With the Restoration of 1660 the ranks of the highwaymen thinned out. Many of those families who supported the King, thereby suffering the sequestration of their land, now had their property restored and were unlikely to use robbery to make a political statement. The highwaymen that remained on the road were there for strictly business reasons and were professionals. Now the timid traveller made a will and commended himself to the Almighty before setting off on a journey by road. This period has bequeathed the enduring image of the gentleman mounted on a fine horse, with riding boots and spurs, cape, tricorn hat and black mask concealing the upper face. The scene is completed with a moonlit night and a lonely road. Pistol at the ready, he draws out of the shadows and orders the carriage or traveller to stop with the immortal words, ‘Stand and deliver!’ He is polite but firm and once convinced that he has received all the valuables that could be surrendered, he raises his hat to the ladies, perhaps shakes the gentlemen’s hands and with a courtly gesture bids them adieu and gallops off across the heath. Such is the image of the ‘gentleman of the road’ and although it has been enormously embellished to enable novelists to sell more books and film-makers to enjoy box-office success, it contains elements of truth.
Other countries in Europe had highwaymen but nowhere else do they seem to have flourished to the same degree. Most of all on the main roads into London, but elsewhere across Britain highwaymen and footpads were to be found exacting their unofficial toll from the travelling public. They sometimes operated brazenly on the streets of London itself. There is a well-known tale of King George I, strolling one evening in his garden at Kensington, being confronted by an intruder described as a highwayman who, after climbing over the high wall, relieved the bemused monarch of his purse and watch. This unpopular King knew little English but he quickly got the robber’s drift. The throne of Britain was extremely desirable for dynastic reasons but George hated the country and its people and was constantly dreaming wistfully of his palace and possessions in Hanover. He found some solace with his mistresses, who were usually remarkably fat or extremely thin, and with eating, for he was a gourmand of extraordinary capacity. The episode in the garden at Kensington must have further convinced the King that Britain was a barbaric, God-forsaken place. Accounts of the incident always insist that the robber was a highwayman, but by virtue of climbing the wall and entering the royal garden on foot he doubled as a footpad and burglar.
One reason why highway robbery was so prevalent in this country was because Britain was one of the few countries in Europe without a professional police force. Elsewhere in Europe there were military patrols to keep the roads clear and apprehend wrongdoers. In this country the Englishman was said greatly to value his freedoms, although in retrospect it is hard to ascertain what these actually were, and to think that these would be threatened by the existence of police forces. Another issue was expense – nobody wanted to pay for policing. The Highwayman Act of 1692, however, established a reward of £40 ‘blood money’ for the capture and successful prosecution of a highway robber. This meant that the highwayman’s greatest danger now lay with bounty hunters and informers. However, the English had a remarkable live-and-let-live attitude towards highwaymen and when they spoke of them to foreigners it was in the awed tones that indicated real patriotic pride. The Abbé de Blanc, who travelled extensively in this country in the late 1730s, said that highwaymen, at least those of the gentlemanly sort, were popularly regarded as heroes and were boasted of as having more pluck than the country’s regular soldiers.
Some of the highwaymen on Britain’s roads in the heyday of highway robbery were gentlemen who simply lived beyond their means, such as Captain Dick Dudley. Too young to have taken part in the hostilities of the Civil War, his father, a well-to-do Northamptonshire landowner, secured a commission for his son in the Army upon the Restoration of Charles II. Dudley proved to be a strict, even draconian disciplinarian. It is alleged that while inspecting a troop of soldiers he ordered his sergeant to strike a trooper who was slightly out of line. The sergeant obeyed but the good captain thought he was insufficiently forceful. To show what he had meant Dudley then grabbed hold of the sergeant’s halberd and brought it down on the unfortunate trooper’s head, cleaving it in two. This episode meant that Dudley was forced to quit the Army. Finding little demand for his talents in the world of employment, he decided to put his skill with weapons and his horsemanship to good effect.
