Chapter VII: Part 7

Isaac Darkin was the son of a cork-cutter in Eastcheap, and was born about 1740; too late to appear in the stirring pages of Alexander Smith or Charles Johnson, in which he would have made, we may be sure, an admired figure. All those who knew him, on the road or in the domestic circle, agreed that he was a handsome fellow; and travellers, in particular, noticed his taking ways. These were first displayed in 1758, when he robbed Captain Cockburn near Chelmsford. No less taking, in their own especial way, were the police of the neighbourhood in that time, for they speedily apprehended Isaac, and lodged him in Springfield gaol. He was duly arraigned at the next assizes, and no fewer than eight indictments were then preferred against him. He pleaded guilty to the robbing of Captain Cockburn, but not guilty on the other counts; and was, after a patient trial, found guilty on the first and acquitted on the others. He was then sentenced to death, but was eventually respited on account of his youth, and finally pardoned on condition that he enlisted in the 48th Regiment of foot, then serving in the West Indies, at Antigua. Drafted with others aboard a ship lying in the lower reaches of the Thames, presently to set sail for that distant shore, he effected his escape, almost at the moment of up-anchor, by dint of bribing the captain of a merchant vessel lying alongside, to whom he promised so much as a hundred pounds to help him out. He was smuggled aboard the merchantman, and so cunningly disguised that when a search-party, suspecting his whereabouts, boarded the ship, and searched it, even to the hold, they did not recognise him in a particularly rough and dirty sailor who was swearing nautical oaths among the ship's company on deck. So the transport-vessel sailed without him, and he, assuming the name of Dumas, rioted all through the West of England, robbing wealthy travellers and gaily spending his takings on what he loved best: fine clothes and fine ladies. He was so attentive to business that he speedily made a name for himself, the name of a daring votary of the high toby. This reputation rendered it politic on his part to enlist in the Navy, so that in case of being arrested for highway robbery, he could prove himself to have a respectable occupation, that would help to discredit the charge of being a highwayman.

He soon became a valued recruit, and was promoted to midshipman; and it is quite likely that if he had been sent on active service he would have distinguished himself in a more reputable career than that in which he was so soon to die. But his duties kept him for considerable periods in port, and he seems to have had ample leave from them; for we find him hovering near Bath and gaily robbing the wealthy real or imagined invalids going to, or returning from, the waters.

On the evening of June 22nd, 1760, he fell in with Lord Percival, travelling by post-chaise over Clarken Down, near Bath, and robbed him of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen guineas—my lord could not positively swear to the exact amount. He then made off in the gathering twilight, and galloped across country, to Salisbury Plain and the little village of Upavon, where he was arrested in a rustic alehouse, and sent thence to Salisbury gaol. At his trial he indignantly denied being a highwayman, or that he was an Englishman. He declared his name was Dumas, that he had lately come from Guadaloupe, where he had taken a part in the late military operations; and said that the so-styled "suspicious behaviour" and damaging admissions he was charged with, when arrested at the inn, were merely the perplexities of a foreigner, when suddenly confronted by hostile strangers.

This special pleading did not greatly deceive judge or jury, but the prosecution broke down upon a technical detail, and Darkin was acquitted; not, however, without an affecting address to the prisoner from the judge, Mr. Justice Willmott, who urged him to amend his ways, while there was yet time.

It is thus quite sufficiently evident that, although the Court was bound to acquit the prisoner, no one had the least doubt of his guilt. His narrow escape does not appear to have impressed Darkin, or "Dumas"; but he was anxious enough to be off, as we learn from a contemporary account of the proceedings, in which it is quaintly said: "He discovered great Impatience 'till he had got off his Fetters and was discharged, which was about five o'clock in the evening, when he immediately set out for London in a post-chaise."

The fair ladies of Salisbury sorrowed when he was gone. They had been constant in visiting him in prison, and had regarded him as a hero, and Lord Percival as a disagreeable hunks. The hero-worship he received is properly noted in the account of his life, trial, and execution, issued in haste from an Oxford press in 1761, shortly after the final scene had been enacted. In those pages we read: "During Mr. Dumas' imprisonment at Salisbury, we find his sufferings made a deep impression upon the tender Hearts of the Ladies, some of whom, having visited him in his Confinement, his obliging Manner, genteel Address, lively Disposition, and whole Deportment so struck them that his Fame soon became the Discourse of the Tea Table; and at the happy Termination of His Affair with my Lord Percival, produced between them the following Copy of Verses:

Joy to thee, lovely Thief! that thou
Hast 'scaped the fatal string,
Let Gallows groan with ugly Rogues,
_Dumas_ must never swing.

Dost thou seek Money?—To thy Wants
Our Purses we'll resign;
Could we our Hearts to guineas coin
Those guineas all were thine.

To Bath in safety let my lord
His loaded Pockets carry;
Thou ne'er again shall tempt the Road,
Sweet youth! if thou wilt marry.

No more shall niggard travellers
Avoid thee—We'll ensure them:
To us thou shalt consign thy Balls
And Pistol; we'll secure 'em.

Yet think not, when the Chains are off,
Which now thy Legs bedeck,
To fly: in Fetters softer far
We'll chain thee by the Neck."

