Chapter XIV: THE ROADS OUT OF LONDON (continued) (2)

Meanwhile, so famous had Hind become, that rumour posted him everywhere where highway robberies were reported. He was already in his lifetime a kind of bogey, or will-o'-wisp sort of a fellow, who could miraculously be in at least two places at one and the same time. Thus, while he was certainly in Scilly, _The Perfect Weekly Account_ of September 13th, 1649, reports from Bedford: "Last night was brought into this gaol, two prisoners taken up upon pursuit by the county, for robbing some soldiers of about £300 upon the way, in the day-time: there were five in the fact, and are very handsome gentlemen: they will not confess their names, and therefore are supposed to be gentlemen of quality, and 'tis conceived they are of the knot of Captain Hind, that grand thief of England, that hath his associates upon all roads. They strewed at least £100 upon the way, to keep the pursuers doing, that they might not follow them."

No doubt this would have been an enterprise entirely after Hind's own heart; but he was not there, nor were the highwaymen of his company.

Again, September 20th: "Yesterday about 20 horse of Hind's party (the grand highway thief) in the space of two hours robbed about 40 persons between Barnet and Wellin. They let none pass, to carry news while they staid about this work, by which means they all escaped before the county could be raised, but the Lord General's horse are diligent in seeking after them."

Hind remained in the sanctuary afforded by the Scilly Isles for eight months, and then travelled to the Isle of Man, where he sojourned thirteen weeks. There had been little scope for his peculiar activities on Scilly, but he found more opportunities on the Isle of Man, the kingdom at that time of my lord the Earl of Derby, to whom he obtained an introduction. He even became what modern diplomats would describe as a _persona grata_ in that island Court. Robbery had been unknown in this most fortunate of the Fortunate Isles before ever Hind set foot there; but with his advent a perfect epidemic of highway robbery prevailed. The Manxmen would have been of the densest had they not connected the coming of Hind with these disasters, and they laid their suspicions before the Governor, Sir Philip Musgrave, who, with Hind by his side, in good-fellowship thought the insinuation absurdly ungenerous. Hind declared his innocence, but protested his willingness to suffer the extremest penalty of the island laws, if he were recognised for the thief. This offer was not so impetuously ingenuous as it looked, for, naturally, if he were so recognised, he would perforce, in the usual course of affairs, be made to suffer; and secondly, he had already taken the precaution of robbing in disguise. The Manxmen had come to the Governor with tales of an aged, hairy man, with long hair and beard; and confronted with the youthful Cavalier-like Hind, protested with apologies, that this was not the man. And then, when they were gone, what must our tricksy Captain do but produce, for the Governor's amusement, the shameless wigs and costumes in which he had masqueraded. There must have been a deal of fellow-feeling in that Governor, and little humour. Your true humorist could not possibly have resisted the obvious conclusion to the screaming farce, and would have had Hind fettered and sent off at once to the deepest dungeon available.

Hind then went across the Border into Scotland, where preparations were afoot for an armed invasion of England on behalf of Charles the Second. At Stirling he loyally kissed the hand of His Majesty and offered his services, not in taking purses on the road, but in fighting for the cause. The King commended him to the Duke of Buccleuch, and he came south and fought for Charles (the "King of Scots," as the Republicans were pleased to call him) at the disastrous Battle of Worcester. Escaping in the headlong flight, he hid himself in London. Near the close of that year, 1651, lodging in the name of James Brown, in the house of one Denzys, who exercised the trade of a barber over against St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, in Fleet Street, he was betrayed to the Republican party and carried before the Speaker of the House of Commons, who, after a lengthy examination "in regard to his late engagement with Charles Stewart, and whether he was the man that accompanied the Scots king for the furtherance of his escape," committed him in irons to the Gatehouse. There was a choice before his captors of the charge to be preferred. At first he was removed to Newgate, and tried at the sessions for highway robbery. A rude woodcut in a biography shows him, visited by his wife and father, at this stage of affairs, with a pitiful verse beneath.

The charges not being sustained by sufficient evidence, he was sent under a strong guard to Reading, there to be tried, March 1st, 1652, for the murder of George Symson at Knowl Hill. Convicted of this, he would forthwith have been hanged, had it not been for an Act of Oblivion that had been passed, securing an indemnity for "all past offences." This, apparently, did not include the offence of high treason; and so reduced, much against their will, to making a political martyr of Hind, the high personages of the Commonwealth, after endeavouring to dispose of him on the ignoble charges of highway robbery and murder, removed him by Order in Council to Worcester gaol, where he was condemned for high treason.

Behold! at last, the saddest sight of all;
Poor Hind! Now in the hole at Newgate lies,
His wife and father both lament his thrall
And are much troubled at his miseries.
His book and candle his companions be;
Though now in chains, he hopes for liberty.]

The book published at this period, entitled _The English Gusman_, one of those purporting to give an authentic life of Hind, narrates a conversation in his cell, here or at Newgate. Hind says: "I had not been here now if there had not been a Judas abroad, for indeed I was betrayed by one who formerly served the King, but now he is for you (pointing to a Captain who was present), but God forgive him."

The keeper of the prison then called him from the fireside to the window, to see if the iron shackles upon his legs were in order.

