There were highway robbers in plenty who stole from the rich but few with that generosity to the poor that was such an appealing feature of Robin Hood’s supposed activities. Instead many robbers had no redeeming features at all and stole from the poor without turning a hair. Many were not only robbers but brutal thugs as well, prepared to assault, rape and murder their victims. In 1333, the vicar of Teigh, a tiny parish in Rutland, abandoned his flock and took up with a gang led by James Coterel. They ranged widely throughout the East Midlands terrifying all and sundry with their gratuitous violence.
Many more examples of anti-social behaviour could be given but those highway robbers who can be justifiably described as ‘highwaymen’ did not appear until two developments had taken place. These were a steady growth in the amount of traffic moving along the country roads and the appearance of the flintlock pistol. The latter was the latest and considerably the best of a line of evolving firearms with which mounted robbers had equipped themselves. It was both light and reasonably accurate and it added greatly to the menace that was de rigueur for the highwayman. It also allowed the robber to brandish his threatening weapon in one hand while easily controlling his horse with the other. By the late eighteenth century the blunderbuss had appeared. This was an ideal weapon for a highwayman. It was a muzzle-loading gun that could fire many balls simultaneously making it particularly dangerous because its inherent inaccuracy was compensated for by its wide and random arc of fire.
While the most common representations of highwaymen show them waylaying a coach full of terrified travellers, by preference it was lone travellers or small groups that were held up. With such victims the highwayman had a much better idea of what resistance could be expected whereas in a coach, especially a closed one, the travellers might be armed and able to give a good account of themselves. A highwayman operating on his own usually approached a coach from the front nearside and kept his distance while trying to ensure that the driver, the guard or both had dropped their weapons. Clearly it was difficult and hazardous for an individual mounted robber to browbeat the occupants of a coach into submission, relieve them of their valuables, keep his horse under control and watch out for other travellers on the road. Sometimes highwaymen shot their victims’ horses to prevent pursuit. Kinder ones might merely cut through the girths and bridles of the horses. On occasions highwaymen would tie up their victims to delay pursuit.
The act of committing a hold-up on the highway rendered the offender liable to the death penalty. Since the gravity of the offence was not reduced if carried out with courtesy and decorum, it made sense to act swiftly and brutally and to kill if necessary. By doing so, the highwayman drastically reduced the number of possible witnesses and the likelihood of immediate pursuit. In practice, few mounted highway robbers appear to have killed their victims. Most highwaymen seem to have been anxious to avoid being identified as murderers as well. The possession of a horse gave the highwayman the opportunity to leave the scene of the crime very quickly and he therefore felt less vulnerable than the footpad.
A highwayman was probably more at risk from betrayal by an accomplice or someone after the reward money than from retaliation by one of his victims. Highwaymen therefore needed to be suspicious of all those with whom they had any dealings. However, some were naturally garrulous and boastful and would treat all and sundry to a drink after a successful outing on the road. As the ale flowed so they might become more and more relaxed or even descend into a drunken stupor. Claude Duval for example, was arrested when in his cups.
Where highway robbers occur in Elizabethan literature the attitude to them is remarkably tolerant. In Henry IV, Part 1 Shakespeare has Falstaff egging Prince Hal on to undertake a hold-up at Gad’s Hill on the Dover Road as if it was a mere jape. Highway robbery also features in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is set in Italy. Three extremely amiable robbers waylay Valentine, who is wandering along pondering gloomily on the fact that he has just been exiled from Milan. On being ordered to stop and hand over his money and valuables, he breaks into a self-pitying monologue. This so affects the tenderhearted bandits that they forego the pleasure of robbing him and on learning that he is an outlaw and a gentleman, they very sportingly ask him to join their band as its leader.