If the stories told about Dudley have any truth, he was not simply a heartless brute despite his skill with the halberd. Apparently, he had a most generous streak in him because he took great pleasure in robbing the very rich and equal pleasure in disbursing his booty to those people he felt deserved his support. However, credulity is stretched by the story that he and his men once held up a clergyman who they ordered to preach them a sermon on the wickedness of stealing. So overwhelmed were Dudley and his men by the cleric’s warnings about the fate awaiting those who flouted the Eighth Commandment that they gave three cheers, restored his purse complete with its contents and had a whip-round and presented the bemused priest with the sum of 4s. On one occasion Dudley accosted a traveller who said he was a magistrate, the kind of person for whom he had a natural antipathy. The man was not lacking in personal courage and he shot Dudley’s horse from under him before being wounded in the arm. Dudley accused the JP of killing his horse and commandeered the magistrate’s mount for his own. However, Dudley told him that a man in his position should not have to walk home and therefore he would arrange for one ass to carry another. Dudley evidently held the law in deep contempt for he purloined a donkey from a nearby field and ordered the magistrate to mount it. He tied his victim’s feet together under the animal’s belly but placed him facing the beast’s posterior. He whipped the donkey, which set off at a brisk trot, revelling in its new found freedom. It eventually arrived at the local county town, still carrying the magistrate, much to the delight of the local populace. It only confirmed their already deeply held belief that the law was an ass.
Dudley was a man of some quality but, unfortunately, most of those who joined the profession during the Restoration could not describe themselves as gentlemen and a variety of desperadoes were drawn towards mounted robbery on the highway. However, they must all have been people of some means because even if they managed to steal a horse, it was costly to maintain one. The lifting of the dead hand of austerity at the Restoration of the monarchy enabled the wealthy once more to flaunt the fact that they could buy the best of everything. A developing sense of economic security was accompanied by a rise in business and commercial activity, which in turn meant that more traffic was moving along the nation’s roads. Prospects for highwaymen increased proportionately. The Restoration marks the start of the golden age of the highwayman, an age that was to last for not much more than 150 years.
Stories exist about chivalrous, charming robbers who apologised for intruding on travellers’ time. Also, supposedly, there were affable, kind-hearted highwaymen who collected up all the valuables from a party of travellers and then handed back the small change so as not to inconvenience anyone who needed to pay for food and drink on the rest of the journey. William Hawke, who was only twenty-four when he was hanged, declared that he had been shot at many times by the victims of his robberies but that he had never returned fire. However, highway robbery was the forcible expropriation of other people’s property, and no amount of self-effacing modesty and politeness from handsome, debonair gentlemen on horseback could make being robbed anything other than an unpleasant, traumatic experience.
Much more typical of the highwayman fraternity was Thomas Wilmot, executed in 1670, whose brutish ferocity led him simply to hack off the finger of a rich lady coach traveller when he found he could not remove her diamond ring in any other way. A robber on the road was in a high state of excitement and tension when accosting his victims and they sometimes had a rush of blood which caused them to abuse or even rape the female travellers. Highwaymen did not necessarily speak politely to their victims. Phrases like, ‘You suffocated dogs-in-doublets and sodomitical sons of bitches – hand over your cash!’ or ‘you double poxed, long-arsed salivating bitch in grain!’ were intended to elicit a swift and submissive reponse to the highwayman’s request.
One particularly notorious gang led by the brutal Richard Bracy was active in the East Midlands in the 1670s. Their favourite locations were Derby, Newark and Nottingham. Bracy was an extremely dangerous man, who had a violent temper and seemed to enjoy beating and torturing his victims. At the age of seventeen he is said to have bludgeoned a young girl to death. Certainly the gang’s activities were marked by gratuitous violence and they completely lacked the decorum and courtesy with which many highwaymen have been associated. On one occasion they were sitting in an inn making their plans when they realised that they had been overheard by the young pot-boy. They seized and murdered him. Bracy’s luck ran out when he was apprehended in bed with his wife, who ran an inn. He spent little time with her but occasionally resorted to the inn when he felt it was wise to lie low for a while. One of the servants informed the authorities that Bracy was at the inn and he was taken without a struggle. It is not known whether Bracy dominated his gang through fear or because of his natural talents at leadership, but once he had been executed the other members were quickly apprehended and called to account. Unlike many highwaymen who were regarded as popular heroes, there were no cheers and no flowers offered up when these men went to meet the hangman.