"Well," said Hind, "all this I value not threepence. I owe a debt to God, and a debt I must pay. Blessed be His name, that He hath kept me from shedding blood unjustly, which is now a great comfort to me. Neither have I wronged any poor man of the worth of a penny, but I must confess that I have (when I have been necessitated to) made bold with a rich bumpkin, or a lying lawyer, whose full-fed fees from the rich farmer doth too much impoverish the poor cottage-keeper."

The many "witty jingles" he put forth occasioned much laughter, but a gentleman standing by said, "Captain, you are not brought hither for robbing, but for treason."

"Treason," replied Hind; "I am not guilty in the least."

"Yes, sir," replied the gentleman, "you are, for complying with Charles Stuart, and engaging against the Commonwealth of England."

"Alas! sir, it seems that is enough to hang one."

"I am afraid you will find it so," answered the gentleman.

"Well, God's will be done," replied Hind; "I value it not threepence to lose my life in so good a cause; and if it were to do again, I protest," said he, laying his hand on his breast, "I would do the like."

"Come," said the keeper, "no more of this discourse; clear the room."

Hind in due course suffered the hateful penalty for high treason at Worcester. He maintained a light and frolicsome demeanour to the last. "These are filthy, jingling spurs," he remarked with a laugh, pointing to the fetters that clanked about his legs as he walked from the bar, "but I hope to exchange them ere long."

He was drawn to the scene of execution, then hanged, and afterwards quartered: his head being placed midway on the Severn bridge, and the other portions of him over the several gates of the city, September 24th, 1652.

JOHN CLAVEL, "GENTLEMAN"

One of the really notable highwaymen of the early years of the seventeenth century was John Clavel, who came from an ancient, if perhaps not particularly distinguished, family, tracing their descent back to Walter de Clavile, in the reign of William the Conqueror. For more than seven hundred years the Clavel, or Clavell, family flourished in a modest way upon their manor of Smedmore, on the Dorset coast, in the neighbourhood of Kimmeridge, and finally ended with the death, _s.p._, as genealogists would say, of George Clavel in 1774. The only Clavel who fully emerges from the obscurity in which the family were content to remain, from the days of the original Walter until those of the ultimate George, is John Clavel, whose vocation was robbery under arms upon the highway. What laid this calling upon him, the personal history of John Clavel does not inform us; but probably, when we consider that he was merely a nephew of Sir William Clavel, the head of the family, we shall be correct in placing him among those younger sons and expectant heirs who, however great were their expectations in some more or less remote future, were generally, in the present tense, not only poor, but head over ears in debt. As the history of the highwaymen has already shown us, their ranks were very largely recruited from those youthful members of reputable families, whose family name was better than their personal credit. Confound the law of primogeniture, and pity the sorrows of a younger son with an excellent ancestry and an empty purse!

Our present hero, John Clavel, who was born in 1603, was heir-presumptive to his uncle, the Dorset squire. Whether that uncle kept him shorter of money than an heir should be, or whether he was a gamester who sought to repair his losses at cards or dice by the hazard of the road, who shall say? Not I. Perhaps he even robbed on the highway for sheer joy of it: such sportsmen were not unknown. But, by all accounts and just inferences, he had been no mere amateur, out for a solitary adventure, when he was laid by the heels and cast into the King's Bench Prison. He had made an occupation of highway robbery.

Thus we read, in one of the _News Letters_ written by Joseph Mead, that purveyor of London intelligence to country gentlemen in 1626: "February 11th, Mr. Clavell, a gentleman, a knight's eldest son (?), a great highway robber, and of posts, was, together with a soldier, his companion, arraigned and condemned, on Monday last, at the King's Bench bar. He pleaded for himself that he had never struck or wounded any man, had never taken anything from their bodies, as rings, etc., never cut their girths or saddles, or done them, when he robbed, any corporeal violence. He was, with his companion, reprieved. He sent the following verses to the King, for mercy:

I that have robb'd so oft, am now bid stand;
Death and the law assault me, and demand
My life and means. I never used men so;
But having ta'en their money, let them go.
Yet must I die! And is there no reliefe?
The King of Kings had mercy on a thiefe!
So may our gracious King too, if he please,
Without his council, grant me a release.
God is his precedent, and men shall see
His mercy goe beyond severity."

That I may neither brave another's blame
Through wronge suspicions, nor yet act ye same
At any time hereafter, but prove true:—
Loe! to be knowne, you have my face at viewe.]

He was reprieved, as the newsmonger tells us, but that was not sufficient. He must not merely escape the death-sentence, but be set free. To that end he wrote in October 1627, in prison, the curious pamphlet, largely in verse, styled the _Recantation of an Ill-led Life_, and published in the following year. He does not forget to style himself, on the title-page, "Gentleman," and has even a Latin tag; perhaps, you know, as evidence of his gentility. Yet he grovels through many pages in so abject a style no man of spirit could endure. Whether he was so thorough-paced a highwayman as he tearfully declares himself to have been is, of course, not to be resolved by us, at this interval of time; but, according to his own showing, he was not only an adept, but deep in the counsels of the high-toby gloaks and a past-master in all their devices. These, with the hope of a pardon, he proceeds to betray, at much length, in his "recantation," which he describes as "A discouerie of the Highway Law. With Vehement dissuasions to all (in that kind) offenders. As also Many cautelous Admonitions and full Instructions, how to know, shun, and apprehend a Theefe. Most Necessarie for all honest Trauellers to per'use, obserue, and Practise." This travellers' handy handbook was "Approued by the King's most Excellent Maiestie, and published by his expresse Command," by one Robert Meighen.