Little is known about the highway robbers of the period before 1550 but it is certain that they were men of a very different kind from Shakespeare’s likeable rascals. Such were Sir Gosselin Denville and his younger brother Robert, who lived in the early part of the fourteenth century. These well-bred ne’er-do-wells had been dispatched to Cambridge to study for holy orders but while they were at the university their father died, leaving them a large sum of money. Eagerly they spent their unexpected windfall on the raffish and seedy delights that Cambridge had to offer at that time. Within three years they were almost broke and only then did they turn their attention to finding a career. Neither of the brothers considered himself suitable for the ministry, nor did working for a living appeal to them. What was more natural than to take to the road?
The Denville brothers joined a gang of desperadoes and launched into a series of robberies during which Gosselin distinguished himself by the sheer brutality of the murders he committed and the malevolent relish he displayed when breaking into convents and ravishing the nuns. The gang grew larger and more audacious and it is said that they even robbed King Edward II on his own highway. Gosselin had a price of 1,000 marks on his head and his younger brother 500 marks. Lesser gang members were priced at 100 marks. The gang members were picked off gradually, informed on by zealous upholders of the law or those who simply wanted the reward money. Eventually, a huge force of Sheriff’s men surrounded those that were left and after a pitched battle with numerous fatalities on both sides, over twenty gang members were taken to York and summarily executed.
The Denville brothers were villains of the darkest hue who numbered highway robbery among other dastardly deeds but they are perhaps too early to fit neatly into the category of highwaymen. A later, more plausible pretender to the description ‘highwayman’ is John Popham who like the earlier Denville brothers, was a ’varsity man. Born in 1531, he read law at Balliol College, Oxford, but found it boring and turned instead to roistering with the university’s rakes and scapegraces. Among his occasional diversions was the robbing of travellers on the roads into and out of Oxford. He practised highway robbery very profitably for many years until his wife persuaded him to abandon it and return to his studies. She pointed out very shrewdly that he could make far more money safely robbing people as a lawyer than ever he could out on the road with all its attendant hazards.
As soon as Popham had qualified, his rise was rapid. He entered Parliament, was eventually knighted and moved on to the post of Lord Chief Justice. Phrases such as ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ come to mind. To his credit, Popham never made any secret of his past. While serving under King James I (1603–25) it is alleged that a former colleague, another highborn ‘gentleman of the road’, appeared before him and Popham took the opportunity to chat informally to the man while the jury retired to consider the verdict. The situation was not looking promising for the accused but he must have been a man of some spirit because when Popham asked him what had happened to the old crowd, he replied, in the very public forum of the court, ‘All are hanged, my lord, except you and me.’
Another early highwayman was Gamaliel Ratsey born into a well-off family from Market Deeping in south Lincolnshire. He seems to have been an Army officer who, when demobilised in the 1600s, stole £40 from an innkeeper at nearby Spalding, was arrested and, knowing that if found guilty he was likely to be hanged, contrived to escape before the trial, albeit clad only in a shirt. He took up with two well-known villains called Snell and Shorthouse. The trio took to the highway as robbers, noted for their boldness. Ratsey wore a particularly grotesque mask that covered his entire face, terrifying his victims and which was so repulsive that it was even mentioned in Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist. Stories grew of how ‘Gamaliel Hobgoblin’, as he was sometimes known, on encountering a penniless victim on the road would make the quaking man provide impromptu entertainment for him and his friends. One luckless victim, an impoverished actor, was forced to recite a passage from Hamlet, while an equally impecunious Cambridge don had to give a learned lesson in the classics to an audience of mocking highwaymen. Ratsey’s career ended abruptly when he and his companions were caught and Snell and Shorthouse turned King’s evidence. Ratsey was hanged at Bedford in 1605. It is said that despite his ferocity on occasions he gave some of the proceeds of his robberies to the poor. For highway robbers, speed was essential and the idea that they stood around casually enjoying Shakespearean orations or academic tutorials stretches credulity beyond breaking point. However, a seed was set, the idea of the highway robber with the sense of humour, the man happy to be entertained by his victim while he stole from him.