But in the short space of six weeks from his acquittal at Salisbury and his triumphal exit in a post-chaise for London, he was again arrested on a charge of highway robbery, this time for robbing a Mr. Gammon at Nettlebed, on the road to Oxford. Committed to trial at Newgate, he was transferred to Oxford gaol, and tried there on March 6th. He had up to now been phenomenally fortunate, but things at this crisis looked a great deal more serious. He acknowledged "he had experienced many narrow scrapes, but never such a d—d one as this," and he was presently found guilty and condemned to death, this time without any extenuating circumstances being found.

Isaac Darkin was what in our times would be called a "superior person." Slang he disdained to use, bad language was anathema to him; and if he did, indeed, condescend to describe a person of mean understanding as "a cake," or "a flat," that was the most he permitted himself. His delicacy was so great that he never mentioned a "robbery," a "robber," or a "highwayman," but spoke instead of persons who had been "injured," or of "the injured parties." And as he was so nice in his language, so he was particular in his dress and deportment. As an eulogist of him said, not without a little criticism: "He was possessed of too great a share of pride for his circumstances in life, and retained more of it to the last than was becoming in a person in his unhappy situation. He had a taste for elegance in every respect; was remarkably fond of silk stockings, and neat in his linen; had his hair dressed in the most fashionable manner every morning; his polished fetters were supported round his waist by a sword-belt, and tied up at his knees with ribbon."

Although but the son of a cork-cutter, he had lived, in the estimation of his contemporaries, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman he spent his last days, and if he did indeed seem to boast a little when, a few days before his execution, he declared he had been nine times in gaol, and seven times tried on a capital charge, that was merely a pardonable professional exaggeration. His claim to have gleaned over six hundred guineas from the road has, on the other hand, the look of an under-estimate. The rumbustious fellows of a hundred years earlier would have thought that very bad business; they often took much more in a single haul. But times were changing, and not for the better, from the highwaymen's point of view.

Isaac Darkin died like a gentleman, without apparent fear, and without bravado, at Oxford, on March 23rd, 1761, and was at that time, as himself remarked, without apparent pathos or truckling to weak sentiment, "not twenty-one."

JAMES MACLAINE, THE "GENTLEMAN" HIGHWAYMAN

The career of James Maclean, or Maclaine, shows that it was not really difficult to become a "gentleman" highwayman. Born at Monaghan in 1724, he was the second son of Lauchlin Maclaine, a Presbyterian minister, who, although settled in Ireland, was a Scotsman of unmixed Scottish blood, and of undoubted Scottish sympathies. There are plenty of materials for a life of his son James, the highwayman, for the story of his career had a remarkable attraction for all classes of people at the time when he went to die at Tyburn, in 1750; and consequently the "Lives" and "Memoirs" of him are numerous. There are also several portraits of him, most of them showing a distinctly Scottish type of countenance, but not one solving the mystery of his extraordinary fascination for women. Indeed, the full-length portrait of him engraved in Caulfield's _Remarkable Characters_, in which he is styled "Macleane, the Ladies' Hero," shows a heavy-jowled person, with dull, yet staring fish-like eyes; exactly the kind of person who might be expected to create an unfavourable impression. Perhaps the artist does him an injustice, but none of the several artists and engravers who have handed down to us their respective versions of his features have succeeded in imparting the slightest inkling of good looks to him, and few of the portraits agree with one another. He was tall above the average, as the various prints show; and he wore fine clothes. It was these exceedingly fine feathers, and the fashionable resorts he affected, that gave him the distinction of "gentleman" highwayman; and it is to be feared that his exquisite dress, in larger measure than the quality of his manners, influenced the ladies of 1750, who wept over his fate just as the equally foolish women of 1670 had wept over the hanging of Du Vall.

_From a contemporary Portrait._]

The Ordinary of Newgate saw nothing remarkable in Maclaine. He speaks of him as "in person of the middle-size, well-limbed, and a sandy complexion, a broad, open countenance pitted with the small-pox, but though he was called the _Gentleman Highwayman_, and in his dress and equipage very much affected the fine gentleman, yet to a man acquainted with good breeding, and that can distinguish it from impudence and affectation, there was very little in his address or behaviour that could entitle him to the character."

Archibald, the elder brother of this fashionable hero, was an entirely respected and blameless person, who entered the Church, and was pastor of the English community at The Hague for forty-nine years, from 1747 to 1796.

James, the future knight of the road, was intended by his father for a merchant; but that pious father died when James was eighteen years of age, and so the youthful "perfect master of writing and accompts," as he is styled, instead of proceeding, as intended, to a Scottish merchant in Rotterdam, received a modest inheritance, with which he immediately took himself off to Dublin, where he lost or expended it all inside twelve months, in dissipation, after the example of the Prodigal Son in the Scriptures.

Only, unfortunately for him, when the money was gone, and he would, given the opportunity, perhaps have returned, like that illustrious exemplar, from his husks and his harlots, to partake of the fatted calf, there was no father, no home, and no fatted calf to which he might return.

But he had still some relatives left in Monaghan, and he thought he might be received by them. In this he was altogether mistaken when he tried to put it to the proof, and was reduced almost to the point of starvation there, when he attracted the attention of a gentleman, who offered him a footman's place in his service. He did not keep this situation long. He was too impudent to his master, and too patronising towards the other servants. He was discharged, and for a time subsisted upon a scanty allowance from his brother.