The _Recantation_ sets out with an extraordinary number of rhymed dedications addressed to the King, the Queen, the Ladies of the Court, "the Right Honourable the Lords of His Maiestie's most Honourable Priuie Counsaile and Counsail of Warre," the Judges of the King's Bench, and others; ending with an appeal to the "Right Worshipful, his euer dear and well-approued good Uncle, Sir William Clavell, Knight Banneret," whom he requests:

... if againe
I euer take a course what shall be vaine,
Or if of any ill I faultie be,
O then for ever disinherit me.

But Sir William did even better than that. To be on the safer side, he disinherited him at once, without waiting for his nephew to prove the sincerity of his professions, and bequeathed his estates to a distant relative.

In the meanwhile, however, John Clavel did at any rate manage to produce a popular book. Three editions of it are known; but whether the book was purchased as a curiosity, or as a practical guide to safe travelling upon the highways, there is nothing to show. The heads of his counsel are interesting:

"Acknowledgement and Confession.

"Absolute Defiance of those that follow my late course of life, living vpon the spoile.

"The highway law.

"How soon they spend what unlawfully they get.

"Instruction for the honest traueller: What he is to take heed vnto, before he take his journey.

"How to carry himself in his inn.

"The danger of trauelling on the Sabbath Day.

"How as he rides he shall know a thief from an honest man.

"An instance how dangerous it is to grow familiar with any stranger upon the way.

"When to ride.

"Where to ride.

"How to ride.

"What is best to be done if he is beset.

"If by chance he is surprised, how to behave himself.

"Being robbed, how to follow, which way to set forth the Hue and Cry, how to coast, and where to find the thieves," etc., etc.

He appears to have largely favoured the Dover Road, in his professional exploits:

... Though I oft have seen Gad's Hill and those
Red tops of mountains, where good people lose
Their ill-kept purses, I did never climb
Parnassus Hill, or could adventure time
To tread the Muse's Mazes, or their floor,
Because I knew that they are lightly poor,
And Shooter's Hill was fitter far for me,
When pass'd releases for my own poverty.

He then proceeds to tell in verse how the inns are often kept by landlords in league with highwaymen, who not infrequently spend thrice as much as honest travellers, or whose servants are either placed there by the knights of the road, or are bribed by them to investigate the contents of travellers' saddle-bags and valises.

Having done this, the hints he next gives to innkeepers, on how to distinguish between highwaymen and decent travellers, seem rather superfluous. As to the stigmata of the highwaymen themselves, besides those

vizards, hoods, disguise,
Masks, muzzles, mufflers, patches on their eyes;
Those beards, those heads of hair, and that great wen,
Which is not natural.

there are the following simpler devices:

Next of a theefe, the vsuall markes be these,
(Which as you ride you may observe with ease)
They muffle with their cloakes, or else their coate
Hides all their clothes, that so you may not note
What sutes they haue, a handkercher they were
About their neckes, or Cipresse, which they reare
Ouer their mouthes, and noses, with their hand
Iust at the time when as they bid you stand;
Perhaps since here I haue discouered this,
They will now leaue them off, that you may misse
Your obseruation, be you therefore sure
As soone as they come riding somewhat neere,
To gaze full at their faces, you shall see
Them turn their heads away, as if so bee
They had spide something on the tother side,
Which if they doe, then keepe your distance wide.

Obviously, the better course for the highway robber who loved his profession, and not only meant to rob successfully, but to live long in the enjoyment of his gains, was to carefully dress the part. To muffle themselves up in cloaks, like conspirators, would be to send even the least prudent traveller off in hurried flight. Such methods were mere danger-signals, and no security against subsequent recognition. But with an artificial nose, or a bushy beard, and little transforming touches of that sort, a careful road-agent might reckon on a long and lucrative practice; always supposing he kept his own counsel and held aloof from bad company. This, however, judging from the careers of most of their kind, seems to have been asking too much.

But to return to the strange fortunes of John Clavel. His piteous appeal from prison (or perhaps rather the family influence brought to bear) at length procured him release. He promised in his book, if set at liberty, to fight for his King:

... I do intend
Whilst these your wars endure, even there to spend
My time in that brave service.

But there is nothing to show how he occupied himself when once again he was restored to society; there is, however, a curious little notice added to the third edition of the _Recantation_, by the publisher, by which it would seem gossip had been doing an injustice to our sinner repentant. Thus it reads:

"The late and general false report of his relapse and untoward
death, made me most willing again to publish this work of his,
to let you know he not only lives, but hath also made good all
these his promises and strict resolutions: insomuch that it has
become very disputable amongst wise men, whether they should most
admire his former ill-ways, or his now most singular reformation,
whereat no man outjoys his friend and yours.—RICHARD MEIGHEN."

This brand plucked from the burning appears to have died in 1642.

WILLIAM DAVIS, THE GOLDEN FARMER

There stands on the summit of the steep hill as you go westward out of Bagshot, along the Exeter Road, a commonplace inn at the fork of the roads leading respectively to Camberley and to Frimley. The "Jolly Farmer"—for that is the name of the inn—looks squarely eastward, down the hill, and seems no doubt, to most who pass this way, not worth even a glance. Nor, indeed, is it beautiful or interesting. Its former sign, however,—the sign of the "Golden Farmer"—enshrined an interesting story of the road. The forerunner of the present house stood on the right-hand side of the way, and was named the "Golden Farmer," in allusion to a highwayman, once only too well known in the neighbourhood.

