Chapter XIV: THE ROADS OUT OF LONDON (continued) (1)

III.—THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

Could the gay highwaymen who, a hundred years ago, were gathered to their fathers at the end of a rope, down Tyburn way, revisit Finchley, the poor fellows would sadly need a guide. Where, alas! is Finchley Common, that wide-spreading expanse of evil omen on which those jovial spirits were so thoroughly at home? Finchley Common, has long since been divided up between the squatters who grabbed the public land when Justice winked the other eye, as Justice had a trick of doing years ago, when the process of enclosing commons was in full swing. There still exists a large oak-tree by the road at a place called Brown's Wells, opposite the "Green Man," and in the trunk of this last survival of the "good old times" there have been found, from time to time, quite a number of pistol bullets; the said bullets supposed to have been fired at the trunk to frighten the highwaymen who might chance to be hiding behind it, under cover of the night. The tree itself has long borne the name of "Turpin's Oak," no less celebrated a person than the redoubtable Dick himself having once frequented it. Turpin, of course, is the greatest of all the rascals who made the name of the Great North Road a name of dread. Before him, however, Jack Sheppard figured here; but not, it is sad to relate, in an heroic manner. In fact, that nimble-fingered youth who was no highwayman—merely a pickpocket and housebreaker—after escaping from the "Stone Jug" (by which piece of classic slang you are to understand Newgate is meant) had the humiliation to be apprehended on Finchley Common, disguised in drink and a butcher's blue smock. That was the worst of those roystering blades. The drink was the undoing of them all. If only they had been Good Templars, or sported the blue ribbon, it is quite certain that they had not been cut off untimely; and might, with reasonable luck, have even retired with a modest competence in early years.

One of the most savagely dramatic encounters on Finchley Common was that which was enacted on July 11th, 1699, with "Captain" Edmund Tooll, _alias_ Tooley, prominent on one side, and an unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Robert Leader, on the other. Mr. Leader was travelling from London across this waste, in company with his servant, when he was set upon by Tooll and some companions (one of whom afterwards turned King's evidence). They stripped Mr. Leader and his man, and, knocking the unlucky gentleman down, brutally stamped on his face and stomach, until, fearing he was to be killed, he begged pitifully for his life to be spared. He then attempted to run away, and the blood-thirsty Tooll shot him in the back, and wounded him so seriously that he died on the following day. When Tooll was at length arrested, at the "Blue Ball," in Jermyn Street, he was wearing some of the murdered man's clothes. He violently resisted, fired upon the officers, and, shortening a sword he held, attempted to stab one of them. He retained this spirit even in the dock, for when his resistance of arrest was mentioned, he said he was only sorry he had not stabbed the officer to the heart. He was executed, impenitent to the last, on February 2nd, 1700, and afterwards hanged in chains on Finchley Common.

It was in 1724 that Jack Sheppard was arrested by Bow Street runners on the Common, and the fact somewhat staggers one's belief in the wild lawlessness of that place. One might just as soon expect to hear of the Chief Commissioner of Police being kidnapped from Scotland Yard. And yet it is quite certain Finchley was no safe place for a good young man with five pounds in his pocket and a mere walking-stick in his hand, whether he proposed to cross it by night or day. Even sixty-six years later this evil reputation existed; for, in 1790, the Earl of Minto, travelling to London, wrote to his wife that, instead of pushing on to town at night, he would defer his entry until morning, "for I shall not trust my throat on Finchley Common in the dark." Think of it! And Dick Turpin had been duly executed fifty years before!

Between 1700 and 1800, in fact, this was a parlous place, and not one of the better-known highwaymen but had tried his hand at "touching the mails" as they went across this waste; or patrolled the darkest side of the road, ready to spring upon the solitary traveller. Indeed, the childlike simplicity of the lonely travellers of those days is absolutely contemptible, considering the well-known dangers of the roads. For instance, on the night of August 28th, 1720, a horseman might have been observed in the act of crossing Finchley Common. He had fifteen guineas in his pocket, and ambled along as though he had been in Pall Mall, instead of on perhaps the most dangerous road in England. At a respectable distance behind him came his servant, and, just in front of him, midway of this howling wilderness, stood three figures. "There is an eye that notes our coming," says the poet, and three pairs of eyes had perceived this wayfarer. They belonged to an enterprising individual named Spiggott and to two other ruffians whose names have not been handed down to posterity. The weirdly named Spiggott was apparently above disguising himself; his companions, however, might have taken the parts of stage brigands, for one of them had the cape of his coat buttoned over his chin, and the other wore a slouched hat over his eyes. In addition to this, he kept the ends of his long wig in his mouth—which seems rather a comic-opera touch than serious business. It was, however, a favourite and effectual way with highwaymen of disguising themselves. It is to be hoped, rather than expected, that the traveller with the guineas saw the humour of it.