Some highwaymen gained a fearsome reputation for gratuitous violence. They assaulted their victims and shot or hamstrung their horses to delay pursuit. One anonymous highwayman waylaid a lone traveller and was so incensed when he found that he was carrying less than a pound that he beat him up, stripped him and, according to some accounts, nailed him by his foreskin to a tree. Patrick Fleming was alleged to have cut off the nose, lips and ears of a man foolish enough to have refused to co-operate. Andrew Baynes made a habit of taking his victims’ clothes and leaving them totally naked if they had no money or valuables, but not before giving them an awful thrashing with his riding crop. Patrick O’Bryan, who had deserted from the Coldstream Guards, murdered an obstinate traveller and hacked him to pieces with his sword. On a later occasion, accompanied by his gang of evil ruffians, he broke into a house in Wiltshire and brutally raped the daughter of the family, then stabbed her, took away about £2,500 and set fire to the house. The house was entirely destroyed and the servants who had been tied up by the gang all perished in the flames. A Scottish highwayman named Gilders Roy was so incensed when he stopped a judge who resisted parting with his valuables that his gang stripped his two footmen, tied them up and threw them into a pond, whereupon they drowned. Roy himself smashed the judge’s carriage, shot the horses and then hanged his hapless victim. However, a Nottinghamshire physician was spared by a highwayman who recognised him and said that he could not rob the man who had saved his mother’s life, kept her in food when she was ill and never charged her a penny.
Highwaymen did not curb their violent ways when they came across female travellers, but some women were not the sort to be browbeaten easily. One such was the Duchess of Mazarin, a courtesan of outstanding beauty who was prominent during the reign of Charles II. She was held up by James Collet who must rank among the more unusual highwayman in that his working clothes were the full robes of a bishop, one of his earlier victims. The Duchess, by no means put out when confronted by an apparently episcopal brigand, admitted to having 100 guineas in her possession, but being sure that the prelate was a fair-minded man, suggested a game of dice to decide whether or not she should surrender her money. It so happened that Collet had a pair of dice. They threw the dice again and again and not only did the Duchess safeguard her riches, but literally won everything that Collet had on him. Sadder and wiser, Collet, as he wandered off presumably naked, must have pondered long and hard over the powers of the gentle sex. He did not stay down in the dumps for very long and a few days later he held up the Bishop of Winchester and was therefore able to equip himself with a new disguise.
Not all highwaymen operating on England’s roads in the seventeenth century were of English origin. It might easily be assumed that a foppish fellow calling himself Claude Duval was a poseur operating under an alias, but this was not so. It appears that Duval was born in Normandy in 1643 and that was his real name. He was not highborn – his father was a miller and his mother was the daughter of a humble tailor. As a youth he drifted to Paris, where he made friends with several English Royalist exiles who were eagerly waiting for the monarchy to be restored. When Charles II ascended the throne, Duval emigrated to England, where it did not occur to him to seek honest employment. There was a general sense of relief at the end of the Puritan stranglehold and a wish among the majority of the population to return to the good old days. In this situation the rich put on their finery once more and took to the roads, travelling between their estates, on business or visiting friends and relations. The resulting increase in road traffic drew the attention of the criminal underworld and precipitated a boom in highway robbery.
Duval quickly found his natural forte and became the most wanted miscreant in the columns of the London Gazette, which regularly published the descriptions of the most wanted criminals and the rewards offered for their apprehension. Duval also became well known for the polished courtesy with which he carried out his robberies and for his Gallic good looks, of which he made great use when flirting with the coy damsels and tremulous maidens he encountered. All over the country women travellers started their journeys harbouring hopes that this French cavalier might waylay them. Duval is credited with a host of conquests, ranging from thirteen-year-old virgins to women of extremely advanced years. Some accounts, however, say that he was not so much amorous as solicitous towards the female sex and that he never allowed salacious thoughts to besmirch the honourable and respectful way in which he conducted himself with all women, even those he was robbing.
The most famous of Duval’s exploits was the occasion on which he is said to have danced a coranto with a wealthy and winsome lady who was one of the occupants of a carriage that Duval stopped on Hounslow Heath. When the highwaymen stopped the coach, the lady, to show that she was unafraid, produced a few notes on a flageolet or small flute. Entranced by this unexpected response, Duval, who by coincidence also happened to have a flageolet on his person, then entertained the assembled company with a few tunes of his own. Presumably one of Duval’s colleagues then took over on the flageolet because Duval and the lady proceeded to treat the spectators to a virtuoso performance of the dance known as the coranto, a feat made all the more remarkable because Duval was wearing a pair of very substantial French riding boots. Duval is supposed to have asked the woman’s husband for the full £400 he was carrying as payment for the entertainment to which he had just been treated. The story goes that Duval was offered just £100 and that he accepted this sum without demur. This calls into question the veracity of the whole episode. After all, Duval was leader of a gang of men who, like him, had taken to the road because they lacked the skills or the inclination to earn a living by honest means. He would not have retained his dominant position for long if he had constantly put chivalry and generosity before the need to reward his followers in cash or kind, the only language that they would have understood.
