, for the first time since Captain Alexander Smith in 1719-20, in three small octavo volumes, and Captain Charles Johnson in 1742, in one folio volume, collated the numerous chapbooks and "last dying speeches and confessions" of that and earlier ages. Captain Johnson, who stole extensively from Smith, who himself was prone to include the most extravagant myths in his pages, calls his folio A General and True History of the Lives and Actions of the Most Famous Highwaymen. Both of them include pirates and murderers. Of the "truth" of much in Smith and Johnson, the less said the better.

No one has ever reprinted those authors in their original extravagance, or their grossness. It would be impossible; and, if possible, it would not be entertaining. Nor has any one ever edited them, or even written an independent history of the highwaymen. When we consider how astonishingly popular those romances have ever been which have had Claude Du Vall, and Turpin, and their like for heroes, this is not a little surprising.

Perhaps the task has been abandoned because of the difficulty—the almost insuperable difficulty—of sifting fact from fiction, and because of a chilling sense that it would be a thankless task to present the highwayman as he really was: a fellow rarely heroic, generally foul-mouthed and cruel, and often cowardly. No novelist would be likely to thank the frank historian for this disservice; and I do not think the historian who came to the subject in this cold scientific spirit of a demonstrator in surgery would be widely read. Most of us like to keep a few of the illusions we believed in when schoolboys. Scientific historians have degraded many of our ancient heroes and exalted the villains, for whom of old no mud was too thick and slab. Beliefs are being assailed on every side. To abolish the traditional courtesy of Claude Du Vall or the considerate conduct of Captain Hind would, therefore, be strokes of the unkindest, and I have here attempted no such iconoclasm. Even where I cannot believe, I have told the tale—whenever it has been worth the telling—as it is found in criminal trials, or in Smith or Johnson, and other old sources, decorously stripped of much vile language. For really, where much that seems incredible may be fully proved, and where the believable turns out not rarely to be false, 'tis your only way.

To continue the story of the highwaymen from Smith and Johnson down to the approaching end of all such things in the beginning of the nineteenth century, is like taking up and concluding a half-told tale. But it was worth the doing. Only in respect of the great figure Turpin has always made, has it been found really necessary to seriously consider and re-state the career of that much-overrated scoundrel, and to put him in his proper place: a very much lower one than he usually occupies.

Hero-worshippers of the highwaymen we cannot be; as thorough disbelievers of their picturesque exploits we dare not pose: for the rest, the proper spirit in which to treat the subject is that of ironic tolerance.

CHARLES G. HARPER.

Petersham,
Surrey,
October 1908.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SEPARATE PLATES

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

HALF-HOURS
WITH THE
HIGHWAYMEN

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE GENERAL DECLENSION FROM OUTLAW TO HIGHWAYMAN, AND THENCE TO FOOTPAD, THIEF, AND BURGLAR—GAMALIEL RATSEY—THOMAS DUN, OF DUNSTABLE

O, there was never a life like the robber's,

So careless, and gay, and free.

And its end? why, a cheer from the crowd below,

And a leap from the leafless tree.

Half-hours! In the days when the highwaymen flourished, and made travel perilous for law-abiding persons, a five-minutes' interview with one of these "Knights of the Road," who were but rarely knightly in their manners, would have been more than sufficient. Travellers, who had been violently abused, threatened, and robbed, did not observe that atmosphere of romance about the highwaymen, with which, not only modern times, but their own age, enwrapped them. The highwaymen have ever been accounted romantic, as we shall see in these ensuing pages; from the more or less mythical Robin Hood, down to the Carolean age of Captain Hind, Swiftnicks, and Du Vall, whose exploits were followed with interest and sympathy by their contemporaries. From a lengthy study of these things, one fact rises prominently above all others: it is the fact that the highwayman's only ceased to be a romantic figure when he stopped and robbed one's self, under the usual circumstances of coarse vituperation and personal indignity. On all other occasions, although he commonly practised after nightfall, he paradoxically moved in a rosy atmosphere, in company with the knightly figures of ancient chivalry (who themselves, if the truth of it were told, would probably be disclosed as a rather sordid crew).

The thrilling romance—or the side-splitting humorous circumstances, as the case might be—of one's acquaintance or next-door neighbour being plundered, threatened with death at the pistol-muzzle, and then, with his very coat stripped off his back, being bidden make haste away, is obvious enough, and the highwayman who did all the threatening and the plundering is easily seen to be at once a hero and a humorist; but when he met yourself in the darkling lane, and had your purse, your coat, and your gold watch, and d——d you because you did not carry more wealth, and so make it better worth the while of a gentleman like himself to be out upon the roads at such unconscionable hours—why, then he was a rogue of the most debased description, and the occasion was not so much humorous as tragical; while, as for Romance: what sickly cant is this? Where are the patrol? What are the peace-officers doing, to earn their pay? Is this a civilised country?

We shall see in these pages the fine flower and the gradual declension of the highwaymen: shall trace the mythical and the almost wholly imaginary figures to the time when, under Charles the First and the Commonwealth, it was difficult to tell where the Cavalier ended and the highwayman began; and shall thence come, by way of the disbanded troopers, who turned highway robbers in William the Third's reign, to that curious age when there was an even chance that the armed and mounted man who bade you "Stand and deliver!" was a baronet, or a footman out of place, turned gentleman of the road to support the vices he had learned of his masters.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, to its close—the era of Maclaine and Sixteen String Jack, the art of highway robbery becomes less idealised. There is more police-court about it, and less hazy glamour. Beau Brocade is a fine figure, well-dressed and splendidly mounted, on the heath, but in the dock at Bow Street, and later at the Old Bailey, he never showed to advantage, Sixteen String Jack excepted, with his pea-green coat and his bouquet, as big as a cabbage. And as the eighteenth century closed and gave place to the nineteenth, the mounted highwayman gradually disappeared, and the footpad, a miserable, muddy, cowardly figure, for whom no one ever had a good word, is seen in his dark lurk, in the wayside ditch, not often courageous enough to work alone, and generally found in couples, ready perhaps with the suffocating pitch-plasters that so terrified the wayfarers of that time.

The footpad never had the slightest inkling of romance, and was always brutal, whether he clapped that pitch-plaster over your mouth, or terrified you, or finished off his examination of your pockets by knocking you down and jumping on your body. A far cry, indeed, from the generous days of Captain Hind, or Claude Du Vall.

No one would ever contemplate a work on "Half-Hours with the Footpads." It would be to introduce the reader into the very worst of society, and the least entertaining; and so we come by degrees to the present era of the housebreakers and the newspaper records, where you may seek romance if you will.

THE FOOTPADS.

The history of the highwaymen is a lengthy emergence from ancient fables and marvellous rustic folklore, to more settled records. It is not peculiar in that gradual development. Such is the evolution of all history. But that of the highwaymen begins with the giants and the heroes, continued down through the legendary period of Robin Hood, to the times of the Civil War in England, between King Charles and his Parliament, when highway robbers cloaked their villainies with Royalist partisanship, to the less romantic eighteenth century, and finally ended, early in the nineteenth century, with all the glamour and tinselled things of the past, in squalid, commonplace circumstances. The highwaymen begin in the dimness of antiquity, continue very largely as heroic myths throughout the middle ages, become philanthropic and chivalric figures in succeeding eras, and later are seen to be mere masquerading footmen, brave only in their masters' fine clothes, seeking money wherewith to gamble and to live dissolute lives. They end, sordid, mud-splashed figures, from which romance shrinks; in no detail distinguishable from such vermin as the footpads, who on dark nights robbed women and children, and defenceless old men, for coppers in solitary lanes, and fled in terror from the robust.

When the profession of highwayman became extinct, those of pickpocket, card-sharper, and burglar were greatly reinforced. Some severe censors of modern times declare that the Joint Stock and Limited Liability Acts were passed in the interest of the classes in whose veins the highwayman blood flowed, and whose instincts could not, in the altered conditions of life, find expression on the road. As company promoters of the Whitaker Wright and Jabez Balfour type, it has been said, these providential enactments enabled them to satisfy their natural leanings. And so the old world journeys down the ringing grooves of change, even as Tennyson desired it should do, though perhaps not on the exact lines of his thoughts.

There are no heroes in these days; or, at the most of it, the hero of to-day, beslavered with overmuch praise, is discovered to-morrow to be a greatly overrated person, not so heroic as ourselves, if the truth were known and every one had his due.

The very last hero in the records of these allied criminal enterprises was Charles Peace, the burglar, who was hanged February 25th, 1879, for the murder (not in the way of his business), of Mr. Dyson, at Banner Cross, near Sheffield, on November 29th, 1876.

There can be no doubt that "Charley," as the police themselves almost affectionately called him, would in a more favourable era have been a highwayman. He had the instincts for the career, and was undoubtedly courageous enough, resourceful enough, and sufficiently equipped with what passed for wit and humour to have shone with no dim light, even in such days as those of Hind and Du Vall. He was not a hero, and the age insisted that he should ply a less respected craft than that of the highwayman, but he could have risen to such an occasion on the road, and perhaps because the public dimly saw as much, he figures in the imagination less as the armed midnight burglar he was, ready in cold blood to shoot down any one who stood in his way, than as a wonderfully daring and skilful adventurer, whose known exploits and whose legendary doings—for legends have accumulated around his well-known and ascertained career—can stir the pulse and heat the imagination. He was well-equipped even in the accident of his name. The heathen gods themselves might have laughed in their heavens—for humour was appreciated among the Olympians—at the sardonic jest of one named Peace prowling at dead of night, armed with a six-chambered revolver, ready and willing to slay those who should bar his path. And then how fine his gauge of the average intelligence, which even nowadays does not often range beyond that primitive conception of the typical burglar, in which he is pictured in the ankle-jacks, the breeches, the velveteen coat, and the moleskin cap of Bill Sikes. He saw that was the mental picture the British public cherished of gentlemen of his trade, and he took his cue therefrom, posing as an independent gentleman. It mattered little that his physiognomy actually reproduced the Bill Sikes head and face, with remarkable closeness; he dressed well, talked well, lived in nicely furnished houses in respectable neighbourhoods, and—last and clinching sign of respectability—he kept a horse and trap.

Until his arrest on the night of November 17th, 1878, in the act of committing a burglary at St. John's Park, Blackheath, he was a respected villa resident, who had a liking for art, a great fondness for music, and, in general, cultivated tastes. There was no reason, except such reason or such elements of chance, as may be found in the busy conduct of his trade, why he should ever have been caught. He burgled as cleverly as he lived; and had too much sense to work in company. Keeping his own counsel, and working alone, he was quite sure no pal would betray him.

His impudent assurance is well displayed in the authentic and well-known anecdote of his offering a choice cigar from among some he had looted, to a tradesman well acquainted with him. He entered the Peckham chemist's shop, made a purchase, passed the time o' day, and offered him his cigar-case. The shopkeeper took one, and later smoked it with great satisfaction.

When next Peace entered the shop, the shopkeeper said: "That was a fine cigar, sir, you gave me the other day."

"Yes," replied Peace, "they are good. I can't afford to buy, so I steal them."

"Do you?" rejoined the man, with a laugh at the absurdity of such a statement from a customer so apparently respectable as Peace; "I wish, then, you would steal me some more."

"I will!" said Peace; and he did. He had the effrontery to again burgle the place whence his original supply had come.

"Here," he said in a day or two, giving the shopkeeper a box full, "are the cigars I promised to steal for you." The delighted recipient thought how exquisitely his customer's kindness and humour blended.

There is nothing neater in all the history of highwaymen than this anecdote, twinkling brightly amid the matter-of-fact records of a degenerate day.

There is plentiful evidence that when Captain Alexander Smith in 1719-20 wrote and published his work upon the highwaymen and other evil-doers, he based his book upon the many chapbooks and broadsides then in existence. Many of them may even now be found by those who do not mind searching for them, but whether they will repay the trouble is quite another matter. He includes in his gallery even Robin Hood and Sir John Falstaff; and, not concerned to point out their legendary or merely literary character, gives an exact (though necessarily not a truthful) biography of each.

Several editions of Smith exist; some in three, others in two volumes. The title-pages vary largely, but all are extremely lengthy, and so curious that it is well worth while to reproduce one as on the next page.

A Compleat
HISTORY
of the
LIVES AND ROBBERIES
of the most Notorious
Highway-Men, Foot-Pads, Shop-Lifts,
and Cheats of both Sexes, in and about
London and Westminster, and all Parts of
Great Britain, for above an Hundred Years
past, continu'd to the present Time.
Wherein their most Secret and Barbarous Murders,
Unparalell'd Robberies, Notorious Thefts,
and Unheard of Cheats, are set in a true Light,
and Expos'd to publick View, for the common
Benefit of Mankind.

To which is prefix'd,
The Thieves New Canting-Dictionary,
Explaining the most mysterious Words,
New Terms, Significant Phrases, and Proper
Idioms, used at this present Time by
our Modern Thieves.

By Capt. ALEX. SMITH.

The Fifth Edition (adorn'd with Cuts) with the Addition of near Two Hundred Robberies lately committed.

In Two Volumes.

London. Printed for Sam. Briscoe, and sold by A. Dodd at the Peacock without Temple-Bar, 1719.

Captain Alexander Smith took an immense delight in his villains. You cannot fail to perceive, if you read his book, that his only contempt was for a bungler in the art. Royalist to the heart's core of him, he expends his most loving labours upon the freebooters who displayed his own political bias, and there can be little doubt that, while they did the robbing, it is the eloquence of Smith himself that supplies the embittered harangues, which the victims of Captain Hind, of Stafford, and of many another in his pages are supposed to endure. Nay, Smith enriches the career of many a Royalist highwayman with incidents those gallant fellows were entire strangers to; and himself robs (in the mere narration of pen, ink, and the printed page) prominent Puritans, who in actual life were assuredly never "held up" on the road.

The convention of disapproval of his heroes' villainies sits very lightly upon Alexander Smith. He pays that merest homage to virtue, but then starts rollicking through the biographies of the highwaymen with an unmistakable gusto. His table of comparative sinfulness is an oddity in itself. He says, ".... we have given them Precedency according as they excelled one another in Villainy. In their general Character the Reader will find the most unaccountable Relations of irregular Actions as ever were heard; penn'd all from their own Mouths, not borrow'd from the Account given of Malefactors by any of the Ordinaries of Newgate...."

He then continues, not very convincingly: "If we have here and there brought in some of these wicked Offenders venting a prophane Oath or curse, which is dash'd" (much is left to the imagination in a ——) "it is to paint them in their proper Colours; whose Words are always so odious, detestable, and foul, that some (as little acquainted with a God as they) would be apt to conclude that Nature spoil'd them in the Making, by setting their Mouths at the wrong end of their Bodies."

Sir John Falstaff strangely comes first in this Valhalla. Who ever, loving the Shakespearian Falstaff, would have expected him to be exalted on this particularly bad eminence, over the heads of the several atrocious murderers Smith does not scruple to include in his pages?

Johnson, Smith's copyist of twenty years later, like his precursor, boggles at no marvellous tale. They knew the temper of their times and worked in accord with it. Why be a critic in an uncritical age?

There were poets before Homer, but by all accounts they were a sorry lot; and there were biographers of highwaymen before Alexander Smith, but for the most part their works are deadly dull. They had excellent materials, but did not know how to handle them. Shakespeare alone, in the scenes on Gad's Hill with Falstaff and Prince Hal and the men in buckram, knew the way, and all London laughed with him at those merry adventures; but such tiresome productions as the Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey, published in 1605, continued to appear.

That little work is typical. Gamaliel Ratsey—whether a real or imaginary person I dare not say—appears by this publication to have been "a famous thiefe in England, executed at Bedford the 26 of March last past, 1605." Probably there was a Gamaliel Ratsey, highwayman, hanged then and there; but the adventures related of him are almost certainly inventions: well invented, but told without the slightest scintilla of literary merit. Yet this ragbag stuff has figured in reprints of "old English literature." So much the worse, then, for Old English literature, if this be representative; or, more likely so much the worse for the critical ability of those who considered it worth disinterring on those grounds. It is not "literature," and not representative of what old England could then produce in literature; but it is valuable as one of the origins of the highwaymen legends.

Gamaliel Ratsey, according to this publication, was born at Market Deeping, in Lincolnshire, the son of a respected local gentleman, one Richard Ratsey, who held a position in the service of a greater gentleman: an esquire, probably, in the train of a nobleman. His only son, Gamaliel, received a good education, but was of a roving disposition and went over to Ireland and joined the army of occupation there, under the Earl of Essex. He so distinguished himself, early in those operations, that he was made sergeant. Soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth, he returned to England with the Earl of Devonshire, and went home to Market Deeping. At the not far distant town of Spalding he began his filching career, by making use of the good terms he enjoyed with the landlady of an inn to steal a bag containing £40 in gold, which had been entrusted to her keeping by a farmer attending the market. To convince Ratsey how trusted a person she was, she foolishly showed where she had placed the bag; and as soon as her back was turned he had taken it from the cupboard where it lay, and made off.

When the farmer returned and wanted his money, there was the very deuce to pay. He and the landlady went off to the nearest justice and swore an information against Gamaliel, who was arrested and thrown into prison, but not before he had found time to return home and bury the bag in the garden. In confidence he told his mother where it was hid, his mother told his sister, his sister told her husband, her husband told his friends, and so at last the confession reached the ears of the justices. Gamaliel would undoubtedly have been hanged on that occasion, only he broke prison and escaped, clad only in his shirt.

His further adventures with Snell and Shorthose, two companions of like inclination, are in themselves amusing when reduced to less stilted language than that of the Life. Curiously enough, one of these incidents is concerned with the robbing of an actor, whom Ratsey bids deliver his money first, and a scene from Hamlet afterwards. So it was not from any want of acquaintance with the best models that the unnamed author of Ratsey's life failed to put life into his narrative. The incident is treated in as dead and wooden a manner as the rest.

A Cambridge scholar, robbed in similar manner, was bidden deliver a learned thesis. We find almost exactly parallel stories in Smith and Johnson. In those pages it is Sir Josselin (? Joscelin) Denville and his numerous band of robbers, who, meeting a Benedictine monk in a wood, make him preach a sermon in praise of thieving. Captain Dudley, a hundred years or so later, is represented demanding a sermon from a clergyman.

More shadowy even than Robin Hood, is "Thomas Dun." We may be in some reasonable doubt as to the validity of many incidents and biographies in the pages of Smith and Johnson, but there is no possible doubt whatever that the "Life of Thomas Dun" is what one of our own eighteenth-century highwaymen and cutpurses would have called a "flam." There was never a Thomas Dun, highwayman, bandit, and murderer, as depicted in those classic pages; but the fact that he was a myth does not prevent those painstaking authors from presenting us with a very exact narrative of his deeds.

The curious "moral reflection" prefaced to Thomas Dun's entirely apocryphal adventures is itself worth reproducing. It says: "A man who is not forced from necessity or a desire of pleasure to become dishonest, but follows his natural dispositions in robbing and maltreating others, will generally be found to be destitute of every humane and generous principle. So will it be found with this character—a person of mean extraction—who was born in Bedfordshire, and who, even in childhood, was noted for his pilfering propensity and the cruelty of his disposition."

He lived, it seems, in the time of Henry the First, "and so many were his atrocities," writes Johnson, "that we can only find limits for the recital of a few." The limits were perhaps more accurately determined by Johnson's own powers of invention.

Johnson did not, of course, invent Thomas Dun. He is the child of the ages. Equally with Robin Hood, every generation, until the decay of folklore, added some new touch to him, and Johnson did but reduce him to print, add a little more, and shape him out of the somewhat formless but threatening figure he presented.

There is this much basis for him: that, on the site of the town of Dunstable, and for some distance along the Holyhead Road in that direction, there extended, from Saxon times until the reign of Henry the First, a dense thicket of scrub woods, overgrowing the ancient ruins of the Roman station of Durocobrivæ. From the time of the Norman conquest the neighbourhood had been infested with robbers, and it was to drive them out and establish some sort of order that the king had clearings made in the woods that afforded such safe harbourage for outlaws. Under Royal encouragement a new town was founded, and in 1131 given, with the rights of market, to a priory that had been founded in the meanwhile. The King himself had a residence at "Dunstaplia," as the town was named, i.e. the "hill-staple" or market, and his successors were often there. The wool market was the most important at Dunstable; the monks long maintaining great flocks of sheep on the adjacent downs.

The robbers became only a memory, but a memory that never faded. It merely took on another form, and in the course of time the name of the town itself was twisted into an allusion to them and to their leader. It needed the collusion of gross ignorance and wild legend to effect so much, but the thing was done; and for centuries Dunstable was, and perhaps even now is, locally said to owe its name to "Dun's Stable," a hollow in the chalk downs, pointed out as having been the place where "Dun," the entirely imaginary leader of the outlaws, stabled his horse. If you doubt this there is the town seal to convince the sceptical, showing as it does what is said to be a horseshoe (a shoe of Dun's horse!), but is really intended for a staple or hasp.

The legendary Dun was a kind of bogey to the children of the neighbourhood, and in Johnson's pages is a most blood-thirsty creature. There we read that his first exploit was on the highway to Bedford, where he met a waggon full of corn, going to market, drawn by a fine team of horses. He accosted the waggoner, and in the midst of conversation stabbed him to the heart with a dagger. He buried the body, and drove the waggon off to the town, where he sold the corn and the waggon as well, and then disappeared!

Dun had a great animosity to lawyers (or, rather, the authors of the legends worked into them their own dislike of the legal profession, and it is curious to note how this runs, like a thread, throughout all the fabric of highwaymen stories), and, hearing that some were to dine at a certain inn at Bedford, went hurriedly into the house about an hour before the appointed time, and desired the landlord to hasten with the dinner, and to provide for ten or twelve. The company soon arrived, and while the lawyers thought Dun a servant of the inn, the innkeeper thought him an attendant of the lawyers. He bustled about, and on the bill being called for, collected the amount, and walked off with it. The company, tired of waiting for him to return with their change, rang the bell for it, and then discovered him to be an impostor. And the hats and cloaks and the silver spoons had gone too.

Dun became such a terror, that the sheriff of Bedford assembled a considerable force to attack him and his band. But Dun, finding his own men to equal, if not actually to outnumber, those sent against him, assumed the offensive, and, furiously attacking the sheriff's expedition, routed it and took eleven prisoners, whom he hanged upon trees in the woods, by way of a hint how rash a thing it was to interfere with him. Removing the prisoners' clothing, they dressed themselves in it, and forming a plan to rob the castle of a neighbouring nobleman, appeared before it in the uniform of the sheriff's men and demanded admission, "to search for Dun." Failing to find him, they requested all the keys of the place, to make a narrower search, and so looted many costly articles. Upon a complaint being lodged with the sheriff, the ruse was belatedly discovered.

It would be wearisome to follow all the fables that tell of Dun's twenty years' bloodstained progress to the scaffold. There is this much to be said in commendation of the popular legends of bandits: that when they are shown to be really bad, without redeeming traits, the legends duly see to it that justice is satisfied. And so with Dun, who is made to end disastrously at Bedford, even without the advantage of a formal trial. "When two executioners approached him he warned them of their danger if they should lay hands on him," and when they insisted upon doing so he struggled with them so successfully that he flung them nine times upon the scaffold, before his strength gave way. The crowds who gloated horribly over executions at Tyburn and elsewhere never had so great a treat as pictured in this fictitious scene: but this was merely the appetiser, the anchovies, so to speak, before the more solid course. Better was to follow.

The original executioners having been put out of action by Dun's violence, reinforcements were brought to bear, and did their business very effectually. "His hands were first chopped off at the wrist; then his arms at the elbows; next, about an inch from the shoulders; his feet below the ankles; his legs at the knees; and his thighs about five inches from the trunk. The horrible scene was then concluded by severing his head from the body, and consuming it to ashes. The other portions were set up in the principal places of Bedfordshire."

This by no means pretty ending, when told to children, terrified them more than all the terrific deeds attributed to Dun himself, and often woke them at night, screaming.

CHAPTER II

ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRY MEN

Bold Robin Hood

Was a forester good

As ever stepped in

The merry greenwood.

The mythical Thomas Dun's redeeming qualities, supposing him, indeed, to have possessed any, are not set forth in those legends of him. He is a blackguard shape; while the equally legendary Robin Hood is one of the brightest figures of romance.

Robin Hood is a poor man's hero, and has been, for over seven centuries, to the peasantry of England something of what King Arthur was to the nobles and the aristocracy. While Arthur was, and is some day again to be, the national hero in the larger issues of war and conquest, Robin remains the lion-hearted outlaw; warring from his boskage in the greenwood of Sherwood Forest, or Barnsdale, against the rich oppressors of the people, whether they be the nobles or the fat ecclesiastics of mediæval satire.

Many industrious writers have sought to reduce the Robin Hood myths to a connected whole, and to trace their origin, but the task has proved hopeless. He is as pervasive as the winds, and came whence no one knows, but may be traced back to the reign of Edward the Second, when he was already fully established as a ballad hero. Ritson, who collected and edited the ancient literature referring to him, is of opinion that he was a real person, Robert Fitzooth, and was born at Locksley, in Nottinghamshire, in 1160. But no evidence settles that point, and it is abundantly possible that he was really evolved from dim memories of Hereward the Wake, the Saxon hero, who long withstood William the Norman in the fens of Ely. In course of time his championship of a conquered nation was lost sight of, and merged into the endearing character of an English yeoman, outlawed for debt, taking refuge with others of his kin in the forest, whence they levied toll upon the oppressor, and, as they themselves were outlawed, respected no law, save that of the greenwood, where the best man was he who could draw the stoutest bow and shoot the straightest; who could make the best play with that truly English weapon, the quarter-staff, or deal the mightiest blow with the fist.