In the twinkling of an eye one brigand had seized his horse and made him dismount, while the others covered him with their pistols. The servant also was secured, the guineas transferred with the dexterity of a practised conjurer, the horses turned loose, and then the three rode away, leaving the traveller and his servant to get on as best they could. Spiggott, in 1720, eventually paid the penalty of his rashness in not disguising himself in accordance with the canons of his high-toby craft, as taught on the stage, and in novels of the eighteenth century, in which crape-masks are essential. When he was caught, with some others, in an attempt on the Wendover waggon at Tyburn, he was identified by the Finchley traveller. The end of him was the end of all his kind, but it was not accomplished without considerable trouble. He, with another prisoner named Thomas Phillips, was in due form, and on several counts, indicted for highway robbery. Both refused to plead, and stood silent in the dock. There was in those times a fearful penalty for refusing to plead to an indictment: the penalty known to legal jurisprudence as _peine forte et dure_, which was, rendered into ordinary English, "pressing to death." The space at Newgate long known as the Press Yard took its name from being the place where this savage penalty was inflicted.

There was every inducement in those times for a criminal to refuse to plead to his indictment. If he pleaded, and was eventually found guilty, his property was, under the law as it then stood, forfeited to the Crown, and his relations, even his wife and children, were deprived of their very livelihood. A man might at one and the same time be an unmitigated scoundrel, and yet have the very tenderest feelings for his own, and many such an one endured the fearful martyrdom of pressing to death in order to preserve his belongings to those who had been dependent on him. For by enduring so much he could save everything, and will it as he would.

The official sentence passed upon those who thus "stood mute of malice," as the phrase ran, was "That the prisoner shall be remanded to the place from whence he came, and put in a low, dark room, and there laid on his back, without any manner of covering except a cloth round his middle; and that as many weights shall be laid upon him as he can bear, and more; and that he shall have no more sustenance but of the worst bread and water, and that he shall not eat on the same day on which he drinks, nor drink on the same day on which he eats; and he shall so continue until he die." A refinement of this torture, more worthy of a demon than a human being, was to place a sharp stone under the prisoner's body.

Spiggott and Phillips were both sentenced to this ordeal, and Phillips was taken in hand first. His courage, however, was not sufficient, and he asked pitifully to be allowed to stand again in the dock and plead. This was granted him, rather by way of a favour than as a right, and he pleaded not guilty, but was convicted and in course of events hanged.

William Spiggott was made of somewhat sterner stuff, and elected to be pressed rather than plead. He was then, as the old picture shows, stretched out upon the floor, his hands and feet secured, a board placed upon his chest, and weights up to 350 lbs. gradually added. He endured half an hour of this, but on another 50-lb. weight being added, gasped out that he would plead. Such were the Chinese-like methods of dealing with criminals in Merry England in the Good Old Days. Exactly who those old days were good for, except the privileged classes, we may long seek to discover; not with any very great hope of success.

Spiggott, being then graciously permitted to plead, was in his turn tried, found guilty, and hanged at Tyburn. He is notable as having been the last criminal to suffer this penalty.

Nathaniel Hawes, who practised on Finchley Common about the same time as Spiggott and his friends, was taken in 1721 in an unsuccessful attempt to rob a gentleman on that wild spot. Not only was his attempt a failure, but he was himself taken prisoner and handed over to justice by his intended victim. He also refused to plead. He would die, he declared, as he had lived, a gentleman. The reason for his refusing to plead was that the brave clothes in which he had been seized were taken off his back. Like most of his contemporaries, he had a mind, if he must make the journey to Tyburn, to go there respectably, and to cut a dash to the last. He would plead if they were returned, but not unless. "No one shall say I was hanged in a dirty shirt and a ragged coat."

So they pressed this most particular fellow up to 250 lbs. After a few minutes he declared himself ready, nay anxious, to plead, and he was accordingly put back, tried, and found guilty: going those three miles to Tyburn after all, it is melancholy to relate, in the grimy shirt and tattered duds of his very proper aversion.

Of the other names in the long and distinguished roll of road-agents who figure on Finchley Common at some time or another in their meteoric careers, it is not possible here to say much. There were the resourceful and courageous Captain Hind, the whimsically named "Old Mob," burly Tom Cox, Neddy Wicks, and Claude Du Vall. They have, most of them, their separate niches in these pages.

Room, however, by your leave, for those thoroughly business-like men, Messrs. Everett and Williams, who entered into a duly drawn and properly attested deed of partnership, by which it was agreed that they should work together on Finchley Common and elsewhere, and divide the profits of their labours into equal shares. Their industry prospered, and the common fund soon reached the very respectable total of £2,000. But when required to render accounts, and to pay over half this amount, Mr. Williams, treasurer of this precious firm, refused. The old proverb of "Honour among thieves" was therefore proved a fallacy. Everett thereupon brought an action at law against his defaulting partner, and a verdict for £20 was actually obtained, and appealed against by the defendant. The court then very properly found the whole matter scandalous, bad in law, and contrary to public policy. Everett was sentenced to pay costs, and the lawyers engaged on either side were fined £50 each for their part in this discreditable affair.

IV.—THE OXFORD ROAD

The way through Uxbridge and High Wycombe to Oxford is largely illustrated elsewhere in these pages, in the biographies of "Old Mob," and of Withers, in which Uxbridge and the neighbourhood of Hillingdon figure largely. Having once passed Hillingdon, travellers were comparatively unmolested until they came to Shotover Hill, near Oxford.