Accounts of incidents often became distorted, as can be illustrated by a story involving Duval and his gang holding up a coach on Blackheath to the south-east of London. The coach contained several ladies, one of whom was feeding a baby with a silver feeding bottle. There are two very conflicting accounts of what happened next. One says that Duval greedily seized the bottle and was just about to pocket it when one of the gang reminded him of his reputation of civility and gentleness towards women. With reluctance Duval then handed the bottle back. The other account, not wanting to show Duval in any kind of unfavourable light, says that it was Duval who remonstrated with a member of the gang who had snatched the bottle and then persuaded him to return it.
Much of the biographical detail we have about Duval comes from the pen of a contemporary writer, Dr William Pope, who published The Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall (sic) in 1670, shortly after Duval’s execution. Pope, a professor of anatomy at Oxford, seems to have been more concerned to produce a good story for the reading and buying public than to confine himself simply to the facts. If he is to be believed, highway robbery was just one of Duval’s many talents, which also included card-sharping and confidence tricks. For all the air of mystery and glamour that surrounded Duval, nemesis eventually overtook him in a London pub called The Hole in the Wall, where one night, stupefied with drink, he was easily overcome and arrested. Forced to stand trial, Duval was convicted and sentenced to death. It is said that numerous rich and fashionable ladies attempted to intercede on his behalf but without success and he was hanged at Tyburn on 21 January 1670, still only twenty-seven years of age. A substantial crowd turned out for his funeral. Many were probably jilted but still doting ex-lovers or fathers and husbands assuring themselves that this rapacious paramour was indeed being consigned to the grave. His body lay in state for several days in a pub near Covent Garden and was visited by numbers of veiled ladies of quality who were apparently inconsolable in their grief at his premature demise. Duval was buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, and his headstone bears an epitaph that starts with the following words:
Here lies Du Vall [sic]: Reader, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse; if female to thy heart.
Much havoc has he made of both; for all
Men he made stand, and women he made fall.
The second Conqueror of the Norman race,
Knights to his arms did yield, and Ladies to his face.
Old Tyburn’s glory; England’s illustrious thief,
Du Vall, the Ladies’ Joy; Du Vall, the Ladies’ Grief.
Some enterprising highwaymen diversified their activities into other areas of crime and one such was John or William Nevison, otherwise known as ‘Swift Nicks’. He ran a lucrative sideline extorting protection money from the drovers who herded vast quantities of livestock from the northern hill country to the lush pastures of the Home Counties, where the animals were fattened up before being slaughtered for the London market. Nevison provided an excellent service and those who made use of it knew that they would experience no attention from rustlers or other thieves while on the road. Although he found that protection rackets helped to pay the bills, Nevison’s main interest lay with highway robbery.
Nevison was born in 1640 near Pontefract in the West Riding of Yorkshire, probably the son of a well-to-do wool merchant. At school he showed signs of intellectual potential, but preferred to channel his energy into leading a gang of youthful delinquents who went around causing mayhem in the Pontefract area. His activities did not endear him to the school authorities and when he was caught stealing a valuable piece of cutlery they gave him a sound thrashing in front of his peers. Mortified by this experience, he decided then and there to draw his schooldays to an end. He purloined a horse belonging to one of the schoolmasters, stole £10 from his father and rode off, fuming but free, to find out what the streets of London had to offer.
At first it seems that Nevison applied himself diligently as a clerk and indeed seems to have made such a good impression that his employer instructed him to go and collect an outstanding debt. The amount involved was £200 and Nevison was unable to resist the temptation. He absconded to the continent but returned later to make his peace with his parents. His mother had died in the meantime but he returned the £10 that he had stolen and effected a reconciliation with his father, who himself passed away soon afterwards. Nevison may have been frustrated in his hope to enjoy a sizeable legacy but he received enough to buy himself a horse and all the paraphernalia required to start out as a highwayman.