William Davis flourished in the seventeenth century. Born at Wrexham, he was early taken to Sudbury, in Gloucestershire, where he eventually married the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper. He had eighteen children, and it would almost seem, by the tone of his early biographers, that this unfortunate fact went some way towards excusing his career. He was, to the day of his death, a farmer, and for a good many years cultivated land in the neighbourhood of Bagshot; a district remarkable in those times rather for wild heaths than for agricultural value. And long it remained of this character, and infested with highwaymen, for we find the poet Gay in 1715, in his fine narrative poem, _A Journey to Exeter_, writing:

Prepared for war, now Bagshot heath we cross,
Where broken gamesters oft repair their loss.

Mr. William Davis was a man very greatly respected for his singular habit of always paying his debts in gold. Paper money—whether notes, bills, or cheques—never passed from him to his creditors. Good, honest guineas, of red, minted gold—tender no man refused—were his only medium. Those who did business with him thought this an eccentricity, but an amiable one; and as the years went on, he accumulated more and more respect.

But in all those years he was in reality a busy highwayman. Many stories are told of him, and by them it appears that he did by no means confine his activities to the neighbourhood of Bagshot. Prudence now and again sent him further afield, to till—to adopt a formula that would have appealed to him as a farmer—comparatively uncropped ground. Thus we find him once ranging so far as Salisbury Plain, and there bidding the coachman, who was driving the Duchess of Albemarle, to rein in his horses, or—presenting a pistol—take the consequences. He had "a long engagement" with postilion, coachman, and two footmen, and wounded them all. He does not appear to have suffered; which does not say much for the marksmanship, the courage, or the resource of the Duchess's guard, whose guardianship was thus proved so ineffectual. But it is a hero-worshipping biographer of highwaymen, who tells the story. The "Golden Farmer" seems on this occasion to have departed from his almost invariable custom, and to have torn the Duchess's diamond rings from her fingers. Probably he would have had her watch also, only the appearance of some other travellers made him prudently fly: followed by a torrent of bad language from Her Grace, who could hold her own with the best, or worst, in that line, having been, before she married General Monk, none other than Nan Clarges, washerwoman, and the daughter of a blacksmith, and well versed in abuse.

Anon, we have the "Golden Farmer" on Finchley Common. He had waited there one day, riding back and forth between four and five hours, hoping for some likely traveller, and none had come. Imagine him, shivering in the bitter blast, and angrily wondering what had become of every one. At last a young gentleman came riding along, unconscious of danger. Up rode the highwayman to him, and gave him a flap across his shoulders with the flat of his hanger.

"How slow you are!" he exclaimed. "A plague on you, to make a man wait on you all the morning! Come, deliver what you have, and be curst, and then go to Hell for orders."

The traveller declared he had nothing about him, but that, the highwayman remarked, was nonsense.

Then, searching the unresisting young gentleman's pockets and taking a gold watch and about one hundred guineas, he gave him three parting strokes on the back, and, telling him in future "not to give his mind to telling lies when an honest gentleman required a small boon of him," cantered away.

One day, having paid his landlord £80, he carefully disguised himself, and in a solitary situation met him with the command to "stand and deliver!"

"Come, Mr. Gravity from Head to Foot, but from neither Head nor Foot to the Heart," said he, "deliver what you have, in a trice."

The "old, grave gentleman" heaved a deep sigh, to the hazard of losing several buttons off his waistcoat. "All I have is two shillings. You would not take that from a poor man."

"Pooh!" rejoined the "Golden Farmer," "I have not the faith to believe you, for you seem by your manner and habit to be a man of better circumstances than you pretend; therefore, open your budget, or else I shall fall foul about your house."

"Dear sir," wailed the old gentleman, "you can't be so barbarous as to rob an old man. What! have you no pity, religion, or compassion in you? Have you no conscience? You can have no respect for your own body and soul, which must certainly be in a miserable case, if you follow these unlawful courses."

"D——n you," rejoined Davis, "don't talk of age or barbarity to me, for I show neither pity nor compassion to any. What! talk of conscience to me! I have no more of that dull commodity than you have; nor do I allow my soul and body to be governed by religion, but by interest; therefore, deliver what you have, before this pistol makes you repent your obstinacy."

There was no help for it, and the rent found its way back from landlord to tenant.

Again the "Golden Farmer" is found in a new setting; this time upon the Oxford Road. The particularly evil character of this road was enlarged upon in 1671 by Richard Brockenden, writing to Sir Richard Paston, and describing what he called "a new set of highwaymen," who robbed every night, unlike the old hands, who evidently rested frequently from their labours to enjoy the fruits of their shy industry, and must have resembled Sir W. S. Gilbert's lawless but light-hearted gang, who sang:

We spend our nights on damp straw and squalid hay
When trade is not particularly brisk;
But now and then we take a little holiday,
And spend our honest earnings in a frisk.

The infamous "new set," who robbed every night, cannot command our sympathy; they were too pushful. William Davis, however, belonged to no set. He was complete in himself; and if he too robbed without ceasing, he had those eighteen children of his to support. It was near the London end of the Oxford Road that the following adventure took place: at none other than the village of Hillingdon, near Uxbridge.