Shotover Hill was the scene of the barber's encounter with a knight of the road. The barber, travelling afoot with a sum of money, had been foolish enough to explain, in the parlour of an inn, how he had cunningly hidden his store among the implements of his trade he was carrying with him. Arrived on the hill-top, he was accosted by the figure of a road-agent who had, "from information received," a very accurate knowledge of how much money the barber was carrying, and where he carried it.

"Wer—what do you wer—want?" asked the trembling barber.

"Only a sher—shave," rejoined the knight of the road, mocking the man's frightened speech; "so out with your shaving-pot and razor, and fall to't!" And he sat himself down on the grassy bank.

With fumbling hands the barber undid his bag, and brought forth the shaving tackle, whereupon the highwayman, stretching his legs as though by accident, managed to upset the pot. Over it went, and smashed upon a stone, displaying that store of golden guineas.

"Ho, ho, my friend!" said the highwayman. "You're not so poor as you thought. 'Tis treasure-trove, indeed, and of right belongs to the King. God bless him! But since His Majesty has small need of a matter of twenty guineas, and I a very pressing one, I'll e'en pouch them myself!" And, so doing, and vaulting into the saddle, he was gone.

Along this same route, in the woodland road between West Wycombe and Stokenchurch, Jack Shrimpton, the highwayman, met a barrister who greatly admired the horse Shrimpton was riding, and offered him £30 for it. Needless to say, the coin promptly changed hands, but the horse did not.

Shrimpton was a native of Buckinghamshire, and was born at Penn, near Beaconsfield. He had been in his youth apprenticed to the soap-making trade, and was afterwards in the army.

One day he happened in a roadside inn upon a traveller who chanced to be the common hangman. He took a glass of wine with him, and, talking over his profession, he asked the hangman, "What is the reason, when you perform your office, that you put the knot just under the ear? In my opinion, if you were to fix it in the nape of the neck, it would be easier for the sufferer."

The hangman said, "I have hanged a great many in my time, sir; but, upon my word, I have never yet had any complaint. However, if it should be your good luck to make use of me, I will, to oblige you, hang you after your own way."

"I want none of your favours," replied Shrimpton heatedly, for the joke had struck nearer home than the hangman could have imagined.

In yet another incident, Shrimpton does not figure to advantage; and, one way and another, we shall not perhaps be ungenerous if we think him to have been something of an ass.

Meeting a miller who had failed in business, and, losing his all, had taken to the high-toby profession, he was summoned to "Stand!" Shrimpton was mounted and armed; the miller was on foot, and had only a cudgel, and when the practised highwayman produced his pistol, abjectly surrendered.

"Surely," said Shrimpton, disgusted with such an amateurish method, "you are but a young highwayman, or you would have knocked me down first and bade me to stand afterwards."

He then confided to the miller that he had recently robbed a neighbour of £150, and was now waiting for a traveller who was coming with six-score guineas. "Assist me," he said, "and you shall have half the booty."

The miller agreed, but presently, taking Shrimpton off his guard, knocked him down from behind with his cudgel. As the unfortunate highwayman lay in the road, slowly regaining consciousness, he saw the treacherous and villainous miller pouching his gold, and preparing to hastily depart with his horse.

"Good-bye," said the miller, "and, harkye, be off as soon as you can, or I'll have you hanged for robbing your neighbour, by your own confession."

"Thus," says the old historian of these things, "the Biter was bit, and Shrimpton swore he would nevermore take upon himself to learn strangers how to rob upon the highway." Excellent resolution! But he had little time wherein to put it into practice, for he was presently hanged, while his career was yet young, on St. Michael's Hill, Bristol, September 4th, 1713.

Of later travellers, by coach or by postchaise, who, fully aware of the risks they ran on all these great roads running out of London, hid their valuables carefully in their boots and other places of which they imagined the highwaymen could have no suspicion, there is not much space left here to tell. Let it, however, be said that those highwaymen were as well-informed as are modern Customs officers of likely places for secreting property; and when the coaches and chaises were stopped, and the travellers bidden hand over their money and watches, it was no use for them to declare that they had nothing. At the pistol-muzzle they were bidden take off their boots or other articles of dress. This was humorously known among the highwaymen as "shelling the peas."

MOLL CUTPURSE: THE "ROARING GIRL"

MOLL CUTPURSE.]