Nevison proved highly resourceful and developed a reputation as a gentleman-robber who was generous to the poor and extended every courtesy and consideration when robbing members of the female sex, apart, of course, from refraining from the actual robbery itself. Nevison’s greatest claim to fame is that it was probably he who undertook the headlong ride to York, so often mistakenly ascribed to Dick Turpin. It is said that he had carried out a robbery at Gad’s Hill in Kent and thought that one of his victims had recognised him. To establish an alibi that would ‘prove’ that he had not been anywhere near Kent at the time, he embarked on the memorable 230-mile ride to York. He travelled at an average of about 14 miles per hour. When he got there, he took part in a game of bowls, chatting to such an unimpeachable witness as the Mayor of York as he did so. He was tried for the robbery in Kent but acquitted. As he intended, the court was convinced that he could not possibly have been in York so soon after the robbery in Kent. Nevison had attracted the attention of no less a person that Charles II who summoned him to his presence, having heard that Nevison had indiscreetly been boasting of his achievement. Aware that he could not be tried again for the same offence, Nevison described the ride in detail and said that he had ridden as fast as ‘Owd Nick’, the Devil, himself. The King was clearly delighted by the whole episode and promptly gave him a new title: ‘Swift Nicks’.
Later, when found guilty of several other robberies and languishing in the condemned cell, Nevison offered to turn King’s evidence on his associates if he was allowed to live. The authorities agreed to this but Nevison, on being reprieved, then reneged on his promise. The authorities did not know what to do next and ordered him to be detained during His Majesty’s Pleasure. This was a dreary prospect and Nevison eagerly took up the option of joining the Army instead. Having done so, he immediately deserted and met up again with the associates on whom he had refused to inform. By now there was a considerable price on his head and one of the gang betrayed him for the reward. He found himself incarcerated in Leicester Gaol and, his reputation having preceded him, was under especially close guard. However, Nevison had not given up yet. His friends visited him in the condemned cell and one, claiming to be a doctor, declared that Nevison had bubonic plague. This caused the gaolers to panic, terrified at the probable effect of the plague in the already unhealthy conditions of the prison. If Nevison thought that they would immediately release him as the vector of the disease, he must have been disappointed when he was placed in solitary confinement instead. The self-appointed ‘doctor’ made several more visits and finally, having painted him with blue spots and dosed him with a heavy sedative, informed the prison governor that Nevison was dead. This ploy worked well and the highwayman was ‘buried’ the next day. By sleight-of-hand what was actually buried was a weighted coffin and Nevison soon returned to his old haunts and habits.
Nevison quickly found that as the ghost of a highwayman, especially one with the reputation of ‘Swift Nicks’, he was even more successful than when he had been living flesh and blood. Few travellers needed prompting when told to stand and deliver by a highwayman who everyone knew was dead and buried. Even the bolder ones thought twice before loosing off a shot at a phantom. It was an ingenious but necessarily short-lived trick as the news quickly spread that Nevison had not returned from the grave because he had never been there in the first place. Life was increasingly difficult for Nevison now because the prize offered for his capture had gone up considerably. The treacherous landlord of an inn he used regularly, tempted by the reward, spiked his drink and then sent for the authorities. Nevison took one sip, then realised what had happened and fought his way out of the inn, making sure that he killed the perfidious host as he left. Up went the reward money again. Nevison had good cause to suspect innkeepers and his luck ran out when the landlady of another of his favourite watering holes conspired with some of the regular customers to call the authorities next time he stopped by for a drink. Nevison was caught, the landlady and her regulars shared the reward and this time there was no escape. He was hanged at York in 1684 or 1685, but not before treating an appreciative crowd to a boastful and racy account of his life and adventures.
Highwaymen seem to have been proud of their profession, particularly when they bathed in the admiration of the crowds who wished them well on their way to be executed and when they arrived at the scaffold. The rewards might be great but so were the risks. Why should anyone take up such a hazardous way of life if they could find something better? There was always the chance that even an absolute beginner, with bravura and luck, might pull off a lucrative robbery. Seasoned highwaymen probably believed that just one more robbery would enable them to retire. This very rarely happened because most of them enjoyed drinking, womanising and gambling, and when the money ran out they quickly returned to robbery. The hazardous nature of the job usually meant it was a short-lived career.