In this extremity he found a gentleman of Cork, a "Colonel F——n," who was confiding enough to engage him as butler. But he apparently did not make a good butler; and was, moreover, discovered making away with his master's property, and discharged. We next find him in London, thinking of joining the Irish Brigade in the French service; but abandoning the idea from conscientious scruples against being employed in Popish surroundings. Maclaine had a very tender conscience and a timid nature, and what with his religious scruples and the fear of being shot (to which he does not allude, but which was very vivid to him), he had to abandon the notion of wearing a fine uniform, which we may suspect had originally given him the impulse to a military life.

Maclaine did not at this period keep very reputable society; but was in 1746 again occupying a position with the forgiving "Colonel F——n." The Colonel seems to have, on this second occasion, found him an undesirable servant; whereupon, "being prepossessed with the perfections of his person," he proposed to enlist in Lord Albemarle's troop of horseguards. The Colonel, as an old soldier, thought this, no doubt, the best thing, and, with an advance of ten pounds, bade him go where glory waited him.

Maclaine accordingly enlisted. He had visions of being seated on a prancing steed—"steed" being the superlative of "horse"—and, dressed in something with plenty of blue or scarlet and gold in it, taking part in ceremonial processions and escorts. Unhappily, soon after he had enlisted, he heard that the troop was to proceed at once to Flanders on active service, and hurriedly got, somehow, out of the dangerous position.

He then made some attempt to settle down and live respectably, for he married the daughter of a Mr. Maclagen, a horse-dealer in the Oxford Road—the Oxford Street of to-day. His wife brought a small dowry of £500, and with this they set up business in the grocery and chandlery way in Welbeck Street. Unhappily for any views he may have entertained of a settled life as a tradesman, his wife died in 1748. It appeared then that the business had not prospered, or that their style of living had been beyond their means, for the stock and furniture were then found to be worth only £85.

Maclaine's first idea after this domestic catastrophe was one very prevalent at that time: the notion of posing as a gentleman of fortune and of fashion, with the object of ensnaring the affections of some susceptible young lady of means and marrying her for her money. He accordingly realised all his effects, and, placing his two infant daughters in the care of his mother-in-law, burst upon the town as one of the elegants of the day.

A needy neighbour, like himself a tradesman, Plunkett by name, who had failed as a chemist, was induced by this hopeful widower to act a part as his footman, and together they frequented places of fashionable assemblage, both in London and at Tunbridge Wells, on the look-out for heiresses. But the game was shy, and meanwhile the small capital of £85 was fast melting away. Fine clothes were ten times more expensive in that age than the finest clothes of to-day, and although it was possible to obtain a good deal on credit, it was not at all workable to visit Vauxhall and such expensive places, and to cut a dash there, for any considerable time on so inconsiderable a capital.

It was Plunkett who at this stage of affairs, when their funds were nearly exhausted, suggested the road as a place where money might usually be had for the asking.

"A brave man," said Plunkett, "cannot want. He has a right to live, and need not want the conveniences of life. While the dull, plodding, busy knaves carry cash in their pockets, we must draw upon them to supply our wants. Only impudence is necessary, and the getting better of a few idle scruples. Courage is scarcely necessary, for all we have to deal with are mere poltroons." But when poltroon meets poltroon, when the timid traveller, ready to hand over his purse on demand, cannot do so because the coward highwayman dare not reach out and take it, what happens? It is an embarrassing moment, whose fortunes are (or were) determined only by chance.

Plunkett did not know the manner of man he had to deal with until they had taken the road together. He had always seemed a bold, swaggering fellow, and big enough in all conscience; but when it came to highway robbery he was a helpless companion.

Their first affair was with a grazier, going home from Smithfield with the proceeds of his day's business in his pocket. Plunkett, suddenly enlightened as to Maclaine's want of nerve, took the conduct of the incident firmly in hand at once, or the results might have been disastrous for both. He took £60 from the grazier, while Maclaine looked on and spoke no word, inwardly in greater fear than he, and ready, had there been any sign of resistance, to fly.

Their next attempt was to stop and rob a coach on the St. Albans road.

It was agreed that Maclaine should stop the coachman and present his pistol on one side, while Plunkett did the same on the other. But although he rode up several times, intending to challenge the Jehu with the traditional cry of the bold and fearless fellows who did the like every night, his heart failed him; so Plunkett had to carry it off as best he could, while Maclaine sat shivering with cowardice in the background, in spite of the "Venetian mask" that covered the upper part of his face and concealed his identity sufficiently well.

But Plunkett, as may have been already gathered, was a man with sufficient resolution for two, and although Maclaine was quaking with terror on every occasion, he brought him in some fashion up to the scratch in a long series of robberies. They frequently hired or stabled horses at Hyde Park Corner, and thence rode out for a day and a night upon Hounslow Heath, or elsewhere.

"In all this while," we learn, he scarcely ever thought of his daughters, "and seldom visited his mother-in-law." O villain!

When in town, he had lodgings on the first floor over a shop in St. James's Street, and presented a gorgeous figure to morning callers. He was even more gorgeous in the evening, when he frequented places of public entertainment, and obtained the freedom of some fashionable houses. But the morning picture he presented will probably suffice. He then wore a crimson damask banjan, a silk shag waistcoat turned with lace, black velvet breeches, white silk stockings, and yellow morocco slippers.