Moll Cutpurse must needs have a place here, by right of her intimate association with the highwaymen, rather than her own exploits. She was not, in fact, a highway robber at all; nor, of course, was her name Cutpurse, but Mary Frith. The daughter of a shoemaker, whose name, as a reporter of the old school might say, does not "transpire," she was born in Barbican, City of London, in 1592. Tradition tells how she was born with clenched fists: sure sign of a wild and adventurous nature. Her muscles and her spirit alike were mannish. As a girl, she was, in the obsolete language of the seventeenth century, a "tom-rig" and "rump-scuttle"; and a "quarter-staff" was more agreeable to her than a distaff. And not only more agreeable, but more natural, and she worsted many a pretty fellow in fair fight with that weapon, with which only the strong and the active could prevail. Her father proposed to apprentice her to a saddler, but she refused, and she was put aboard a ship bound for Virginia, to be sold into the plantations. It seems a drastic way with a rebellious daughter; but it failed, for Moll escaped before even the ship had left the Port of London. Love never entered into the career of Moll, and as she had the strength of a man and a masculine voice that procured her the name of the "Roaring Girl," she early concluded to wear masculine attire. In Middleton's comedy, written about her when she was still young, he makes a character declare: "She has the spirit of four great parishes, and a voice that will drown all the city." It will thus be seen that she was at an early age well known to those who lived their life in London. And for excellent reasons. She had not only become a member of a gang of thieves and pickpockets, who frequented the Bear Garden in Southwark and other popular resorts, but had graduated with amazing ease and swiftness in the art of slitting pockets and extracting purses, and from that had by force of an organising brain elevated herself into the position of a plotter of robberies and high directress of clyfakers and bung-snatchers. So well was the destination known of most of the watches and trinkets that were continually disappearing, that the owners of them were often knocking at her door in Fleet Street, ready to ransom their property for a well-recognised percentage of its value, before the thieves had returned with it; and they had to be politely requested to call again. In those halcyon days of the receivers of stolen property, before the evil career of Jonathan Wild had caused an Act of Parliament to be passed, dealing with them on the same footing as the actual thieves, much was done in this way of ransom and ready brokerage, and, so long as it was done with discretion, with advantage to all concerned. The owners got their own again, with the expenditure of a comparatively trifling sum, the gang carried on their operations with a large degree of security, and the wily Moll made an excellent income. She was witty and original, and—such was the spirit of the age—she became rather the fashion among the riotous young blades of town, who were then "seeing life." The highwaymen knew her well, and resorted to her house when they had taken watches and jewellery they could not themselves, without the gravest risk, endeavour to sell. They trusted her, and the public, coming to redeem the articles, did the same; and indeed, as intermediary between losers and finders, she was honesty itself: absolutely beyond suspicion.

Thus wagged the merry days until the Civil War altered the complexion of things. The times had been growing, for some few years before, curiously out of joint. The people, once taken with the mad pranks and outrageous humours of the society in which she moved, had grown more serious-minded, and the gay gallants who still continued to "see life" were no longer regarded with indulgence. The ripple of Puritanism that had arisen in the time of James the First and had then been little more than a religious expression, had increased in the time of his son to an overwhelming wave of politico-religious fury. It swept on, blotting out the theatres, frowning down all levity and finally breaking into warfare between the two different ideals cherished by Roundheads and Royalists.

The gallants naturally became Cavaliers, and went warring for their King over the country; but in the City there was a strict, stern way of regarding things that did Moll's business no good. Like all her associates, she was a Royalist. The alliance perhaps does that cause no service in the pages of history; but we must take it as we find it, and make the best or the worst of the fact, just as our own partisanship dictates.

She detailed trusty members of her organisation to persecute, in their own particular way, leading members of the detested party that had acquired political ascendency. On one occasion, while they robbed Lady Fairfax on her way to church, the "Roaring Girl" herself set out, according to the legend, to rob the husband, Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, with her own hands, on Hounslow Heath. It seems beyond belief, but the tale is at any rate a very old one, to be traced back almost as far as her own day. The story tells how she shot Fairfax in the arm, killed two horses ridden by the servants attending him, and secured all the money the general had with him. We may go so far as to concede that this was what the "Roaring Girl" would have rejoiced to do, had it been possible; but imagination refuses to carry us further.

Moll's fortune declined during the long years of the Commonwealth, which fact is, at any rate, something for Cromwellians to plume themselves upon. That she should live to see the Restoration and Charles the Second upon the throne, was one of her most ardent desires. She never doubted that he would be restored, and was careful to leave a sum of twenty pounds, by will, to celebrate the event, if it should happen to be deferred beyond her time. She died of dropsy, just one year before the Restoration took place.

CAPTAIN PHILIP STAFFORD

I do not think, if the highwaymen were with us again, that they would be treated by their victims with the extraordinary lenience shown them in those (in that respect) easy-going seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was commonly sufficient for a "knight of the road" who had been good enough to refrain from abuse or personal violence to say at parting, "God bless you," and then to shake hands with his victim, for that victim to go his way and never think of laying an information. And that is one of the reasons why the high-toby trade flourished so bravely in times when to be convicted of highway robbery meant death. The law, in fact, overreached itself, and the awful extremity of the penalty, so far from discouraging highwaymen, really encouraged their kind; for those were, after all, not the heartless periods we are taught to think them, and comparatively few were prepared to swear away the life of a fellow-creature in revenge for the loss of guineas or jewellery. Had the penalty been less tragic there would have been more informations.

But it was in the years following the Civil War, ending with the execution of Charles the First, that the roads in general, and Maidenhead Thicket in particular, attained their greatest notoriety. The whole country, indeed, swarmed with the adventurers who had attached themselves to the fortunes of the Cavalier party, and with gentlemen ruined in the cause of the King; their property sequestrated by Parliament and their persons subject to arrest. When the fighting was done, many of them became brigands and preyed upon honest men. If their victims chanced to be of the opposite faction, well and good; but it really mattered little to them of whom they levied unlawful tribute upon the road, and in short, the broken Cavaliers turned highwaymen, of whom we read in the classic pages of Smith and Johnson, were no favourable advertisement of their defeated party. Captain Alexander Smith, to whose diligence we owe the accounts of these seventeenth-century highwaymen, was himself of Royalist sympathies: the fact peeps out from almost every page of his work; but he had not the wit to see that the careers of his sorry heroes, as told by him, show them in general to be bullies, ready at a moment's notice, with a gush of cant, to justify their acts, fully as revolting as any of the cant that ever proceeded from what we are taught to believe was the canting party. They were a scoundrelly crew, whose highway work was but an incident, and that a comparatively venial one, in lives compact of almost incredible viciousness.