Born in 1627 at Wrexham in Denbighshire, William Davis practised as a highwayman for the unusually long time of forty years. What makes him even more remarkable is that his wife and eighteen children never suspected that he was leading a double life. All his acquaintances thought of him as a hard-working farmer, which indeed he was, a good husband and father, a pillar of the Church and a known generous contributor to good causes. He was well regarded because he always paid his debts promptly and in gold coin, hence his nickname ‘The Golden Farmer’. Little did they know how he got much of this gold. He farmed near Bagshot Heath in Surrey, notorious as a haunt of highwaymen and he contributed to its notoriety by waylaying travellers single-handed along the roads of the district. He did this both by night and day and was helped by a range of masterly disguises that allowed him to operate with impunity for such a long time.
William Davis had few scruples about robbing other members of the farming fraternity but one of his boldest exploits was the robbing of his own landlord. This man called on Davis to collect the annual rent and went away contentedly with the resulting 70 guineas. As soon as he had gone, Davis changed his clothes, put on a disguise and galloped across country to get ahead of the landlord. He apprehended the landlord who did not recognise him and vainly pleaded poverty. Davis recovered his rent money and some days later provided an attentive and sympathetic listener to the selfsame landlord pouring out his woes about the robbery. On another occasion he was travelling down the Oxford Road when he fell in with a lawyer who, as they jogged along together, naively revealed that he was carrying £50. It was so easy to whip out a pistol and rob the hitherto unsuspecting lawyer. As with so many tales about the activities of highwaymen, this story should be viewed with some scepticism because the theme of highwaymen duping and robbing members of the legal profession recurs frequently. It is likely that attitudes towards lawyers have not changed markedly over the centuries and that the populace revelled in the idea that the gentlemen of the road outwitted people they regarded as parasites. It was no accident that there were alehouses called The Honest Lawyer with a sign showing a figure in legal accoutrements but without a head.
‘The Golden Farmer’ did not enjoy a glorious end, according to the legends. He had been successful for so long because he always carefully weighed up the odds before embarking on a robbery, but perhaps old age finally took its toll. His last robbery was carried out on the Exeter coach but he made the careless mistake of failing to search for firearms. As he turned to ride away, one of the travellers in the coach shot him in the back and he fell from his horse and was easily captured. When his identity was revealed, it caused a major sensation and few who knew him could believe that the highly respected, generous, hard-working and upright farmer was actually also a highway robber. His wife and his children, grown up by this time, are supposed to have hung their heads in shame. ‘The Golden Farmer’ was executed in 1689 or 1690. At one time there was a public house in the locality named after him.
Contemporary with William Davis was Thomas Sympson, known as ‘Old Mob’. He was based at Romsey in Hampshire but seems to have travelled far and wide and gained an enviable reputation for audacity and resourcefulness. One day, near Honiton in Devon, he encountered none other than Sir Bartholomew Shower. This wealthy knight declared that he only had small change on his person but this did not disconcert ‘Old Mob’ who forced Shower to draw up a money draft, payable on sight at one of the leading goldsmiths in the nearby city of Exeter. He tied the disconcerted Shower to a tree and rode off to Exeter to redeem his draft. ‘Old Mob’ was not totally heartless because he returned to the scene and untied his victim but, since his horse had already been turned loose, Sir Bartholomew had no alternative but to walk home.
Pedlars of cure-all medicines have existed for centuries and although their patter and their products have been a constant source of hope for some, they have widely been regarded as charlatans. ‘Old Mob’ was fond of delivering long-winded lectures to his victims and when he waylaid a well-known quack he told him sternly: ‘You have put out more eyes than the smallpox, made more deaf than the cataracts of the Nile, lamed more than the gout, shrunk more sinews than one that makes bow-strings, and killed more than the pestilence!’ Clearly, ‘Old Mob’ was fond of taking the moral high ground. When he apprehended the Duchess of Portsmouth, a woman of easy virtue and humble origins who had been showered with titles and possessions by a grateful monarch in appreciation of the services that she had rendered, ‘Old Mob’ could not resist calling her an ‘outlandish whore’. He numbered the hated Judge Jeffreys among his victims and did not let him go without delivering a homily: ‘I don’t doubt that when justice has overtaken us both, I shall stand at least as good a chance as your lordship, who have [sic] already written your name in indelible characters of blood by putting to death so many hundred innocent men, for only standing up in defence of our common liberties . . .’ Having delivered this harangue, ‘Old Mob’ proceeded to the more important business of relieving Jeffreys of the sum of 56 guineas.