The whole cycle of Robin Hood legend is delightfully and most characteristically English, instinct with the purest and most passionate love of the countryside, and nerved with the championship of manhood's rights and with the fiercest hatred of the law and of the ruling classes in days when laws were the repressive measures instituted by the wealthy for the purpose of denying simple justice to the poor. The hatred of authority and the armed resistance to it, that are the leading features of Robin Hood legend, are no mere criminal traits, but violent protests (the only kind of protest then possible) against the bloody forest laws of the Norman and Plantagenet times, and the system by which the peasantry were serfs, with no more social rights than the negroes enjoyed before their emancipation in 1833.

Robin Hood legend was for centuries the expression of what might now be styled Liberal, or even Radical, or Socialist opinion, but it has an innate poetry and chivalry which those modern schools of thought conspicuously lack; and indeed, as personal liberty broadened, so did the legends of this splendid figure of romance become blunted and vulgarised in the countryside, until he is made interchangeable with the highwaymen who had only their own pockets to fill and no cause to represent.

How popular and how astonishingly widespread was the story of Robin Hood, we may readily guess from the many places or natural objects named after him. "Robin Hood's Butts" on the racecourse near Onibury, a mile and a half from Ludlow, are still pointed out. They are in the nature of sepulchral barrows. From there, says legend, Robin Hood shot an arrow that sped the mile and a half to Ludlow church, and fixed itself on the apex of the gable of the north transept! An arrow is certainly there, but Robin never shot it. It is, in fact, an iron likeness of an arrow, and is the sign of the guild of Fletchers, or arrow-makers, who built the transept.

There are other "Robin Hood's Butts" in the country: his "Cairns" on the Blackdown Hills in Somerset; "Robin Hood's Bay," on the Yorkshire Coast; his "Barrows," near Whitby; "Robin Hood's Tor," near Matlock; boundary-stones in Lincolnshire, known as "Robin Hood's Crosses"; a large logan-stone in Yorkshire, styled his "Penny Stone"; a fountain near Nottingham that figures as his; "Robin Hood's Well," between Doncaster and Wetherby; "Robin Hood's Stable," a cave in Nottinghamshire; a natural rock in Hopedale, Derbyshire, known as his "Chair"; his "Leap," a chasm at Chatsworth. A number of ancient oaks are "Robin Hood's," and legends of his exploits still cling to Skelbrooke Park, Plumpton Park, Cumberland, Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, and the forests of Sherwood, Barnsdale, Needwood, and Inglewood.

The forest of Inglewood, in Cumberland, is indeed associated with other outlaws as legendary as Robin himself or as that Irish figure of wild romance, "Rory o' the Hills." Andrew Bel, William of Cloudisdale, and Clym o' th' Clough are the great woodland triumvirate of the north.

ROBIN HOOD, UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

It would be a thankless office to dwell greatly upon the probability that Robin Hood, as an individual person, never existed, and that he was perhaps not even typical of the woodland outlaws of old, whose ideas and practices doubtless fell far short of the ballad Robin's ideals. It is much more pleasant to consider the romantic spirit that evolved him and gave him his exquisite setting of mossy glades and giant oaks, where the sun comes in golden-green shafts through the embowering foliage, and you hear the winding of the hunters' horns in chase of the deer. There is a springtime gladness in the old verses, of which this is typical:

Whan shaws bene sheene and shroddes full fayre,

And leaves both large and longe,

Itt's merry walking in the fayre forrist

To hear the small birdes songe.

To se the dere draw to the dale,

And leve the hillës hee,

And shadow hem in the levës grene,

Under the grene-wode tre.

It is the springtime of the year and of the English nation that you glimpse in these lines; a picture of that larger rural England of possible adventure, and uncontaminated skies that is now a thing of the past.

Nature is portrayed in these ballads with a vividness and certainty that more ambitious poets cannot match:

The woodweele sang and wold not cease,

Sitting upon the spraye,

Soe lowde, he wakened Robin Hood,

In the greenwood where he lay.

It is versification of the simplest and the most sincere kind.

Robin Hood, real or imaginary character, has himself no criminal taint, but he is one of the original founts whence the stream of highwayman legend is fed. It does not, or should not, sully his fame, that the stream becomes polluted with much vileness as it flows down the channel of time. A gradual vulgarising of the beautiful old story of the manly outlaws in Lincoln green, who went on foot and chased and shot the deer, and redressed wrongs in the leafy coverts, is sadly to be noted; and by the middle of the eighteenth century it became so obscured that it was possible for one of the booksellers of the time to foist upon an undiscriminating public an absurd production, in which Robin and the seventeenth-century Captain Hind figure as contemporaries. The poor threadbare rags of chivalry are thrown over the recreant shoulders of the highwaymen, but they suit them ill; and the fine clothes the highwaymen sometimes wore and the excellent horses they rode, do not hide from us their essential coarseness.

When Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman was written, about 1362, Robin Hood long had been a popular figure; and in that wonderful descriptive poem we find, among those lifelike figures, Sloth, the priest, who confesses himself ignorant of hymns of the Saviour and the Virgin, and unable even to repeat his paternoster; "but," he says, "I can ryme of Robin Hode."

That confession would scarce have pleased the real Robin, who was an exceedingly religious man. In the oldest ballad surviving of him, he is found lamenting that he has not been to mass for a fortnight, and he thereupon, at great risk, goes to Nottingham town, to repair the omission. He especially venerated the Virgin, and is in one ballad found to be so extremely devoted to his religious duties as to have three masses daily, before dinner.

At the same time, although he is found declaring to his band that no damage is to be done to any husbandman "that tylleth with his plough," nor to any good yeoman, nor to any knight or squire "that wolde be a good felowe," he delights in persecuting ecclesiastical dignitaries. A fat abbot, or a steward of a monastery, unlucky enough to fall in with him, has a weary time of it. The higher these personages, the worse the treatment meted out to them. "Ye shall then beat and bind," we find Robin directing his merry men; and as these ballads were but the essence of the public feeling of the age, it is quite evident that when at last Henry the Eighth made away with the monasteries, he must have had a very considerable and long-established force of popular sentiment entirely in accord with him.

One of the chief exploits of Robin with the dignified clergy was the traditional meeting with the Bishop of Hereford, in Skelbrooke Park, where he was said to have made the Bishop dance round an oak, and then, after plundering him, to have left him bound securely to the tree. Variations of the story are met with in plenty in legends of other outlaws and highwaymen.

That the Robin Hood legends impelled other romantic souls to take to the woodlands and be also Robin Hoods, in admiring imitation, seems sufficiently evident from old records, of which the Derbyshire petition to Parliament in 1439 is typical. The petitioners solicited help to procure the arrest of a certain Piers Venables and others who, it is stated, "wente into the wodes like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meyne."

Nottingham was ever a town inimical to our Robin; probably because it was nearest to his haunts in Sherwood Forest. In the earliest ballad extant of his exploits, we learn how, going piously into the town for the feast of Pentecost, he met an old monk whom he had once robbed of £100. The monk "betrays" him, and to prevent his escape the town gates are closed. Robin, seeking to leave, is captured, after a desperate resistance, and thrown into prison; and the false-hearted monk sets out for London, to convey the welcome news to the King, who will be delighted to learn that the bold outlaw is at last laid by the heels.

But Little John and Much waylay the monk, and kill him and his little page, and themselves, with the despatches, seek audience of the King, who sends a command by them to the Sheriff of Nottingham, ordering him to bring Robin Hood before him.

Arriving at Nottingham, these bearers of the King's commands are received with due honours and elaborately entertained. Finally, after much feasting and drinking, and when the sheriff and his men are sunk in a drunken sleep, Little John and Much steal their keys, kill the gaoler, and release Robin Hood. Then they return happily to the forest. The ballad ends by the pardon of Little John, in consideration of his fidelity to his chief.

Another ballad tells of the adventure of Robin and the potter. Meeting an itinerant seller of earthenware pots, Robin challenges him to the usual test of who is best man, a fight with quarter-staff. On this occasion he meets his match and is badly beaten. But there was never such a hungry man for a fight as our hero, and he then suggested a combat with swords, in which he was also vanquished. Then he changes clothes with the man of pots, buys his stock, and goes to Nottingham, where he sells them at less than cost price and so makes a speedy clearance of all but five. These he gives to the sheriff's wife, who then invites him to dinner. At the dinner-table he hears of a trial of skill at archery to be decided that afternoon, and attends and surpasses all competitors. The sheriff asks him of whom he learned such marvellous archery. "Of Robin Hood," he answered; and then the sheriff expresses a wish to see the outlaw. The pretended potter then conducts him into the depths of the forest and there blows a single blast upon his horn.

Immediately they are surrounded by Robin's own merry men, who compel the sheriff to leave his horse and other gear; glad enough to get away on any terms. Robin, however, courteously sends the sheriff's wife a white palfrey that "ambles like the wind."

Indeed, Robin was very much of a lady's man, and no outlaw worthy the name of forester was ever else. They were all squires of dames, and in this at least were equal, in theory at any rate, to the best "perfit gentil knight" that ever wore a lady's kerchief.

Courtesy to beauty in distress was ever one of the chiefest salves with which bandits salved their self-respect. No sentence of outlawry could make them rue, if to that principle they held them true. Even an outlaw had his ideals: to play special providence, to succour the distressed, to punish the oppressor, and "never to lay hands on a woman, save in the way of kindness." There were, of course, many lapses from these altitudes of conduct, but the ideal long remained, and only seems to have greatly decayed in the eighteenth century.

We have the historical instance of that adventure of the fugitive Queen of Henry the Sixth, lost in 1459 in the wilds of Staffordshire, after the disastrous battle of Blore Heath. Plying from that stricken field, on horseback, with her son, the youthful Prince Edward and one only retainer, the little party were surprised in the mountainous district of Axe Edge by a band of robbers, who seized their money, jewels, and every article of value. These savage men knew nothing of their rank, save that they were obviously people of quality. Then the rogues fell to quarrelling among themselves, as to the division of the spoil. Menaces were growled out, and swords drawn. Margaret of Anjou, the high-spirited Queen, seeing the bandits so engaged with each other, took her son by the arm and hurried with him into an adjacent wood.

MARGARET OF ANJOU AND THE BANDIT.

We hear no more of the solitary retainer. He seems to have left early.

The Queen and her son had not gone far when they encountered another outlaw. With the simple frankness of a great despair, she threw herself and the young Prince upon his mercy. "Friend," said she, "I entrust to your loyalty the son of your King."

What a generous-hearted bandit could do, he did. Taking them under his protection, he conducted them by secret and intricate ways into the comparative safety of the Lancastrian headquarters.

But to resume our Robin. The fate of Guy of Gisborne shows how rash it was to attack our friend in Lincoln green, who was by no means so green as he looked. Guy had sworn to apprehend the outlaw, and roamed the forest in search of him, in a "capull hyde," which is said to mean a horse's skin. Guy found him at last, with disastrous results to himself, for Robin slew him and mangled his body with what is particularly described as an "Irish knife." He then clothed himself in the "capull hyde" and took his deceased enemy's horn, and went off to Barnsdale, where his men, unknown to himself, had been in combat with the sheriff's force, with the result that several were killed and wounded on both sides. Robin's men had, however, the worst of the fight, and Little John had been taken prisoner and bound fast to a tree.

Robin, drawing near his men's haunts, blew a blast upon the horn he had taken, and the sheriff, recognising the note, and thinking it was Guy of Gisborne, come back victorious, went to meet him, with the result that he and his force were taken, and Robin's men released.

The many scattered ballads of Robin Hood that had long passed from mouth to mouth were collected, edited, and printed about 1500 by Wynkyn de Worde, under the title of A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode and his meyne, and of the proude Sheryfe of Notyngham.

According to this, the home of Robin Hood was in Barnsdale, the woodland tract between Doncaster and Pontefract. There Little John and two companions waylay Sir Richard at the Lea, a knight passing through the forest: a melancholy man, as sad as he of the Rueful Countenance. He is not afraid to accompany the rovers to their master, for he has little to lose. But Robin, far from ill-using, entertains him to a sumptuous dinner, served (by what marvellous means we are not told) in the merry greenwood. Such mediæval delicacies as swans, with, of course, pheasants, smoke at the outlaw's spread. The feast being concluded, the knight prepares to depart; but "Pay you, ere you wend!" says Robin; "it was never the custom of a yeoman to pay for a knight."

The knight, deeply humiliated, confessed he had but ten shillings.

"Go search," commands Robin to Little John. "If, sir, you have no more," he says to the knight, "I will not have a penny."

The search confirmed the knight's words; and it then appeared that this was a sorely stricken knight indeed.

"For a hundred winters," he explains, his ancestors had been knights, and until within the last two or three years he had possessed an income of four hundred pounds a year, as his neighbours well knew.

But his son was unlucky enough to kill a Lancashire knight, and a squire as well, in a joust; and, to help pay the penalty of his son's mishap, the father's goods had been "sette and solde," and his lands pledged to the Abbot of St. Mary's, for four hundred pounds. The day for repayment of this loan was close at hand, and the knight, unprovided with money, already foresees his estate pass from him.

Robin Hood then asks him, who would be the knight's surety, if he advanced the sum.

Alas! replies the knight, he is as badly in want of friends as of money. He can offer no surety, save Our Lady, who had never failed him before.

In Robin Hood's way of thinking, no better surety could be found, even if England were sought through and through; and the knight is immediately provided, not only with money, but with clothes, a horse, and a trusty squire, in the person of Little John. The whole band enter deeply into their leader's feelings, and weep salt tears over the knight's misfortunes, and themselves contribute liberally to supply his needs.

The second "fytte," or act, is placed at St. Mary's Abbey, on the day of reckoning, and the abbot is introduced, chuckling at the absence of the knight, and the probability of his lands being forfeited. The prior entreats his superior to show a little pity, but his call for moderation is scornfully rejected by the abbot, and by the cellarer, a fatheaded monk of the type made familiar in modern German paintings of tonsured voluptuaries eyeing tables full of food and stroking their paunches.

In midst of these proceedings, the knight enters, and humbly begs for an extension of time; but the abbot insists on his bond, and will have, and at once, either the money or the land. Then the high justice is introduced, as moderator:

"What will ye gyve more?" said the justice,

"And the knight shall make a release;

And elles dare I safly swere

Ye never hold your lande in pees."

"An hundred pounde" sayd the Abbot;

The justice said "Give him two."

"Nay, be God! sayd the knight,

"Ye gete ye it not soo:

"Though ye woulde gyve a thousande more,

Yet were ye never the nere;

Shall there never be myn eyre

Abbot, justyse, ne frere."

He sterte hym to a borde anone,

Tyll a table rounde,

And there he shoke out of a bagge,

Even four hundred pounde.

The debt thus paid, the knight takes leave of the disappointed abbot, and "went hym forthe full merye syngynge, as men have told the tale."

Living at home in retirement, he soon saves sufficient to get together the sum that Robin had advanced; and then equips himself with a splendid present of bows and arrows for the outlaw, and rides, with a merry song and a light heart, to Barnsdale.

The third fytte tells the adventures of Little John, who, straying into Nottingham, attracts the attention of the sheriff by his skill in archery, and enters into his service for one year, in the name of Reynold Greenleaf. But in a little while, in the sheriff's absence, Little John raises a quarrel in the house and runs away with the cook. Together they go off to the greenwood, with the family plate, and ready money, "three hundred pounds and three." Robin Hood receives them, but they have not long returned when Little John plans to capture the sheriff himself, on his way home. The seizure is easily made, and the sheriff is taken to the foresters' camp, where supper is served to him on his own plate. He is then stripped to his shirt and breeches, and released the next morning, after being obliged to take an oath never to lie in wait for Robin Hood, "by water, ne by londe," and if any of the band fall into his custody, to help them to the best of his power.

The fourth fytte opens with the cellarer of St. Mary's, travelling with a large sum of money. He falls in with Robin and his men, but declares he has only twenty marks. Little John, however, on searching him, discovers eight hundred pounds; whereupon Robin Hood exclaims that the money must be sent by Our Lady, who, with her accustomed goodness, had doubled the sum he lent the knight.

The monk is then bidden go his way, after refusing a parting glass; vowing, with much truth, that he might have dined cheaper at Blyth or Doncaster. The knight, at this moment, arrives with the money to repay his loan. Robin accepts his presents, but will not take the money, as Our Lady has just now paid it back, together with another four hundred pounds, which he begs the knight to accept.

The fifth fytte opens with the Sheriff of Nottingham proclaiming a shooting match. Robin attends, and bears off the prize, but as he leaves the town, the cry of "Robin Hood" is raised. "Great horns 'gan they to blow"; the townsmen assemble, and a fight begins, in which Little John is wounded in the knee, so that he can neither walk nor ride. In this desperate pass, he entreats his captain to smite off his head with his sword, so that he may not fall alive into the hands of the enemy, but Robin indignantly refuses. Little Much takes him on his back, and carries him off, halting from time to time to speed arrows into the ranks of the pursuing sheriff's men. They then all escape to the castle of their knightly friend, who, in the sixth fytte, is waylaid, and carried off by the sheriff.

The knight's lady then appeals to Robin Hood, who calls his men, and, proceeding to Nottingham, slays the "proud Sheriff" and releases the knight.

In the seventh fytte we have the arrival of "our comely King," Edward the Third, at Nottingham, come to inquire into a complaint the sheriff had made against the knight for harbouring outlaws. The King, for a whole year, endeavours to capture Robin or the knight, but has no sort of success until a forester offers, if the King will assume the costume of an abbot, to conduct him to the outlaws' retreat, "a mile under the lynde"; i.e. in the midst of the lime-trees, or lindens.

This offer is accepted, and Robin receives the pretended abbot with unusual courtesy, taking but one-half of the forty pounds he offers for ransom of himself. The "abbot" then produces a summons under the Royal seal, inviting Robin to Nottingham "both to meat and meal."

Robin goes down on bended knee before this august message, and entertains the "abbot" in the best style, with venison and

With good white bread and good red wine,

And therto fine ale brown.

After dinner he entertains his guest at a shooting-match; the chief condition being that whoever misses a rose-garland suspended between two poles shall forfeit bow, arrows, and quiver, and submit to receive a buffet on the head.

Robin misses by three fingers and more, and the King is entitled to inflict the penalty. He hesitates. "Smite boldly!" says Robin; "I give thee large leave."

Thus encouraged, the king, with one blow of his stalwart arm, makes the outlaw reel. Such an exhibition of vigour was more convincing than moral suasion, and Robin, perceiving that this is no abbot, but the King himself, submits at once, with his men. The sovereign graciously pardons them and invites them to London.

The eighth fytte concludes the story. Robin and his men follow the King to the Court; but within a year the love of the free and unconventional forest had lured away all but Robin and two companions, and Robin himself was sick to be gone. The finishing touch was the sight of a gathering of young archers.

"Alas! and well-a-way

If I dwell longer with the King,

Sorowe wyll me slay,"

says the sometime outlaw, longing to be a forester again.

So he forswears the Court, and retires again to the forest.

And there, the legends say, he lived as of old for twenty-two years; until falling sick, he resorted to the priory of Kirklees, where a kinswoman of his was prioress. After the medical fashion of the time, the remedy was to be slightly bled; but the treacherous prioress, and one Sir Roger of Doncaster, opened a vein by which he bled to death: dying "from the perfidy of a woman," as had been prophesied.

From the chamber in the gatehouse of the priory where he lay, he shot his final arrow, his faithful Little John whom he had summoned by three blasts of his horn, supporting him. The spot where the arrow fell was to be his grave, and there Little John was to lay him, with his bow bent by his side, a turf under his head, and another at his feet. The old ballad of his affecting end piously concludes:

Crist have mercy on his sowle

That dyed on the rood,

For he was a good outlawe

And dyde pore men much good.

The railed-in spot where he, by tradition, lies buried had once, we are told, a stone inscribed

[Click [here] for transliteration.]

But this appears to have been the invention of Martin Parker, author of the "True Tale" of the hero, c. 1632. It still, however, imposes upon the credulous and supports the somewhat sweeping saying current in Camden's time: "Tales of Robin Hood are good for fools."

Wykyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood romances is itself a proof of the wide popularity the hero had always enjoyed, and did still enjoy; but it does not stand alone as proof. In 1444 we hear a grumbling voice speaking of Robin, Little John, Friar Tuck, and the others of that immortal band, "of whom the foolish vulgar, in comedies and tragedies, make entertainments, and are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing them, above all other ballads."

A century later, none other than Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, preaching before Edward the Sixth, bore unwilling testimony to Robin's popularity with the masses: "I came once myself," he said, "to a place, riding on a journey homeward from London, and I sent word overnight into the town that I would preach there in the morning, because it was a holyday.... I thought I should have found a great company in the church, but when I came there, the church door was fast locked. I tarried there half an hour and more, and at last the key was found; and one of the parish comes to me, and says, 'Sir, this is a busy day with us, we cannot hear you; it is Robin Hood's Day. The parishes are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood.'

"I thought my rochet should have been regarded, though I were not," added Latimer, plaintively; "but it would not serve; it, too, was fain to give place to Robin Hood's men."

Apparently at this point the congregation laughed, for we find him, resuming, rather heatedly: "It is no laughing matter, my friends, but rather a weeping matter, a heavy matter, under the pretence of gathering for Robin Hood, a traitor, and a thief, to put out a preacher, to have his office less esteemed, to prefer Robin Hood before the preaching of God's Word."

In 1601, when England was living under a recently reformed religion, it became again necessary to reconstruct Robin Hood legend for popular acceptance, and in a play, written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, he appears as the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon; a figure for which there is not the slightest historical warranty. Thus the fabricated "epitaph" at Kirklees must itself have been, as it were, a by-product of this play. Maid Marian and several other characters who appear in it originated only a century earlier, and have no part in the earliest ballads. The play then gradually merged into May Day festivities and the once familiar "Jack-in-the-Green," extinct only within the last forty years, but greatly vulgarised towards the end, when chimney-sweeps acted "Jacks-in-the-Green," and the Maids Marian were too often fat and fiery-faced sluts. The entertainment was found all too often outside public-houses.

Robin Hood has, of course, equally with other heroes, suffered greatly from being continually edited and restated, from age to age. How should he escape the fate that King Arthur experienced, of being made into a distinctly Victorian gentleman? Tennyson has redressed old Robin, with new clothes and a new conscience, in The Foresters; Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and there you cannot but entertain the horrible suspicion that he has become a typically respectable mid-Victorian, and that if any one offered to exchange his greenwood tree for a "parlour" with perhaps a suite of walnut furniture upholstered in green repp, and a marble clock with a couple of glass lustres on the dining-room mantel-piece, he would gladly accept, forswear his woodland glades, and live cleanly thereafter.

But the two most striking evidences of the old-time popularity of Robin Hood, not so long dead, are found in the many inns named after him, and in that great friendly society, the "Ancient Order of Foresters," whose title is directly inspired by the legendary story of Robin and his fellow outlaws. No one who has ever seen the Foresters in their regalia at their annual day at the Crystal Palace can have any doubt of that inspiration.

CHAPTER III

THE "HAND OF GLORY"—LIABILITY OF COUNTRY DISTRICTS FOR ROBBERIES—EXEMPTION IN RESPECT OF SUNDAY TRAVELLING

Those far-distant, unpleasant days when "highway lawyers," and entirely unromantic bands of robbers, murderers, and footpads swarmed over the country, and robbed and slew with comparatively little fear of the law, were also extremely superstitious days. Good men and bad were alike steeped in a degrading belief in white and black magic, portents, and omens. Magical aids in the prosecution of both innocent and guilty enterprises were employed; and among them none more fearful than the charm known generally as the "Hand of Glory": the "open sesame" of thieves and assassins, among whom, it is to be feared, we must include not a few of our "romantic" highwaymen; although probably the larger number of them would actually have felt themselves insulted at being styled thieves, and certainly only a minority slew wilfully. Most desired nothing so little as to shed blood, in spite of the terrible alternative they threatened—"Your money, or your life!"

But among the thieves and the murderous the superstition of the "Hand of Glory" was widely prevalent. It appears to have originally derived from mediæval Germany, that storehouse of terrible imaginings. What the "Hand of Glory" was, and the effect it produced, may be seen better by the following quotation from the Ingoldsby Legends, which is one of the most genuinely thrilling passages in literature. It is full of the most dreadful description, but exquisitely done:

On the lone bleak moor, At the midnight hour,

Beneath the Gallows Tree,

Hand in hand The Murderers stand,

By one, by two, by three!

And the moon that night With a grey, cold light,

Each baleful object tips;

One half of her form Is seen through the storm,

The other half's hid in Eclipse!

And the cold wind howls, And the Thunder growls,

And the Lightning is broad and bright;

And altogether It's very bad weather,

And an unpleasant sort of a night!

"Now mount who list, And close by the wrist,

Sever me quickly the Dead Man's fist!

Now climb who dare Where he swings in air,

And pluck me five locks of the Dead Man's hair!"

THE "HAND OF GLORY": BENEATH THE GALLOWS TREE.

The dried hand, thus obtained, was fitted with wicks, one to each finger and the thumb, made from the five locks of hair dipped in grease from the murderer's own body and the fat of a black tom cat, and generally consecrated with the saying of the Lord's Prayer, backwards. When all these wicks were lighted, and the blazing Hand of Glory carried into a house, a spell was supposed to be cast on place and inmates, in which the malefactor could work his will:

"Now open lock To the Dead Man's knock!

Fly bolt, and bar, and band!

Nor move, nor swerve, Joint, muscle, or nerve,

At the spell of the Dead Man's hand!

Sleep, all who sleep!—Wake, all who wake!—

But be as the Dead, for the Dead Man's sake!"

"OPEN LOCK, TO THE DEAD MAN'S KNOCK."