A prominent figure was that of Philip Stafford, a desperate fellow who, born about 1622, and originally the son of a gentleman-farmer in the neighbourhood of Newbury, had seen some fighting for the King, and, like many another highwayman of that period, was known as "captain." Maidenhead Thicket was a favourite lurk of his. Here it was he met a clergyman, shot his horse, robbed him of forty guineas, and bound him to a tree.

We read that Stafford soon grew successful in his profession and amassed a considerable sum of money; and then thought it well to retreat to a village in the north of England, and live there in a retired and frugal manner. It does not seem a characteristic resolution for a highwayman to take. The quiet life, it might be supposed, would not suit such an one. But such is the story told of him.

The more to avoid suspicion, he assumed the appearance of sanctity, and attended the village church and the parish meetings, and soon acquired great popularity as a speaker among the simple country people. After he had continued there about a year the minister died, and we are expected to believe the fantastic story that Stafford was elected in his stead, and that he "acquitted himself to the entire satisfaction" of the people; until, indeed, he went off with the plate.

He then, tired of the simple life, resumed his evil courses. Near Reading he waylaid a farmer, jogging home from market, and, worming himself into the unsuspecting man's confidence, found he had with him £33, the price of two loads of wheat just sold. He relieved the unfortunate man of that sum; but this was his last exploit. According to Johnson, he had scarcely taken leave of the farmer when two gentlemen, well mounted, came up, and, being informed of what had happened, rode after Stafford, and, in the space of an hour, overtook and dismounted him, seized the money, and carried him before a Justice of the Peace, who committed him to prison. At the ensuing Assizes he was tried and condemned. During his imprisonment he lived in a sumptuous manner, and, after the lax customs of the time, was even visited by many of his own profession, who formed a plan for his escape. But rumours of this being noised about, the day of execution was changed, and the scheme for his rescue was foiled.

He made the customary brave show at that last scene. Dressed in "a fine light suit of clothes, with a nosegay in his breast," he at first appeared perfectly unconcerned, and seems to have been the first of a long line of bold fellows who, given a last drink at a tavern on the way, promised to pay for it when they returned: an excellent jest. But, arriving at the place of execution at Reading, looking wistfully around, and seeking to prolong the preliminaries, in hope of that promised rescue, he faltered and trembled when the looked-for friends made no appearance. Presenting the sheriff with a paper containing a short account of his adventures, he was duly hanged.

"By his particular desire," the sheriff had him buried under the tower of St. Mary's Church.

CAPTAIN JAMES HIND, THE "PRINCE OF PRIGS"

By a general consensus of the opinions current in his age, Captain James Hind was incomparable among his fellow-highwaymen for courage, for resource, and for courtesy, and succeeding ages, although prolific in highwaymen, failed to produce the like of him.

James Hind was born in 1616 at Chipping Norton, the son of a saddler, and began life as apprentice to a butcher of that town. The lives of celebrated men, as told in popular biographies, afford many contradictions, and the career of Hind, set forth in the innumerable chapbooks of his own period, of the era of the Catnach press, and in a robustious kind of juvenile gutter-literature, that has survived even to our own day, is told in a variety of ways. His course was sufficiently adventurous, but his biographers have not condescended to the critical attitude; and thus, among the tales of wonder in which he moves, there are doubtless many that have simply accrued, just as the house-flies of summer are attracted to fly-papers. Indeed, as the highwaymen have ever been something (and generally a good deal) of heroes, so legends inevitably have gathered round them. If their exploits have not found a Homer to do for them what the Greek poet performed for the heroes of the _Iliad_, that is merely their misfortune, and they have had to be content with a Smith, a Johnson, and the trivial production of scribblers fortunate in anonymity.

Among the earliest of the chapbooks dealing with the short life and merry of Captain Hind is that scarce and curious print entitled _No Jest like a True Jest_, which presents us with what is quaintly styled "the true Protracture" of him, reproduced here. Observe his gallant bearing, the bravery of his dress, his winning smile, his lady-like feet! He carries a formidable pistol, it is true, but as you note him standing so debonair beside his gallant charger, you perceive, as it were, the courtesy and consideration that unfailingly accompanied his actions, shining out behind the rude methods of the old wood-engraver who seems to have hewed the portrait out of the wood with a billhook.

According to _No Jest like a True Jest_, which is but indifferently truthful in many of its details, and does not strike one as being a jest-book, Hind's father, before apprenticing him to a butcher, "put him to school, intending to make him a Scholar, but he minded his wagish Pastimes more than his Book," and so all ideas of a liberal education were cut off. Nor was the apprenticeship to the butchering more successful, for he, "having a Running Pate, soon grew weary of that also, and in conclusion ran away from his Master." Excusing himself, by complaining of the rough and quarrelsome character of the master, he borrowed two pounds from his mother, and fled to London. He was fifteen years of age at this time, and, if we may believe the biographers—a difficult enough exercise—"he soon contracted a relish for the pleasures of the town. A bottle and a female companion became his principal delight, and occupied the greater part of his time. So precocious were the 'prentice-boys of the early seventeenth century, and so far did forty shillings go!"