The Ratseys and Denvilles were ahead of their time. The age of the highwayman proper starts in the seventeenth century. It was in the reign of King Charles I that the so-called ‘gentleman of the road’, the figure given to us by legend and imaginative literature, really came into his own. This was indeed a cavalier, swashbuckling figure with cocked hat, flowing locks, lace at his collar and cuffs and a black crêpe mask covering his eyes. To be a highwayman he also had to be astride a horse. There were highway and street robbers who plied their trade on foot but they were mere footpads and considered a very low form of criminal life. Some highwaymen did conform to the romanticised stereotype but most were of a much more sinister character and appearance and they turned to highway robbery from a strictly business point of view. Many were inveterate but unsuccessful gamblers who, when faced with unmanageable debts also turned to highway robbery. Some were Army officers especially from the cavalry who upon being demobbed found that the skills they had learned in the Army counted for little in civilian life. Being used to good pay, status and the wining and dining that were an essential part of an officer’s life, they found themselves suddenly penniless and without prospects. Desperation might drive them on to the road. In the earlier part of the seventeenth century most of the highwaymen of whom some kind of record has been kept were young men, aged thirty or less. What is surprising is that some of them had plenty of money and, having little need to plunder as they did, presumably relished the excitement.
One such maverick was James Clavel, heir to a substantial estate in Dorset. In 1626 he was arrested as a seasoned highwayman of particular notoriety who had made a speciality of robbing the mail. In his defence, Clavel emphasised that although he certainly had committed a number of robberies, he had never employed violence. He was found guilty and condemned to death but he whiled away his time in jail awaiting the outcome of an appeal by writing poems, including one in which he begged the King for clemency. This was a cringingly obsequious piece of verse but King Charles seems to have been flattered when he found himself being indirectly compared with Jesus of Nazareth. He graciously ordered the death sentence be commuted to imprisonment. Here is a sample of Clavel’s verse:
I that have robbed so oft am now bid stand,
Death and the Law assault me, and demand
My life and means. I never used men so,
Yet must I die? And is there no relief?
The King of Kings had mercy on a thief.
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 go beyond severity.
Clavel was evidently flushed with the success of his poetic efforts and he proceeded to write his autobiography (he was aged twenty-three at the time) entitled ‘Recantation of an Ill-led Life’. As an autobiography this was curious for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that much of it was written in verse and rather poor verse at that. Actually there is very little autobiography in Clavel’s ‘Recantation’ and most of his uninspired doggerel consists of hints to travellers about how best to move around the roads without attracting the attention of highway robbers. Clavel was pardoned, a very rare occurrence. Perhaps he had threatened to write more poetry and the authorities jumped at the opportunity to get rid of him. Alternatively, they may have been grateful for Clavel’s revelations about his former colleagues and have taken these into account when considering his fate. We get a fuller idea of the nature of the ‘Recantation’ from its sub-title: ‘A Discovery of the Highway Law, with vehement disuassions to all offenders, as also many cautious admonitions and full instructions how to know, shun and apprehend a thief, most necessary for all honest travellers to peruse, observe, and practice.’
Another young blood, eager to prove himself on the highway, was Isaac Atkinson, again born into a well-heeled family. Even as a youth Isaac enraged his father because of his avid pursuit of female flesh of every description. In this case the sins of the son were visited on the father whose life became extremely tedious because of the procession to his door of fathers all complaining that Atkinson Junior had deflowered their daughters. The monotony of attempting to propitiate them was hardly relieved by rancorous discussions with the many and equally indignant husbands who had been cuckolded by the young man. As the number of Atkinson Senior’s unwanted grandchildren rose inexorably and with wearisome regularity, the old man finally decided that enough was enough and he unceremoniously ejected Isaac from the house, disinheriting him on the way out. This proved to be just the break young Isaac had been looking for because he now launched himself into highway robbery with the same energy that he had previously devoted to his pursuit of the opposite sex, although he did not totally abandon his amorous activities.