Traditions not so long since surviving in the North Riding of Yorkshire tell a horrid story of the use of an enchanted hand of this kind. One wild and bitter night—the sort of night when homeless wayfarers were more than usually to be pitied—a man clad in ragged clothes knocked at the door of a lone inn on a solitary moor, and asked for a lodging. There was no accommodation to spare, but as the night was so inclement and the way was long to the next house, he was told that if he liked, he might lie in the front of the kitchen fire. He accepted this offer with every appearance of thankfulness, and soon after, when the family had gone to bed, he was left there. But although the innkeeper and his family had retired and left the stranger alone, the servant was still engaged for a few minutes in another room which chanced to command a view of the kitchen. Happening to glance in that direction, she was at first astonished, and then horrified, to find that the stranger had risen up from the floor and had seated himself at the table where she saw him take a shrivelled, mummified hand from his pocket, set it up, and then, one by one, light the fingers. The girl rushed upstairs to warn her master of these extraordinary doings, but she found him and his family all already in a charmed sleep. It was impossible to arouse them; and here she found herself alone in the house with the evil-intentioned stranger and his uncanny movements. She quietly went downstairs again and saw the beggarman exploring the house and collecting articles that appeared to him worth taking. Still on the kitchen table burnt the four fingers of the Hand of Glory, in blue, sickly flames; but the thumb was not burning. To that fact was due the circumstance that one person in the house remained unaffected by the spell.

Stealing on noiseless feet into the kitchen, she blew upon the Hand, but could not blow it out. She poured beer over it, but the Hand only seemed to burn better. She tried water, but that appeared to have no effect, one way or the other. Then she emptied the milk-jug over it. Immediately the place was in darkness, except for the glow of the kitchen-fire. The spell was instantly removed, the sleepers awakened, and the robber seized and afterwards tried and hanged.

Harrison Ainsworth, revelling as always in the horrible, gives us his version of the Hand of Glory in Rookwood. In this variant you recognise the nastiness of it, rather than the horror:

From the corse that hangs on the roadside tree

(A murderer's corse it needs must be)

Sever the right hand carefully:—

Sever the hand that the deed hath done,

Ere the flesh that clings to the bones be gone;

In its dry veins must blood be none.

Those ghastly fingers, white and cold,

Within a winding-sheet enfold;

Count the mystic count of seven;

Name the Governors of Heaven,

Then in earthly vessel place them,

And with dragon-wort encase them;

Bleach them in the noon-day sun,

Till the marrow melt and run,

Till the flesh is pale and wan.

As a moon-ensilver'd cloud—

As an unpolluted shroud.

Next within their chill embrace

The dead man's awful candle place;

Of murderer's fat must that candle be,

(You may scoop it beneath the roadside tree)

Of wax and of Lapland sesame.

Its wick must be twisted of hair of the dead,

By the crow and her brood on the wild waste shed.

Wherever that terrible light shall burn,

Vainly the sleeper may toss and turn;

His leaden lids shall he ne'er unclose

So long as that magical taper glows.

Life and treasure shall he command,

Who knoweth the charm of the Glorious Hand!

But of black cat's gall let him aye have a care,

And of screech-owl's venomous blood beware.

The ancient condition of Merry England was a despotic rule tempered by rebellion and highway robbery, in which the Barons revolted from time to time against kingly encroachments, and the peasantry were generally at odds with both those estates. The woodland tracts that then overspread the greater part of the country were filled with outlaws, of whom Robin Hood, as we have already seen, was a sublimated idealisation, and in those tangled thickets a man, or a body of men, might lurk and exist for years, subsisting upon the deer whom it was then, under the old forest laws, mutilation and death to slay. But with the law already arrayed against them, the outlaws who had been deprived of the very few rights a man of the peasant class might then own, cared little for the fearful penalties that awaited those who took a fat buck and converted it into venison, and valued not at all the punishments that awaited the highway robber. A man proscribed for some offence, who had then taken to the woods of necessity, might even, for sheer love of the life, elect to remain in them for sport; for the sporting instinct has ever been deeply implanted in the character of the English race, without respect of class. It is largely the sporting instinct, and not so much the actual worth of the quarry, that makes the modern poacher brave the keepers of the squire's preserves.

It was but a step from specialising in unlawful chase of the deer to robbing travellers. The deer-stealers were already Ishmaels, before they had dared so greatly, and they were doubly outlawed after so boldly usurping the hunting prerogatives of kings and nobles. What mattered, then, the taking of a purse; nay, even of a life?

The Legislature early attempted to put pressure upon local authorities, to secure the arrest of robbers, and, as usual, the pressure was exercised through that most vulnerable part, the pocket, the "Achilles' heel" of civilisation. The country (often in later years we find it "the county") was supposed to be responsible for good governance, and if the country was unfortunate enough to be infested with robbers, it was expected to arrest them; or failing that, to be financially answerable for their robberies. We find this specifically provided for by Act of Parliament in 1285, and again in 1354.

But it was impossible in those times, in the sparsely populated country, to suppress robbers, and the rural districts suffered severely in pocket as a result of bold pillaging in the day-time.

In 1509 Margaret Paston, writing from Norfolk, is found nervous of sending gold to London, and telling her husband, then staying in town, that a sum of twenty marks had been paid for a ward, but that the person who paid it "dare not aventure her money to be brought up to London for feere of robbyng; for it is seide heere that there goothe many thefys be twyx this and London." He was therefore to have the money at his coming home.

The county division known as "the hundred" was the area responsible and liable to reimburse losses occasioned in this manner. Thus, inter alia, we find the Hundred of Benhurst, in Berkshire, continually assessed to make good the losses sustained by travellers, along what is now the Bath Road, through Maidenhead Thicket, a place whose ill repute was second only to that of Hounslow Heath. By an Act of Parliament of 1585 (27 Elizabeth c. 13, s. 2) the sum recoverable from the hundreds was limited to half the travellers' loss. The reasons given for this limitation were the distress and impoverishment of the inhabitants by reason of these frequent and severe levies upon their purses. It is evidence of the extraordinary increase of highway robbery at that period. Five years after this enactment, the Hundred of Benhurst paid £255 compensation for robberies committed in the Thicket.

Even so, the liability of the country, the county, or the hundred, had always been limited to robberies committed in daylight. "Between sun and sun," i.e. between the setting of the sun and the next morning's sunrise, the highwaymen might work double tides and plunder as they would, and no action for damages would lie against the inhabitants.

Nor could travellers who were robbed on Sunday have any redress. It was particularly enacted by the statute of 1676, known as the Sunday Trading Act, that any one travelling on the Lord's Day did so entirely at his own risk, and was barred from bringing an action. "But nevertheless," the section continues, "the inhabitants of the counties and hundreds (after notice of such robbery to them, or some of them, given, or after hue-and-cry for the same to be brought) shall make or cause to be made fresh suit and pursuit after the offenders, with horsemen and footmen, according to the statute made in the twenty-seventh year of Queen Elizabeth, upon pain of forfeiting to the King's Majesty, his heirs and successors, as much money as might have been recovered against the hundred by the party robbed, if this had not been made."

CHAPTER IV

THE YOUNGER SONS—JUDGE POPHAM—SHAKESPEAREAN HIGHWAYMEN—THE "CAVALIER" BRIGANDS—A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS TRACT

No doubt many of the "highwaymen's" escapades in the times of Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth were the coltish pranks of high-spirited young men of family, or the freaks of university students. To assume a disguise, to buckle on a sword, and then take to the highway, singly or in bands, would be just the kind of adventure to tickle the fancy of such youths, and the danger that lay behind it all was really rather an appetising spice than a discouragement. The tradition of Henry the Fifth, when yet Prince of Wales, robbing on Gad's Hill for pastime, was still current, and Shakespeare had just revived it, and invested the doings of the Prince and Falstaff and their merry men with the glamour of the stage, which even then set the fashion.

Such a young man, according to Aubrey, was John Popham, afterwards Sir John, and Chief Justice of the King's Bench. "In his youthful days," says Aubrey, "he was a stout and skilful man at sword and buckler as any in that age, and wild enough in his recreations, consorting with profligate companions, and even at times wont to take a purse with them."

This wild fellow became, as a member of Parliament and a judge, an extremely severe personage in dealing with the class of people with whom we thus learn him to have associated. Partly his work was the Act of 1589, which prescribed banishment (or, as later times phrased it, "transportation") "into such parts beyond the seas as shall be at any time hereafter for that purpose assigned."

Shakespeare's highwaymen are, as a rule, gentlemen. Such were the outlaws who in the Two Gentlemen of Verona waylaid Valentine and Speed in the forest. They had been banished from Verona and Mantua merely for such trivial and essentially gentlemanly peccadilloes as an attempt to abduct an heiress, and stabbing another gentleman to the heart. Too bad!

They found Valentine so presentable a young man that, finding he had no property to lose, they immediately proposed to make him their captain. They were prepared to do him homage, and be ruled by him. "But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest."

Making the best of circumstances—being rather prepared to captain a band of desperadoes than lose his life, Valentine consented, with one proviso:

"I take your offer, and will live with you;

Provided that you do no outrages

On silly women, or poor passengers."

To which the outlaws indignantly reply that they "detest such vile, base practices."

The doings of Falstaff and Prince Hal in their highway robbery exploits on Gad's Hill are classic farce, with elements of probability, although Sir John Fastolf, the original Falstaff, was introduced by Shakespeare without the slightest warranty: the real Sir John having been no dissolute, cowardly old man, but a brave and stern soldier, who had warred nobly for King and country for forty years.

The point of view from which the gentlemen highwaymen regarded themselves is admirably set forth in the play of Sir John Oldcastle, produced in 1600. The stage is generally regarded as the mirror of life, and thus, when "Sir John à Wrotham" is made to introduce himself to the audience, by frankly acknowledging he was, "in plain terms, a thief; yet, let me tell you, too, an honest thief," we doubtless have the real mental attitude of the "collectors"—as they were pleased to fancifully style themselves—set forth. He goes on to declare himself, in the good old Robin Hood vein, to be "one that will take it where it may be spared, and spend it freely in good fellowship." A modern company-promoter, of the Whitaker Wright type, might say as much, but even if true, it would not be held an excuse.

The same outlook upon life is observed in The Cashiered Soldier, a tract published in 1643. It represents that warrior out of work exclaiming:

"To beg is base, as base as pick a purse;

To cheat, more base of all theft—that is worse.

Nor beg nor cheat will I—I scorn the same;

But while I live, maintain a soldier's name.

I'll purse it, I,—the highway is my hope;

His heart's not great that fears a little rope."

Again, Bishop Earle, in his Microcosmography, shows us how the highwaymen were recruited. Speaking of the sorrows of younger sons, and narrating the shifts to which they were often reduced, he says: "Others take a more crooked path, through the King's highway, where at length the vizard is plucked off, and they strike fair for Tyburne."

The biographies of highwaymen given later in these pages, fully illustrate the position of affairs in the succeeding age, and show that the country swarmed with highway robbers after the conclusion of the Civil War between King and Parliament. Many of them were impoverished cavaliers, but the most prominent were only pretended gentlemen, who used any Royalist sympathies they may have had in giving a specious excuse for their misdeeds. Captain Hind is typical of these plundering fellows in the era of the Commonwealth. So many were they, and so formidable, travelling, as they often did, in bands, that it became the business of the troops, at the conclusion of the war, to hunt out all such associated brigands.

On September 17th, 1649, General Fairfax issued a proclamation addressed to the commanders of "every respective regiment of horse," urging them to activity in the apprehension of all robbers, and promising high rewards for everyone captured. To this a Royalist print, the Man in the Moon, sarcastically rejoined that the "House of Robbers"—by which the House of Commons was meant—had voted for the next six months a reward of £10 for the taking of every burglar or highway-robber, "the State's officers exempted."

The proclamation, however, had its due effect, for on December 24th, no fewer than twenty-eight malefactors, principally of the classes specified, were all gibbeted together at Tyburn. Among them was "one Captain Reynolds, who was of the King's party in Cornwall, at the disbanding of the Lord Hopton's army at Truro.... His carriage was very bold, and, as he was going to be turned off, he cried: 'God bless King Charles: Vive le Roi.'"

But they were generally defiant at the last, whether Royalists or mere purse-takers; whether of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Conscience, which makes cowards of all, did not awake and begin to unnerve these candidates for Jack Ketch until the very opening of the nineteenth century.

Thus, in the olden times we find the condemned highwaymen nearly always nursing the grievance of their doom, and speaking of Justice and her emissaries as their "enemies"; as witness Thomas Hill, executed July 19th, 1694. Was he penitent at Tyburn? Not at all. His last words were, "God bless all my friends, and let all my enemies be hanged as I am"; and, adds his biographer "other reflecting and abusive Expressions."

Although it might well seem, after an extensive course of reading in the thoughts and deeds of those times, that the country was entirely populated by two classes: the scoundrels who were always trying to evade Justice, and the officers of the law, continually occupied in tracing them, an unobtrusive residuum of well-intentioned and well-conducted people existed. We do not, it is true, hear much of them, which is only to be expected; but they existed, nevertheless, and were often as anxious to save sinners as any modern tract-distributor.

A curious seventeenth-century four-page leaflet in the British Museum, styled A Terrible and Seasonable Warning, shows something of the well-meaning forces, as well as a good deal of the superstition, of the time, in an account of how a young man named Abraham Joiner, aged between seventeen and eighteen, described as a ballast-man, of Shakesby's Walk, near Shadwell church, was saved at the last moment from becoming a footpad or a highwayman. It is nothing more nor less than a seventeenth-century ancestor—and a very badly printed one—of the modern religious tracts produced nowadays by the million, in a rather hopeless endeavour to save hurrying sinners, often too anxiously wondering how they are to live in this world, without troubling about the next.

The young man began to keep bad company, and in especial that of one Ann Turner, who said she must have money, and he must by some means get it for her. Abraham went home in a desperate frame of mind. He thought of the several ways (none of them honest ones) in which money in a sufficiency might suddenly be obtained; and frightened his mother by saying he must and would get some, even though he asked the devil to help him to it.

"In this Humour," we learn, "he went out to the Cock and Lyon in King Street, where there came into A Room to him a Person in a Dark-colour'd Habit, and ask'd him what made him so Melancholly? If he wanted Money, he cou'd help him to it, and bid him meet him the next Night, which he at first told him he wou'd do; but afterwards suspecting it might be the Devil, he told him he cou'd not meet him at the time, then bid him meet him on Sunday, behind Stepney church, which he consented to do, and, going away, gave him a Pistole in gold (a coin, not a firearm) after which the Young Man grew uneasy in his Mind, and going home show'd his Brother, who advis'd him to throw the Money away, assuring him it could be none but the Devil, which very much terrified the young man, so that he threw the Money away, and was taken with a sudden trembling, and falling on his knees, besought God to forgive him.

"In this condition, Mr. Constable, the Minister of the Parish, was sent for, and Mr. Symons, who Pray'd by him till the time was over when he had promis'd to meet the Person he had seen, and Mr. Constable and the other Divines us'd many Prayers and exhortations with him, and at length so comforted him that 'tis hoped the Devil will have no further Power over him, if he takes this timely Warning of the Mercies of God."

"A TERRIBLE AND SEASONABLE WARNING."

Then follow "Some of the Prayers." The first page shows a very respectable-looking devil and a very greatly terrified young man; also some black-cassocked clergymen on their knees, very earnestly praying.

A curious broadsheet tract of about a century and a half later, entitled Wild Robert, may be fitly noticed here. Like the earlier tract, it was a purely religious publication; but the time had gone by for supernatural terrors to be invoked. Poetry, of sorts, is brought to bear, instead:

THE END OF WILD ROBERT.

THE EXECUTION OF WILD ROBERT.

Being a Warning to all Parents.

Wild Robert was a graceless Youth,

And bold in every sin

In early life with petty thefts,

His course he did begin.

But those who deal in lesser sins,

In great will soon offend;

And petty thefts, not check'd betimes,

In murder soon may end.

And now, like any beast of prey,

Wild Robert shrunk from view,

Save when at eve on Bagshot Heath

He met his harden'd crew.

With this fierce crew Wild Robert there

On plunder set his mind;

And watch'd and prowl'd the live-long night

To rob and slay mankind.

But God, whose vengeance never sleeps,

Tho' He delays the blow,

Can in a single moment lay

The prosperous villain low.

One night, a fatal night indeed!

Within a neigh'bring wood,

A harmless passenger he robb'd,

And dy'd his hands in blood.

The direful deed perform'd, he went

To shew his golden spoils,

When vengeful Justice, unawares,

Surpris'd him in her toils.

Wild Robert seiz'd, at once was known,

(No crape had hid his face)

Imprison'd, tried, condemn'd to die!

Soon run was Robert's race.

Since short the time the laws allow

To murderers doom'd to die,

How earnest shou'd the suppliant wretch

To Heaven for mercy cry!

But he, alas! no mercy sought,

Tho' summon'd to his fate;

The Cart drew near the Gallows Tree,

Where throng'd spectators wait.

Slow as he past no pious tongue

Pour'd forth a pitying pray'r;

Abhorrence all who saw him felt,

He, horror and despair.

And now the dismal death-bell toll'd,

The fatal cord was hung,

While sudden, deep and dreadful shrieks,

Burst forth amidst the throng.

Hark! 'tis his mother's voice he hears!

Deep horror shakes his frame;

'Tis rage and fury fill his breast,

Not pity, love, or shame.

"One moment hold!" the mother cries,

"His life one moment spare,

One kiss, my miserable child,

My Robert, once so dear!"

"Hence, cruel mother, hence," he said,

"Oh! deaf to nature's cry;

Your's is the fault I liv'd abhorr'd

And unlamented die.

"You gave me life, but with it gave

What made that life a curse;

My sins uncurb'd, my mind untaught,

Soon grew from bad to worse.

"I thought that if I 'scap'd the stroke

Of man's avenging rod,

All would be well, and I might mock

The vengeful pow'r of God.

"My hands no honest trade were taught,

My tongue no pious pray'r;

Uncheck'd I learnt to break the laws,

To pilfer, lie, and swear.

"The Sabbath bell that toll'd to church,

To me unheeded rung;

God's holy name and word I curs'd

With my blaspheming tongue.

"No mercy now, your ruin'd child

Of heav'n can dare implore,

I mocked at grace, and now I fear

My day of grace is o'er.

"Blame not the law which dooms your son,

Compar'd with you 'tis mild;

'Tis you have sentenc'd me to death,

To hell have doom'd your child."

He spoke, and fixing fast the cord,

Resigned his guilty breath;

Down at his feet his mother fell,

By conscience struck with death.

Ye parents, taught by this sad tale,

Avoid the path she trod;

And teach your sons in early years

The fear and love of God.

So shall their days, tho' doom'd to toil,

With peace and hope be blest;

And heav'n, when life's short task is o'er,

Receive their souls to rest.

The price of this improving publication was one halfpenny, and no one, observing the dramatic picture with which it begins, or reading the verses, will be disposed to think value for money was not given. Let us hope the parents of that age duly profited by the advice given!

CHAPTER V

ENORMOUS CAPTURES MADE BY HIGHWAY GANGS—BRACY'S GANG—ROBBERIES ON THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET—ADVERTISEMENTS OF THE PERIOD—AUGUSTIN KING—PLUNDER AND BATTLE ON THE ST. ALBANS ROAD—SOLDIERS AS HIGHWAYMEN

Much has already been said in these pages of the imaginative character of a good deal to be found in Captain Alexander Smith's Lives of the Highwaymen, but at the same time it would not be proper to regard that work as a work of fiction. The amazing adventures of the highwaymen whose careers are treated of there can be readily paralleled in the actual trials of their kind, not only in the periods with which he deals, but at a much later time. The enormous booty they carry off in his pages may seem incredible, but time and again we find, in accounts that cannot be disputed, that the highwaymen did, in fact, secure extremely large sums. Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, if it were necessary to prove the truth of this statement. The trial at Derby in August 1679 of "Twelve Notorious Highway Men, Murderers, and Clippers of Money" is merely one case in point.

These were "Mr." Bracy, evidently superior to most of the gang, Richard Piggen, Roger Brookham, another superior person, one "Mr." Gerrat, John Barker, William Loe, John Roobottom, Thomas Ouldome, John Baker, Daniel Buck, Thomas Gillat, and one Smedley.

Bracy was captain of the gang: the head and brains of it. They broke one night into the house of "Captain John Munday, Esquire," at Morton, near Derby, took away £1200 in gold and silver, also plate, "binding the Esquire and all his Family in their beds, and using great insolences by threats, to make them confess their Treasures."

Two months after this exploit the gang "met" (not, we may suppose, casually) a waggon between Lenton and Newark, in which were several small barrels of money, and others of gold lace. Securing the waggoner, they hauled out the barrels, and, breaking open the barrel-heads with the hatchets they had been careful to bring with them, they secured a booty of eighteen hundred pounds, "which," we are told, "they divided, and so disperst."

Buck, together with a man named Ryley, was shortly afterwards taken at Ockbrook, near Derby. Both were hanged. The rest of the company continued their former practices. Breaking open the house of Lady Jane Scroop, at Everston, near Nottingham, they took £600, "missing two or three thousands by being one day too forward in their Actions." They then must needs quarrel over dividing the spoil. The affair is best told in the words of the original account:

"Upon the discussing of this booty, one of the company and Bracy falling at a difference, they had a small Combate with their Swords, the other cutting the Throate of a Mare that Bracy rode upon, which for swiftness and goodness was hardly to be compar'd in England."

The gang next proposed to raid the house of one Squire Gilbert, at Locko, near Derby, and that of Mr. Garland at Lenton; but in the meanwhile most of them were arrested. Bracy, who at that time had hurried off to his wife's death-bed, at an inn she kept, twelve miles north of Nottingham, was betrayed by one of the servants of the inn, who informed the Justices that the highwayman who was being sought was in the house. The inn was presently surrounded, and Bracy's son, looking out of a window, saw there was little chance of his father escaping. What chance there remained was tried. Taking a horse out of the stable at the back, he bid his father mount, leap the fence, and make a dash for it. It was a poor chance, and was made worse by the horse refusing the jump. A sheriff's man then shot the horse dead, and with a second bullet wounded Bracy himself. The highwayman, however, continued the combat until he sank, mortally wounded. He was then carried to a bed in the inn, where he died.

The remnant of this numerous band were indomitably active. Three of them beset two gentlemen in Needwood Forest, bidding them "Stand and deliver!" Refusing, one of them was shot; but the other, with sword and pistol, made a brisk resistance, until one of the thieves, creeping up behind, ran him through the body.

THE FIGHT IN NEEDWOOD FOREST.

These three were not long afterwards arrested for clipping money. Tried and convicted of that offence, itself involving capital punishment, they had no hesitation in confessing their other crimes.

Among others at that time under arrest were Piggen and Baker. Piggen turned King's evidence, and was pardoned: Baker also being pardoned, but why, we do not learn. Among the facts deposed to by these convicted criminals was that the gang were accustomed to meet at an inn called the "Cock," near St. Michael's Church, Derby, kept by a widow named Massey and John Baker, her son-in-law. There they had clipped in one night so much as £100. A boy of fifteen years of age was employed in the house, and by some means accidentally learnt too much of the gang's business. They thought him too dangerous, and so murdered him and buried his body in the cellar.

Where wealth gathered, there were the highwaymen also. There was no road more frequented by wealthy men in the reign of James the First and that of Charles the Second than the road to Newmarket. The Court was frequently there for the race-meetings, and gamblers of all kinds were naturally attracted. Many a gamester who had lost his all on horses or by cards at Newmarket took as a matter of course to robbing other sportsmen: either those hasting down to try their luck, or those fortunate ones who were returning home with pockets bulging with their winnings. One William Fennor, who in 1617 published a pamphlet called the Competers' Common-Wealth, has much that is interesting to disclose about these reckless blades. A "competer" was, of course, one of the gamesters aforesaid; and any of them who had the misfortune to lose his money went immediately, as he tells us, upon the Heath, to replenish his pockets. They were by no means proud, and did not disdain to rob rustics of their pence. "Poor Countrie people," he says, with bitter satire, "cannot passe quietly to the Cottages, but some Gentlemen will borrow all the money they have." Tyburn Tree and Wapping Gibbets, he added, had "many hangers-on," gathered in from among these gentry.

Fennor's disclosures did not end these practices. As the fame and vogue of Newmarket increased, so also did the highway robberies on the Newmarket Road. The culminating point of it all appears to have been a pitched battle which, according to the Domestic Intelligence of August 24th in that year, took place at the Devil's Ditch, through which the highway runs on to Newmarket Heath. Five highwaymen had here robbed a coach and taken £59, and a very considerable booty in the way of gold lace, silks, and linen. Before they could make off with the plunder, the exasperated countryfolk were roused, and were stationed in a body in the opening of that tall and steep bank, impracticable for horsemen, the only way by which the Heath may be entered or left. The highwaymen were thus completely shut in, and could only escape by abandoning their horses: an unthinkable alternative. Had they retreated, they would have been captured in Newmarket town. The only thing to be done was to make a dash for liberty. "Knowing themselves Dead Men by the Law, if they were taken," says that early newspaper, "they charged through the Countrymen, and by Firing upon them Wounded four, one of which we understand is Dead of his Wounds." Thus they got clear away: the whole incident leaving upon the mind a very vivid impression of a lawless and ill-policed country.

Not only were these men determined in resistance. They were ready to revenge such of their comrades as had been unfortunate enough to be captured; as we see from the diary of Sir John Reresby, who, writing in February 1677, says: "I went to London (from York) well guarded, for fear of some of my back friends and highwaymen, having caused the chief of them to be taken not long before."

The newspapers of that time were full of advertisements offering rewards for the recovery of property, or the apprehension of thieves. Some of them afford amusing reading. Thus, in the London Gazette of December 1st, 1681, we find the following:

"Robb'd the 10th of Nov. last, from Mr. Joseph Bullock of Bristol, on the Road between Hungerford and Newbury in Barkshire, one Silver Watch and Case, there being on the backside of the Case an Almanack, a Hanger with a Plate Hilt, a Buff Belt, with Silver Buckles; by Three Men, the one a middle-siz'd Man, full Fac'd, a short White Wigg much Curl'd in an old Cloth-colour riding Coat, on a Flea-bitten Horse, about 14 hands high, his Brows Brown; the other a middle-sized Black Favour'd, on a Grey Horse, above 14 hands high, with Black Hair or Wigg, and thin Favour, the other a full set Man, thin Favour'd with curled dark Brown Hair. Whoever can discover the Persons aforesaid to Mr. Bullock of Bristol or at the Three Cups in Breadstreet, London; (the said Robbers having killed one John Thomas, the said Mr. Bullock's Servant,) shall have their Charges, and ten pounds reward."