On one exceptional occasion, Plunkett and Maclaine went as far as Chester, and did good business on the way; but their best haul was on Shooter's Hill, where they stopped and robbed an official of the East India Company of a large sum.

With his share of the plunder, Maclaine took a little holiday on the Continent, and visited his brother at The Hague, probably astonishing that worthy man by his sudden magnificence. He then returned and rejoined Plunkett.

Horace Walpole wrote at different times several accounts of how he was once stopped by these brothers-in-arms. It was a moonlight night, in the beginning of November 1749, nearly a year before Maclaine's career was brought to a close, that Horace was returning from Holland House, Kensington, to London. The hour was ten o'clock, the place Hyde Park. What trifles, or what amount of money Messrs. Maclaine and Plunkett took on this occasion we are not told; for Walpole does not take his correspondents so completely and voluminously into his confidence over this affair as he generally did. He only tells them, and us, that the pistol of "the accomplished Mr. Maclean," as he calls him, went off—by accident, he is careful to say—and that the bullet passed so close as to graze the skin beneath his eye and stun him. The bullet then went through the roof of the carriage.

The incident that so nearly brought the life of Horace Walpole to an untimely end, and might thus have left the world much poorer in eighteenth-century gossip, was conducted, as he tells us, "with the greatest good-breeding on both sides." He further adds that the reason of Maclaine being out that night and taking a purse _that_ way was, he had only that morning been disappointed of marrying a great fortune. It does not seem at all an adequate reason; but that was the eighteenth century and this is the twentieth, and perhaps we cannot see eye to eye on all these matters.

But, at any rate, Maclaine afterwards behaved very nicely about the articles he had taken; sending a note to Walpole as soon as ever he had returned to his lodgings, in which he made his excuses, if not with the witty grace of a Voiture, at least expressed in a manner ten times more natural and easily polite. He declared that, had the bullet found its billet in Walpole's head, he would certainly have put one through his own. Then, in a postscript, which, like the postscripts in letters written by feminine hands, contained the whole substance of and reason for the letter, Maclaine added that he would be pleased to meet the gentleman at Tyburn (O ominous tryst!) at twelve at night, where the gentleman might purchase again any trifles he had lost.

There, if not particularly elsewhere, Maclaine seems to have indeed proved himself, in one brief moment, a "gentleman" highwayman. You see the argument passing in his mind. The trifles were indeed trifles intrinsically, but they might have had some sentimental worth, of old or new association, that would have made the loss of them a grievous thing to their rightful owner. Well, then, if that owner liked to ransom them for a trifling sum, here was his chance. A very considerate offer.

But Horace Walpole did not accept the rendezvous. Possibly he doubted the honour of a highwayman met at such a spot.

The "gentleman highwayman" resented criticism, as will be seen by the following story: Maclaine frequented Button's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, and paid particular attention to the barmaid there, daughter of the proprietor. The attentions of such a fine gentleman as he appeared to be were very flattering to the girl, and very noticeable to other frequenters of the house, one of whom, a certain Mr. Donaldson, knew Maclaine, and took the opportunity of warning the girl's father of his real character. The father in his turn cautioned his daughter, and foolishly let slip the name of the person who had warned him; and she, of course, passed on the information to the engaging Maclaine.

On the next occasion when Donaldson visited Button's, and while he was sitting in one of the boxes, Maclaine entered, and in a loud voice, and the pronounced Irish brogue that was ever on his tongue, said: "Mr. Donaldson, I wish to spake to you in a private room."

Mr. Donaldson, being unarmed, and naturally afraid of being alone with such a man as he knew Maclaine to be, said that as there could not possibly be anything pass between them that the whole world was not welcome to know, he begged leave to decline the invitation.

"Very well," rejoined Maclaine, "we shall meet again."

A day or so later, as Mr. Donaldson was walking near Richmond in the evening, he saw Maclaine on horseback, approaching him; but fortunately at that moment a gentleman's carriage appeared, and Maclaine rode after it; Donaldson hastening into the protection that the streets of Richmond town afforded. It is probable that, but for this timely diversion, Maclaine would have shot the man who dared tell the truth about him.

But the end of the alliance of Maclaine and Plunkett was now at hand. On June 26th, 1750, at two o'clock in the morning, they stopped the Salisbury stage on Turnham Green. The courage of the coach passengers was at a low ebb at that unconscionable hour, and they suffered themselves to be robbed, without making the least resistance. They numbered five men and one woman. The men were bidden step out, and, doing so, were searched and robbed at leisure. A Mr. Higden had an exceptionally fine waistcoat, and had to part with even that to Maclaine, who was a connoisseur in waistcoats. A Mr. Lockyer also was constrained to give up a wig. From the lady was taken "only what she chose to give." Here, at any rate, is a faint sweet relic of an older courtesy.

As an afterthought, Maclaine went back for two or three of the portmanteaux stored away in the hoot.

They then, riding off westward, met the Earl of Eglinton, travelling in his post-chaise. He had an escort of two mounted servants, but as they were over half a mile behind at the time, he might equally well have been travelling alone.

Maclaine, riding up to the postboy, threatened him with a pistol and told him to stop instantly; but, at the same time, was sufficiently cautious to so place himself that the occupant of the post-chaise would be unable to fire at him without hitting the postboy. The highwaymen were, as a rule, exceedingly well-informed persons; and Maclaine knew perfectly well that Lord Eglinton carried a blunderbuss with him, and had the reputation of always being ready and willing to use it.