It is said that the singularly energetic Atkinson held up and robbed no fewer than 160 attorneys in the space of 8 months in the county of Norfolk alone. Questions inevitably come to mind. Why were the roads of Norfolk apparently teeming with attorneys? Did Atkinson rob only attorneys? Was there something about the behaviour or appearance of a travelling attorney that uniquely aroused Atkinson’s ire and if so, why? The attorneys provided him with rich pickings because he benefited from these robberies to the tune of £3,000, perhaps as much as £350,000 in today’s terms.
Like most highwaymen, Isaac Atkinson’s brief career came to an inglorious end. He was apprehended at Turnham Green near London not, as might be expected, lightening the purse of an attorney but stealing a bag of halfpennies from a young and attractive market-woman, albeit believing that it was a bag of gold coins. Eyeing up his victim, Atkinson’s carnal instincts, never far below the surface, made him decide to try to seduce her as well. Sensing his intentions, she threw the bag and its clinking contents over a hedge. Atkinson dismounted and went to fetch the bag before giving his full attention to the young woman. Atkinson’s stallion seems to have been as libidinous as its master. It took an immediate shine to the girl’s small mare which, anxious to safeguard its chastity, turned tail and fled with Atkinson’s stallion in hot pursuit. Atkinson was left to rue a bag of halfpennies and a long walk back. The girl, dismounting from her sweat-flecked mare, realised that her riderless equine pursuer signified that the highwayman himself was now stranded on foot. A posse quickly found Atkinson. He gave a good account of himself, shooting four of them until he was overpowered.
At the tender age of twenty-four Atkinson was hanged at Tyburn. He showed little fear and no remorse and merely commented that he had had a short life but a full and merry one. Doubtless innumerable husbands with toothsome wives and the fathers of comely young wenches agreed and breathed a sigh of relief on hearing of Atkinson’s premature if predictable end.
Walter Tracey, born in 1596, was the younger son of a prosperous Norfolk landowner. As so often happened, the father wanted his son to enter the Church where his social standing and relative wealth would be assured, but the young man had different ideas. However, he was packed off to Oxford to study theology. At that time there were few places in the country better able to serve the needs of young men eager to sow their wild oats than the venerable university cities of Oxford and Cambridge. Tracey had only been at Oxford for a short time before he fell in with a bad crowd and various misdemeanours led to him being sent down in disgrace. His father threw him out so Tracey found brief employment with a grazier. This was a rather tame occupation for a hot-blooded young rake like Tracey but he enlivened his spare time by seducing the young women of the district. Tracey had charm and good looks and was reckoned to be an accomplished musician and he took full advantage of these gifts in his dealings with the opposite sex. Some accounts of Tracey’s life suggest that ‘playing on a musical instrument’ was a euphemism for sexual activity. Maybe he was a virtuoso.
Tracey eventually married his employer’s daughter, having seduced her beforehand, and lined himself up with a handsome dowry and a chance of eventually taking over the family business. Tracey, however, was not prepared to vegetate forever in some rural backwater and he felt the pull of London’s bright lights. He persuaded his father-in-law and family to visit London with him but on their way up to the capital he came across some of his erstwhile undergraduate companions. They went off to celebrate this fortuitous reunion with a drinking bout and Walter, admiring the raffish lifestyle of these young menabout-town, determined to embark immediately on a new and more adventurous career. The next morning he stole his father-in-law’s wallet and set off for Coventry where he robbed an innkeeper and his wife of 85 guineas. He may have been congratulating himself on his courage and resourcefulness but he had much to learn.
Tracey next met a scholar heading for Oxford whom he pretended to befriend. The man confided that he was carrying £60 with him. Tracey threatened to relieve him of this money but the latter broke down and spun him such a yarn of distress and despair that Tracey gave him £4 of his own money and sent him on his way. Before doing so he had taken the scholar’s bag, which he believed contained the £60, and he trotted off well content with the outcome of this encounter. Imagine his chagrin when he discovered that the bag contained nothing more valuable than a collection of verminous and useless old clothes, including a pair of stockings without any feet and a pair of shoes that boasted only one heel between them.