Here, in the matter-of-fact language of an advertisement, we see one of those obscure tragedies that were always occurring on the roads: bloodshed that for the most part called in vain for vengeance.

Again—this time in 1684—the London Gazette is used as the medium, in an effort to obtain justice, but it is not to be supposed that there were any results. He must have been an extremely sanguine advertiser to have offered so speculative a reward for information so greatly desired:

"On Whitsunday in the Evening was committed a great Robbery by four Highwaymen within half a mile of Watford Gap in the County of Northampton, to the value of above Eight score Pounds taken from some Passengers. They were of indifferent stature, their Coats were all turned up with Shag, one had a blew Shag, and wore a Perriwig, the others wore their own Hair; They had two Bay Naggs, a Bay Mare somewhat battered before, and a Sprig Tail Sorrel Mare, which they took away from one they robb'd, and a black Nag; one of them had short Holsters to his Saddle without breast-plate, another a pair of Pistols in his Saddle Cover. Whoever gives notice of the said Robbers to Joshuah Snowden, Confectioner at the Belsavage Gate on Ludgate Hill, or to Henry Keys at Watford Gap Inn, shall be well rewarded."

Even University graduates were at this period known to occasionally present a pistol upon the road. Such behaviour was by no means uncommon among collegers in earlier centuries, but we read with astonishment how Augustine King, a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, was publicly advertised in the London Gazette of December 1st, 1687, among other highwaymen, as follows:

"There is likewise abroad one Augustine King, formerly convicted at Cambridge; a Notorious Highway Robber, who made his Escape from the Gatehouse. He is a lusty fat man, about 31 or 32 years of Age, fresh-coloured, full Ey'd, his own Hair, lank, inclinable to black: he hath several more in his Company, who, some, or most of them, are well-known to some Inn-keepers not far distant from London, who will do well to cause them, especially King, to be taken before next Sessions at the Old Bayly, for their own Indemnity."

King would seem to have actually been captured as a result of this public announcement, for we find that he was executed in the following year.

The road on to St. Albans witnessed astounding doings. On November 9th, 1690, seven highwaymen robbed the Manchester carrier of £15,000, tax-money, which was being conveyed under what is described as a "strong" escort, to London. The robbery was coolly planned and with equal coolness executed. At their leisure the highwaymen arrived on the scene, fully advised of the approach of the carrier, and proceeded to seize and rob all wayfarers and then securely tie them to trees. Having thus made sure of not being interrupted, they were ready for the chief booty of the day. Dashing among the strong escort, they overcame them in a fight, whose details are not reported, and after taking the money killed or hamstrung eighteen horses, to render pursuit impossible.

It appears that this was looked upon as a Jacobite and Roman Catholic plot, and that two Roman Catholics were arrested on suspicion and committed for trial; but the rest is obscure. Some suspicious persons might even regard the whole affair as a put-up job between the escort who thus betrayed their trust and shared an excellent haul.

Again, at London Colney, near by, on the night of August 23rd, 1692, the highwaymen performed a notable feat; robbing none other than the great Duke of Marlborough, the foremost military genius of the age, of five hundred guineas.

Three months later a party of highwaymen—no doubt the same dare-devil rogues—secured between £1,500 and £2,000 out of a waggon "near Barnet," and in November the Oxford coach was pillaged in mid-day, after a bloody fight. About the same time, we read in Narcissus Luttrell's diary, fifteen butchers, going to Thame market to buy cattle, were robbed by nine highwaymen, who carried them over a hedge, made them drink King James's health in a bottle of brandy, and bid them sue the county: a remedy open to travellers who were robbed on the roads in daylight "between sunrise and sunset."

Military force was found necessary for the suppression of these outrages. Detachments of Dragoons were sent out all round London and posted at a distance of about ten miles out, on the great roads. The captures effected by these patrols were numerous; but at some spot not more clearly identified than as being "near Barnet" they had an armed encounter with the band led by "Captain" James Whitney, December 6th, 1692. One Dragoon was killed, but Whitney was captured and duly executed, and the roads, in the north, at any rate, for awhile had peace.

Not, however, for very long. Robberies may not have been again committed on so astonishing a scale; but highwaymen reappeared when the Dragoons were withdrawn, and found their occupation, not only lucrative, but pretty safe.

But as the years went on, things grew steadily worse. Unemployment was the principal cause of the enormous increase of highway robberies in 1698. Highwaymen, as we have already seen, were numerous before, but they now grew more than ever daring. The Peace of Ryswick, which had the year before ended an inglorious war, caused great numbers of soldiers to be disbanded, and, finding no livelihood to be obtained in honest work, they naturally chose to plunder the travellers whom they observed journeying to and from London, often with well-filled purses, ready to become the property of any bold fellow who could command a good horse, a pistol or sword, and courage to stop men on their lawful business. Near Waltham Cross, bandits to the number of thirty built themselves huts amid the leafy coverts of Epping Forest, and, without waiting for the kindly obscurity of night, came forth at all hours with deadly weapons and held up the traffic along the Cambridge and the Newmarket roads.

They did not hesitate to slay, and often the bodies of slaughtered wayfarers affrighted the next travellers, who, warned by such sights of the futility of resistance, rendered unto these highway Cæsars whatever they had about them: satisfied to escape, with empty pockets indeed, but with a whole skin. For a while this settlement of reckless men was abolished by a raid, under the direction of the Lord Chief Justice, but the expedition, raiding in the interests of law and order, had not long departed when the outlaws again occupied the spot. They even had the impudence to send a written and signed defiance to Whitehall. There they went too far, for that would have been no Government worthy of the name which consented to receive such a document and to idly pass it by. Another Dragoon expedition, somewhat similar to that of 1692, was equipped, and while some of the soldiers patrolled the roads in that direction, others encamped for a time in the Forest itself. Thus it is probable that soldiers still in service were employed against those others not so fortunate, who had been disbanded and obliged to seek these ways of existence.

This fraternity was certainly broken up, and we do not hear again of such numerous, or such highly organised, bands; but when the Dragoons were again withdrawn, the roads once more became extremely dangerous.

The Dragoons themselves were, individually, not above suspicion. No doubt they learned some useful things when engaged on this kind of duty; and when such unskilled persons in the use of arms as ruined gamesters took to the road to replenish their pockets, it was perhaps not remarkable that soldiers should seek to add to their scanty pay by like means. The Guards regiments numbered many experts in the "Stand and deliver" way. Opportunity helped them. They were already armed, and, as they did not live in barracks until about 1790, and were merely quartered on the inhabitants of London and Westminster, they were free at all hours of the night to "labour in the calling of purse-taking."

Thus we read of a quite typical affair in January 1704, on Hounslow Heath, in which James Harris, a trooper in the Horse Guards, was principally concerned. It seems that on the 26th of that month a certain George Smith, Esquire, and a Major Wade, of Bristol, were travelling westward in a postchaise. They halted at the "Pack Horse" at Turnham Green, "for refreshment," and appear to have refreshed so well that by the time their equipage was crossing Hounslow Heath they had fallen fast asleep. From this slumber of repletion they were rudely awakened by stern voices saying, "D—n you, give me your money!" and "D—n you, give me your watch!"

"Who's that a-calling?" asks the songster. In this case it was James Harris and a companion, who robbed them effectually after a rough-and-tumble with the servant of Mr. Smith, who sprang at Harris and pulled him off his horse. There they struggled, and presently the highwayman's mask was torn off, disclosing his scarred face. Mr. Smith then declared he would give up all his valuables if the highwayman would spare his man's life, and the affair ended.

Mr. Smith afterwards, hearing that a man answering to this description had been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in other robberies, came forward, entirely in the public interest, and identified him at the military mews. "Sir, do you know me?" Harris impudently asked, advancing upon him with insolent braggadocio. Mr. Smith did.

Harris was indicted at the Sessions on February 28th, and found guilty, but was afterwards reprieved.

Such lenient treatment was not calculated to render the highways more safe, and so especially dangerous became the road between Shoreditch and Cheshunt that the turnpike men were in 1722 provided with speaking-trumpets, in a singular effort to warn travellers and one another "in case any Highwaymen or footpads are out." It does not appear exactly how this idea was worked, or if travellers were supposed to wait until such highwaymen or footpads retired: but, according to a newspaper report of that time, the scheme was successful, for we read: "We don't find that any robbery has been committed in that quarter since they have been furnished with them, which has been these two months."

Other roads and suburban districts to the east and north-east of London continued to be extremely dangerous. In the history of Hackney we read, for example, of numerous highway robberies, burglaries, and murders, in a long series of years. The neighbourhood of the then almost trackless Hackney Marshes no doubt was a predisposing cause for this exceptional ill-repute. Here again, we find that soldiers were often the criminals. On November 23rd, 1728, the house of a Mr. Wood, a farmer, near Hackney, was broken open by half-a-dozen fellows, who seized and bound all the family. The account then goes on to say that, "They had the good conduct to take off their coats that nobody might know what regiment they belonged to, and robbed in their red waistcoats only, but left a cockade behind them. It is supposed they belonged to the Dragoons; but those gentlemen (it is humbly presumed) ought not to leave their cockades behind them when they go upon such expeditions, such things being of no use but upon reviews."

CHAPTER VI

"WHO GOES HOME?" IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS—FOOTMEN TURN HIGHWAYMEN—SIR SIMON CLARKE—A MERRY FREAK AND ITS TRAGICAL CONSEQUENCES—AMAZING POLTROONERY OF TRAVELLERS—ADVERTISEMENTS OF THE PERIOD—HIGHWAY ROBBERY IN PICCADILLY

An old-world survival, heard every night in the lobbies of the House of Commons during session, is that of the cry, "Who goes Home?" When the House rises, and the legislators, who have left their brains outside and have voted "as their leaders tell 'em to" are dispersing, the stentorian shout of "Who goes Home?" passes from policeman to policeman, along corridors and down staircases, until at last it reaches the coachmen and the cabmen waiting in Palace Yard. The cry means nothing now, except that the sitting is over, but it originated in the ill-guarded condition of the streets and of the suburbs some hundreds of years ago, when even members of Parliament were not safe from highwaymen and footpads, and when at that call they assembled in little bands, often under the protection of the linkmen, to journey together for mutual protection to their several destinations.

"WHO GOES HOME?"

Those were the times when Londoners, travelling at night westward from Hyde Park Corner, where the last outpost of civilisation, in the shape of the ultimate watchman's box, was situated, assembled there in parties, armed with bludgeons and blunderbusses, and, so fortified, came thankfully to their destinations in one or other of those solitary country mansions, whose high-walled gardens and heavy doors arouse the astonishment of those modern observers who do not realise the old necessity that existed for residences so situated being planned very much after the style of block-houses in a hostile country.

Nor was it only by night that the fringes of London were made dangerous by highwaymen and footpads. Hyde Park was a fashionable resort, even under the Commonwealth, but even in the early years of the succeeding century it was a dangerous place, as we learn from the following item in Narcissus Luttrell's diary, only one among many such, under date of 1704:

1704. "A Gentleman going from St. James's to Kensington was met and attacked in Hide Park by two Foot Pads, who took from him his Sword, Watch, Perriwig, and Rings, in all to the value of £130, and left him in a deplorable condition."

The highwaymen who terrorised travellers from about 1720 and onwards were still recruited from the ranks of younger sons, from broken gamesters, and from the army; but about this time they were very largely reinforced by a class of men now extinct. The noblemen and the wealthy of the eighteenth century kept up establishments that have long since become things of the past. The "running footmen," for example, who were a feature in every peer's household, trotting in advance of my lord's carriage, are only to be found in books on bygone usages. The Duke of Queensberry, "Old Q," kept the last of them, and he died in 1810. From the footmen, "running" or other, the coachmen, and the other servants of nobility in that age, the roads were very largely peopled with highwaymen. These men had learned in service to imitate all the vices and none of the virtues (although they were few enough) of their masters. Their imitation chiefly led them into gambling, and when they lost their places through their failure to do their duty, and sometimes the robbery of plate and money, that commonly resulted from their devotion to cards and drink, there was nothing easier than to take to the road. They had learned, in their association with the great, something of deportment, they could generally ride a horse, and a cast-off suit of my lord's fully furnished them, in the bad light of a winter's day, with the appearance of gentlemen. Such at that period were many of the "Knights of the Road"; and thus, in spite of the glowing accounts commonly given of the mid-eighteenth century highwaymen, it is not surprising to find that they were, as a general rule, merely sordid fellows, whose idea of repartee was the cold muzzle of a pistol and a "Deliver instantly": embellished with a volley of oaths.

But now and again we happen upon some pleasing play of fancy; as, for instance, when Harry Simms, a really dashing highwayman who was well known as "Gentleman Harry," came upon a gentleman in a postchaise. Harry rode furiously always. "Don't ride your horse so hard, sir," said the gentleman, "or you'll soon ride away all your estate."

"Indeed I shall not," returned Gentleman Harry, "for it lies in several counties."

He then bade the traveller deliver what he had about him, which proved to be over a hundred guineas, and having realised so much of his widely distributed estate, he made off in search of fresh adventure. He found plenty, before he was finally captured at Dunstable and hanged in June 1747.

"Gentleman Harry" was but a gentleman by the popular recognition accorded his dashing ways; but a real, officially recognised gentleman was at the same time upon the road; no less a personage than Sir Simon Clarke, Bart., who, in company with a certain Lieutenant Arnott, scoured the roads of Hampshire for a brief space. The Baronet was brought to trial at Winchester and convicted, but so impressed were the High Sheriff and the grand jury by the threatened scandal of a Baronet, even though merely a bad one, being hanged, that they petitioned the King on the subject, and Sir Simon Clarke was reprieved sine die, "which," says the contemporary chronicler of these things, "implies for ever."

There was, however, a certain blind fury about the ways of Justice at that time, which in general boded ill for evil-doers. The abstract theory of Justice eliminates the idea of revenge, and capital punishment for all manner of trivial offences was inflicted, less from any real sense of the enormity of the crimes, than with the object of protecting Society. Society could not adequately be protected in those days by the primitive forerunners of our police, and so, when by chance any criminal was captured—and the capturing of them generally was a chance affair—Justice usually made a terrible example of them, by way of warning. It was only as times grew gradually more secure that it was imagined justice could really afford to dispense with these examples, which were fondly thought to be deterrents. Capital punishment was then the best conceivable warning to others not to go and do likewise, and the subsequent exhibition of the criminals' bodies dangling from gibbets was the next best; but the very frequency of these loathsome exhibits rendered men callous and by familiarity blunted the edge of all these practical warnings Society thought itself bound to give, for its own protection.

Private influence and class interests might now and then be powerful enough to procure the reprieve of a highwayman in the mid-eighteenth century, but a due sense of what was owing to the middle classes generally forbade lenient treatment. A pretty face, however, and persistent pleading could produce wonderful results.

There was no sense of humour in justice at that period, as may be clearly seen in the case narrated by Silas Told, the earnest Wesleyan who in 1744 began to thrust himself into the fearful prison atmosphere of Newgate, and to wrestle there with condemned prisoners for their souls, in surroundings of the utmost brutal indifference.

It seems that during the riotous proceedings accompanying the election of a member of Parliament for Chelmsford, four young men of good family had grown so merry with drink that they went out upon the country road and played the dangerous game of highwaymen. In the course of this drunken freak they robbed a farmer, and were recognised and arrested, being afterwards sent to Newgate, tried, and capitally convicted. Their names were Brett, Whalley, Dupree, and Morgan. The last-named happened at the time to be engaged to Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton. The young lady was stricken with grief, and frequently visited her unlucky sweetheart in prison, and "Like the importunate widow set forth in the Gospel," says the good Told, "she went daily to His Majesty, as also did others at her request, and pleaded with His Majesty for the life of Mr. Morgan; but at first, His Majesty, considering it a point of injustice as well as partiality, would by no means attend to her plaintive petitions. Another consideration was that they were all persons of dignity and fortune, and could not plead necessity to palliate the enormity of the robbery, as many unhappy sufferers could; therefore His Majesty said his subjects were not to be put in bodily fear and suffer the loss of their property merely through a capricious, wanton whim. However, the morning before the execution, Lady Betty Hamilton appeared before His Majesty and fell upon her knees (I suppose in tears too). 'My lady,' said His Majesty, 'there is no end of your importunity; I will spare his life, upon condition that he be not acquainted therewith till he arrives at the place of execution.'"

In the result, the unfortunate Brett, Whalley, and Dupree, who had not high-born sweethearts to plead for their lives with Royalty, were hanged. Morgan followed in the cart, and the sheriff did not produce the order for respite until it was at the foot of the gallows.

Silas Told describes the actual scene. "'Tis hard," he says, "to express the sudden alarm this made among the multitude; and when I turned round, and saw one of the prisoners out of the cart, with his halter loose, falling to the ground, he having fainted away at the sudden news, I was instantly seized with a great terror, as I thought it was a rescue, rather than a reprieve; but when I beheld Mr. Morgan put into a coach, and perceiving that Lady Betty Hamilton was seated therein, in order to receive him, my fear was at an end, and, truly, I was very well pleased on the occasion."

But no one seems to have been very greatly scandalised at the exceedingly hard measure meted out to the others, who had no charming sweethearts to plead for them, but who, nevertheless, certainly ought to have been reprieved with Morgan, who by no means deserved his good fortune; for he entered upon a wild life, and was observed, six months later, gambling with a fraudulent bankrupt, who himself was presently hanged.

Some thirty years earlier, in 1722, to be precise, a man named John Hartley, who had been convicted and condemned to death for robbing upon the highway as a footpad, had his life begged by an extraordinary deputation of six young women, who went, dressed in white, to plead with the King at St. James's Palace, for a reprieve. Hartley's crime would in our own day be considered severely punished with the award of six months' hard-labour, for he had merely felled a poor journeyman tailor, gone over his pockets, and, in a furious rage, because he found no greater sum than twopence, stripped him of every stitch of his clothing, tied him to a tree, and made off with this singular booty. It was, no doubt, an assault, aggravated by exposing the unfortunate tailor to the bitter blast; but that a man should die for twopence, and a bundle of not very desirable clothes, seems a punishment altogether beyond the bounds of reason. Yet, at a period when a man might be hanged for merely stealing a handkerchief, without any aggravated assault, this was not considered unreasonable. "Society must be protected," in effect, said the law; and if Society could not police the streets and the roads with living police, and so prevent crime, it took care that gallows and gibbet should display unmistakable evidence of its readiness to avenge it.

There must have been some extraordinary attraction about John Hartley, in spite of his mean and paltry occupation of a footpad, for the young women who went in white to beg for a reprieve were eager, if their prayer were granted, to cast lots among themselves for the honour of being his wife. But it was not to be. The reprieve was refused by the King in person, who told the hopeful young women that he thought hanging would be better for him than marriage.

Their hazardous calling begat in the gentlemen of the high-toby a ghastly kind of humour. Thus, when that unholy trio, Christopher Dickson, John Gibson, and Charles Weymouth, united in the not very desperate job of robbing a poor old man, who proved to have nothing on him but the suit of clothes he stood up in, and a pair of spectacles; and when Dickson would have taken even these from him, Gibson intervened. "Give the old fellow his spectacles back," he said; "for, if we follow this trade, we may assure ourselves we shall never reach his years, to make use of them." True enough: they were hanged soon afterwards, and never required any aids to eyesight.

The impudence of the highwaymen is sometimes so unconsciously extravagant, that it is on that account alone extremely amusing. They felt it an intolerable grievance when they happened upon purses not particularly well lined, and resented it hotly. An instance of this may be found, not in any irresponsible novel, or other work of imagination, but in the sober pages of the Worcester Journal of September 29th, 1738, where we learn that in the early morning of September 21st, between the hours of four and five, the "Flying Bath Coach" was stopped by two footpads, about a mile on the London side of Newbury. There were five passengers in the coach, all of whom these daring adventurers robbed, without being resisted in the least. While one of them held the horses' heads, the other interviewed the passengers.

From a Sardinian gentleman he took a purse of guineas and a rich scimetar that might have been profitably employed by the Sardinian gentleman, one would have thought, about the robber's head and body; from Captain Willoughby of Abchurch Lane, twenty-six shillings and—oh! degrading—his coat and periwig; from Mr. Grubb, a distiller, of Bishopsgate Street, twenty-five shillings; from Mr. Rawlinson, High Constable of Westminster, three half-crowns, together with his periwig and silver stock-buckle; and from Mr. Pratt, proprietor and coachman of the "Flying Coach," four guineas, and his silver watch. He threatened every minute to blow out their brains with a horse-pistol he flourished, and although he had succeeded, without any trouble, in securing a not inconsiderable booty, cursed them violently, saying, "gentlemen were not obliged to be at the expense of powder and ball, and likewise a long attendance on the road, to lose their time for so slender a profit."

To frighten travellers by these outrageous methods was a duly calculated part of the business. We have, in the pages of Borrow's Romany Rye, the theory of violent language and violent behaviour on the part of the highwaymen duly expounded by the ostler of the unnamed inn mentioned in chapter xxiv. This ostler, a Yorkshireman by birth, had seen a great deal of life in the vicinity of London, to which he had gone at a very early age. "Amongst other places where he had served as ostler was a small inn at Hounslow, much frequented by highwaymen, whose exploits he was fond of narrating, especially those of Jerry Abershaw, who, he said, was a capital rider." Abershaw, he would frequently add, however, was decidedly inferior to Galloping Dick, who was a pal of Abershaw's. I learned from him that both were capital customers at the Hounslow inn, and that he had frequently drunk with them in the corn-room. He said no man could desire more jolly or entertaining companions over a glass of "summat"; but that upon the road it was anything but desirable to meet them: there they were terrible, cursing and swearing, and thrusting the muzzles of their pistols into people's mouths; and at this part of his locution the old man winked and said, in a somewhat lower voice, that upon the whole they were right in doing so, and that when a person had once made up his mind to become a highwayman, his best policy was to go the whole hog, fearing nothing, but making everybody afraid of him; that people never thought of resisting a savage-faced, foul-mouthed highwayman, and if he were taken, they were afraid to bear witness against him, lest he should get off and then cut their throats some time or other, upon the roads; whereas people would resist being robbed by a sneaking, pale-visaged rascal, and would swear boldly against him on the first opportunity: adding, that Ferguson and Abershaw, two most awful fellows, had enjoyed a long career; whereas, two disbanded officers of the army, who wished to rob a coach like gentlemen, had begged the passengers' pardon, and talked of hard necessity, had been set upon by the passengers themselves, amongst whom were three women, pulled from their horses, conducted to Maidstone, and hanged with as little pity as such contemptible fellows deserved. "There is nothing like going the whole hog," he repeated, "and if ever I had been a highwayman, I should have thought myself all the more safe; and, moreover, shouldn't have despised myself. To curry favour with those you are robbing, sometimes at the expense of your own comrades, as I have known fellows do, why, it is the greatest——"

"So it is," interposed the postilion.

The newspapers of those times afford deeply interesting reading. Very few of them but contain some startling item of highway robbery, or news of the capture or trial of the highwaymen who dared even to ply their trade within sight of the streets. It seems so very long ago, and it all has an extraordinary air of unreality. Even although you turn over the small quarto and foolscap pages of those daily and evening, or weekly or bi-weekly sheets, these things seem the stuff that dreams are made of; but if the items of news give that effect, certainly when you turn to the advertising columns, you feel once more that you are in touch with actualities. The same quacks, or rather their great-great-grandfathers, are puffing the same kinds of goods, and even the blackguard fellows who figure, with their own "brainy" or impudent faces, in the advertising pages of twentieth-century popular magazines, and successfully gull hundreds of thousands of simpletons, have their ancestors posturing in these yellowing sheets. They are not so boldly "displayed," for the mechanical possibilities of the age did not permit of it, and they of necessity appealed only to hundreds, instead of the hundred thousand; but they are at one, in all essentials, with the creatures who nowadays make "this unparalleled offer to YOU," and rudely point a finger at you out of the page. In the Grub Street Journal for 1737 and succeeding years, and in its numerous contemporaries are to be found advertised the "greatest Restorative in the world," cures for consumption, marvellous literary works, without which life would be a blank, and a certain Dr. Newman's vile electuaries. Dr. Newman advertised largely and long, and he generally included a quaint little woodcut of himself, seated at a table, and with a box of his beastly pills (comparatively the size of a saucepan) on the table beside him, with a bottle of his medicine, apparently supplied in two-gallon carboys, keeping it company. He is the ancestor, you perceive, as you observe him staring out of the page, of all those modern pushful persons, who seem to think that by picturing themselves in their advertisements of how to add to your stature, to add to your purse, or turn your nose down, your ears in, to grow stouter or leaner, or what not, their statements are by some mysterious means fortified and endorsed.

DR. NEWMAN AND HIS PILLS.

The quaintest things are advertised in these old journals. A coachman in Long-Acre has devised a bullet-proof postchaise, or chariot, in which "any Gentleman may travel with Safety and not less Expedition than heretofore." It is claimed to be proof against any weapons carried by highwaymen.

Mr. Lott, of Maidstone, who, in several of his advertisements, "Begs leave to acquaint all Gentlemen and others (others!) that he has taken a large House in Beer-Cart Lane," advertises sporting and other guns, and has a very choice assortment of pistols "for Gentlemen travelling," perhaps also—who knows?—purchased by highwaymen on the look-out for those travelling gentlemen. His advertisement is embellished most remarkably with a somebody, whether gentleman or highwayman, it would be difficult to say—but it looks not altogether unlike a conventional representation of the devil. On due reconsideration, however, it would appear to be a sportsman, for he is accompanied by what may be taken for a dog. What kind of sport he expects to get with the gun he holds in his left hand, with the remarkable kink in the barrel, it would be impossible to say; but the pistol he flourishes in his right looks lethal enough to do the business of any highwayman that ever patrolled the roads and spoke with the coaches.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ADVERTISEMENT.