It seems, then, that the "Golden Farmer," dressed in appropriately rustic style, overtook near Gerrard's Cross a certain Squire Broughton, a barrister of the Middle Temple, and entered into conversation with him. When he learned the profession of this chance acquaintance, he pretended to be on his way to London to advise with a solicitor, and, expressing himself as fortunate in meeting one learned in the law, asked him if he could recommend counsel. Broughton, scenting business, bespoke for himself, and the "Golden Farmer," spinning a cock-and-a-bull story of some neighbour's cattle breaking into his fields and doing a vast amount of mischief, sought his opinion.

"It is very actionable," said the lawyer, "being Damage Fesant."

"Damage Fesant?" asked the highwayman. "What's that, pray, sir?"

The lawyer, with much show of learning, duly expounded the matter; and so, as evening drew in, they came to the "Red Lion," Hillingdon, discussing the Law of Trespass, the extent to which the farmer was probably damnified, and the pros and cons of the whole bogus affair.

Passing a very pleasant night at the "Red Lion," they set out together the next morning, still talking law.

"If I may be so bold as to ask you, sir," said the Golden Farmer, "what is that you call Trover and Conversion?"

"Why," said the lawyer, "that is easily explained. It is an action against one who has found any property, and, refusing to deliver on demand, converts it to his own use."

They were now on Hillingdon Heath, a lonely place, not yet lined with mean houses and paltry shops, and still to wait a matter of two hundred years before Mr. Whiteley's factory and stable-yards were built beside the road.

"Very well," said the Golden Farmer, "and if I should find any money about you, and converted it to my own use, that would be merely actionable?"

"That would be highway robbery," rejoined the man of law, "and would require no less satisfaction than a man's life."

"A robbery!" exclaimed the highwayman. "Why, then, I must e'en commit one for once; therefore deliver your money, or this pistol shall prevent you reading Coke upon Littleton any more!"

"You must be joking!" exclaimed the lawyer, edging away.

But the Golden Farmer, presenting the pistol to his breast, advised him to "down with the rhino, or he would get his mittimus by summary process." The man of law still hesitated.

"Do you think," said he, "there is neither heaven nor hell?"

"Why," rejoined the highwayman, "thy impudence is surely very great to talk of heaven or hell to me! D'ye think there's no other way to heaven but through Westminster Hall? Come, come, down with your rhino this minute, for I have other customers to mind than to wait on you all day!"

Thus adjured, the lawyer reluctantly handed over "thirty guineas and eleven broad pieces of gold," besides some silver and a gold watch.

The "Red Lion," Hillingdon, is standing to this day, and the crowds who frequent it in these times when the electric trams pass its door, may feel a romantic thrill as they connect the house with this story.

Hillingdon Heath figures also in the next adventure.

"Well overtaken, brother tinker!" exclaimed the "Golden Farmer," as one day he came up with an itinerant mender of pots and kettles; "methinks you seem very devout, for your life is a continual pilgrimage, and in humility you go about barefoot, thereby making necessity a virtue."

"Ay, master," replied the tinker, "needs must when the Devil drives, and had you no more than I, you, too, might go without boots and shoes."

"That might be," quoth the "Golden Farmer"; "but as for yourself; you, I suppose, march all over England with your bag and baggage?"

"Yes," said the tinker, "I go a great deal of ground, but not so much as you horsemen, and I take a great deal of pains for a livelihood."

"Yes," rejoined the highwayman, "I know thou art such a strong enemy to idleness that, mending one hole, you make three."

"That's as you say," retorted the tinker; "however, sir, I wish you and I were farther asunder, for i'faith I don't like your company, and have a great suspicion of you."

"Have you so?" said the highwayman; "then it shall not be without a cause: come, open your wallet forthwith, and deliver that parcel of money that's in it."

The unhappy tinker begged he would not rob him. If he did, he said, he must needs be forced to beg his way home, over a hundred miles.

But the "Golden Farmer" had no mercy. "D——n you," said he, "I don't care if you have to beg your way _two_ hundred miles, for, if a tinker escape Tyburn and Banbury, it is his fate to die a beggar."

So saying he made off with the tinker's money and wallet too.

At last the "Golden Farmer" met his long-deferred doom, and in his own district. The Exeter Road, in the neighbourhood of Bagshot, had long been haunted by a highwayman, who robbed impartially the early coaches of that age, or the travelling chariots of the great. This highwayman had his peculiarities. Others might risk stealing notes and jewellery, but he refused all trinkets, and took coin only. The strange thing is that no one in Bagshot or round about seems to have exercised the simple art of putting two and two together and making a total sum of four; or, in other and less metaphorical phrase, of deducing the "Golden Farmer," who paid only in gold from the unnamed, masked highwayman who took only gold. The two were, of course, one, and so much was discovered one night when, the highwayman having as usual stopped and plundered a coach, a traveller who had secreted a pistol shot him in the back as he was making off.

Bound hand and foot, the wounded man was taken to the "King's Arms," where, to the astonishment of all, he was recognised as the "Golden Farmer."