Ere long this youthful adventurer found his way into the society of highwaymen. It was in the Poultry Compter, whither he had been consigned for his part in a drunken riot, that he first made the acquaintance of Robert Allen, who was expert in most thievish arts. Over a bottle they struck up a friendship, and Allen presently introduced him to the gang he himself captained. They were mounted men, and the first test of the young recruit was the choice of a horse. He chose, with the unerring judgment in horseflesh that was one of his distinguishing characteristics through life, the best animal in the stable. Taken then to Shooter's Hill, and set to bid the first traveller "Stand and deliver!" he acquitted himself in so finished a manner as to win the respect of his new comrades, who, witnessing the exploit from the leafy coverts beside the road, could not withhold their admiration.

Here now thou seest me as a Butcher's Boy,
And sporting with a Dog in Merriment;
Hereafter, thou wilt read the Tricks I play,
Which may afford Thee pleasure and content.
For there's no Robb'ry yet I ere did doe,
But doth contain at least a jest or two.]

The horseman whom he thus robbed instantly handed over the ten guineas he was possessed of, and was no doubt bitterly wondering how he was to get home in a penniless state, when Hind courteously returned him one guinea. "This," said he, "is for handsel sake." The watching band of highwaymen marvelled greatly. Here was an intrepid youngster, the coolest hand at robbery, courteously giving back a percentage of his honest earnings. They were witnessing the foundation of a new school in an old art, a school that, although its fit pupils were few and far between, did at least establish a tradition that, while it did not greatly advantage the travelling world, did at least serve to win a long line of highwaymen an amount of forbearance that seems to us moderns almost incredible. The law visited highway robbery with sentences of the utmost ferocity, but individuals, as a general rule, took their losses, not only with an astonishing philosophy, but with a remarkable display of good-nature.

Insult a man, and he may brook it,
But keep your hands out of his breeches pocket,

says a well-known couplet; but here we have the strange spectacle of courtesy disarming the resentment caused by the turning out of those pockets! Hind was not yet the holder of a commission, but he was evidently already captain of himself.

Those were successful years, in which Hind scoured the roads with Allen's band. They robbed by wholesale, but never did the gentlemanly Hind omit the courteous formula of raising his hat on requesting a delivery. Your tax-gatherer and rate-collector of modern times do not do so much, in the presentation of their "Demand Notes."

Not only did Allen's gang pervade the country upon horseback: they conducted operations in lordly style, travelling often in carriages, or setting forth, some equipped as noblemen and others as their servants, all the better to conduct their campaign of robbery. Allen, of course, like most highwaymen of that time, was of Royalist sympathies. He conceived the magnificent idea of waylaying the travelling coach of no less a personage than His Highness, the Lord Protector of the Realm, Oliver Cromwell himself, on the way from Huntingdon. Unfortunately, the coach was guarded by seven servants, unusually full of fight, and so the attack not merely failed, but several of the highwaymen were captured, among them their leader, Allen, who, a short time later, suffered at Tyburn for his error of judgment. Hind was fortunate enough to escape, by dint of a good horse and excellent horsemanship.

We are told, however, that Hind's horse was killed by the exhausting efforts of this escape. Having no money to purchase another (how on earth did the highwaymen manage to dissipate all the money they stole?), he was under the necessity of trying his fortune on foot until he should find means to procure another. It was not long before he espied a horse tied to a hedge, with a saddle on, and a brace of pistols in the holsters.

"This is my horse," cried Hind to the owner, whom he observed on the other side of the hedge, and forthwith he vaulted into the saddle.

"The horse is mine, you rascal!" roared the owner, making a dash for it.

"Sir," rejoined Hind, "you may consider yourself well off, that I have left you with all your money in your pocket to buy another, which you had best lay out before I meet you again, lest you should be worse used." So saying, he rode off in search of new booty.

To rob the rich, to act as special providence to the poor, to succour the distressed, and to plague the existence of their political opponents seem to have been as much the attributes of the seventeenth-century highwaymen as they were of that merry outlaw, Robin Hood. It is thus that, in the vilely printed pamphlets written by illiterates, composed of blunted type, struck off upon incredibly bad paper by the aid of rickety hand-presses, and sold at the old country fairs, the highwaymen have always had a niche in the affections of the rustics, who had no purse nor gear to lose. Hind was of this type, whether actually or as the creature of legend it is now no use to inquire. We learn, for instance, how, riding through the town of Warwick, and hearing a commotion in a side street, he drew rein to discover the cause. An innkeeper, he was told, had been arrested at the suit of a rascally old usurer, for a debt of twenty pounds. It was the work of a few minutes for Hind to leap from his horse, to pay the money, and thus to release the innkeeper. "Generosity!" you will exclaim. Well, no; or, at any rate, merely a generous impulse that cost him nothing but a little physical exertion, for what was easier to Hind than recovering again those twenty sovereigns! He followed the money-lender out of the town, and, overtaking him in a lonely place, said, with his forceful politeness, "My good friend, I lent you, of late, a sum of twenty pounds. Repay at once, or I take your miserable life!"