Even in those times, there were people who strove to abolish capital punishment; and the advertisement columns of these old journals bear witness to the fact, in the announcement of a pamphlet, priced at only sixpence, displaying arguments in favour of discontinuing the death-penalty. On one occasion it is printed next to a paragraph which records briefly how a highwayman, disappointed at not getting sufficient plunder, shot a poor traveller on the road near Staines. "We hear," says the journal, "that the man has since dy'd of his Wounds." This curious juxtaposition looks uncommonly like a sly example of editorial sarcasm at the expense of the excellent advertiser: a hint after the style of the sardonic French philosopher's comment upon the similar proposal to remit the death penalty upon murderers: "que messieurs les assassins commencent."

The newspapers and the magazines alike contain the most startling commentaries upon life as lived in London during the eighteenth century. Thus we read, in an obscure paragraph, how the French mail was robbed in Piccadilly, by the valise containing the bags being cut off the postchaise. The occasion was not so exceptional that it would demand more than a few lines. But in those days newspapers had not discovered the way of exploiting news for all it was worth, and more, by the twin arts of the artful headline and the redundant adjective.

Again, it was late in September 1750, Horace Walpole tells us, and he was sitting in his dining-room in Arlington Street, close upon eleven o'clock one Sunday night, when he heard a loud cry of "Stop thief!" A highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Piccadilly, at the corner of Arlington Street, and, being pursued, rode over a watchman and almost killed him. He escaped, of course.

Across the way, on the west side of Berkeley Street, the curious sunk thoroughfare, known as Lansdowne Passage, (the name as painted up is spelled wrongly, without the concluding "e") dividing the gardens of Lansdowne House and the Duke of Devonshire's mansion, is connected with a highwayman story of some eighteen years later. The entrance to this passage-way for pedestrians is divided by an iron bar, which renders it impossible for anything more bulky than a man to squeeze through, and there are even some particularly stout persons who might find it difficult to pass. The passage conducts to Curzon Street, and is at such a low level that a flight of steps leads down to it, through the narrow opening.

LANSDOWNE PASSAGE.

The iron bar dates from about 1768, and was placed there immediately after the sensation caused by a mounted highwayman, who, having committed a robbery in Piccadilly, evaded his pursuers by riding up Berkeley Street and down the steps of Lansdowne Passage, and so through it and into Bolton Street, at a gallop.

When such things as those just narrated were possible, it is only a little more surprising to read how Sir John Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, could raid a masquerade ball, on March 6th, 1753, in search of highwaymen. He had received information that some of the profession would be present, and went with his men and entered the gaming-room, and obliged all the company to unmask and give an account of themselves. "It is supposed," says the Gentleman's Magazine, "those fellows had notice of his coming before he could get upstairs, and so made off in the crowd, for none of them were taken." There had been deep gaming that night, and a plentiful circulation of bad guineas.

It is amazing to modern readers who read of the notoriety in which the highwaymen often lived, that they should have been suffered to appear in public so frequently, and yet their profession to be so well known. At Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at the fashionable coffee-houses they were found, enjoying the gaieties of the town, and reading, no doubt, in the newspapers of the day, accounts of their own enterprises of a day or two earlier. There was a certain or an uncertain period of grace allowed most of these fine fellows, whose careers, long or short, were very largely lengthened or shortened by the amount of the rewards that presently began to be offered for their apprehension. The convenience or safety of the long-suffering public was never consulted. It never is. Then and now, the public existed, and still exists, for the support of officials and functionaries. That is what we of the unofficial classes are here for. This system, carried to its logical conclusion, may be best studied in France and Germany, but we in England are fast advancing on the same lines.

In the days of the highwaymen, the system worked, in respect of them, in this way: they were not worth catching until a reward was offered, and it even then remained a nice point whether it were not better to wait until a still larger reward was advertised, before closing in upon the fellows and haling them before the magistrates. You had simply to watch the "public form," so to speak, of your man, just as people accustomed to bet upon horse-races watch the performances of the animal they favour. If your highwayman were a dashing and enterprising fellow, likely to make much of a stir in his line, it was obviously not worth the while to collar him for the sake of a mere £40 reward offered for the apprehension of a highwayman. You just waited until he became a notorious person, with some great deeds to his credit—a big haul of guineas or jewellery, or perhaps even a murder. Then he would be worth £100, or, in extreme cases, even more; and then only would he be taken, unless, indeed, some foolish competitive busybody officiously intervened, and got him before he had quite ripened.

CHAPTER VII

THE HIGHWAYMEN OF WILTSHIRE AND SALISBURY PLAIN—MR. JOSEPH READER'S ADVENTURE—THE CHERHILL GANG—"CLIBBORN'S POST"—MURDER OF MR. MELLISH—CLOSE OF THE HIGHWAYMAN ERA

Many of the stories in these pages are concerned with the doings of highwaymen in the districts near London, but the neighbourhood of almost every town was infested in degree, and there are few local histories, and fewer of the older newspaper files, that do not afford curious reading in the highway robbery sort, intermingled with advertisements offering rewards for the apprehension of horse- and sheep-stealers and fugitive husbands who have left their wives and families chargeable upon the parish. The neighbourhoods of Devizes and Salisbury seem to have been exceptionally favoured with these miscellaneous rascals, no doubt because those two places stood at either extreme of what long remained the wild and desolate region including Salisbury Plain, where, although the great roads to Bath and Exeter brought a considerable traffic, the houses were few and far between. It was an ideal district for evil-doers, and there are a very considerable literature and a very startling series of incidents in this sort, connected with it. [1]

A curious incident is that told on an old broadsheet printed in 1712, and sold at the usual broadsheet price of one penny, of the hanging of a highwayman by one of the travellers he attacked. On Saturday, February 2nd, in that year, a Mr. Nat. Seager, a maltster, took horse from Shaftesbury for Blandford, to buy corn in Blandford market. He had only gone two miles and had descended into the plain from the hill-top town, when "he was attack'd by a Highway-Man and a pistol clap'd to his Breast, with the Word of Command 'God D—n you, you old Dog, alight and deliver.'"

Mr. Seager, very much terrified, dismounted, or perhaps, rather, tumbled off his horse, and threw the man £3 in silver; but the highwayman was not content with this. "It was not all," he said; and, rapping out another oath, he drew a broadsword and gave Mr. Seager a cut on the shoulder. Whereupon Mr. Seager produced twenty-four guineas more, with which the highwayman rode off contented, leaving the unfortunate maltster bleeding on the ground.

In a little while there came along the road another traveller, Mr. Joseph Reader, miller, of Shaftesbury, whistling upon his way, according to his habit.

"What is the matter?" he asked, surprised to see his friend and neighbour lying there, all gory.

Seager told him.

"Master," said Reader, "lend me your horse, and I will endeavour to overtake the rogue, if you will describe him to me."

"He has a great blue coat, and a sorrel horse," replied Seager: and with that, Reader mounted and hastened the way he had gone.

It was not long before he overtook the highwayman, who was waiting for more prey, and thought he saw it in Reader. Twice he fired pistols at him, and twice he missed; and then Reader, who was by far the stronger of the two, smote him with a cudgel he carried, and dragged him from his horse. At this moment Seager came up and found them struggling on the ground, and Reader immediately despatched him for aid.

But when he was gone, and our brave miller had opportunity for reflection, it occurred to him that his adversary might by some means get the better of him, after all, before help arrived; and so he stood the risk of losing the £40 reward due to him for taking a highwayman. That was a risk not to be entertained, and "therefore," said he, "I'll e'en hang him myself." And so he did. Striking him insensible, he dragged the unlucky man to a wayside tree, and hanged him from it by his own belt.

The highwayman had not long given up the ghost before Seager returned, at the head of the Sheriff's posse; when the miller learned, much to his dismay, that, by acting as hangman upon one who had not been brought to trial, he had put himself in very grave peril.

In fact, the law, resenting this interference with its prerogative, had a good deal to say to Mr. Joseph Reader, who was brought to trial at Dorchester before Mr. Justice Coker, at the next assizes, and charged with murder. Fortunately, he was acquitted, and his resourcefulness properly acknowledged by a subscription of over £30, made up for him in Court.

Not only solitary highwaymen, but bands of marauders, scoured the treeless and hedgeless wastes of Salisbury Plain and its neighbourhood. One of these was known as the "Cherhill Gang," and chiefly favoured the locality between Marlborough, Calne, and Devizes. Individual members of this brotherhood were taken from time to time, hanged at Devizes, and afterwards gibbeted at a spot high on the downs, between Beckhampton and Cherhill. The remaining members of the band and the friends and relations of the departed of course bitterly resented this kind of post-mortem publicity, and very often they would either come by night and saw through the post of the gibbet and so bring the whole thing to the ground, or would climb up the post and bring down the tattered relics of their friend, swinging there in his chains or his iron cage, and give it decent burial. There is much to be said in favour of them. But after this had continued for some time, the authorities hit upon a plan of binding the lower portion of the gibbet round with iron, of tarring it, and of driving some hundreds of nails half-way into the post, just by way of deterrents to climbers and others.

A very pretty story—pretty in its peculiar way—is told of Serjeant Merewether successfully defending one of the Cherhill Gang at the assizes, and of his being robbed of his fee that night, by his interesting client, when on his return home.

Another member of the same gang had the peculiar fancy of stripping himself perfectly naked, by night, and then springing out of a wayside bush upon the startled traveller. The unexpected spectacle, he said, was so alarming that robbery became very easy. But this was probably only a midsummer freak. Imagination refuses to contemplate even the most desperate highwaymen in midwinter, when snow-squalls swept Marlborough Downs, emulating those picturesque figures, the naked aborigines of the poet's vision:

When, wild in woods, the noble savage ran.

I will quote here but one of the many old newspaper reports of doings on this spot, but that a picturesque one. The date is January 1743: "A captain in the army, who was going to Bath in a postchaise, was stopped near Sandy Lane by two highwaymen, by one of whom he was told that he wanted but a guinea, which he hoped to be soon able to pay him again. The captain gave him the guinea, and the fellow gave the driver a shilling, and told the gentleman if he was stopped by any one else, to say 'Virgin Mary,' that being the watchword for the day. They had not gone far before they were stopped by four persons; but on being given the watchword, they raised their hats, and rode off."

"CLIBBORN'S POST."

The visible relics of the highwaymen are few, but among them that of "Clibborn's Post" is peculiarly interesting. This relic is found in Hertfordshire, in the neighbourhood of that fine old Elizabethan manor-house, now a farm, but famed in romance, Queen Hoo Hall. On the way from Tewin and Queen Hoo Hall to Bramfield, the wooded lane rises in a curve to the summit of what is known locally as "Open Valley Hill." Here, on the grassy bank, firmly planted in the soil, stands a stout, oaken post, carefully bound with strips of iron. This is "Clibborn's Post," the modern successor of the original stake driven through the body of a brutal highwayman of that name, shot dead at this spot in the act of attacking a farmer who was on his way home from Hertford Market to Datchworth. This occurrence happened on December 28th, 1782. There had, about that time, been many highway robberies committed on the country roads in this neighbourhood; but no one had been able to identify the desperado, who had plunged the countryside, and especially the week-end market folk, into such terror. On this particular night this farmer was driving home in a cart, accompanied by a servant named Shock. Just as they reached this spot—then, as now, a lonely place surrounded by tangled undergrowth and dense plantations—a man rushed out from the thickets and seized the horse's reins. The farmer jumped down to struggle with him, but his assailant was getting the upper hand, and was in the act of unclasping a knife to cut his throat, when the farmer called out to his servant, who carried a blunderbuss: "Shoot, Shock, or I am a dead man!" Shock had been afraid to fire, thinking he might hit the wrong man, but, on this command, he let fly, and shot the highwayman dead. When they examined the body they found it to be that of a pieman named Clibborn, a well-known and ostensibly honest person who frequented the Hertford inns on market day, selling pies to the farmers and others. He had opportunities of noting those who would be carrying large sums of money home with them; and, leaving early, waylaid them in some lonely spot such as this.

It was still, at the close of the eighteenth century, abundantly possible for peaceful travellers along the roads to be killed by highwaymen: Mr. Mellish, a city merchant, returning from a day with the King's hounds, in company with two friends, named Bosanquet and Pole, having been shot dead by a gang, who attacked and robbed the carriage in which they were travelling, when near Sipson Green, on the Bath Road. It was a wanton act, too; the travellers having disbursed their money on demand, and the carriage already starting off again for Hounslow when one of the gang fired a shot after it. Mr. Mellish, sitting with his back to the horses, was struck in the forehead. It is probable that the highwayman intended no more than to warn the occupants of the carriage that he and his fellows really were fully armed, and that they had therefore better hasten away as quickly as they could; but the intention is immaterial: the unfortunate man was killed, and the highwaymen were never captured.

The nineteenth century opened badly for the highwaymen, for not only had the business of banking and the payment of money by cheque grown largely, but Pitt's Act for Restricting Cash Payments, passed in 1797, had led to fewer large amounts in coin being carried about their persons by unprotected travellers. Nothing was more remarkable than the great sums of money that seem to have been carried by all classes in the periods already discussed; and in those circumstances lay the highwaymen's opportunity. But now they had fewer and smaller takings in coin, practically a choice only between watches and jewellery and bank-notes: very dangerous classes of property to handle unlawfully.

But if their takings were less, their numbers were scarcely fewer; and the gibbets were still not infrequently replenished. Thus, a highwayman named Haines was, in May 1799, gibbeted on Hounslow Heath, just where the Bath and the Exeter roads part company, at the western extremity of Hounslow town. A curious item in the Annual Register for that year proves—if proof were wanted—that the spectacle of his hanging had been a popular sight; for there we read an account of how a party of eight gentlemen, who had been out for the day to witness the spectacle, ferried over the Thames to the "Flower Pot" inn at Sunbury that night, at ten o'clock, presumably with the intention of "making a night of it." It may not be uncharitable to suppose that they had already taken more than sufficient, for in crossing the river, the boat was upset and three of them were drowned.

The stumps of the gibbets that formerly stood at the fork of the Exeter and the Bath roads, at the western end of Hounslow were discovered in 1899, when the road was excavated for the electric tramways that now pass the spot.

At the close of the eighteenth century, the approaches to London again became so dangerous that it was necessary to institute some kind of protection. This was established in 1805, under the name of the Bow Street Patrol, and was organised, as its name implies, from the principal London police-office. This was a forerunner of the existing horse-patrols of the Metropolitan Police, to be now and again encountered at night on lonely suburban roads in these far more secure times of ours. Even Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common grew comparatively safe when this armed and efficient force got to work. They were probably not in full existence when the poet Campbell and his wife, walking on Sydenham Common in that year, were confronted by a mounted highwayman who demanded their money, with menaces. An alarm was promptly raised, and he was pursued and captured; when he was found to be a resident of the neighbourhood.

In the provinces the era of the highwaymen was longer lived. The roads between Arundel and Chichester were in 1807, for example, haunted by one Allen, a highwayman who preyed chiefly upon the farmers coming home with well-filled purses from market. The militia were called out to capture him, and thus, in these peculiarly glorious circumstances of war, he was shot dead near Midhurst, while endeavouring to escape arrest.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITERATURE OF THE LATER HIGHWAYMEN

Since Smith and Johnson's days, the literature of the highwaymen has declined in quality and increased in output. The history of the highwaymen has never been reconsidered or restated since they flourished, and no one has ever attempted to extend it from 1742. Not even Turpin appears in Johnson's folio, published three years earlier than that "hero's" execution at York: an omission which seems amply to prove that Turpin's contemporaries did not consider him a particularly interesting or notable person.

Yet, although nothing has been done to tell the story of the highwaymen who flourished numerously long after Smith and Johnson had completed their works, there is an abundance of materials for the purpose. They are not nice materials. Distinctly unappetising trials for the most part, "last dying speeches and confessions," usually impudent fabrications, and, when not entirely un-authentic, generally the utterly unreadable productions of the Ordinaries of Newgate and other prisons, who turned an honest, if somewhat discreditable, penny in hearing the generally boastful and lying accounts by prisoners of their crimes and adventures; seldom writing them down from dictation, and commonly but imperfectly memorising them, and only setting down their general sense. That is why the very numerous "authentic" lives, last dying speeches, and confessions of the highwaymen and others, written out by the Ordinaries and usually attested at the end by the criminals themselves, are so bald and unconvincing. An outside rival production was, as a general rule, a good deal more spicy, and although unauthorised, not necessarily less truthful. The "official" productions, as we may term them, were of a stereotyped fashion, ballasted with an intolerable deal of moral reflections, and written in a heavy-handed way that by no means reflected the convict's own generally keen relish of his own villainies. We should not mind all this, if we knew the Ordinaries to have been good and earnest men; but they were nothing of the kind. By education gentlemen, and by virtue of their holy orders bound to maintain the law and the Gospel, they were nevertheless a pack of intolerable scoundrels, drunken and dissolute, and not infrequently as fitted for the cells as the unhappy prisoners in the Stone Jug, to whom on Sundays in the prison chapel they preached Hell and Damnation, the Burning Lake and Everlasting Torment. The publication of the last dying speeches and confessions of their interesting charges was the perquisite of these unworthy men, and it was one of the most indefensible of privileges in that age of perquisites.

Thus the pamphlets they issued and grew fat upon soon pall upon us. There are, however, other sources: the "Newgate Sessions Papers," the somewhat too famous "Newgate Calendar," which shared with the Bible the favour of George Borrow; the "New Newgate Calendar"; the "Malefactors' Bloody Register," and other atrocious "literature"—to give it the conventional title bestowed without discrimination upon all printed matter.

I am sorry for myself, after having perused those dreadful pages, and many other like authorities, in search of the romantic highwayman as seen in fiction. I have not found him, but I have found plentiful evidence of the existence of innumerable ineffable blackguards and irreclaimable villains of the most sordid, unrelieved type: bestially immoral, tigerishly cruel, and cringing cowards until they were safely jugged, when their cowardice was exchanged for a certain callousness. There were exceptions, but the general effect of reading these originals is an effect of moral and material muddiness, of a personal uncleanliness not a little distressing. It would even have a lasting effect of depression, were it not abundantly evident that these things are of a day that is done. They are part of those "good old times" that, happily, are not our times.

Fortunately, even among this extensive literature, it is possible to find some human touches; here and there to trace some humorous rogue and find him entertaining.

Rather late in the day comes James Catnach, with his penny chapbooks and broadsides. He is not elevating, and is often vulgar. The more vulgar his productions, the better they sold. I don't think he quite realised that point, but some modern popular publishing firms have, and profit hugely by it, for vulgarity is popular and pays enormously. If Jemmy Catnach, of Nos. 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, Little Earl Street, hard by the Seven Dials, had fully grasped this point, he would have died worth very much more than the £3,000, £5,000, or even £10,000 he was represented to have left when he quitted this life, about 1841.

James Catnach commenced business about 1813. His publications were all issued at the popular price of one penny, and covered every subject likely to attract the sympathies of the lower classes. Not quite the lowest classes, for they could not at that time read at all. We must not suppose that he dealt only in the horrible. Not by any means. You might buy of him for the nimble penny the history of Goody Two Shoes, the story of Jack the Giant Killer, the affecting tale of Cock Robin, or the even more affecting story of the Babes in the Wood. The "Soldier's Farewell to Home and Parents," in which the illustration is intrinsically so rough, and the paper and print are so abominable, that it is difficult to see which is the soldier and which are the parents, showed that maudlin sentiment was very profitable. He published also a large selection of patriotic, amorous, and tearful ballads; but it is sadly to be confessed that his penny murders were by far the most popular. He had no penny Sunday papers and no halfpenny evenings to compete with him, and the daily and weekly journals ranged from threepence to eightpence. His only competitors were the garret, cellar, and kitchen printers of his own kidney: Birt, of the neighbouring Great St. Andrew Street, and others. But he was the chief of them, the most industrious, and the most successful. He and his small staff in 1824 printed in eight days, off four formes, no fewer than 500,000 copies of an account of the murder of Mr. Weare by Thurtell, and bagged £500 profit on the business. His customers were a low and dirty mob of pedlars, hawkers, and street-sellers, who paid chiefly in coppers, and dirty ones at that. Those were the days when pennies and halfpennies were really coppers, and not, as now, bronze; and they were large. A penny weighed one ounce, and was an appreciable weight in the pocket: sixpence in coppers was a burden. The coppers Catnach received in the way of his business were a nuisance to him, and he was afraid, from their filthy condition, that they would also be infectious, and so he generally boiled them in a solution of potash and vinegar. In the almost vain endeavour to dispose of them he was accustomed to pay the wages of his boys and men in coppers, from ten shillingsworth to forty shillingsworth, and even then had to arduously load up vehicles with the rest, for the bank. His back kitchen was paved with bad pennies set in concrete.

The lives and adventures of the highwaymen were always a safe sale. Like most of his rudely illustrated productions, they were embellished by his own ingenious hand. The backs of old engraved plates of music served him instead of wood-blocks, and these he engraved upon, apparently with a chopper and a hammer, if we may judge by the startling results. He could have taught Thomas Bewick a thing or two in breadth of treatment, and in his noble scorn of detail (or in his inability to execute it, whichever it was) he was undoubtedly the first of the Impressionists. He was rather good at devils, and supreme in picturing a ferocious villain; but not successful in representing a village beauty.

He issued a very good edition of the Life and Adventures of Dick Turpin at the usual price of one penny: good beyond his common run, because he seems to have employed some one to engrave the pictorial cover for him, and you can really distinguish quite easily between Black Bess and the turnpike-gate, over which that gallant mare is shown to be jumping. Dick Turpin, in this production, affects a jockey-cap.

Birt, of Great St. Andrew Street, was another of the many small printers, who issued popular and ill-printed penny lives of Turpin in the days before the boys' penny papers issued in frowsy courts off Fleet Street, began to print long, long romances of him and Tom King, always to be "continued in our next." Birt shows us what purports to be a portrait of Turpin, no doubt from some strictly un-authentic source, and the short narrative ends with the picture of an execution, in which alone the purchaser had his money's worth, for we see two criminals hanging: Turpin and another, who would seem, so far as appearances go, to be his twin brother. It is a new light upon the life and death of the hero.

CHAPTER IX

THE NEWGATE CHAPLAINS: SAMUEL SMITH, PAUL LORRAIN, THOMAS PURENEY—THE PRISON LIFE

The Chaplains, or Ordinaries, of Newgate were amply provided for. The presentation to the office was in the gift of the Lord Mayor and aldermen, and included a residence in Newgate street, in addition to the salary, a legacy of £10 a year paid by the Governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, an annual £6 from Lady Barnardiston's legacy, and what are described as "two freedoms yearly," which generally sold for £25 each. In addition to these, the city usually presented the Ordinary with one other, annually. By 1779 it appears that he no longer enjoyed the freedoms, but his salary was augmented to £180, and, in addition, he received £3 12s. 0d. a year from the sheriffs.

Surely this was a stipend ample enough for the class of men who held the office, especially as the divines who generally obtained it did very well out of the "authentic" lives of the criminals to whom they extended ghostly counsel. The "Bishop of Newgate" was the slang term for the Ordinary, and so well—though not so admirably—did the men, who, in a long succession, filled the office, fit into the place, that we but rarely find one translated to other fields of activity. They lived and died Ordinaries of Newgate. Even a good man might have become degraded by the place and its fearful management, but the men appointed were of the worst type, and a disgrace to the Church.

The Reverend Paul Lorrain and the Reverend Thomas Pureney were typical Ordinaries, blusterous, bloated, and snuffy; ready with a threadbare tag from an easy classic; profaning the Scriptures with vinous hiccoughs; more keen to nose a revelation for their delectable broadsides and hypocritical pamphlets than to lead a sinner to repentance, even if they knew the way; and always with an alert eye on the main chance.

Lorrain succeeded one Samuel Smith in 1698, and held the post until his death, in 1719. He was most diligent in the production of those "official" accounts of the lives, confessions, and last dying speeches of the criminals, which were printed and sold largely, and thus formed a considerable augmentation to the salary of himself and his kind. A collection of forty-eight of these curious pamphlets, written by him, is found in the British Museum. We turn to them with expectancy, but from them with disgust. With every advantage at their command in this peculiar form of authorship, the Reverend Paul Lorrain and his successors failed to produce anything but the most insufficient of lives, the most commonplace confessions, and the most threadbare last dying speeches, garnished with haphazard texts.

Generally published at eight in the morning of the day after the respective executions, they had their public; but the very cream of the sale was skimmed off on the actual day of the execution by unlicensed publications, and it was usually quite easy for the doomed men going to Tyburn to purchase a penny biography of themselves, and to read what they had said at the last moment, before the last moment itself was reached. In Hogarth's print of the end of the Idle Apprentice at Tyburn, the "Last Dying Speech and Confession of Thomas Idle" is being bawled out at the moment of his hearing the final ministrations in the cart. Obviously, these productions could not be "authentic," in so far, at least, as the concluding scenes were concerned; but there is that journalistic flair about many of those that have survived the bad paper and the worse ink with which they were produced, which shows a full comprehension of what the public wanted. And whatsoever the public wants, it is the journalist's business to see it duly gets. There is more resource, more touch with life, in these than in the works of the Ordinaries.

A certain low and undistinguished feeling of pedantry runs through all those clerical issues. The Reverend Mr. Paul Lorrain, or the equally Reverend Mr. Thomas Pureney, tells us of such and such an one, that, "departing from the early paths of Virtue and Integrity, where the Flowers of Innocency may be pluckt," (much they knew of such things, to be sure!) "he stray'd among the Profligate and the Abandon'd, and became a Highway Man."

Such stuff! All very well for copy-book maxims or good books for well-behaved children; but the streets wanted stronger meat than this; and they got it. In the unauthorised lives of the various malefactors, written for the appreciation of the crowd, it may be read how such a youthful innocent as the one described above in so sesquipedalian a style, "was a practis'd prig at eleven years of age. He stole his Father's Cash-Box, and, coming with it to London, spent the Contents in the gayeties of the Town." Precocious youth! But precocity is not, as many suppose, a Twentieth-Century portent.