Fact and fiction are so intermingled in these stories of the "Golden Farmer's" exploits, that it would be almost as easy to unravel the real history of Robin Hood himself, as to present a biography of him that should have much pretence to truth in detail. It seems we are not even on sure ground when we set his name down as William Davis, for in a collection of old printed trials at the British Museum we find a William Davis, identified with the "Golden Farmer," executed in September, 1685, for being the principal figure in a burglary and felony committed in company with one John Holland and Agnes Wearing at the house of a minister, one Lionel Gatford, in Lime Street, City of London. Agnes Wearing suffered with him, but Holland was reprieved.

Yet, although this Davis was turned off in 1685, we find, by the _London Gazette_ of September 9th, 1689, that there were then in custody at Newgate two persons suspected of being housebreakers and robbers, several instruments for breaking into houses having been taken with them: "one calling himself William Freeman, whose right name is William Hill, commonly called the 'Golden Farmer,' an indifferent, tall, black Man, well set, with black hair, has a shaking in his Head, and is between 50 and 60 years of age." This advertisement proceeds to notify that "those robbed may have a sight of them at Newgate."[5]

_From a contemporary woodcut._]

Another story tells how he was pursued in Whitefriars, London, the old-time Alsatia of rogues and vagabonds behind Fleet Street. He shot dead a butcher who tried to stop him, but was tripped up and secured, at the corner of Salisbury Court and Fleet Street, where he was afterwards hanged, December 20th, 1689, in his sixty-fourth year: or, by another account, December 20th, 1690. His body was afterwards hanged in chains on the threshold of his own house at Bagshot.

On a broadsheet ballad, published on the occasion of his execution, entitled _The Golden Farmer's Last Farewell_, a rude woodcut appears at the head of the verses, in which you see a very small figure hanging most comfortably from a gallows-tree, with a thoroughly happy expression upon his face, while a small crowd (assorted sizes) contemplates his sad end with a variety of emotions, ranging from amusement to contempt. The verses are typical of the penny literature of the age, and do not necessarily follow his career with any slavish regard to truth:

Unto you all this day,
my faults I do declare,
Alas! I have not long to stay,
I must for Death prepare;
A most notorious Wretch,
I many years have been,
For which I now at length must stretch,
a just Reward for Sin:
No Tongue nor Pen can tell
what sorrows I conceive;
Your Golden Farmer's last Farewell,
unto the World I leave.

A Gang of Robbers then
my self did entertain;
Notorious hardy Highwaymen,
Who did like Ruffians reign:
We'd rob, we'd laugh, and joke,
and revel night and day;
But now the knot of us is broke,
'tis I that leads the way:
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

We houses did beset,
and robb'd them night and day,
Making all Fish that came to Net,
for still we clear'd the way;
Five Hundred Pounds and more,
in Money, Gold, and Plate,
From the right Owner we have bore,
but now my wretched State,
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

We always gagg'd and bound
most of the Family,
That we might search until we found
their hidden Treasury;
A sword-point at their throat,
a Pistol cock'd straightway,
Presented at their Breast, to make
them show us where it lay:
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

I having run my Race,
I now at last do see,
That in much shame and sad disgrace,
my Life will ended be:
I took delight to rob,
and rifle rich and poor,
But now at last, my Friend, Old Mob,
I ne'er shall see thee more:
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc,

The Blood which I have spilt
now on my Conscience lies,
The heavy, dreadfull thought of Guilt,
my Senses do's surprize;
The thoughts of Death I fear,
although a just Reward,
As knowing that I must appear,
before the living Lord.
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

I solemnly declare,
who am to Justice brought,
All kind of wicked Sins that are,
I eagerly have wrought;
No Villains are more rife
than those which I have bred,
And thus a most perfidious Life
I in this World have led:
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

Long have I liv'd, you see,
by this unlawful Trade,
And at the length am brought to be,
a just Example made;
Good God, my Sins forgive,
whose Laws I did offend,
For here I may no longer live,
my Life is at an end.
No Tongue nor Pen can tell, etc.

THOMAS SIMPSON: "OLD MOB"

The name of Thomas Simpson arouses no emotions of love or hate, of fear or of admiration. He is just "Thomas Simpson," plebeian, undistinguished amid the other hundreds of Thomas Simpsons who have worn a commonplace name throughout a commonplace career, and so ended; the world appreciably no better for their existence, and certainly not noticeably worse. There have been perhaps thousands of Thomas Simpsons, but there has been only one "Old Mob." The Thomas Simpson, who rose to fame with that picturesque nickname, was born at Romsey, in the New Forest, in the first half of the seventeenth century. We are told little of his early life, and merely learn that he continued to live at Romsey as his only home, "until he had five children and some grandchildren." His education, we further learn, without surprise—for it was the seventeenth century, you know—"appears to have been greatly neglected." It was impudence, however, more than anything, more even than courage, that ever made the successful highwayman: the 'ologies were useless on the hard high road, under stars, when a carriage worth robbing drew nigh; nor even would the elementary three R's help a man any the better to thrust a pistol through a window and cry "Stand!"

Old Mob had little education and less manners. Your Du Valls and Captain Hinds might bring the manners of society and the refinements of the ball-room into the keen air of the highway; for him there was but the rasping tongue of command and the contact of the cold muzzle of his pistol with your nose. He ranged the south and west of England very freely, and is found on one occasion in the Eastern Counties.