Tracey soon picked up the necessary skills for survival as a highwayman and some years later he is said to have encountered Ben Jonson, the noted playwright, on the road. Jonson’s response to being accosted by a sinister figure on horseback pointing a pistol at him was the unexpected one of spontaneously composing and uttering a short verse, casting aspersions on the robber’s parentage and predicting his likely destination after death:
Fly, villain, hence, or by thy coat of steel
I’ll make thy heart my leaden bullet feel,
And send that thricely thievish soul of thine
To Hell, to wean the Devil’s valentine!
Far from being put out by this tirade, Tracey rose splendidly to the occasion and proving that he was no mean bard himself, fired back with his own piece of verse twice as long.
Art thou great Ben? Or the revived ghost
Of famous Shakespeare? Or some drunken host
Who, being tipsy with thy muddy beer,
Dost think thy rhymes will daunt my soul with fear?
Nay, know, base slave, that I am one of those
Can take a purse as well in verse, as prose;
And when thou art dead, write this upon thy hearse,
‘Here lies a poet who was robbed in verse.’
It is not known how long this exchange of rhyming witticisms and insults lasted, nor whether Tracey succeeded in lightening Jonson’s purse. However, it was certainly the start of a bad day for Jonson. A few miles down the road he was attacked by a band of footpads who, like Tracey, showed little respect for his literary achievements and stole his horse after having bound him hand and foot and tied him to a tree with some victims of earlier robberies that day. They were eventually released by some country labourers but not before Jonson heard this immortal exchange between two of his fellow captives, ‘Woe unto me, I am undone,’ to which his companion promptly retorted, ‘Pray, if you are all undone, come and undo me.’ Tracey interspersed his activity on the roads with bouts of the amorous activity that seems to have been de rigueur for a man in his line of business. Luckier than many, Tracey eventually retired to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. Ironically, his luck ran out when, swindled in some investments, he went on the road once more and made the mistake of holding up the Duke of Buckingham. He was captured, sentenced to death and executed at the age of thirty-eight. His career had lasted longer than that of most highway robbers.
By no means according with the popular image of the highwayman but unquestionably qualifying as highway robbers were Sawney Beane and his family. He was born near Edinburgh in the late sixteenth century and never evinced the slightest interest in pursuing honest toil. Sawney was not only idle but phenomenally repulsive in every way. Fortunately for him, he met a woman just as disgusting as himself. The gruesome duo decided to leave Edinburgh and carve a niche for themselves elsewhere, which is just what they did. They made their headquarters in a complicated system of caves on the Ayrshire coast of west Scotland not far from Ballantrae. They started rustling cattle and then graduated to highway robbery.
Observing the adage that dead men tell no tales and seeking to save on their food bills, the Beanes decided not only to kill the victims of their robberies but to eat them as well. Through a series of incestuous relationships the couple created a family which in due course became a small tribe consisting of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters. Rumour was rife and searches were instituted but nobody was able to find the hideaway and the tribe waxed fat on their high-protein diet. Sometimes they had more food than they could eat and they would go to the seaward end of the caves and dispose of a few human remains in the sea. These sometimes became caught in fishermens’ nets or were washed up along the coast. The Beane tribe resided in these caves as robbers and cannibals for at least twenty-five years but were eventually caught, hauled off to Edinburgh and summarily executed. They were guilty of three of the most taboo actions known to humanity: incest, murder and cannibalism. Estimates of the number of their murder victims rose to a thousand or more, although it is likely that the final total was considerably smaller than this.
The highway robbers of this period are not generally as well known as many of the later ‘gentlemen of the road’. It is likely that the robbery business was somewhat ‘hit-and-miss’ before economic and commercial growth was reflected in increasing numbers of travellers carrying cash and other items of interest. Sawney Beane of course is not in any way typical but the modus operandi of the mounted and armed robber had been established and was to move on into the swashbuckling later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.