But in the strategic position he had taken up, he was quite safe, and meanwhile Plunkett had advanced from the rear and taken his lordship completely by surprise. He threatened, indeed, instantly to shoot him, if he did not throw the blunderbuss away; and my lord flung the weapon from him at once, as though it had been red-hot. Plunkett then took seven guineas from him.

Maclaine was not behindhand, and seized his lordship's overcoat and the blunderbuss which was lying upon the heath. He was a frugal person, and in that particular did credit to his Scots ancestry. A curious old print shows this robbery, famous in its day, and in it Maclaine and Plunkett do certainly look most awe-inspiring in their attitudes: Maclaine, in particular, being apparently engaged in pushing his pistol through the postboy's head. But that is doubtless artistic licence.

Maclaine did a very foolish thing when he returned to his St. James's Street rooms, early that same day. He sent for a Jew dealer to come and make an offer for some clothes he wished to sell; none other, in fact, than those he had taken from the coach, and when they were shortly advertised as having been stolen, the mischief was done. As if that were not folly enough, Maclaine's frugality had led him also to remove the gold lace from one of the stolen coats and to offer it for sale. He chanced to take it to the very laceman who had recently sold it. His arrest was then a matter of course. Equally of course, he strongly protested against the indignity of a "gentleman" being arrested for theft, and then he broke down and wept in "a most dastardly and pusillanimous manner, whimpering and crying like a whipt schoolboy."

Maclaine declared that the absconded Plunkett had left the clothes with him, in part satisfaction of a debt he owed, and that he, Maclaine, was to have sold them for what they would fetch, as part liquidation of the debt.

Any so-called confession he might have made, he now declared impossible. What should a gentleman like himself know of highway robbery? "It is true enough that when first apprehended, the surprise confounded me and gave me a most extraordinary shock. It caused a delirium and confusion in my brain which rendered me incapable of being myself, or knowing what I said or did. I talked of robberies as another man would do in talking of stories; but, my Lord, after my friends had visited me in the Gate-house, and had given me some new spirits, and when I came to be re-examined before Justice Lediard, and was asked if I could make any discovery of the robbery, I then alleged I had recovered my surprise, that what I had talked of before concerning robberies was false and wrong, and was entirely owing to a confused head and brain."

He called nine witnesses to character; among them Lady Caroline Petersham, who is represented in a curious print of the trial at the Old Bailey, under examination.

The elegant Maclaine stands prominently in the dock handsomely attired, but, alas! heavily fettered, with his laced hat under his left arm. One hand holds his lengthy written defence, the other is affectedly spread over his breast, in gentlemanly protestation of his being an injured person. His is a tall, upstanding figure; but he appears, by the evidence of the print, to have had a face like a pudding: and the majority of the counsel seated at a table in front of him are shown regarding it with easily understood curiosity and astonishment.

One of the dignified persons on the bench is represented addressing Lady Caroline: "What has your Ladyship to say in favour of the Prisoner at y^e Bar?"

With a dramatic gesture, she replies: "My Lord, I have had the Pleasure to know him well: he has often been about my House, and I never lost anything."

In spite of this cloud of witness, our gentleman was convicted, and that with the utmost dispatch, for the jury returned their verdict of "guilty" without leaving the box.

The time between his condemnation and execution was spent in an affectation of repentance, that does not read very pleasantly. He suddenly found himself a great sinner, and indeed revelled luxuriantly in the discovery. But there was not the true note of abasement and conviction in all this; for he went among his fellow-criminals like a superior person, and offered them consolation from the rarefied heights of his "gentility," that must have been excessively galling to them. Their profanity and callousness shocked him profoundly. Probably their behaviour was not less profane when he, condemned to die for misdeeds similar to their own, presumed to lecture them on the error of their ways. But preaching was in his blood, and would find expression somehow, and he found excuse for his almost consistent lack of courage on the road in the moral reflection that it was conscience made a coward of him. But conscience did not prevent him sharing in the swag when the enterprise was carried through.

He said it was true that, since he had entered upon the highway, he had never enjoyed a calm and easy moment; that when he was among ladies and gentlemen they observed his uneasiness, and would often ask him what was the matter, that he seemed so dull. And his friends would tell him that surely his affairs were under some embarrassment; "But they little suspected," said he, "the wound I had within."

He protested in a good cause he believed there was not a man of greater natural courage than himself, but that in every scheme of villainy he put Plunkett on the most hazardous post. "There," said he, "I was always a coward—my conscience"——always that sickly, unconvincing iteration. But the insistence of conscience that Plunkett should always be placed in the way of the bullets is at least amusing.

Walpole tells how Maclaine had rooms in St. James's Street, opposite White's Club, and others at Chelsea. Plunkett, he says, had rooms in Jermyn Street. Their faces were as well known in and about St. James's as that of any of the gentlemen who lived in that quarter, who might also be in the habit of going upon the road, if the truth were known about everybody. Maclaine, he said, had quarrelled, very shortly before his arrest, with an army officer at the Putney Bowling Green. The officer had doubted his gentility, and Maclaine challenged him to a duel, but the exasperating officer would not accept until Maclaine should produce a certificate of the noble birth he claimed.