Accounts of his career generally open with his encountering a certain Sir Bartholomew Shower, between Honiton and Exeter. The road in the neighbourhood of Honiton Clyst is still little frequented, and at that time must have been singularly lonely. Old Mob called upon the knight to "stand and deliver," and Sir Bartholomew delivered accordingly, and with a pleasing readiness because he had the merest trifle on him, and thought to have thus escaped easily. But Old Mob was disappointed, and proportionably wroth: "My demands, sir, are very large and pressing," he said, "and therefore you must instantly draw a bill for one hundred and fifty pounds and remain in the next field for security till I have received the money."

The knight vainly protested that there was no one in Exeter who had so large a sum by him, but Old Mob would take no denial and led him a long distance away from the road, tied him to a tree, and compelled him to draw a bill for the amount on a goldsmith in the city. Then he rode into Exeter, duly cashed it and, returning, released his prisoner. "Sir," his biographer reports him as saying, "I am come with a _habeas corpus_ to remove you out of your present captivity"; which he did, leaving him to walk home the distance of three miles.

This last remark attributed to Old Mob, the uneducated, is no doubt a biographical frill, inserted to fitly round off the incident. What should he know of _habeas corpus_? This was a vice of which the biographer of the knights of the road could by no means rid themselves.

It was upon the road between Newmarket and London that Old Mob halted the carriage of no less a personage than Louise de la Kérouaille, the notorious Frenchwoman, favourite of Charles the Second, whom that monarch had created Duchess of Portsmouth.

"Do you know who I am, fellow?" demanded that haughty lady, indignant at being stopped by so mean-looking an object.

Now, for such as the Duchess of Portsmouth and her kind to ask such a question of a highwayman was singularly rash. Captain Alexander Smith and "Captain" Charles Johnson, in their folio volumes of the _Lives of the Highwaymen_, published in 1719 and 1742, respectively, describe Old Mob's reply, either in his own words, or excogitated out of their own inner consciousness, according to their own ideas of probability; but these present pages are in octavo volumes and this is the twentieth century, and for one of these reasons, or both—as you please—it is really not possible to reprint the vigorous reply of Old Mob to the Duchess's request. He not only told her who she was, but also, in the sheerest unornamental language, _what_ she was, as well. Among other things: "You are maintained at the public expense. I know that all the courtiers depend upon your smiles, and that even the King is your slave. But what of all that? A gentleman-collector upon the road is a greater man, and more absolute than His Majesty is at Court. You may now say, madam, that a single highwayman has exercised his authority where Charles the Second of England has often begged a favour."

Her grace continued to gaze upon him with a lofty air, and told him he was a very insolent fellow: that she would give him nothing, and that he should certainly suffer for his insolence. "Touch me if you dare!" she exclaimed.

"Madame," rejoined the highwayman, "that haughty French spirit will do you no good here. I am an English freebooter, and I insist upon it, as my native right, to seize all foreign commodities! Your money is indeed English, but it is forfeited, as being the fruit of English folly. All you possess is confiscated, as being bestowed upon one so worthless. _I_ am King _here_, madame! I have use for money, as well as he. The public pay for his follies, and so they must for mine." And Old Mob thereupon gathered in two hundred pounds in gold, "a very rich necklace which her Royal paramour had lately given her," a gold watch, and two diamond rings.

You will observe an intolerable tendency in Old Mob to moral reflections: as though he were one who had missed his vocation, and would have been more legitimately employed in improving the occasion from the pulpit. And not only Old Mob held forth in this manner. His contemporaries—if we may believe Messrs. Smith and Johnson—did the like: in very unclerical fashion, it is true, for they sandwiched their preaching with the most horrible oaths and blasphemies: all duly printed at length by those authorities, without the decent veil of the blushing "——," or the discreet "*." It was a singularly mixed method; but the preachments are all of so singular a likeness that we may shrewdly suspect them to be the inventions of their biographers. The cursings and revilings we may take as being the highwayman's very own. They were instinctively employed to strike terror into the hearts of unfortunate wayfarers, just as in olden Chinese warfare the pig-tailed warriors came on with grimaces and with shields pictured with hideous masks.

"Old Mob" then met "Old Gadbury, the Astrologer," and stopping him and demanding his money, "the Starry Prophet began to plead Poverty, but this did not move him at all to Compassion."

"You lying Rogue," quoth he, "can you that possess all the Seven Planets of Free-hold, and let them out on Lease to the Stationers' Company, plead Poverty to me. No, no, you must not sham Poverty to me; come, come, your Money presently, or this Pistol, shall be worse to you than the raging Dog Star that threatens Death and Diseases to a Country."

And "Old Gadbury" had thereupon to make a speedy delivery.

The next most outstanding enterprise of Old Mob was the halting of Judge Jeffreys in his coach, some time later than that Judge's assize of blood in the West. The highwayman, setting suddenly upon the equipage, disabled the two servants who accompanied it, and then demanded his lordship's money.

"I am Sir George Jeffreys," quietly remarked the judge, with a world of meaning, as he severely eyed the pistol presented at him. That plain statement was designed to send a pang of apprehension through the aggressor; and, indeed, the lowering presence of the judge had made many a prisoner brought before him quail; but Old Mob, by the best accounts, does not appear to have been greatly impressed. He was ready as ever with his moral remarks.