"He soon became a Flash Cull and set up half a dozen Doxies of his own, who empty'd his Pockets as soon as he filled 'em." Nothing at all about the early paths of Virtue and Integrity in this, it will be observed.

"He then, observing that more was to be made in one Night's good-fortune under the Stars than in a week of snatching the Bung or cly-filing in the streets, and with less danger, in it, became a Collector of Tolls upon the High-Way."

That was your true penny style for the streets. It was sympathetic and understood, which the "Flowers of Innocency" business was not.

Paul Lorrain and his brethren never failed with the moral lesson, however little they themselves believed in it; and always, you will find, who read their nauseating pages, that those who had the misfortune to sit to them for their biographies were "truly penitent," "moved to contrition," or "heartily renounced their Wicked and profligate course of life," and the like.

And yet nothing is more certain than that the larger number of them went to death impenitent and hardened. The better sort were merely sulky; the worse cursed and flung indecent quips to the crowd, all the way to the gallows. Nor need there be much wonder at it. To die for taking a purse from a traveller must have seemed even to an eighteenth-century highwayman, born into this state of things and bound to suffer by it, an extravagant penalty. Temperament, sanguine or otherwise, did the rest, and conditioned his attitude on the Tyburn journey.

The Reverend Thomas Pureney had a way of his own with sinners. He could not make them truly penitent, but he could, and did, frighten them almost into convulsions by a way he had in preaching. He was a nasty person, among a succession of forbidding persons. He stumbled as he walked: his nose and cheeks flamed with intemperance in drink: he took the flavour of the pot-house with him whithersoever he went. Nay, he even, as a youth, before ever he was educated for the Church, had thoughts of himself going upon the highway, and indeed actually began the business of taking things without leave of the owners of them. His first and only essay in this sort was the handling of a silver flagon and two volumes of sermons, which he was conveying from the rectory of his native place in Cambridgeshire, when the excellent clergyman discovered him with this singular booty and lectured him, not unamiably. He would certainly end his days in Newgate, prosed the good man, if he did not instantly see the error of his youthful ways, and reform. Why, that very reform, so far as it went, served, strange to say, to land him, years later, at Newgate; and there he ended, after all; but very differently from the fashion the old clergyman had foreseen.

His respectable parent soon after this youthful escapade entered him at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and there he assimilated as much learning as sufficed to place him in holy orders. But he had not been, in any sense of the word, a moral man while at the University, and although he found a curacy at Newmarket, it was with a reputation which rather fitted him for the society of the racecourse than for the pulpit that he went there.

The eighteenth century demanded little of a clergyman, but even that little our Pureney could not render, and he was flung out with ignominy, even from Newmarket. Drink and flagrant immorality were the undoing of him there, and the rumours of his evil ways long followed him about, and prevented him securing another post, until at last that of Ordinary at Newgate was tossed contemptuously to him. The suggestion of that office—insult though it would have been to a decent man—found in him a ready and grateful acceptance. No standard of conduct was required, and, joy of joys! he became pastor among the very kind of heroes who had fired the imagination of his perusing youth.

He lorded it over those caged gaol-birds with imperious ways for thirty years, and in that time had the fortune to hob and nob with many a famous rogue. Jack Sheppard and many a lesser light sat under him in the prison chapel and listened to his outrageous sermons, promising damnation and everlasting torment; and he had the singular fortune to call the infamous Jonathan Wild a crony for some years, and in the end, when that appalling scoundrel had been found out and cast for the shameful death to which he had brought so many others, to preach the worm that dieth not to him also. It is true that, owing to his intimate acquaintance with Pureney, Wild did not greatly value his discourse, and sought and obtained the counsel and guidance of an outsider, the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, to wit, who, he says, "very Christian-like gave me his assistance"; but the Ordinary came into his own again on the Sunday, when the condemned, Wild among them, were herded into their gruesome pew in that most awful of chapels, and had to listen to his ravings.

Pureney's account of the life, crimes, conviction and confession of Jonathan Wild and of other malefactors condemned at the same time is a folio broadsheet, distinguished among a badly produced class of literature as surely the very worst-printed, on paper of the commonest. A rude woodcut at the beginning discloses the Ordinary in a black Geneva gown, preaching to his charges (an extraordinarily large Ordinary, and remarkably small convicts), with conventional representations of Heaven and Hell, to left and right. A Hand, bearing a celestial crown a good many sizes too large for any of the convicts here pictured, is seen amid clouds; the Ordinary, not at all astonished by the phenomenon, pointing to it and continuing his discourse.

DECORATIVE HEADPIECE FROM PURENEY'S "LIFE AND CONFESSION OF JONATHAN WILD AND FOUR OTHER MALEFACTORS."

Hell's mouth, smoking like the exhaust of an over-lubricated motor-car, is occupied by a very convincing Devil, armed with an undeniably business-like trident, who has most certainly got his eye rather upon the unsuspecting Ordinary than on the weak-kneed group of five malefactors, one of whom appears by his attitude to prefer Hell to any more of the Ordinary's exhortation. And, if all accounts of Pureney's life and death be true, the Devil did get him, after all.

Such was the type of publication out of which Pureney earned an addition to his income; but the tale does not quite end here. The last page is largely occupied with an advertisement of the most flagrantly indecorous and reprehensible character, of which even an eighteenth-century clergyman of the Church of England might have been ashamed. But the clergy fell generally far short of the ideal ministers and vicars of God. Whether in town or in the country, where "Parson Trullibers" abounded, they were a disgrace to their office; and even when they were earnest, which was seldom, provoked criticism by their extravagance.

In 1724, when Jack Sheppard, pickpocket and housebreaker, was again lying in Newgate, after being re-captured, his doings appealed greatly to the imagination of all. He was the most famous person of that year, and great crowds thronged to see him. Sir James Thornhill, the Royal Academician, painted his portrait; chapbooks innumerable, badly written, and ill-printed, on vile paper, were issued before his execution and sold in thousands to eager purchasers; and clergymen took his career for their texts. One ingenious preacher, given to sensational discourse, outdid all his brethren in thus improving the occasion:

"Now, my beloved, what a melancholy consideration it is, that men should show so much regard for the preservation of a poor, perishing body, that can remain at most but a few years, and can at the same time be so unaccountably negligent of eternity. Oh! what care, what pains, what diligence, and what contrivances are made use of for, and laid out upon, these frail and tottering tabernacles of clay, when, alas! the nobler part of us is allowed so very small a share of our concern that we will scarce give ourselves the trouble of bestowing a thought upon it.

"We have, dear brethren, a remarkable instance of this, in a notorious malefactor, well known by name as Jack Sheppard. What amazing difficulties has he overcome! What astonishing things has he performed, for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcase, hardly worth hanging! How dexterously did he pick the padlock of his chain with a crooked nail! How manfully burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, wrench out an iron bar, break his way through a stone wall, and make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison! And then, fixing a blanket to the wall with a spike, how intrepidly did he descend to the roof of the turner's house, and how cautiously pass down the stairs and make his escape at the street door!

"Oh! that ye were all like Jack Sheppard! Mistake me not, my brothers, I mean not in a carnal, but in a spiritual sense; for I purpose to spiritualise these things. What a shame it would be, if we did not think it worth our while to take as much pains, and employ as many deep thoughts, to save our souls, as he has done to preserve his body! Let me exhort you, therefore, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance; burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts; mount the chimney of hope, take from thence the bar of good resolution, break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strongholds in the dark valley of the shadow of death. Raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the Church; let yourselves down to the turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility. So shall you come to the door of deliverance from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner, the devil, who 'goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.'"

No doubt the preacher meant well, but his figurative style was too pronounced.

It is easy and proper to be severe on the subject of the Newgate chaplains, but perhaps some allowance should be made for them, on the score of the associations of prison life, always bad, but incredibly degrading in that age. If we except Pureney, who was himself an instinctive criminal, the Ordinaries could not, all at once, have become callous and depraved. They were not, of course, men distinguished for learning or piety, for it was the practice to give the chaplaincy to the dregs of the profession; but were doubtless, at the time of their appointment merely average men, eager to obtain a livelihood. They ran very grave risks, too, in those days when gaol-fever ravaged the prison, and even infected the sessions-house. It was highly dangerous to attend the prisoners, often indiscriminate in their revengeful violence, both in their cells and at the place of execution. A peculiar incident recorded of an execution at Hertford, on March 25th, 1723, shows that all manner of indignities were possible. On that day, when William Summers and another man named Tipping were turned off, the hangman was so intoxicated, that, supposing three had been ordered for execution, he insisted on putting a rope round the parson's neck as he stood in the cart, and was with difficulty prevented from stringing him up as well.

SCANDALOUS SCENE AT A HERTFORD EXECUTION.

It is only charitable to suppose that the Ordinaries must needs have been shocked when first introduced to their morally and physically pestiferous charges, and gradually became used to their surroundings. Let us take a prisoner typical of those whom these divines attended:

Valentine Carrick is not so well-known a name as Maclaine, but he also formed a popular sight during the short interval between his conviction and execution. "James" Carrick, as he is also styled, was son of a retired jeweller, who was wealthy enough to set up for a gentleman, and to purchase his son an ensign's commission in the army. Like hundreds of others of his class, the young ensign gambled freely; like most, he lost, and like a large proportion of broken gamesters, he sought to replenish his pockets by emptying those of travellers on the King's highway by threats, and at the point of sword or muzzle of pistol. He was one of the most reckless blades that ever the Stone Jug had received. He applied the saying of the heedless folk mentioned in the Bible to his own situation: "Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for to-morrow we die." Others might laugh and tipple as they passed their few days in the condemned hold; he did more, for he shouted and sang, and was generally roaring drunk.

Hundreds came to see this edifying spectacle, and the Newgate turnkeys reaped a rich harvest in fees paid by eager sightseers. Such an extraordinary rush impressed even the prisoner, who appears to have thought it very stupid. "Good folks," he exclaimed, "you pay for seeing me now, but if you had suspended your curiosity till I went to Tyburn, you might have seen me for nothing." The company he kept—and was by the lax regulations of the prison readily allowed to keep—in gaol was of the most depraved type. At any rate, these dissolute companions served to keep up his spirits to the very last, and followed him to Tyburn itself, where he ended in the same vein: "When he came to the place of Execution, he smiled upon, and made his Bows to all he knew. Instead of praying with the rest of the Criminals, he employ'd that time in Giggling, taking Snuff, and making Apish Motions to divert himself and the Mob. When Prayers were over, he told them the Sheriffs had made an order that no Surgeons should touch his Body. The Ordinary advised him to consider whither he was going, to which he answered that, being a Roman Catholic, he had receiv'd no Sacrament, and prepar'd for Death in his own Way; and then, giving himself some pretty and genteel Airs (as he seem'd to think 'em) in adjusting the Halter about his Neck, the Cart was drawn away."

So far from contrition and repentance being found in Newgate, the prison was generally, as we have seen, the riotous finish of an ill-spent life. The interest with which they were regarded effectually prevented the prisoners from realising themselves the miserable sinners they were officially declared to be from the chapel pulpit on Sundays. The times were practically pagan.

William Hawke, or Hawkes, one of several men at different times styled the "Flying Highwayman," was greatly honoured. He had been condemned in July 1774, on the paltry charge of stealing a small quantity of linen: quite beneath a person of his skill, and, like many another fine fellow, received very distinguished company as he lay in his dungeon cell. Rank and fashion, wit and beauty, enlivened his days and made them pass cheerfully enough. Among others who called upon him was the eccentric Colonel George Hanger, afterwards fourth Lord Coleraine, who offered him a handsome price for his horse, to which the high-minded Hawke warmly responded: "Sir, I am as much obliged to you for your proposal as for your visit. But," he added in a low tone, and in a wary manner that implied his increasing confidence, "the mare won't suit you, perhaps, if you want her for the Road. It is not every man that can get her up to a carriage."

Hanger was so exceedingly pleased with this little trait of professional sympathy that he advanced Hawke £50, to enable him to offer bribes for his escape; but all efforts in that direction failing, the highwayman later returned the money, with his grateful thanks. He was buried in Stepney churchyard, with the following epitaph: "Farewell, vain world, I've had enough of thee," over him, by his own desire; an ineffective post-mortem repartee upon the world, which had already so emphatically proved it had had enough of him.

CHAPTER X

THE WATCHMAN, AND THE EXECUTION BELL OF ST. SEPULCHRE

Robert Dowe, citizen of London and merchant taylor, who died in 1612, bequeathed the annual sum of twenty-six shillings and eightpence to the vicar and churchwardens of St. Sepulchre, for the time being, for the delivery of a solemn exhortation to the condemned criminals in Newgate, on the night before their execution. The parish clerk, or other person that might be appointed for the purpose, it was laid down by the terms of this bequest, "should come in the night-time, and likewise early in the morning, to the window of the prison where they lie, and there ringing certain tolls with a hand-bell appointed for the purpose, should put them in mind of their present condition and ensuing execution, desiring them to be prepared therefor, as they ought to be. When they are in the cart, and brought before the wall of the church, at the beginning of their journey to Tyburn, there he shall stand ready with the same bell, and, after certain tolls, he shall rehearse a certain prayer, desiring all the people there present to pray for them."

"Admonition to the Prisoners in Newgate, on the Night before Execution.

You prisoners that are within,

Who for wickedness and sin,

after many mercies shown, are now appointed to die to-morrow in the forenoon: give ear, and understand, that to-morrow morning the greatest bell of St. Sepulchre shall toll for you, in form and manner of a passing-bell, as used to be tolled for those that are at the point of death: to the end that all godly people, hearing that bell, and knowing it is for your going to your deaths, may be stirred up heartily to pray to God to bestow His grace and mercy upon you, whilst you live. I beseech you, for Jesus Christ's sake, to keep this night in watching and prayer, to the salvation of your own souls, while there is yet time and place for mercy; as knowing to-morrow you must appear before the judgment-seat of your Creator, there to give an account of all things done in this life, and to suffer eternal torments for your sins committed against Him, unless upon your hearty and unfeigned repentance, you find mercy through the merits of the death and passion of your only Mediator and Advocate, Jesus Christ, who now sits at the right hand of God, to make intercession for as many of you as penitently return to Him."

Then followed the:

"Admonition to the Condemned Criminals as they are passing by St. Sepulchre's Church-wall to Execution.

"All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners, who are now going to their death, for whom this great bell doth toll.

"You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears; ask mercy of the Lord, for the salvation of your own Souls, through the merits of Jesus Christ.

Lord have mercy upon you.

Christ have mercy upon you."

To see that these injunctions were duly carried out, the Beadle of Merchant Taylors' Hall was given a "modest stipend," but whether any other person drew a further sum for seeing to it that the Beadle saw the parish clerk perform the duty does not appear.

It would seem that, as time went on, the watchman who patrolled the neighbourhood at night took over the duty of performing the midnight exhortation. By that time it had been crystallised into poetic form, and was no doubt, when delivered with due solemnity under the frowning walls of Newgate at that midnight hour, a very impressive thing. Twelve o'clock sounded slowly from the belfry of St. Sepulchre, and then, heard through barred windows in those massive walls of rusticated masonry, came that deliberate recitation:

All you that in the condemned hold do lie,

Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.

Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near,

When you before the Almighty must appear.

Examine well yourselves, in time repent,

That you may not to eternal flames be sent;

Forswear your sins, trust in Christ's merit,

That Heavenly grace you may inherit;

And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,

The Lord have mercy on your souls!

Past twelve o'clock!

THE BELLMAN.

All you that in the condemned hold do lie,

Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.

We may imagine, if we pause a moment, with the fearful story of that historic prison in our minds, the condemned men, merrymaking up to the last and receiving curious and dissolute visitors in their imprisonment, having their reckless carousing broken in upon by that awful message, and halting a moment, with an icy terror striking in upon their nerves, to realise that this, then, was the last chapter in their lives. We are not to suppose, however, that these solemn words, ordained by the excellent Robert Dowe, made a lasting impression on those for whom they were intended. The passing citizen, or the honest tradesman lying wakeful in his bed, probably was more deeply impressed. The criminals themselves, as the long story of them through the dreadful centuries shows, were mostly callous. They had, the larger number of them, long over-passed the dread of death; and even with those who were afraid, it was by tradition a point of honour to take that last journey to Tyburn as gaily as though they were the central figures in some merrymaking, instead of going to their own shameful extinction. Indeed, the populace expected no less, and while they were ready to applaud the highwayman, who made his exit in gala costume, and with something that might pass for wit on his lips, and were eager for the honour of shaking him by the hand, they were not backward with curses, stones, and mud when some poor devil, unnerved, or perhaps even penitent, broke down and was drawn, a miserable object, to the gallows.

But there were those critics who did not believe in the picturesque nocturnal method of admonishing malefactors of their approaching end. They did not consider it was possible they could be oblivious of it, or "as if Men in their Condition you'd have any stomach to Unseasonable Poetry"; as that "late famous, notorious robber," John Hall, executed 1708, very pertinently remarks in his "Memoirs."

Did those criminals who were sincerely penitent properly value Mr. Dowe and his bequest? It is to be feared they did not altogether relish being woke up from the sleep (if they had any) of their last night on earth. Of another sort than the generality of them, however, was Sarah Malcolm, who died in 1733 for the murder of her mistress, Mrs. Duncombe. "D'ye hear, Mr. Bellman," she shouted out from her window; "call for a Pint of Wine, and I'll throw you a Shilling to pay for it."

The great bell of St. Sepulchre continued to toll on the morning of executions until 1890. It was to have been sounded at the execution of Mrs. Pearcey, but a guest at the Viaduct Hotel was lying ill at the time, and a message being conveyed to the vicar, asking that it might on this occasion be dispensed with, the old custom was then discontinued, and was not again renewed. It had, in fact, been merely a sentimental survival since 1888, when the Charity Commissioners had laid hands upon, and appropriated the £50 left two hundred and eighty-three years before. The midnight bellman had ceased his warning cry in 1783, when Tyburn executions ended and Newgate's prisoners began to be executed in the Old Bailey, on the very threshold of the prison.

THE "EXECUTION BELL," ST. SEPULCHRE.

The original hand-bell reposes in a glass case on the north wall of the chancel of St. Sepulchre's church, with a suitable inscription.

CHAPTER XI

HANGMAN'S HIGHWAY: THE ROAD TO TYBURN

Tyburn:

That most celebrated place,

Where angry justice shows her awful face;

Where little villains must submit to fate,

That great ones may enjoy the world in state.

Let us now see something of that road—that Via Dolorosa, as we may in all fitness call it—along which the condemned, highwaymen and others, went to Tyburn Tree. I shall style it "Hangman's Highway." It is not a pretty name, and it was never its official designation; but it is an apt one. Since 1783, when it lost that unenviable notoriety, its social status has continually risen, and there is now not a more respectable three-miles stretch of thoroughfare in London.

It had in remote ages been "Hangman's Highway," for from the west gateway in the wall of Roman Londinium, from the spot in after-years known as "Newgate," the malefactors of the Roman period were marched out and done to death. But in mediæval times, the citizens of London, not then so easily moved at the sight of executions, were content to allow criminals to be put to death in their midst, and we read of executions on Cornhill. A little later, and we find Smithfield chosen; a spot called "The Elms," apparently situated opposite where St. Bartholomew's Hospital stands, being the place where, not only criminals of low degree, but many of high rank suffered. Here the Scottish patriot, Wallace, was hanged in 1305, and here Mortimer was executed in 1330.

Holinshed, indeed, deriving his information from Adam Murimuth, tells a different tale. He says, of Mortimer: "He was at London drawne and hanged at the commen place of execution called in those daies The Elmes, and now Tiborne, as in some bookes we find."

But there is some confusion of ideas here: Tyburn did not become a place of execution until long after, and St. Giles's was the next site of the gallows.

It was a little less than a hundred years later, that the newer choice was made, for about 1413 we read that the gallows was set up at the northern boundary of the Leper Hospital of St. Giles, half-way to Tyburn. It is referred to in ancient documents as the "Novelles furches," i.e. the "new forks": in allusion to the arms of the gallows-tree. There, in 1417, Sir John Oldcastle was hanged and his body afterwards burnt.

But Smithfield was still occasionally the scene of executions, and there, also, the fires that consumed the Protestant martyrs in the Marian persecution were lighted. Even so late as 1693, the celebrated highwayman, Captain James Whitney, was executed at Smithfield, on a spot known as "Porter's Block," near Cowcross Street. The equally celebrated, or notorious, John Cottington, called "Mulled Sack," was hanged at "Smithfield Rounds," some years earlier.

"The Elms" was also the name of the earlier Tyburn, and much confusion has naturally arisen over this duplicating of names. The original Tyburn appears to have been established on the banks of a stream, which long ago ran across what is now Oxford Street, near Stratford Place. Here, then, were those other elms, distinct from the fatal elms of Smithfield. [2] To this place the executions were remitted, no doubt following upon the remonstrance of some aggrieved person, who found the gallows of St. Giles injuring his property. [3] The continued westward progression of Tyburn Tree is, indeed, a sign of the growth of London in that direction, and a proof of the very natural objection entertained by residents and owners of property to executions conducted in front of their windows.

The Tye Bourne obtained its name from the two branches, in which it flowed down from the Hampstead heights towards the Thames. The two streams were something over half a mile apart: the easterly branch crossing Oxford Street just below Stratford Place, and the westerly—the "West Bourne," that has itself also disappeared, but has given its name to Westbourne Grove and Westbourne Terrace—flowing across the Bayswater Road into Kensington Gardens. Its course lay along what is now Kensington Gardens Terrace, and does so still: underground, and enclosed in a pipe.

A Roman road went due west out of the West Gate of Londinium to join the Watling Street (which ran from Stangate, Lambeth, across the Thames at Westminster, in a north-westerly direction to Edgware) at the present junction of Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, and the Edgware Road, occupying the line of the existing Oxford Street. It crossed the eastward branch of the Tye Bourne by a paved ford: the "strat-ford" i.e. "street ford," that long, long ago suggested a name for Stratford Place. Even the great modern borough of St. Marylebone owes its name to this bourne, and to the original church of St. Mary, built not far from its bank. The present Marylebone Lane owes its curious windings to the fact that it was once a country lane that followed the twists and turns of the little river.

St. Marylebone gets its name in a manner worth describing. The original church of St. John, Tyburn, that had stood from time immemorial beside the banks of the Tye Bourne, between the Oxford Street end of what are now Marylebone Lane and Stratford Place, was situated in a very lonely, yet exposed situation, on the great road from the City of London to the west. The village centred about where High Street, Marylebone, is now to be found, and the church and the village pound stood apart. So often was this original place of worship broken into and desecrated by thieves and vagabonds that it became at last necessary to remove it altogether. Accordingly, a licence was obtained in 1440 from the Bishop of London, Robert Braybrooke, to demolish the building and to erect a new church in the village itself, to be dedicated to St. Mary. Hence the disuse of "Tyburn" and the rise of "St. Mary-le-bourne."

The old Court House and vestry offices of Marylebone, in Marylebone Lane, built in 1829, occupy the site of the ancient vestry and that of the old pound for strayed cattle; and skeletons, found there in plenty at the building of it, were ascribed to the criminals anciently hanged and gibbeted on the spot, rather than thought to be the bones of the respectable inhabitants.

But, however dangerous the neighbourhood for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, it was on one summer's day, annually, the scene of a gay civic festival. Ever since 1239 there had been conduits established here for the supply of water to London—that one square mile of London known as the City—and to this spot on that annual occasion repaired my Lord Mayor and aldermen, to feast in a building called the "Banqueting House," that then stood in the pleasant country meadows. It may be found, distinctly marked, on old maps, on the site of Stratford Place, which itself is of considerable age, having been begun in 1744.

A record is still preserved of that civic junketing in 1562, when, after lunch, the Lord Mayor and the other guests hunted the hare through the woods of St. Marylebone. Then they dined, and, the huntsman having unearthed a fox, the hunt tailed away to St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where at last he was killed, "with great hollowing and blowing of horns at his death."

There should never have been the slightest doubt as to the real meaning of the word "Tyburn." It clearly means "the two streams." Somewhat similar derivations of place-names are found in the numerous "Twyfords" throughout the country, and in the name of Tiverton: the meanings being, of course, respectively, "Two Fords," and "Two Ford Town." But we find such derivations as "t'Ay Bourne," and the quaint passage written in 1617, "Teyborne, so-called of bornes and springs and of tying men up there." Fuller, at any rate, if not prepared to suggest an origin, was not, on the other hand, content to accept the popular view. He adopted a mildly critical attitude when he wrote his Worthies, and said: "Some will have it from Tie and Burne, because the poor Lollards for whom this instrument (of cruelty to them, though of justice to malefactors) was first set up, had their necks tied to the beame, and their lower parts burnt in the fire. Others will have it that it is called from Twa and Burne; that is, two rivulets, which it seems meet near to the place."

But the earliest mention of the stream, or streams, in A.D. 951, when it was called "Teoburne," seems to settle the point, beyond reasonable doubt.

The valley of this vanished stream can still most clearly be perceived, in the very marked dip in the road at this point, and its course onward towards the Thames may be traced by Brook Street and Half Moon Street, to Piccadilly (where a similar dip in the road will be found) and so into the Green Park.

The westward march of London in course of time moved on the Tyburn "Elms," to a site midway between the two branches of the Tye Burn, and fixed the scene of execution for some two centuries at what was later known as "Tyburn Gate," until at last "Tyburn," as a Golgotha, ceased to be, in 1783.

There was probably an excellent reason for this selection. The spot was certainly not near either of the bournes, but it was, as already pointed out, at a junction of roads, and it was then a place where the greatest publicity could be given to the ways of justice—or what passed for such—with the breakers of laws. It was not, according to ancient accounts, a nice place, even before the gallows was erected there; being nothing but a barren heath, standing rather high above the surrounding country, and with no houses near.

