Charles G. Harper

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

“ It would be difficult, if not impossible, to say which road out of London was the most infested with highwaymen, in all these centuries. Where all were extremely dangerous for honest men, the bad eminence of any particular one is disputable. All the great highways were bordered by lonely wastes and commons until well on into the nineteenth century, and it is not saying too much to declare that the era of the highwaymen did not really end until that of railways had begun. ”

“ He was not a hero, and the age insisted that he should ply a less respected craft than that of the highwayman, but he could have risen to such an occasion on the road, and perhaps because the public dimly saw as much, he figures [Pg 9] in the imagination less as the armed midnight burglar he was, ready in cold blood to shoot down any one who stood in his way, than as a wonderfully daring and skilful adventurer, whose known exploits and whose legendary doings—for legends have accumulated around his well-known and ascertained career—can stir the pulse and heat the imagination. ”

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

“ And as the eighteenth century closed and gave place to the nineteenth, the mounted highwayman gradually disappeared, and the footpad, a miserable, muddy, cowardly figure, for whom no one ever had a good word, is seen in his dark lurk, in the wayside ditch, not often courageous enough to work alone, and generally found in couples, ready perhaps with the suffocating pitch-plasters that so terrified the wayfarers of that time. ”

“ Near by is Furnival Street, formerly Castle Street, as a tablet dated 1785 proclaims.
"Holborn Bars" is a name that but mildly stimulates the curiosity of modern Londoners, who, seeing no bars here, wonder idly about the name, resolve to inquire about it, and then in the busy life they lead, forget their passing interest. There were toll-bars here in the highwaymen's days, and those who care to seek for themselves may still determine the exact boundary of the City of London, for a granite obelisk on either side of the road, bearing the City arms, still marks the spot. ”

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

“ You had simply to watch the "public form," so to speak, of your man, just as people accustomed to bet upon horse-races watch the performances of the animal they favour. If your highwayman were a dashing and enterprising fellow, likely to make much of a stir in his line, it was obviously not worth the while to collar him for the sake of a mere £40 reward offered for the apprehension of a highwayman. You just waited until he became a notorious person, with some great deeds to his credit—a big haul of guineas or jewellery, or perhaps even a murder. ”

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

“ Traditions not so long since surviving in the North Riding of Yorkshire tell a horrid story of the use of an enchanted hand of this kind. One wild and bitter night—the sort of night when homeless wayfarers were more than usually to be pitied—a man clad in ragged clothes knocked at the door of a lone inn on a solitary moor, and asked for a lodging. ”

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

“ The law visited highway robbery with sentences of the utmost ferocity, but individuals, as a general rule, took their losses, not only with an astonishing philosophy, but with a remarkable display of good-nature.
Insult a man, and he may brook it,
But keep your hands out of his breeches pocket, says a well-known couplet; but here we have the strange spectacle of courtesy disarming the resentment caused by the turning out of those pockets! Hind was not yet the holder of a commission, but he was evidently already captain of himself. ”

“ The passing citizen, or the honest tradesman lying wakeful in his bed, probably was more deeply impressed. The criminals themselves, as the long story of them through the dreadful centuries shows, were mostly callous. They had, the larger number of them, long over-passed the dread of death; and even with those who were afraid, it was by tradition a point of honour to take that last journey to Tyburn as gaily as though they were the central figures in some merrymaking, instead of going to their own shameful extinction. ”

“ He lorded it over those caged gaol-birds with imperious ways for thirty years, and in that time had the fortune to hob and nob with many a famous rogue. Jack Sheppard and many a lesser light sat under him in the prison chapel and listened to his outrageous sermons, promising damnation and everlasting torment; and he had the singular fortune to call the infamous Jonathan Wild a crony for some years, and in the end, when that appalling scoundrel had been found out and cast for the shameful death to which he had brought so many others, to preach the worm that dieth not to him also. ”

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

“ The mythical Thomas Dun's redeeming qualities, supposing him, indeed, to have possessed any, are not set forth in those legends of him. He is a blackguard shape; while the equally legendary Robin Hood is one of the brightest figures of romance.
Robin Hood is a poor man's hero, and has been, for over seven centuries, to the peasantry of England something of what King Arthur was to the nobles and the aristocracy. While Arthur was, and is some day again to be, the national hero in the larger issues of war and conquest, Robin remains the lion-hearted outlaw ”

“ Highwaymen, as we have already seen, were numerous before, but they now grew more than ever daring. The Peace of Ryswick, which had the year before ended an inglorious war, caused great numbers of soldiers to be disbanded, and, finding no livelihood to be obtained in honest work, they naturally chose to plunder the travellers whom they observed journeying to and from London, often with well-filled purses, ready to become the property of any bold fellow who could command a good horse, a pistol or sword, and courage to stop men on their lawful business. ”

“ As company promoters of the Whitaker Wright and Jabez Balfour type, it has been said, these providential enactments enabled them to satisfy their natural leanings. And so the old world journeys down the ringing grooves of change, even as Tennyson desired it should do, though perhaps not on the exact lines of his thoughts.
There are no heroes in these days; or, at the most of it, the hero of to-day, beslavered with overmuch praise, is discovered to-morrow to be a greatly overrated person, not so heroic as ourselves, if the truth were known and every one had his due. ”