"After his arrest," says Walpole, "there was a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept-mistress." Walpole concluded he would suffer, and as he wished him no ill, he did not care to follow the example of all fashionable London, and go to see him in his cell. He was almost alone in his thus keeping away. Lord Mountfield, with half White's Club at his heels, went to Newgate the very first day. There, in the cell, was Maclaine's aunt, crying over her unhappy nephew. When those great and fashionable frequenters of White's had gone, she asked, well knowing who they were, but perhaps not fully informed of their ways, beyond the fact that they gambled extravagantly: "My dear, what did the Lords say to you? Have you ever been concerned with any of them?"

"Was it not admirable?" asks Walpole; adding, "but the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over their fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe: I call them 'Polly' and 'Lucy,' and asked them if he did not sing: 'Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around'?"

In that last passage, Walpole refers to Gay's _Beggar's Opera_, written in 1716 and produced in 1728; a play written around an imaginary highwayman, "Captain Macheath," who might very well have stood for Maclaine himself. Polly and Lucy were two of Macheath's friends in the opera.

We have Walpole's own authority for the otherwise almost incredible statement that three thousand people went to see Maclaine in his cell, the first Sunday after he was condemned. He fainted away twice with the heat of the cell. "You can't conceive the going there is to Newgate, and the prints that are published of the malefactors and the memoirs of their lives and deaths, set forth with as much parade as Marshal Turenne's."

The fatal October 3rd came at last, when he was to die. A curious etched print published at the time, at the small price of threepence, entitled "Newgate's Lamentation, or the Ladies' Last Farewell of Maclaine," shows the parting, and bears the following verses:

Farewell, my friends, let not your hearts be fill'd,
My time is near, and I'll with calmness yield.
Fair ladies now, your grief, I pray, forbear,
Nor wound me with each tender-hearted tear.

Mourn not my fate; your friendships have been kind,
Which I in tears shall own, till breath's resign'd.
Oh! may the indulgence of such friendly love,
That's been bestowed on me, be doubled from above.

Thus fortified, and giving his blessing, for what it might be worth, he went to Tyburn diligently conning his prayer-book all the way, and not once glancing at the crowds.

To the constable who had arrested him, and who now came to beg his forgiveness, he replied earnestly: "I forgive you, and may God bless you, and your friends; may He forgive my enemies and receive my soul." And then he was turned off, and died quite easily. There was a great sale for the many more or less truthful lives of him hawked round the gallows.

JOHN POULTER, _ALIAS_ BAXTER

The story of John Poulter is one of the saddest that here present themselves to be recorded. He was born at Newmarket, of poor parents, and was given a sufficient schooling for his station. At thirteen years of age he was taken into service in the stables of the Duke of Somerset, and remained there for six years, leaving with an excellent character for smartness and industry. He then went into the employ of Colonel Lumley, and was on three occasions sent to France, in charge of racehorses; always giving complete satisfaction. But this slight experience of foreign travel seems to have unsettled him, and he craved for adventures under alien skies. We next find him, accordingly, sailing on a Bristol merchant ship and voyaging to the West Indies, to the American Colonies, and to Newfoundland; seeing life in a humble but effective way.

Returning to England at last, and, sailor-like—or at any rate, like sailors of those times—falling at once into abandoned company, he met, at Lichfield on February 1749, a dissolute set of persons living disreputably upon their wits; among them a certain John Brown, alias Dawson, who, with an experience of the highway trade, easily persuaded the adventurous Poulter to join him and his associates.

Brown, Poulter, and company, fully armed, then set out to prey upon all and sundry; devoting themselves more particularly to thefts from houses. At Lichfield, while one diverted the attention of the landlord of the "George" inn, another rifled a chest and stole a sum of money and many valuable articles. At Chester, Poulter distinguished himself by stealing some black plush that he fancied might make him a fine stylish waistcoat; and sent off at once to a tailor, to call at the "Black Dog" inn, where he and the gang were lodging, that he might be measured, and enabled to appear forthwith as a person of elegance and distinction. We may here fitly pause a moment to admire, or to be astonished at, the child-like vanity and delight in fine clothes displayed by nearly all the highwaymen at that time. They could not resist seizing every and any opportunity that offered, of dressing themselves in the best that could be obtained.

Unfortunately, the manners of a highwayman were not exactly those of a gentleman. There was something overdone in the affected elegance of deportment, a certain exaggeration and a decided "loudness" that made reflective people suspicious. Thus, the tailor to whom Poulter sent for his stolen plush to be made up was not altogether satisfied with his strange customer, and when a pistol that Poulter carried in his pocket went off accidentally during the process of measurement, he was convinced that a person who carried loaded firearms in this manner was not only a dangerous, but also a suspicious, person. The bullet had harmlessly sped into the ceiling, but the tailor was unnerved by the incident, and Poulter, rather lamely apologetic, endeavoured to explain away this concealed armoury by accusing Brown of putting crackers in his pockets. As for the tailor, he hurried off to the Mayor with the story that a dangerous person, evidently a highwayman, had taken lodgings in the city, and was one of a queer gang, whose suspicious movements had already attracted attention. The Mayor sent some trusty emissaries to examine Poulter and his associates, but they had already taken the alarm, and had embarked at Parkgate for Ireland.