The road to this last Golgotha of London, before executions took place outside Newgate prison, is known by many names to-day: Holborn, High Holborn, New Oxford Street, and Oxford Street, along whose course it would now be difficult to point out many historical survivals. The church of St. Sepulchre still stands, as of yore, immediately without the site of the ancient City wall, and seems to many well versed in the gloomy memories of the spot, to bear an ominous name, until it is, with a little thought, recognised to be really dedicated in memory of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. An ironic fate, indeed, it was that for so many centuries associated its name with the last moments of the capitally convicted.

Its tower is prominent even now, but it was even more striking—though more closely hemmed in with houses—before the Holborn Viaduct, in 1867, superseded the road that in the old days plunged down into the deep valley of the Fleet River, that Old Bourne, or Hole Bourne, so greatly in dispute among antiquaries, and crossed here by Holborn Bridge, until the improvements of the viaduct-building age overbuilt the valley, and swept away the bridge and the surrounding streets into the limbo of forgotten things.

"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces," sighed the poet; and the thing remains just as true and as sad when we substitute "places" to suit our own present needs. Newgate prison is gone and Skinner Street is abolished, that once stood immediately adjoining St. Sepulchre church, and the only vestige remaining of it is a very plain tablet dated 1802, that may be found by the diligent and the quick-sighted in the dungeon-like crypt of the Guildhall Museum. The dirty alleys are gone too, and that is no loss—and gone also is what was known to Cockneys as "'Obun 'ill." Holborn Hill, which, it need perhaps hardly be explained, was the true name of this eminence, was not an Alp, nor even a Plinlimmon, but it remained to the very last a terror to London drivers, especially of heavy vehicles. It was a great thing when Holborn Viaduct was built, to have abolished those exceeding-steep gradients which faced all eastward—and westward—going traffic, and were terribly exacting to horses, especially in damp, greasy weather.

"'It 'im on the raw, mister!" suggested a countryman in the old days to the omnibus driver, as the vehicle toiled up the steep, towards the City.

Alas! poor horse.

"Not yet," returned the driver, who knew his business; "we saves that for 'Obun 'ill!" That was the supreme effort!

The descent of Holborn Hill was the first thing that lay before those old-time melancholy processions to the Elms in very ancient days, and to Tyburn, about half a mile further westward, in later ages; and something of what it was in the way of a descent we may still judge by looking down over the parapet of the Viaduct, on to Farringdon Street, far below. Before the procession fairly started on its way down this declivity, it halted by the porch of St. Sepulchre, and the criminal, so soon to die, received a large nosegay from the clergyman, for all the world as though he were a débutante upon the concert platform, instead of his being about to make a painful and humiliating entry into the next world. The nosegay was generally tied in the best fashion, with white silken ribbons; and indeed, the thing was done in style by all present, not excepting the central figure, the condemned man, who was almost always, when he could afford it, dressed gaily and fashionably, as though he were going to a wedding. He went to his death like a gentleman, no matter how he had lived his life. The only derogatory circumstance about it was that, while the sheriff rode in his carriage, the real hero of the day was obliged to go the journey in a cart. For the rest, if he were a good-plucked one, the highwayman, forger, murderer, or pickpocket—whatever was his crime—went his way in receipt of a continual ovation. He held the centre of the stage all the way. No one wanted to deprive him of this pre-eminence; be sure of that.

Of these scenes Swift wrote in 1727:

As clever Tom Clinch, while the rabble was bawling,

Rode stately through Holborn to die at his calling,

He stopt at the "Bowl" for a bottle of sack,

And promised to pay for it when he came back.

His waistcoat and stockings and breeches were white,

His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie't.

The maids to the doors and the balconies ran,

And said, "Lack-a-day, he's a proper young man!"

And as at the windows the ladies he spied,

Like a beau in a box, he bowed low on each side,

And when his last speech the loud hawkers did cry,

He swore from the cart, "It was all a damn'd lie!"

The hangman for pardon fell down on his knee:

Tom gave him a kick in the guts for his fee:

Then said, "I must speak to the people a little;

But I'll see you all damn'd before I will whittle!

My honest friend Wild (may he long hold his place),

He lengthen'd my life with a whole year of grace.

Take courage, dear comrades, and be not afraid,

Nor slip this occasion to follow your trade;

My conscience is clear, and my spirits are calm,

And thus I go off, without prayer-book or psalm;

Then follow the practice of clever Tom Clinch,

Who hung like a hero, and never would flinch."

The original of this savage satire was, no doubt, Tom Cox, the younger son of a gentleman of Blandford, who, resenting his meagre fortune under that old fetish of the English landowner, the law of primogeniture, came to London for the purpose of adding to it in what was then the conventional manner. His career was ended, too, by the authorities with an equally slavish regard to precedent, for when convicted at the Old Bailey of highway robbery, he was sentenced to be hanged; and if, as a matter of fact, his actual ending at Tyburn on June 3rd, 1691, was marked by an incident of striking originality, it was his own pluck and resource that provided the piquant sensation created, and nothing officially contributed.

CLEVER TOM CLINCH GOING TO EXECUTION.

He had been heedless in the extreme while in prison of the ministrations of the Ordinary, and, being well provided with money, lived his last days riotously. Even when beneath the gallows at Tyburn he remained unmoved, and when the Ordinary asked if he would not join with his fellow-sufferers in prayer, he swore and kicked both him and the hangman out of the cart. He was but twenty-six years of age when he died.

But good humour generally prevailed on the way: "The heroes of the day were often on excellent terms with the mob, and jokes were exchanged between the men who were going to be hanged, and the men who deserved to be."

Not only the "mob" enjoyed these occasions: people who, by position and education ought to have known better, made a point of either witnessing the start, or, better still, of being present at the actual execution. Those were not constituent items of the "mob" who, for example, paid their half-crowns for seats in the grand stand that was a permanent structure at Tyburn, to witness the final scene; but they had all the ferocity of mobs, and showed it one day in 1758, when, having paid their money to see Dr. Henesey hanged, he was not hanged, but reprieved instead. Enraged at this shameful breach of faith—and not at all glad that one fellow-mortal had at the eleventh hour escaped a shameful end—they wrecked the seats and departed in a by no means appeased ill-humour.

Some enthusiastic sightseers walked all the way: they could not have too much of a good thing. Happy were those who could not only do that, but could by favour secure a place next the criminal himself! T. J. Smith, who wrote the well-known volume called A Book for a Rainy Day, tells how, as a little boy, he was nearly given such a treat. He did, at any rate, witness the start, under the care of Nollekens, and saw the clergyman give the condemned malefactor the nosegay: but the greater treat was, by a mere accident, not to be his.

"Tom, my little man," whispered Nollekens, "if my father-in-law, Mr. Justice Welch, had been high constable, we could have walked beside the cart all the way to Tyburn."

Where Holborn Viaduct ends westward in the Circus, graced in these latter days of ours with that polite equestrian statue of the Prince Consort, lifting his cocked hat so high to omnibus passengers, the Tyburn procession arrived at the summit of Holborn Hill; passing to it beneath the tall tower of St. Andrew's church. The respectable inhabitants of Thavies' Inn—that demure row of red-brick houses on the left hand, built late in the seventeenth century, or early in the eighteenth—were, we may be sure, as eager to view the passing show as were the "lower orders." The windows of the "Old Bell" inn, last but one of the ancient galleried inns of London, demolished so recently as 1897, were, no doubt, in great demand; and indeed, at all the many hostelries on the line of march the sightseers gathered, and at one and the same time satisfied their curiosity and quenched the thirst it provoked. But gone are all the relics of the coaching days, and most others. Holborn is not what it was. Nothing is.

The weirdest jokes were current of the doomed criminals' behaviour on this melancholy way. Thus Thomas Witherington, executed in 1635, when going up Holborn Hill, requested that the cart might be stopped, for he desired to speak to the sheriff's deputy, who was conducting the affair. "Sir," he is reported to have said, when the deputy asked what it was he wanted, "I owe a small matter at the 'Three Cups' inn, a little further on, and I am afraid I shall be arrested for debt as I go by the door. So I shall be much obliged to you if you will be pleased to carry me down Shoe Lane and bring me up Drury Lane again, so that we don't pass it, and perhaps lose my appointment at Tyburn."

The deputy, entering into the humour of it, said he could not alter the route, but, if they were stopped, he would certainly go bail for him; and so Witherington, "not thinking he had such a good Friend to stand by him in time of need, rid very contentedly to Tyburn."

As these cavalcades progressed, they came gradually into the country. They passed the ultimate boundaries of the City at Holborn Bars, where the ancient timbered and gabled buildings of Staple Inn still look across the road to what is now Gray's Inn Road, but was then merely a lane. Near by is Furnival Street, formerly Castle Street, as a tablet dated 1785 proclaims.

"Holborn Bars" is a name that but mildly stimulates the curiosity of modern Londoners, who, seeing no bars here, wonder idly about the name, resolve to inquire about it, and then in the busy life they lead, forget their passing interest. There were toll-bars here in the highwaymen's days, and those who care to seek for themselves may still determine the exact boundary of the City of London, for a granite obelisk on either side of the road, bearing the City arms, still marks the spot. London had reached thus far early in the seventeenth century, but it went little further westward for another hundred years.

The names of Great Turnstile, Little Turnstile, and New Turnstile, now narrow side streets, giving upon Lincoln's Inn Fields, are reminiscences of the time when the land westward of Lincoln's Inn really was meadow-land, instead of a London square garden surrounded by houses. These various "Turnstile" streets still keep the ancient narrowness of the country lanes they once were, when the "kissing-gates," or turnstiles, led into green fields spangled with butter-cups and daisies; but such things are things of long ago: the old wall-tablet at the Holborn end of New Turnstile, dated 1688, showing when the rustic pathways were first exchanged for streets, and the wayside hedges for bricks and mortar. Until quite recent years Tichborne Court remained near by, with its fine tablet bearing the Tichborne arms and the date 1685.

Kingsway, London's new street, immediately westward, has been driven along the line of Little Queen Street since 1903; its name in some fashion intended to perpetuate the route taken by Charles the Second between Whitehall and Newmarket. When His Majesty shed the light of his countenance upon the races, or when he merely wished to visit his palace at Theobalds, near Cheshunt, his way would lie along what is now Kingsway, across Holborn, along the now vanished Kingsgate Street (demolished in 1903, in the Holborn to Strand street-improvements), and into the Theobald's Road. Kingsgate Street derived the second part of its name from it having been a private road for the King's own use: barred and locked against the passage of meaner folk, except in the case of a privileged few, fortunate enough to obtain passes. Less influential people, passing on foot, on horseback, or by carriage towards Cheshunt and Newmarket, in the wake of the Court, had to struggle as best they might through a network of peculiarly evil and muddy lanes, infested with highwaymen, who, nothing daunted by witnessing the dismal processions of their brethren going westward, robbed with celerity and an exquisite assurance those who, repairing to the races, would in all likelihood have lost their guineas on Newmarket Heath.

Thus we read in one of the "News Letters" of Charles the Second's time, under date of 1666: "Last Monday week in Holborn Fields, while several gentlemen were travelling to Newmarkett, to the Races there, a Highway Man very politely begg'd their Purses, for he said he was advis'd that he should win a great Sum if he adventur'd some guineas with the Competers at New-Market on a certain horse call'd 'Boopeepe,' which my Lord Excetter was to run a match. He was so pressing that they resign'd their Money to his keeping (not without sight of his pistols); he telling them that, if they would give him their names and the names of the places where they might be found, he would return to them that had Lent, at usury. It is thought that his Venture was not favourable, for the Gentlemen have not receiv'd neither Principle nor Interest. It is thought that it was Monsieur Claud Du Vall, or one of his knot, that Ventur'd the Gentlemen's money for them."

Not only have all those lanes disappeared in the long ago, but even such comparatively late landmarks as Kingsgate Street are no more: Kingsgate Street, the home of Sairey—"which her name is well beknownst is S. Gamp."

A little distance further westward, the Londoner not deeply versed in the ancient lore of the metropolis is greatly surprised at finding High Holborn curving boldly to the left and departing in the most marked manner from that straight line to the west traced nowadays by New Oxford Street. He does not know, or does not stop to consider, that New Oxford Street really is new, as newness in streets goes. It is, in fact, not older than 1847. Before it was made, there was no good through-route between the City and Tyburn, and the line of road went by a circuitous course, still easily traced—by High Holborn, Broad Street, and High Street, Bloomsbury. Passing under the very shadow of the Church of St. Giles—anciently "St. Giles-in-the-Fields"—the road again fell into the straight line opposite Tottenham Court Road.

The reason for this curious departure from the direct course is thought to have been the existence in ancient times of a lake, or marsh—a certain "Rugmere" mentioned in old records—covering the site of what is now New Oxford Street. However that may have been, this marsh must in course of centuries have dried up, for the site was built upon in later ages.

It was not an idyllic village that by degrees came into existence here. It formed an annexe to St. Giles's, a village itself associated from remote times with undesirables. A leper hospital was one of the early features of the place, and poverty and crime in later years came to roost by natural selection there; until, in fact, the proverbial conjunction of St. James's and St. Giles's, indicating the opposite extremes of aristocratic elegance and unredeemed vulgar squalor, was coined out of its flagrant raggedness and dirt. The particular spot through which New Oxford Street runs, was the deepest deep of that foul slum. Drink and depravity met there and flourished. It was generally known, this very microcosm of criminal life, as "The Rookery," but satirists called it, in obvious contrast with its real character, the "Holy Land." None dared venture into that select purlieu, except under police protection; and London breathed more freely when, in 1844, it was at last decided to remove this long-threatened plague-spot. Three years later, the new thoroughfare was opened; the improvement had cost no less a sum than £290,227 4s. 10d., of which £113,963 went to the Duke of Bedford, as compensation, although the work had the effect of increasing the value of his adjoining property. The transaction is an eloquent instance of the marvellous and continued success of the Russell family in feeding fat upon the body politic, like lice upon the corporeal body. It does not appear that, although His Grace was advantaged thus enormously, both by betterment and by compensation, the unfortunate owners and occupiers of houses and business premises in those highways suddenly converted into byways received any of the much-needed compensation for the "worsement" they suffered. For when New Oxford Street was made, the fortunes of High Street, Bloomsbury, of Broad Street, and of the circuitous part of High Holborn were at once shattered, and they at one stroke became the byways they have ever since remained.

Swift, in his ballad of "Clever Tom Clinch," mentions the "Bowl" inn, at which the convict called "for a bottle of sack." This was a house that stood at the corner of what is now Endell Street and Broad Street. For "sack," which Swift probably used for the sake of the rhyme with "come back," read ale, and the verse is true to facts; for the processions halted at the "Bowl" ale house, and the criminals were offered a drink of ale; and it does not seem ever to be recorded of them that they refused it. Perhaps they took with them memories of the old saying, that "the saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his ale": an unfortunate occurrence directly attributable to his ill-humour. No one knows what the saddler had done, but he was to die for it, and being led out to York's execution place, on Knavesmire, turned from the drink offered him on the way. He had been effectually hanged only a minute or two, when an unexpected reprieve came by a hurried messenger; too late.

All the good-plucked ones on their way to Tyburn, were not only expected to take their ale, but to make that joke about "coming back" to pay for it. It was as essential and as conventional as the clown's, "Here we are again!" Some surly ruffian might be moved, once in a way, to drain the bowl, fling it empty at the landlord, and bid him "wait for payment till he met him in H—ll"; but that was ungentlemanly, and the assignation not certain of fulfilment. Sometimes it would happen that one of these travellers going on to dance upon nothing at Tyburn would make variations upon the old theme; but nothing seems to have been quite so neat as the last remark of an atrocious villain, Tom Austin, who, when he stood with the rope round his neck, replied to the Ordinary's query if he had anything to say before he died: "Nothing: only there's a woman yonder with some curds and whey, and I wish I could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged, because I don't know when I shall see any again."

AT THE "BOWL."

Leaving the "Bowl" and threading the narrow passage of High Street, Bloomsbury, the processions, passing St. Giles's Pound, came into the "Tyburn Road," called sometimes "the Oxford Road," and now, and since about 1718, styled Oxford Street. Lysons, in his Environs of London, says the row of the first few houses on the north side of Tyburn Road westward of the Tottenham Court Road, was completed in 1729, and then it was first called Oxford Street; but he is clearly in error, for until about 1888 there remained built into the wall of No. 1, Oxford Street, on the south side, at the first-floor level, an oval tablet inscribed, "This is Oxford Streete, 1725." When the houses were rebuilt, this simple relic disappeared. But a still earlier tablet remains to disprove Lysons. This is one built into the wall of a house at the corner of Rathbone Place, which announces "Rathbones Place in Oxford Street 1718." The omission of the possessive case apostrophe has a somewhat gruesome effect, when we consider the old story of Oxford Street; but the side street was then the property of a certain Captain Rathbone. Oxford Street then had a very unenviable reputation. Pennant's description of it in his own youthful days forms interesting reading.

"I remember Oxford Street," he says, "a deep hollow road, and full of sloughs; with here and there a ragged house, the lurking-place of cut-throats: insomuch that I was never taken that way by night in my hackney-coach, to a worthy uncle's, who gave me lodgings in his house in George Street, but I went in dread the whole way."

Rathbone Place did not long remain the most westerly street. By 1725 a good deal of the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, on the opposite side of the road, was in existence, and was at once fashionable; and Thomas Street, with its tablet dated 1725, shows that, originally as "Bird Street," it had carried the bricks and mortar tide still further.

It can easily be understood that the stigma of the Tyburn route was at this period of development beginning to be resented by these new settlers, who glanced with loathing at the crowds who came to give the condemned a good send-off.

It was said that 200,000 persons visited Tyburn to witness the execution of Ferdinand, Marquis Paleotti, in 1718, for the murder of his servant, named, by a curious coincidence, Jack Sheppard, and thus by no means to be confounded with the famous Jack Sheppard, pickpocket and burglar, who was executed here in 1724.

Henri Misson, one of the most entertaining and instructive of foreign travellers in England, who travelled among us in 1718, and wrote his experiences and impressions, says: "Hanging is the most common Punishment in England. Usually this Execution is done in a great Road about a quarter of a League from the Suburbs of London. The Sessions for trying Criminals being held but Eight Times a Year, there are sometimes twenty Malefactors to be hang'd at a time.

"They put five or six in a Cart (some gentlemen obtain leave to perform this journey in a coach) and carry them riding backwards, with the Rope about their Necks, to the fatal Tree. The Executioner stops the Cart under one of the Cross Beams of the Gibbet, and fastens to that ill-favoured Beam one End of the Rope, while the other is round the Wretches Neck. This done, he gives the Horse a Lash with his Whip, away goes the Cart, and there swings my Gentleman Kicking in the Air.

"The Hangman does not give himself the Trouble to put them out of their Pain; but some of their Friends or Relations do it for them. They pull the dying Person by the Legs, and beat his Breast, to dispatch him as soon as possible. The English are People that laugh at the Delicacy of other Nations, who make it such a mighty Matter to be hanged. Their extraordinary Courage looks upon it as a Trifle, and they also make a Jest of the pretended Dishonour that, in the opinion of others, fall upon their Kindred.

"He that is to be hanged, or otherwise executed, first takes Care to get himself shaved and handsomely dressed; either in Mourning, or in the Dress of a Bridegroom. This done, he sets his Friends at Work to get him Leave to be buried, and to carry his Coffin with him, which is easily obtained. When his Suit of Clothes, his Night Gown, his Gloves, Hat, Periwig, Nosegay, Coffin, Flannel Dress for his Corps, and all those things are bought and prepared, the main Point is taken Care of. His Mind is at Peace, and then he thinks of his Conscience. Generally he studies a Speech, which he pronounces under the Gallows, and gives in Writing to the Sheriff or the Minister that attends him in his last Moments; desiring that it may be printed. Sometimes the Girls dress in White, with great Silk Scarves, and carry Baskets full of Flowers and Oranges, scattering these Flowers all the Way they go. But, to represent Things as they really are, I must needs own that if a pretty many of these People dress thus gaily, and go to it with such an Air of Indifference, there are many others that go slovenly enough, and with very dismal Phizzes."

AN EXECUTION AT TYBURN.

Jonathan Wild, hanged May 24th, 1725, was a whimsical fellow at the last of his career, for he picked the pocket of the Ordinary on the way. It is perhaps most exquisitely characteristic of the race of Newgate Ordinaries that the article stolen was a corkscrew. "Jonathan Wild the Great," as Fielding calls him, "died with the eloquent trophy in his hand."

Half a century later, those Newgate chaplains enjoyed an equally bad—if, indeed, not a worse—reputation, and a slighting remark is made in Storer's letter to George Selwyn, in describing the execution of Dr. Dodd for forgery, on June 27th, 1777. He rode to Tyburn in exceptional state, in a carriage, and as a heavy rain-shower was falling at the moment of his entering the cart, an umbrella was held over him, so that he might not be wetted. It was unfeelingly remarked at the time that the precaution was entirely unnecessary, for he was going to a place where he would soon be dried. John Wesley, who also witnessed the execution, was of a different, and a more charitable, opinion. "I make no doubt," he said, "but at that moment the angels were ready to carry him into Abraham's bosom."

"He was a considerable time in praying," says Storer, "which some people about seemed rather tired with; they rather wished for a more interesting part of the tragedy. There were two clergymen attending upon him, one of whom seemed very much affected. The other, I suppose, was the Ordinary of Newgate, as he was perfectly indifferent and unfeeling in every thing he said and did."

In Hogarth's print of the final scene in the life of the Idle Apprentice, arrived at Tyburn to be hanged, we have a very painstaking representation by that matter-of-fact artist of one of these fearfully frequent executions. Hogarth was the most uncompromising realist; he set down what he saw, and extenuated nothing. Thus, in this view, we may be quite sure we see a typical execution in the middle of the eighteenth century; the criminal seated in the cart, with his coffin dolorously ready to receive his body, while with one eye upon the prayer-book, and the other on the ribald crowd, he strives to pay attention to the last exhortations of the Ordinary, who is seen with uplifted hand and finger pointing to the sky, apparently comforting him with the assurance that he shall find that mercy in the other world, which man has denied him in this.

EXECUTION OF THE IDLE APPRENTICE AT TYBURN.

The sheriff's mounted guard, with their halberds, look unconcernedly on, for this is an almost everyday business with them. One is seen joking with a comrade. Drunken women are drinking gin, pickpockets are at work, and a slatternly woman is crying the "Last Dying Speech and Confession of Thomas Idle."

On the right hand is the permanent stand for those spectators who were above mixing with the mob, and were prepared to pay well for the comfortable circumstances in which they could witness a fellow-creature publicly put to a shameful death. Close by, you perceive the "three-legged mare" itself, at that time a fixed, and a very roomy and most substantial structure, designed to accommodate as many as a dozen or so criminals at one time; so plentiful then were the hangings. The hangman himself is seen to be idly reclining on top, smoking a contemplative pipe, until it shall please the clergyman to finish, and hand over the doomed man to him. And there is the Sheriff's carriage, and on the left hand the brick wall, which then enclosed Hyde Park. In the far distance are seen the pleasant heights of Notting Hill, then in the open country, and no doubt a spot where the innocent delights of gathering hazel-nuts could still be enjoyed, as in the times when it was first called the "nutting" hill.

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA PRAYING AT TYBURN.

So changed are the modern circumstances of the spot where Tyburn Gate in later times, and Tyburn gallows in earlier years, stood, that vexed controversies are continually arising as to the exact spot on which the gallows was erected. It is not, really, a difficult point to settle. The structure shown in Hogarth's engraving, and displayed in a still earlier German print, in which Queen Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles the First, is seen to be making pilgrimage and praying for the souls of her Roman Catholic servants hanged here, was erected exactly in the middle of the road, where, as you go westward, the straight line of Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road is met by the Edgware Road. Old maps indisputably prove it, and the point is more particularly settled by a large and very detailed plan of the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, made in 1725, and until recently in the vestry. It is now in the Buckingham Palace Road branch of the Westminster Public Libraries, where an old engraving of it also hangs on the staircase. This plan shows the parish boundary running up Park Lane to Oxford Street, and there meeting the boundaries of Marylebone and Paddington, at the junction of Oxford Street, the Bayswater Road, and the Edgware Road. The three boundaries all meet in the middle of this confluence of thoroughfares, and there the gallows is shown, one of its three legs in each parish.

In its later years, Tyburn as a hanging place became more varied, and the permanent gallows gave way to a temporary one, erected at different points somewhat further west. Two circumstances suggested this: firstly, the building of houses overlooking the scene, and the natural wish of the tenants that such dreadful exhibitions should not be displayed absolutely beneath their windows; and secondly, the even more practical necessity of ridding the public highway of the obstruction caused by the permanent scaffold. The key to this question of removal is found in the Gazetteer, May 4th, 1771, which remarked that the Dowager Lady Waldegrave was having a "grand house built near Tyburn," and added that, "Through the particular interest of her ladyship, the place of execution will be removed to another spot."

The highwaymen who suffered so largely here had in their lives, been a danger and a hindrance upon the highway, and they were now found, oddly enough, in the circumstances of their taking off, to be an equal nuisance. The road at this point had begun to be enclosed on all sides, and traffic, no longer able to avoid that ominous timber framework, would have actually been blocked by it. So, as with the passing of the years it had been found that executions tended somewhat to decrease, the permanent gallows was at last disestablished, and a new and movable one was constructed. This was used practically all over the area bounded by Tyburn Gate, at the junction of roads already described; by Bryanston Street, Seymour Street, Connaught Square, Stanhope Place, and so round by the Bayswater Road to Tyburn Gate again. The site of No. 6, Connaught Place, has been particularly mentioned, and, more particularly still, that of No. 49, Connaught Square, which the original lease from the freeholder, the Bishop of London, declares to have been the place where the gallows stood.

It was in 1783 that Dr. Johnson, that revered philosopher, declaimed against the changes then being witnessed. Perhaps the novelty that most angered him was the proposed abolition of the degrading processions of condemned malefactors from Newgate to Tyburn. "The age is running mad after innovation," he exclaimed to Sir William Scott, "and all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation."