“ They end, sordid, mud-splashed figures, from which romance shrinks; in no detail distinguishable from such vermin as the footpads, who on dark nights robbed women and children, and defenceless old men, for coppers in solitary lanes, and fled in terror from the robust.
When the profession of highwayman became extinct, those of pickpocket, card-sharper, and burglar were greatly reinforced. ”

“ Good men and bad were alike steeped in a degrading belief in white and black magic, portents, and omens. Magical aids in the prosecution of both innocent and guilty enterprises were employed; and among them none more fearful than the charm known generally as the "Hand of Glory": the "open sesame" of thieves and assassins, among whom, it is to be feared, we must include not a few of our "romantic" highwaymen; although probably the larger number of them would actually have felt themselves insulted at being styled thieves, and certainly only a minority slew wilfully. ”

“ It is no laughing matter, my friends, but rather a weeping matter, a heavy matter, under the pretence of gathering for Robin Hood, a traitor, and a thief, to put out a preacher, to have his office less esteemed, to prefer Robin Hood before the preaching of God's Word. ”

“ Less influential people, passing on foot, on horseback, or by carriage towards Cheshunt and Newmarket, in the wake of the Court, had to struggle as best they might through a network of peculiarly evil and muddy lanes, infested with highwaymen, who, nothing daunted by witnessing the dismal processions of their brethren going westward, robbed with celerity and an exquisite assurance those who, repairing to the races, would in all likelihood have lost their guineas on Newmarket Heath. ”

“ Being thus provided, a watchword must be framed, wrapped up in some common question, as 'What's o'clock?' or 'Jack, what shall we have for supper?' As soon as these words are used, you must instantly fall to work, seizing with your left hand the traveller's bridle, and with your right presenting a pistol. This so terrifies that he delivers instantly, for who will trust a pistol at his breast loaded with a brace of bullets, and a mouth discharging at the same time volleys of oaths, that if he deliver not instantly he is a dead man? ”

“ As the old priest had foretold, years before, Du Vall became the ladies' favourite. "Maids, widows, and wives," we learn, "the rich, the poor, the noble, the vulgar, all submitted to him," and he led the gayest of lives in London.
He knew Blackheath as well as Hounslow, and there, with his companions, met a coach full of ladies and a child with a feeding-bottle. Rudely, one of the gang rode up, violently robbed the ladies of their watches and rings, and did not scruple even to steal the child's silver bottle. ”

“ But that of the highwaymen begins with the giants and the heroes, continued down through the legendary period of Robin Hood, to the times of the Civil War in England, between King Charles and his Parliament, when highway robbers cloaked their villainies with Royalist partisanship, to the less romantic eighteenth century, and finally ended, early in the nineteenth century, with all the glamour and tinselled things of the past, in squalid, commonplace circumstances. ”

“ We may imagine, if we pause a moment, with the fearful story of that historic prison in our minds, the condemned men, merrymaking up to the last and receiving curious and dissolute visitors in their imprisonment, having their reckless carousing broken in upon by that awful message, and halting a moment, with an icy terror striking in upon their nerves, to realise that this, then, was the last chapter in their lives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having thus endeavoured to fright highwaymen, by showing them the intolerable torments of a prison, besides the certainty and shamefulness of hanging, and hazard of eternal death hereafter, I shall here take another course to scare them, if possible, and therefore in the first place I shall lay down directions how to know them as they ride on the road, with rules how to shun them, or, if robbed, how to pursue and apprehend them when they think themselves most secure. ”

“ Perhaps the task has been abandoned because of the difficulty—the almost insuperable difficulty—of sifting fact from fiction, and because of a chilling sense that it would be a thankless task to present the highwayman as he really was: a fellow rarely heroic, generally foul-mouthed and cruel, and often cowardly. ”

“ Highwaymen for the most part are such that were never acquainted with an honest trade, whom either want of money or employment prompted them to undertake these dangerous designs; and to make their persons appear more formidable, and to gain respect, they dub one another 'colonel,' 'major,' or at least a captain, who never arrived to a greater height than a trooper disbanded, or at the utmost a lifeguards-man cashiered for misdemeanour. ”

“ So we see that the narrator of Du Vall's life, certainly did not approve of the hero-worship accorded him.
But Du Vall's career was now fast drawing to a close. His exploits as a highway chevalier had grown too notorious for him to be allowed to range any longer at will on the roads around London. At times, perhaps fully informed of his exceeding danger, he would employ himself in another art, in which he was an expert—the art of cheating at cards, in which an exceptional sleight-of-hand served him in good stead. ”

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

“ The hangman himself is seen to be idly reclining on top, smoking a contemplative pipe, until it shall please the clergyman to finish, and hand over the doomed man to him. And there is the Sheriff's carriage, and on the left hand the brick wall, which then enclosed Hyde Park. In the far distance are seen the pleasant heights of Notting Hill, then in the open country, and no doubt a spot where the innocent delights of gathering hazel-nuts could still be enjoyed, as in the times when it was first called the "nutting" hill. ”