Poulter had already had enough of this criminal life, and, tired of adventure of all kinds, desired nothing better than to settle down to some business. He accordingly, in the name of Baxter, took a small alehouse in Dublin, and, entirely dissociating himself from his companions for a time, did a comfortable and fairly prosperous trade, averaging five barrels a week. Here he might have continued, and would have been glad to do so, only for a most unfortunate circumstance.

There were at that time a number of Irish rogues in London, obtaining a hazardous livelihood, chiefly by picking pockets, but not disdaining any form of villainy that might promise to be profitable. General Sinclair was robbed of a gold watch by one or other of this gang, as he was leaving a party at Leicester House, and William Harper and Thomas Tobin, two suspicious characters, were arrested for being concerned, and taken to the Gatehouse at Westminster, whence they were presently rescued by their gang, to the number of a couple of dozen; all of them making off to Ireland.

This affair would not appear to concern Poulter in any way, engaged as he was at Dublin in earning an honest livelihood; but it had a very tragical result on his fortunes. Among the fugitives was one James Field, who had known Poulter in London; and he, as ill-fortune would have it, chanced one day to walk down that Dublin Street where Poulter's inn was situated. By the accursed malevolence of fate, Poulter himself happened at that moment to be standing at the door of his house. Field immediately recognised him and stopped to enquire what his old confederate was doing. He drank there and wished him good day, but soon after brought all that escaped gang of scoundrels to the spot; and there, much to Poulter's dismay, they established themselves, day by day, making his inn, once so respectable and well-conducted, a byword for riotous drinking, and the haunt of characters that it would be flattery to describe as merely "suspicious." Field and others were actually taken into custody there. Decent trade deserted the inn, and, despairing of being rid of the scoundrels, whom he dared not forbid the house, lest they should turn upon and denounce him, he absconded across Ireland to Cork, where he at first contemplated taking another inn. He at last, however, settled upon Waterford, and took an inn there, remaining for six months, when he was induced to return to Dublin by his former brewer, who, sorry to have lost a good customer by Poulter's enforced flight, wanted him back.

He eventually settled two miles outside Dublin, at an inn called the "Shades of Clontarf," looking upon the sea; and became part innkeeper, part fisherman, and led a very happy, honest, and contented life, making, moreover, an average profit of £3 a week.

But here he was found towards the close of 1751 by Tobin, who foisted himself and a dissolute woman companion upon the unfortunate man. Poulter generously received them, but earnestly implored Tobin not to bring his evil associates into the neighbourhood. He wanted, he declared, to live an honest life, and to be done with the past. Tobin assured him he would not appear in the neighbourhood again; but in a few days he was back at Clontarf, with a select company of rascals, and from that time the unhappy Poulter knew no peace. His determination to lead a respectable life they took as a direct challenge to, and slur upon, themselves. There is nothing that so greatly enrages the habitual criminal as the reclamation of one of his own kind, and it is doubtless the influence of hardened evil-doers that prevents many a criminal, really disgusted with crime, from reforming. These wretches set themselves deliberately to ruin Poulter. They practically lived at his house, and, as had been done before, they soon changed the character of it from a decent alehouse to a thieves' boozing-ken, to which the police-officers came at once when they wanted to find some bad character, or to trace stolen property. Poulter was a mere cipher under his own roof.

But they were not content with wrecking his trade: they must needs blast that good character he had been so patiently acquiring. They did it by making him out a smuggler. Six pounds of tea and twelve yards of calico and muslin placed secretly in his boat, and information then lodged with the Revenue officers, was sufficient. Poulter's boat was seized and condemned, and Poulter himself, convinced that he would not be able to establish his innocence, fled from the scene and hurried aboard a vessel bound for Bristol, where he landed penniless. There, in Bristol streets, he met two early criminal acquaintances, Dick Branning and John Roberts, and as there seemed to be no likelihood of being allowed to live within the law, he agreed to take part with them and a number of confederates, whose headquarters were at Bath, in a campaign of highway and other robberies.

Their operations were of the most roving description. By way of Trowbridge, they made for Yorkshire, raiding the country as they went with all manner of rogueries. Nothing came amiss. At Halifax they netted twenty-five guineas from a clergyman by an eighteenth-century ancestor of the thimble-rigging fraud, called "pricking in the belt." At last they found themselves at Chester: place of evil omen for Poulter. There, at the house of a confederate, they heard on the evening of their arrival of a train of pack-horses laden with Manchester goods, due to pass that night. Watch had been kept upon them, said the confederate, and a man would point out to our friends which, among all the animals of the pack-horse train, was best worth robbing of his load. It would be best, he said, to do the work on the country road, and to take the horse into a field.

As it happened, they pitched upon the wrong horse, and got only a load of calamancoes, fabrics woven of wool with an admixture of silk, popular in those times; but the pack contained over a thousand yards, and they cut it off after some difficulty in the dark, and got away safely with it; although greatly alarmed by the horse's loud neighing when he found himself separated from his companions.

The robbers went off at once out of the neighbourhood, and that same night reached a village near Whitchurch, eighteen or twenty miles distant. There they obliterated all distinguishing marks on the goods, and divided them.