It was timorously remarked that this change would, at any rate, be an improvement upon the old order of things; but Johnson, like most elderly men, thoroughly believed in what has been styled, "the gospel of things as they are," and he vehemently retorted, "No, sir, it is not an improvement; they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they don't answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties: the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?"

But the age was more progressive than Dr. Johnson, and 1783 did actually witness the last execution at Tyburn. Unhappily, public executions did not come to an end at the same time; such dismal exhibitions continuing in London to draw huge and riotous crowds at the Old Bailey until they were finally abolished in 1868. The old excuse for public executions—that they were valuable as deterrents from crime—had long been proved singularly ill-founded; and it was notorious that these gruesome occasions, in some morbid fashion, attracted not only a ruffianly and callous assemblage, but brought all the graduates in crime to the spot to witness a scene in which themselves would, in all probability, some day figure as chief actors. The last dying speeches of the criminals were heard by few in the crowd, and were aptly described as "exhortations to shun a vicious life, addressed to thieves actually engaged in picking pockets." The hardened wretches who looked on at these last scenes, and who had, many of them, already qualified for a place in the cart, had a kind of perverted professional pride. They applauded when a malefactor, with a curse and a jest, "died game," and they howled disapproval when some poor nervous creature broke down pitifully on the verge of eternity.

We observe in the rough but effective old woodcut which graces, or at any rate, occupies, if it does not grace, the end of this chapter, a criminal, not only dying game (in spite of the curious black-faced, cheerful, parrot-like hangman above, who seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself), but apparently distributing handbills; very much to the astonishment of the sheriff's bodyguard, whose faces exhibit a singular variety of emotions. Perhaps the criminal is so unconcerned because he knows it impossible to hang him on so short a gallows as that shown here. The illustration is one of the curious seventeenth-century representations of current events that formed the pictorial news of the age.

The last person actually to be executed at Tyburn was John Austin, hanged there November 7th, 1783.

CHAPTER XII

THE WAYSIDE GIBBETS

The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.—Psalm lxxix. 2.

The highwaymen were not specifically servants of the Lord, and certainly never numbered a saint in their ranks; but the point to be made here is that, after all, they were human beings, who lived in a supposedly civilised country, and were entitled to be turned off in a gentlemanly way; and, their crimes being thus expiated, to be buried decently and allowed to rest. For a murderer, it may readily be conceded, nothing could be too severe in the way of punishment. Let the bodies of those who profane God's temple be themselves profaned with every offensive circumstance. But for mere robbery upon the highway the methods of the law were too drastic.

When it was considered more than usually desirable to convey a warning to evil-doers in general, and highwaymen in particular, that Justice was still vigilant and ready to punish crime, the bodies of executed malefactors were occasionally set up along the roads on tall gallows and hanged, or "gibbeted," there in chains or in an especially constructed iron framework, so that they might remain for a length of time, to preach an eloquent sermon to some classes of the passers-by, and to disgust others.

Among the features of the country to which the old map-makers especially devoted their attention, the gibbets and the beacons along the roads are most prominent. Ogilby, in his Britannia of 1675, shows a startlingly large "gallows," like a football goal, a mile and a half on the London side of Croydon, and on the Tarporley-Chester Road shows a "Gibbit," two miles and a half from Chester.

THE ROAD NEAR CHESTER, 1675.

There was never any lack of subjects for gibbeting purposes, but it was generally desired to preserve the criminal's body as long as possible, to avoid the trouble and expense of replacing him with a fresh subject; and to that end the practice was either to place the body in a copperful of boiling pitch, or to pour pitch over it. So treated, it would last an almost incredibly long time: always supposing the relatives of that public exhibit did not come by stealth and make away with it.

There are still a few gibbets to be found in England: but rarely, or never, the original posts. A sentiment which we are not quite prepared to declare a perverted one, but which is certainly a sufficiently gruesome manifestation of antiquarian enthusiasm, has led to the old gibbet-posts being renewed from time to time in several places; and there they stand, on hill-tops or by roadsides, reminders of those fearful old times when such things as these could be.

In these pages we are concerned only with those that bear upon the subject of the highwaymen. Among these Caxton Gibbet is prominent, standing as it does on the North Road, between Royston and Alconbury Hill. The particular spot where the gibbet stands is an exceedingly lonely, and, to some minds dismal, stretch of road that winds in the flat, featureless lands, with never a house in sight but the neighbouring wayside alehouse, the "Gibbet" Inn. Only one mile distant is the village of Caxton, but to all appearances the spot might be many miles remote from even a hamlet.

Caxton, according to Cobbett, resembles a Picardy village; "certainly nothing English," he savagely continued, "except some of the rascally rotten boroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse. The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked. The few scrubbed trees that now and then meet the eye, and even the quick-sets, are covered with a yellow moss. All is bleak and comfortless; and just on the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, 'Caxton Gibbet,' tendering its friendly one arm to the passers-by. It has recently been fresh painted, and written on in conspicuous characters."

CAXTON GIBBET.

And so it remains to-day.

Among the criminals gibbeted on the original Caxton Gibbet was George Atkins, who in 1671 had murdered Richard Foster and his wife and child in the adjoining parish of Bourne. He remained at large for seven years, and was then captured and hanged; his body being afterwards exhibited here. But the most pitiful story connected with it is that of the younger of the two sons of Mrs. Gatward, a widow, who for many years kept the "Red Lion" Inn at Royston. She was assisted by her two sons in the coaching and posting business attached to the inn; but the younger took a sudden fancy to become a highwayman; probably from a mere love of excitement, or dared to do it by companions of his own age. Whatever the compelling cause, he went out and waylaid the postboy carrying the mails between Royston and Huntingdon, and robbed the bags. He was arrested, condemned to death, and hanged, and his body was gibbeted here.

The story of this amateur highwayman is to be met with in the manuscript history of Cambridgeshire, written by Cole, a diligent eighteenth-century antiquary: "About 1753-54, the son of Mrs. Gatward, who kept the 'Red Lion' at Royston, being convicted of robbing the mail, was hanged in chains on the Great Road. I saw him hanging in a scarlet coat, and after he had hung about two or three months it is supposed that the screw was filed which supported him and that he fell in the first high wind after. Mr. Lord, of Trinity, passed by as he lay on the ground, and, trying to open his breast to see what state his body was in, not being offensive but quite dry, a button of brass came off, which he preserves to this day.... It was a great grief to his mother, who bore a good character, and kept the inn for many years after."

The story goes that the mother had the body secretly conveyed to the inn, and gave it decent, if unconsecrated, burial in the cellar.

It is easy to find the excuse that society had to be protected at all costs, to condone the savagery of those who permitted gibbeting for what we in our own age would consider a minor crime; but if we pause a moment, and strive to realise the feelings of the surviving relatives by imagining one of our own belongings so shamefully exposed like carrion, for the ravens and the crows to feed upon, we shall not so readily find excuse for that fearful procedure.

The story of Mrs. Gatward's son very nearly fits that which suggested to Tennyson his gloomy and pitiful poem, "Rizpah"; but the original motive for that poem is usually said to have been a gibbet on the downs between Brighton and Worthing. In that case also, the victim was a lad who had robbed the mail for a mere freak. There was no mercy for him.

They killed him, they

Kill'd him for robbing the mail,

They hanged him in chains for a show.

There was no consideration for amateurs in that dreadful eighteenth century in which many writers have found a specious glamour of romance, because men and women wore powder and patches and sported silken clothes of amazing colours and styles. Who shall admire the embroidered waistcoat if no feeling heart beats beneath it, and what are manners or deportment if they but mask the tiger.

Rizpah, whose name forms the title of Tennyson's poem, was the concubine of King Saul and mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth, who were hanged and gibbeted, together with the five sons of Michal, on the sacred hill of Gibeah. There they remained from the early days of barley harvest until October. "And Rizpah ... took sackcloth and spread it upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."—2 Samuel xxii. 10.

The poor old woman of the poem is a sadder figure than Rizpah, for she is nearer, in time and place, to ourselves, and is represented as gathering up the bones of her only son, as they drop from the gibbet. Hers is a figure of terror and for pity:

Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea—

And Willy's voice in the wind, "O mother, come out to me."

Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?

For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

We should be seen, my dear; they would spy us out of the town.

The loud black nights for us, and the storm rushing over the down,

When I cannot see my own hand, but am led by the creak of the chain,

And grovel and grope for my son, till I find myself drenched with the rain.

Anything fallen again? Nay—what was there left to fall?

I have taken them home, I have number'd the bones, I have hidden them all.

They would scratch him up—they would hang him again on the cursed tree.

Sin? O yes—we are sinners, I know—let all that be,

And read me a Bible verse of the Lord's good-will towards men—

"Full of compassion and mercy, the Lord"—let me hear it again;

"Full of compassion and mercy—long-suffering." Yes, O yes!

For the lawyer is born but to murder—the Saviour lives but to bless.

Robbers of His Majesty's mails had always been hanged on conviction, but this severity had proved no deterrent, and it was not until the Earl of Leicester, Postmaster-General in 1753, prevailed upon the Government to have their bodies afterwards hung in chains, that any diminution of mail-robberies took place. Highwaymen, it is curious to reflect, did not so much mind being hanged, but had the greatest horror of their bodies being afterwards exposed. It is a weakness not readily to be understood, this horror, not of death, but of the desecration of the senseless body after death; but it was a very useful feeling to play upon, by way of deterrent.

That the highwaymen and the murderers were not always dissuaded from their crimes by the prospect of this post-mortem indignity is of course to be readily supposed. There was always the chance of their not being discovered. Thus, although mail-robberies were probably much fewer than they would have been, except for the gibbeting order, they still were a feature of the highwaymen's enterprises: and the midnight roads continued to be awful with pendant bodies, creaking in the wind in their rusted irons.

It is not difficult to mentally reconstruct those times and those wayside incidents, and I can imagine the solitary highwayman proceeding to his shy business. There comes a horseman along the road; he can be heard half a mile away, in the hush of the night when, with the setting of the sun, the cattle have ceased lowing and a distant church clock alone helps to break the stillness. He is in no hurry, this belated cavalier, for the click-clock of his horse's hoofs is measured and he is long in passing.

He is gone, pacing slowly up the hill to where the great road goes by the end of the lane, and as he goes we hear him, under his breath, cursing the rising moon for a false jade. By favour of her light we have seen him as he goes, with a crape mask over his face and pistols in his holsters; and recognise him as Hotposset Dick, the highwayman, whose nickname comes from his fondness for mulled port. They say he always has a tankard for his mare as well as for himself when starting out to speak with the mail at Five-ways Cross.

Five-ways Cross is not a cheerful place for Dick just now, and his mulled port is useful for other purposes than keeping out the cold. It is a spot which most people would find lonely, but Dick has company up there; company of a silent kind, which is apt rather to get on the nerves, unless a man is well primed. It is a friend of Dick's, who used to go shares with him in the risks of robbing on the highway and in the profits of their trade. He was caught ignominiously, when carrying too much liquor; hanged, and gibbeted at the Cross afterwards. There he swings by the roadside in his cage, in a contemplative attitude, as though pondering on the mysteries of life and death. Six months' hanging there has not improved either his manly beauty or his clothes, and although the spot is generally shunned by the villagers, some one, for purposes of evil sorcery, has made away with one of the dead man's hands and most of his hair, to make a Hand of Glory.

"THERE HE SWINGS BY THE ROADSIDE, IN HIS CAGE, IN A CONTEMPLATIVE ATTITUDE, AS THOUGH PONDERING ON THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND DEATH."

A complete set of gibbet irons is nowadays a somewhat rare and curious object. Their pattern varied according to local taste and fancy. There exists a set in the museum at Warrington, Lancashire, which enclosed the body of Edward Miles, who was executed in 1788 for robbing the mail and for murdering the postboy. He was gibbeted near the Twystes, on the road to Manchester, and the iron frame in which he swung for years was buried at the foot of the gibbet-post. When it was found, in 1845, it had become an antiquity bearing upon the obsolete customs of our forefathers, and was carefully preserved. The shape of it quite clearly indicates the outline of a man's body, and there is even a kind of ghastly smartness about the framework that suggests a military bearing, which must have made the awful object a terribly dramatic sight.

MILES'S IRONS.

In the same neighbourhood in 1796 James Price and Thomas Brown were gibbeted together on Trafford Green, three miles from Chester, for robbing the postboy of the mails; and a pamphlet recounting their trial and execution goes so far as to include a map of the road, and a neat little view of the double gibbet, with Messrs. Price and Brown dangling from it.

The execution of the two brothers, Robert and William Drewett, in 1799, for robbing the Portsmouth mail near Midhurst, was a late example of Post-Office ferocity, and is saddened by the tradition that the younger prisoner was innocent, and that he refused to clear himself because by so doing he would incriminate his father. The bodies were gibbeted on North Heath Common.

The last person to be gibbeted in England was Cook, who had committed a peculiarly atrocious murder at Leicester [4] in 1832. Two years later, the practice was abolished by statute.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ROADS OUT OF LONDON

I.—THE DOVER ROAD

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to say which road out of London was the most infested with highwaymen, in all these centuries. Where all were extremely dangerous for honest men, the bad eminence of any particular one is disputable. All the great highways were bordered by lonely wastes and commons until well on into the nineteenth century, and it is not saying too much to declare that the era of the highwaymen did not really end until that of railways had begun. Edmund Burke, who died in 1797, might see fit to declare that the age of the highwaymen was done, and that the age of cheats had succeeded, but he was a little too sanguine, or too despondent, whichever way you feel inclined to look at it. To take Wiltshire alone: one man was hanged at Fisherton gaol, Salisbury, in 1806, for highway robbery, one in 1816, two in 1817, and two in 1824; while in 1839, when the law had become less ferocious, three others were each sentenced to fifteen years' transportation for a most determined highway robbery at Gore Cross, on Salisbury Plain, on the evening of October 21st, in that year.

Gad's Hill, on the Dover Road, had from the earliest times a peculiar prominence in these matters, and even obtained its name from the rogues who lurked there. But, indeed, it is not going beyond the strictest bounds of truth to say that all the hills on the Dover Road were of evil repute. There were the cut-throats and footpads who lurked in the wayside trees and rushed out from the leafy coverts of Shooter's Hill, with terrifying cries. They were not politeful, those footpads, and the title of "gentlemen of the road," which was accorded those exquisite thieves, Claude Du Vall and Captain Hind, must needs be withheld from them. We read in the entertaining and instructive diary of Samuel Pepys how on April 11th, 1661, with a lady, he rode along the Dover Road, "under the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill, and a filthy sight it is to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones."

Six men were hanged here, and their bodies exposed on gibbets, in times not so very remote, for robbery with murder upon the highway. The remains of four of them decorated the summit of the hill, while the other two swung gracefully from tall posts beside the Eltham Road. The Bull Inn, which stands on the crest of Shooter's Hill, was in coaching times the first post-house at which travellers stopped and changed horses on their way from London to Dover. The Bull has been rebuilt of recent years, but tradition says (and tradition is not always such a liar as some folk would have us believe) that Dick Turpin frequented the road, and that it was at the old Bull he held the landlady over the fire, in order to make her confess where she had hoarded her money. The incident borrows a certain picturesqueness from lapse of time, but, on the whole, it is not to be regretted that the days of barbecued landladies are past.

The usual stories of highway encounters give the courage to the highwaymen and abject cowardice to their victims, but the positions were reversed in an affray that took place on this particularly bad eminence in 1773. A Colonel Craige and his servant were attacked about ten o'clock one Sunday night by two well-mounted highwaymen, who, on the Colonel declaring he would not be robbed, immediately fired and shot the servant's horse in the shoulder. On this the servant discharged a pistol, and, as a contemporary account has it, "The assailants rode off with great precipitation." That they rode off with nothing else shows how effectually the Colonel and his man, by firmly grasping the nettle, danger, plucked the flower, safety.

Don Juan was equally bold and successful. He was stopped with "Damn your eyes! Your money or your life!" by a party of footpads. He did not comprehend the language: but the meaning of their actions was plain enough:

Juan yet quickly understood their gesture;

And, being somewhat choleric and sudden,

Drew forth a pocket pistol from his vesture,

And fired it into one assailant's pudding—

Who fell, as rolls an ox o'er in his pasture,

And roar'd out, as he writhed his native mud in,

Unto his nearest follower or henchman,

"O Jack! I'm floor'd by that 'ere bloody Frenchman!"

On which Jack and his train set off at speed;

And Juan's suite, late scatter'd at a distance,

Came up, all marvelling at such a deed,

And offering, as usual, late assistance.

Juan, who saw the moon's late minion bleed

As if his veins would pour out his existence,

Stood, calling out for bandages and lint,

And wish'd he'd been less hasty with his flint.

"Perhaps," thought he, "it is the country's wont

To welcome foreigners in this way; now

I recollect some innkeepers who don't

Differ, except in robbing with a bow

In lieu of a bare blade and brazen front.

But what is to be done? I can't allow

The fellow to lie groaning on the road:

So take him up; I'll help you with the load."

But ere they could perform this pious duty,

The dying man cried, "Hold! I've got my gruel;

Oh, for a glass of max! We've miss'd our booty;

Let me die where I am!" And as the fuel

Of life shrunk in his heart, and thick and sooty

The drops fell from his death-wound, and he drew ill

His breath, he from his swelling throat untied

A kerchief, crying "Give Sal that!"—and died.

But not all travellers went armed, nor were all robbers so timorous. Robberies on Shooter's Hill continued without intermission, and at the very close of 1797—the year in which Burke, the statesman, died, who had some years earlier declared the age of the highwaymen to be past—a rather daring one was committed. It was on the Sunday evening, December 30th, and may be found reported in the Times of January 2nd, 1798. It was about six o'clock when highwaymen stopped a postchaise on Shooter's Hill, in which were two lawyers, named Harrison and Lockhart, and a midshipman of H.M.S. Venerable. They were travelling to London from Sheerness. The highwaymen took the lawyers' purses and watches. "The man on Mr. Harrison's side treated him with much personal violence, by forcing his pistol into his mouth, on opening the chaise-door." The men did not ask the midshipman for money, but took his trunk, containing all his clothes. No one for a moment thought of so foolish a thing as resisting.

But Gad's Hill was the very worst spot on the Dover Road, and had a very bad record for robbery and murders. When Shakespeare made Gad's Hill the scene of that famous highway robbery, when Prince Hal, Falstaff, Poins, and all the rest of them robbed the merchants, the franklins, and the flea-bitten carriers who were journeying from Rochester, he only made it so because of the ill repute the locality already possessed. The place is not romantic to-day, and it is somewhat difficult to realise that here, where Charles Dickens's hideous house of Gad's Hill Place stands, the valorous Falstaff, brave amid so many confederates, bade the travellers stand, and added insult to injury by calling them "gorbellied knaves" and "caterpillars."

FALSTAFF ON GAD'S HILL.
How the rogue roared!"

There is, indeed, a beautiful view from the southern slope of the hill, looking down upon Strood and Rochester; but to see Gad's Hill as it was of old, we should have to sweep away Gad's Hill Place, and the rows of mean cottages that now form quite a hamlet here. The hedges and enclosures, too, did not exist until modern times, but, instead of them, dense woods and dark hiding-places came close up to, and overshadowed, the highway, which was always full of ruts and liquid mud. These facts will give some idea of how terrible the hill could be of nights, when the rogues who hid in the shadows sprang forth and relieved travellers of their gold. The Danish Ambassador was set upon and plundered here in 1656, and it is quite evident that the knights of the road who despoiled him were no illiterate rogues, because they sent him a very whimsical letter of explanation, in which they said that: "The same necessity that enforc't ye Tartars to breake ye wall of China compelled them to wait upon him at Gad's Hill." Once in a way, however, travellers were more than equal for these gentry, as we may well see in these extracts from Gravesend registers: "1586, September 29th daye, was a thiefe yt. was slayen, buryed"; and again, "1590, Marche the 27th daie, was a theefe yt. was at Gad's Hill wounded to deathe, called Robert Writs, buried."

It would be an easy matter to write a long chapter on Gad's Hill and its terrors. We will conclude with a mention of the Duke of Würtemberg's adventure. He and his suite were travelling along the road, when a man with a drawn sword ran after them. The Duke promptly told the coachman to drive as fast as he could; not, as he naïvely added, because he was afraid of one man, but he didn't know how many others there might be. The Prince evidently had that discretion whose lack has been the death of many a bold, but ill-advised, fellow.

Shakespeare's scenes in Henry the Fourth, in which the travellers are robbed and Falstaff afterwards fooled, were greatly appreciated in his own day, because such happenings to wayfarers were the merest ordinary incidents of travel, not only in the time of Henry the Fourth, but in that of Elizabeth. The play touched life in one of its most familiar experiences.

[II.]—THE BATH ROAD

The Bath Road was not far inferior to the old highway to Dover in records of highway robbery, although they are chiefly of a later date than the Gad's Hill encounters; but the records of St. Mary Abbot's Church, Kensington, afford us an interesting peep into a time when the boundary of that now metropolitan borough, towards Knightsbridge, was very dangerous to honest folk. Thus we read, in the burial register, November 29th, 1687, of the interment of "Thomas Ridge, of Portsmouth, who was killed by thieves, almost at Knightsbridge."

This was no mere chance case. Some years earlier, John Evelyn recorded in his diary the ill-repute of the road at this point, and says robberies took place even while the road was full of coaches and travellers. The innkeepers of Knightsbridge shared the disfavour in which these first reaches of the Bath Road were held. When the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Rochester quarrelled, in the time of Charles the Second, and agreed to fight a duel, the Duke and his second lay at an inn at Knightsbridge, the night before the encounter, in order to avoid any suspicion of their intentions and any possible interruption. Much to their surprise, they found themselves in some danger of being arrested, not on any charge of breaking the King's peace over the approaching duel, but on the altogether unexpected suspicion of being highwaymen, who purposed skulking at an inn for the night, the better to waylay travellers. "But this," remarks the Duke, in his Memoirs, "I suppose, the people of the house were used to, and so took no notice of us, but liked us the better."

And so the neighbourhood remained, very little changed for the better, until the nineteenth century dawned.

It seems, looking upon the closeness of modern Knightsbridge to the very centre of things, almost the language of extravagance to say as much, but the literature of the ensuing periods fully supports the truth of it. Thus writes Lady Cowper, in her diary, October 1715: "I was at Kensington, where I intended to stay as long as the camp was in Hyde Park, the roads being so secure by it, that we might come from London at any time in the night without danger, which I did very often."

In 1736, Lord Hervey wrote from Kensington: "The road between this place and London is grown so infamously bad that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners tell us there is between them and us a great impassable gulf of mud." Impassable roads—through which, nevertheless, some wayfarers certainly did manage to pass—and highwaymen may always be bracketed together. Thus in April 1740, only four years after Lord Hervey had written that doleful letter—and we may be quite sure the roads had not improved during the interval—the Gentleman's Magazine recorded that, "The Bristol Mail from London was robbed a little beyond Knightsbridge by a man on foot, who took the Bath and Bristol bags, and, mounting the postboy's horse, rode off towards London."

On June 3rd, 1752, a professional thief-taker named Norton was instructed to repair to Knightsbridge, to see if he could apprehend a man who had on two or three occasions stopped and robbed the Devizes chaise. He proceeded in a chaise to a lonely inn, known as the "Halfway House"—half-way between Knightsbridge and Kensington—and as the vehicle approached, a man stopped it by threats from a pistol. Out jumped Norton and seized the man, a certain William Belchier, who was hanged, a little later.

On July 1st, 1774, William Hawke was executed for a robbery here, and two others, for a like offence, on November 30th following. Three highwaymen were thus accounted for, at short intervals, but others, equally daring, were evidently left, for on the 27th of the next month, a Mr. Jackson, of the Court of Requests at Westminster, was attacked at Kensington Gore, by four men on foot. He shot one, and the others fled.

A Mr. Walker, a London police-magistrate, writing in 1835, said: "At Kensington, within the memory of man, on Sunday evenings a bell used to be rung at intervals, to muster the people returning to town. As soon as a band was assembled, sufficiently numerous to ensure mutual protection, it set off; and so on, till all had passed."

Such are the memories that belong to the very beginning of this road; but they cluster most thickly, of course, around Hounslow Heath, on which Du Vall very largely practised, in the reign of Charles the Second. Du Vall is important enough to require a full biography elsewhere in these pages, and we pass on to others, who merely, so to say, stride across the stage, and so disappear.

Hounslow Heath no longer exists as a heath. Enclosure Acts and cultivation have, during the last hundred years, wrought a remarkable change upon the scene, and smiling market-gardens now spread for miles where once existed nothing more than a waste of furze-bushes, swampy gravel-pits, in which tall grasses and bulrushes grew, and grassy hillocks. This home of snipe and frogs, and haunt of the peewit, was not without its highwaymen by day, and at night it swarmed with them.

There was excellent reason why it should be so particularly favoured. Through its whole length ran, not only the Bath Road, from Hounslow town to Colnbrook and Slough, but the Exeter Road, on to Staines. Both roads were largely travelled to and from the West of England, and the Bath Road was, in addition, the road to Windsor; and was from that circumstance travelled by some of the wealthiest and most important people, who sorely tempted the daring spirits of the age. At a time when it was possible for a band of conspirators to assemble in Sutton Lane, near Gunnersbury, for the purpose of waylaying and assassinating William the Third, on his way from Richmond Park to Kensington Palace (February 10th, 1696), it was nothing out of the way for noblemen, returning from a visit to the King at Windsor Castle, to be stopped and robbed in their carriage when crossing Hounslow Heath. Masked robbers made no difficulty about endeavouring to halt Lord Ossulston's carriage here, one day in 1698; and it was merely by good fortune that he escaped with the loss of two of his horses, shot dead. The Duke of St. Albans was also attacked; but, with the aid of the gentlemen with him, beat off his assailants. The Duke of Northumberland, as Macaulay tells us, was not so fortunate, and fell into the hands of these audacious ruffians; with what result we do not learn.