Twenty sovereigns were with fear and trembling handed over, together with another twenty, "for interest," and when this ill-used man sought to recover his due from the innkeeper under legal plea of "duress," or what not technical terms, he was not only defeated on the innkeeper producing his signed discharge, but was soundly flogged into the bargain.

The fanciful book of Hind's exploits called _The English Gusman_, published in 1652, contains some marvellous stories, notably that in which a witch gives him a talisman protecting him for three years. He had been staying the night at the "George" inn, Hatfield, and leaving early the next morning, encountered an ill-favoured old woman who begged alms of him.

"His horse presently staid, and would go no further. 'Sir,' said the old woman, 'I have something to say to you, and then you shall be gone.'

"Hind, not liking her Countenance, puld out five shillings and gave her, thinking she would but like a Gipsee, tell his fortune, said, 'Good woman, I am in haste.'

"'Sir,' said she, 'I have staid all this morning to speak to you; and would you have me lose my labour?'

"'Speak your mind,' said Hind.

"The old woman began thus: 'Captain Hind, you ride and go in many dangers; wherefore, by my poor skill, I have thought of a way to preserve you for the space of three years; but, that time being past, you are no more than an ordinary man, and a mischance may fall on you, as well as another; but if you be in England, come to me, and I will renew the Verteu of this Charm again.'

"In saying these words, she puld out of her bosom a little box, almost like a Sun-Dyal, and gave it to Captain Hind, and said to him, 'When you are in any distress, open this, and which way you see the Star turns, ride or go that way, and you shall escape all dangers.'

"So she switched him with a white Rod that was in her hand, and strook the horse on the buttocks, and bid him farewell. The horse presently leaped forward with such courage that Hind could not turn to give her thanks; but, guessing her will it should be so, rode on his way."

Next; here am I presented to thy view,
Mounted aloft upon a gallant Nagg:
And then behinde me doth appear to you,
How I'm enchanted by an ugly Hagg.
For Three years' space: A little time I wot;
Yet many Pranks I plai'd, and Purses got.]

The talisman, according to the author of these marvels, lasted him until the time when he was present at the siege of Youghal, and its expiry was marked by his being wounded there.

He was a wide traveller, our gallant "Captain." We hear of him as a "true Royalist," receiving a commission from Sir William Compton, and find him at the desperate two-months' siege of Colchester, where the beleaguered Royalists made a last stand for Charles the First. On the surrender of that town, August 27th, 1648, to Fairfax, he managed to escape in woman's, or, according to another account, sailor's clothes.

The scene now shifts to Enfield, and we perceive Hind and the regicide, Hugh Peters, encountering in the green rides of the Chase. Politely Hind requests his purse, yet discloses a not altogether inopportune pistol. To this Peters replies with a defensive volley of texts. "Thou shalt not steal; let him that stole steal no more," and the like, together with a variety of paraphrases of the eighth commandment.

Hind, anxious to answer Peters in his own vein, finds himself a little floored at first, from want of practice, but presently he begins, "Verily," says he, imitating the sanctimonious tones of the Puritan, "if thou hadst regarded the Divine principles, as thou oughtest to have done, thou wouldst not have wrested them to such an abominable and wicked sense as thou didst the words of the Prophet, when he said, 'Bind their Kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron.' Didst thou not then, detestable hypocrite, endeavour from these words to aggravate the misfortunes of thy Royal master, whom thy cursed republican party unjustly murdered before the gate of his own palace?"

Stand and Deliver! Next in order comes;
Quickly your Money. Make no stay at all,
For my aim's high, and at those greater sums,
The lesser lead to Tyburn's funeral.
Here's all the difference, as 'tis manifest,
I got their money: they received a jest.]

Here Peters began to extenuate the action of the regicides, and to quote Scriptural authority; with an excursus upon the sinfulness of robbery.

"Pray, sir," replies Hind, Doctor of Divinity, _pro tem._, "make no reflection against men of my profession, for Solomon plainly said, 'Do not despise a thief.' But it is to little purpose for us to dispute: the substance of what I have to say is this: Deliver thy money presently, or else I shall send thee out of the world to thy master, the Devil, in an instant."

"These terrible words of the Captain," we are told, "so terrified the old Presbyterian that he gave him thirty broad pieces of gold, and then departed."

But Hind must needs still further humiliate the enemy. He accordingly rode after him at full speed, and, overtaking him, addressed him in this wise: "Sir, now I think of it, I am convinced this misfortune has happened to you because you did not obey the words of the Scripture, which says, expressly, 'Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, in your purses for your journey,' whereas it is evident that you had provided a pretty decent quantity of gold. However, as it is now in my power to make you fulfil another commandment, I would by no means slip the opportunity; therefore, pray, give me your cloak. You know, sir, it is commanded that, if any man take away thy cloak, thou must not refuse thy coat also."

The old Puritan shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably before he proceeded to uncloak them, but on Hind assuring him he must needs be obeyed, he surrendered the garment, and off went the highwayman with it.