Jeffreys reminding him that a Providence existed which governed the world, and that he might therefore expect to be duly punished for his iniquities, he held forth in his best pulpit style: "When justice has overtaken us both, I hope to stand as good a chance as your lordship, you, who have written your name in indelible characters of blood and deprived many thousands of their lives, for no other reason than their appearing in defence of their just rights and liberties. It is enough for you to preach morality upon the Bench, when no person can venture to contradict you; but your words can have no effect upon me. I know you too well not to perceive that they are only lavished upon me to save your ill-gotten wealth." Then, his eloquence in this vein being exhausted, thundering forth a volley of oaths, and presenting a pistol to his breast, he threatened the judge with instant death, unless he surrendered his money. Perceiving that his authority was of no consequence to him upon the road, Judge Jeffreys thereupon handed over the gold he had about him, amounting to fifty-six guineas.

To recount the many improbable stories told of Old Mob, singly, or in conjunction with his sometime ally, the "Golden Farmer," would be to tell many stupid tales, and to convict oneself of credulity. He was caught at last, and, being convicted on thirty-four out of thirty-six indictments, was duly hanged, with nine others, September 12th, 1691. He declared, on the scaffold, that "while he continued to Rob on the Highway, he pray'd at the same Time that God would forgive it, and that it eas'd his mind something." It was added that "though he had wounded several Persons, yet he affirm'd he never murder'd any; which, to be sure, was very forbearing and obliging of him."

CLAUDE DU VALL

Claude Du Vall ranks among his brother highwaymen as high as Rembrandt or Raphael among artists. He was, indeed, no less an artist in his own profession than they. He might not, and probably did not, acquire as much of other people's property on the road as did Hind or Whitney; but artists are not necessarily money-makers. Such as were his takings, he took them with a finished grace and a considerate courtesy, that not even the Prince of Prigs, in his best moment, ever quite attained. We do not learn, for example, that Hind, the "Gentleman Thief," footed it on the heath in a graceful dance with one of his victims, as did Du Vall; but Hind had not the advantage of that foreign blood which made Claude skip for gladness in the midst of alarms.

In the _Memoires of Monsieur Du Vall_, published in 1670, only a few days after the hero's death from the effect of a hempen cravat, we have the sole authority for the merry tales told of him. It is a curious production. From it we learn that:

"Claude Du Vall was born Anno 1643 at Domfront, in Normandy, a place very famous for the excellency and beautifulness of the air, and for the production of mercurial wits. At the time of his birth there was a conjunction of Venus and Mercury, certain presages of very good fortune, but of a very short continuance. His father was Pierre Du Vall, a miller, his mother, Marguerite De la Roche, a tailor's daughter."

The author of these remarkable memoirs then proceeds to say, in surely a very cynical manner: "They lived in as much reputation and honesty as their conditions and occupations would permit." This, of course, is a sly fling at both the business of a miller and that of a tailor; for honest millers have from the earliest times been proverbially as scarce as honest lawyers; while for tailors to "cabbage" the cloth entrusted to them has always been expected.

Du Vall's biographer then ranges from sarcasm to an indignant defence of his birth and parentage.

"There are some," he says, "that confidently aver he was born in Smock Alley, without Bishopsgate, that his father was a cook, and sold boiled beef and porridge; but their report is as false as it is defamatory and malicious."

"It was easy," he continues, "to disprove this in several ways, but the chief argument against it was this: If he had been born in Smock Alley, he would not have been a Frenchman, but if he had not been a Frenchman, it was quite impossible he should have been so much beloved in life and lamented in death by the English ladies."

Early in life, a wandering priest who happened upon his parents' humble dwelling, found a mark upon his head as of two crowns: a sure sign, said the priest, that he was to be a traveller. Then, adopting something of the _rôle_ of a fortune-teller, he declared the boy would never be long without money; and, wherever he went, "he would always have the exceeding favour of women of the highest condition."

The rustic miller and his wife looked upon the priest as an oracle, but wondered how such fortune would come to pass. Nothing visible on the horizon of their lives warranted any such expectations. They were miserably poor, and kept themselves but little warmed by that comparative honesty of which we have already read. So when Claude grew to the age of thirteen or fourteen, he was turned adrift from the old home, to fend for himself. His parents did what they could, but that did not amount to much. A little less unexpected honesty on their part would have enabled him, no doubt, to enter upon the world under better circumstances: but as it was, the best they could do was to buy him shoes and stockings—things he had never before known—and a second-hand suit of clothes. This outfit, and twenty sous given him at parting, was all his property. As he went they threw an old shoe after him for luck, and bid him go seek his fortune.

The boy made his way to Rouen in the first instance. There he was promised a ride to Paris on one of the post-horses he saw in the courtyard of an inn, if he would earn that lift by helping stable them for the night. He willingly agreed, and was fortunate to meet at the same inn a number of English youths, who, with their tutors, were returning by way of Paris to England. In return for such use as he could be to them in practising their insufficient French, they employed and fed him for the few days they remained in the country.

In Paris, according to our admiring but discriminating biographer, "he lived unblameably during this time, unless you esteem it a fault to be scabby, and a little given to filching; qualities very frequent in persons of his nation and condition." So, employed about stables and inn-yards in Paris, he continued until the Restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660 brought about the return of many exiles. In the service of one of the many "persons of Quality" who then crossed the Channel, went Claude Du Vall, who by this time was seventeen years of age.