At Grantham, which Poulter and Tobin next favoured with a visit, they relieved a credulous farmer of fifteen guineas by the "pricking in the belt" device. At Nottingham several of the accomplices met, but they had bad luck, and Poulter went on the sneak and stole a silver tankard, without a lid, from the "Blackamoor's Head" inn: and that was all the scurvy town of Nottingham yielded them. They then made for Yorkshire, where they remained for a considerable period, and then left, only because their widespread thefts of all kinds made a continued stay dangerous. York, Durham, and the north, including Newcastle, comprised a tour then undertaken.

They then made their way to Bath, the general rendezvous of the gang, and thence in what Poulter calls "three sets," or gangs, moved independently and by easy stages into Devonshire: attending the cattle-fair at Sampford Peverell, with marked success to themselves, and grievous loss to the farmers and graziers there assembled. Thence they moved on to Torrington and Exeter, and so back again to Bath, where twelve of them met at Roberts's house.

Poulter and two confederates named Elgar and Allen then went into the north of England again, attending fairs, horse-races and cock-fighting matches on the sharping lay; winning about £30 or £40 at cards. Returning to Bath, and being looked upon with suspicion, living as they were with a number of riotous men in Roberts's house, they hit upon the dodge of passing for smugglers, and thus at once explaining their association and enlisting public sympathy. Every one, except the Revenue officers, was in those times well-affected towards smugglers.

They were not only at considerable pains, but at great expense also, to create this impression. "We used," says Poulter, in his confessions, "to give seven shillings a pound for tea, and sell it again for four shillings and sixpence, on purpose to make people believe we were smugglers."

While they were thus staying at Bath, they would go now and then to a fair, and try "the nob," or "pricking in the belt." If that did not succeed, they would buy a horse or two, give IOU's for the money and false addresses, and then sell the horses again. "This," says Poulter, "is called 'masoning.'"

This was followed by a raid into Dorset. A visit of the gang to Blandford races was highly successful. They attended numerously, and while some robbed the booths, others devoted their attention to the sportsmen, and yet others lightened the pockets of the crowds engrossed in watching the cock-fighting. They wound up a glorious day by dining in style at the "Rose and Crown," and there chanced upon the best luck of all those gorgeous hours: finding a portmanteau from which they took eighteen guineas, four broad pieces, and diamonds, jewels, and clothes to a great amount. Many of these articles were taken to London by Poulter, and sold there to Jews in Duke's Place, Aldgate, on behalf of self and partners. The proceeds were duly divided at Roberts's house at Bath.

The next activities of these busy rogues were at Corsham, near Bath. They then appeared at Farringdon in Berkshire, and there robbed the Coventry carrier. Newbury and Bristol then suffered from them. At last, they grew so notorious in the West of England that they judged it only prudent to alter their methods for a time, and to devote themselves exclusively to horse-stealing: an art they had not hitherto practised with any frequency.

An amusing incident was that in which Poulter robbed a man of £20. The foolish fellow, an utter stranger, had been rash enough to display his money to Roberts one night in a country alehouse. It had just been paid to him, he said. "And it will presently be taken from you," Roberts might truly have retorted. But he merely in a sly manner drew Poulter's attention, who later followed the man and presenting a metal tinder-box to his head, roared out, "Your money or your life." The tinder-box in the darkness looked so like a pistol that the money was meekly handed over.

Poulter then went off to Trowbridge, in company with a new recruit, Burke by name, an Irishman, who had been confidential ostler to Roberts, and was now advanced to full membership of this body of raiders. Meeting a post-chaise near Clarken Down, Burke proposed to attack it, but Poulter would agree only on condition that no violence were used. Poulter then led the attack, but in the darkness put his hand with accidental force through the window, and cut it severely. In doing so, his pistol went off, and Burke thinking it was the occupant of the chaise who had fired, replied with his own firearms. Fortunately, no one was hit.

The chaise was occupied by Dr. Hancock and his little girl. Poulter took up the child and kissed her, and then, setting her down, robbed the Doctor of one guinea and a half in gold, six shillings, a gold watch, and some clothes: a booty not worth all the trouble, and certainly not by a long way worth the further trouble the affair was presently to bring.

After seeing the post-chaise disappear in the darkness, Poulter and his companion made their way to a neighbouring inn, and coolly displayed their takings to the landlord and his wife, who appear to have been, if not actual confederates, at least better disposed to self-revealed robbers than honest innkeepers should be. The landlady gave the highwaymen a bag for the clothes, and the landlord, when they lamented the fact of all their powder and ball being fired off, obligingly removed the charge from his loaded fowling-piece, and melted down two pewter spoons for casting into bullets. The landlady, when Poulter and Burke asked her if these preparations for arming did not alarm her, said: "No, they are not the first pistols I have seen loaded by night in this kitchen." Evidently an inn that the solitary and unarmed traveller with money about him should avoid.

She added thoughtfully that, after this robbery, they had better travel as far away as they could, that night from the spot. She would send them any news.

They then left, and, taking a horse they chanced to see in an adjacent meadow, proceeded to Exeter, where they sold the stolen articles to a receiver.

It was not more than three weeks later when Poulter was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the robbery of Dr. Hancock. He was thrown into Ilchester gaol, brought to trial, and condemned to death. He made a full confession and disclosed the names of no fewer than thirty-one of his associates, their places of meeting, and their methods. He was not only anxious to save his life by thus turning evidence against the gang, but he was genuinely wearied of the manner of life into which he had been hounded.