The next Sunday, ascending his pulpit, Peters held forth, with a natural warmth of feeling, upon the crime of highway robbery, taking as his text, "I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on?" when an honest plain man present, who had heard of the incident, exclaimed, "Upon my word, sir, I believe there is nobody here can tell you, unless Captain Hind were here." The which put the congregation into such an excessive fit of laughter that the parson was made to blush, and descended from his prattling-box without further prosecuting the subject.

It was upon the road between Sherborne and Shaftesbury that Hind fell in with Serjeant Bradshaw, prominent among those who had sat in judgment upon the King. Bradshaw was in his travelling chariot, and, progressing with a considerable degree of state, declined to be robbed; mentioning his name.

"Pooh!" exclaimed Hind, "I fear neither you nor any king-killing villain alive. I have now as much power over you as you lately had over the King, and I should do God and my country good service if I made the same use of it; but live, villain, to suffer the pangs of thine own conscience, till Justice shall lay her iron hand upon thee, and require an answer for thy crimes, who are unworthy to die by any hands but those of the common hangman, or at any other place than Tyburn. Nevertheless, though I spare thy life, deliver up thy money, or die for thine obstinacy."

To save a miserable life, he put his trembling hand into his pocket, and drew out about forty shillings in silver, which he presented to the Captain, who swore he would that minute shoot him through the heart, unless he found him coin of another species. The Serjeant was then compelled to present Hind with a purse full of Jacobuses.

What a devil of talk possessed Hind. To be robbed and insulted, that was perhaps endurable; but to be lectured—oh, horrible!

"_This_, sir," says he, receiving the purse, "is the metal that wins my heart for ever! O precious gold! I admire and adore thee, as much as either Bradshaw, Prynne, or any other villain of the same stamp. This is that incomparable medicament which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster. It is truly Catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit's powder, but more effectual. The virtues of it are strange and various; it maketh justice deaf, as well as blind; and takes out spots of the deepest treasons, as easily as Castile soap does common stains. It alters a man's constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso's transfusion of blood can do in seven years. 'Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them. It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors. It is a mighty cordial for a declining cause: it stifles faction and schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes fools wise men, and wise men fools, and both of them knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is, in a decent manner, and in a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the above-mentioned cures, and many others, too numerous to be here mentioned."

With this, probably having quite exhausted himself, he haughtily pistolled the six horses that drew Bradshaw's carriage, and so left the unfortunate regicide, stripped of his money, deprived of all means of locomotion, and stunned by his flow of verbiage.

This, like the most of Hind's exploits, was robbing on the grand scale. To be sure, he rarely stooped to little larcenies, for he was a practical philosopher among the "skilful surveyors of highways and hedges" that he and his kind were pleased to style themselves. "Remember what I tell you," he would say; "disgrace not yourselves for small sums, but aim high, and for great ones; the least will bring you to the gallows."

There spoke the "Prince of Prigs," who was indeed so notable in his own lifetime that he had the honour accorded him of a play written around his exploits while yet he survived to add to them. It is not a good play, but that is no fault of our "gentleman" highwayman: the thing is that it should have been written and printed at all. Thus runs the title-page, that he himself may have read:

An Excellent Comedy
called, The
PRINCE OF PRIGGS
Revels:
or
The Practises of that grand Thief Captain
JAMES HIND
Relating
Divers of his Pranks and Exploits, never
heretofore published by any.
Repleat with various Conceits, and Tarltonian Mirth,
suitable to the Subject

Written by J. S.

London, Printed for G. Horton, 1651.

Seventy pounds he took from Colonel Harrison, another of the regicides, on the Bath Road, at Maidenhead Thicket; and so at one and the same time avenged his King and full-lined his pockets. A hue-and-cry was raised immediately, and the "Captain" was in danger long before he suspected it. It was an innkeeper who warned him—for the taverners and tapsters of that, of earlier, and of succeeding ages were ower sib to the gentlemen of the high-toby trade, and stood them in good stead whenever possible.

In this situation, it seems, Hind experienced an unwonted access of nervousness, and was apprehensive of every person he met upon the road. He had reached Knowl Hill, some four miles only from the spot where he had held up Harrison in his carriage, when a gentleman's servant, George Symson by name, riding at full speed after his master, came dashing by. With his mind full of the hue-and-cry raised after him, Hind, supposing this to be one of his pursuers, turned about, and raising his pistol, shot the unfortunate man dead: the only occasion of his taking life.

In May 1649, he was at The Hague, in the councils of Charles the Second. Thence, after a three days' stay, he crossed to Ireland and was made a corporal in the Duke of Ormonde's Life Guards. Wounded in action with Cromwell's troopers before Youghal, he escaped to Dungannon, but plague raged there, and he sailed for Scilly, which had a clean bill of health, and was, moreover, the safest place in which a hunted Royalist, highwayman or not, could at that time find himself. For, when all else had failed, even in the staunch and long-enduring West, the Scilly Isles still held out for the cause. The King was dead, but his son reigned in the hearts of the Cavaliers, and a faithful band, captained by Sir John Grenville, retired to that remote archipelago, fortified the islands, and made them a privateering base. It was not until June 1651, that Blake's flotilla forced them to surrender.