On another occasion, ‘Old Mob’ learned that a well-to-do peer of the realm was about to travel from Bath to London. His lordship’s fame was based largely on his lecherous proclivities and ‘Old Mob’ decided that he could take advantage of this. He disguised himself very effectively as a woman and was soon invited to join the peer and his small party of attendants. He flirted outrageously and his lordship, clearly thinking that his luck was in, made an unambiguous, even brazen suggestion to his new and alluring companion. ‘Old Mob’ consented on condition that they left the attendants and found a suitably secluded spot in which to consummate their mutual passion. Having accepted this, his lordship, with lust unrequited, was soon relieved of his money. ‘Old Mob’ enjoyed a long and varied career but one that ended on the scaffold in 1691.
Britain was involved in a number of wars in the second half of the seventeenth century, for example, with the Dutch in the 1670s and with the French in 1689 in the War of the League of Augsburg. During wartime there were inevitably many men who deserted the Army. By doing so they automatically put themselves outside the law and became fugitives. When wars ended, demobilised, brutalised men likewise found themselves without obvious lawful means of support. Deserters and demobilised men often took to crime and some became highwaymen. John Withers, a deserter, was a merciless thug who mixed working as a footpad with violent sorties on horseback. On one occasion, having had his horse shot from under him and desperate for money to buy another, he and his accomplice were on foot when they waylaid a postman in London in broad daylight. Neither Withers or his companion was masked, and so to get rid of the only witness to the robbery Withers calmly cut the poor postman’s throat. They then took the body to a nearby stream after ripping it open and filling it with pebbles to weigh it down. Possibly more sadistic was William Cady, a graduate of Cambridge University, who is reputed to have held up a well-to-do merchant and his wife. He demanded an expensive-looking ring on the woman’s finger, whose plea that it was of great sentimental value was wasted on the impatient and volatile Cady. He made to seize her hand but she was too quick for him and pulled off the ring, swallowing it there and then. Enraged, Cady is said to have shot her in the head, ripped her open and recovered the ring, watched with mesmerised horror by her husband. This is one of many highwaymen’s tales for which there is no serious supporting evidence and while it is certain that some highway robbers were capable of appalling violence, this particular episode challenges belief.
Highway robbers on horseback and highway robbers on foot have been described but who could resist the idea of a highway robber on ice? Jonathan Simpson was one such highwayman who operated on skates! The winter of 1683–4 was exceptionally cold and few travellers were prepared to risk using the roads. Consequently, there was little business to be done by those robbers who were not prepared to alter their modus operandi. The River Thames in London was firmly frozen from early December to the beginning of February. Such was the attraction of walking on the Thames that enterprising businessmen set up stalls on the ice and eventually a ‘Frost Fair’ extended for about a mile from the Temple to Southwark. Large crowds appeared and these also attracted people with criminal intent. Simpson equipped himself with skates and found that rich pickings were to be had by simply knocking people over on the ice, apparently by accident, and then robbing them as they floundered about in confusion attempting to regain their feet.
One of the most interesting and ingenious highwaymen of the seventeenth century was James Whitney who assumed the title ‘Captain’, although he had never actually been an officer in the Army. He was of humble origin and, like Dick Turpin, was apprenticed to a butcher. Also like Turpin, he found the trade boring and was dismissed, later becoming the landlord of The George at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. Those who worked in the licensed trade had to perform a delicate balancing act. They wanted the good business that highwaymen often brought but they did not want to risk losing their licences if the magistrates thought they were providing a base for known villains. Whitney enjoyed having highwaymen in his bar with their roistering talk and devil-may-care manner. They liked him too and often suggested that he should take to the road himself. Why work so hard for little reward when just one profitable robbery could net much more than he earned in an entire year? These blandishments eventually had their effect and Whitney sold his inn, bought a handsome, strong horse and a brace of pistols and set off in search of adventure.
Whitney’s first victim was a prosperous-looking clergyman. Whitney took his money and, perhaps more surprisingly, his clerical habit. A few minutes later he came across an extremely dishevelled and impoverished rural curate to whom he immediately gave some money and his first victim’s smart vestments. One day Whitney was patrolling Bagshot Heath, fully disguised, when he accosted an affluent-looking rider and, whipping out his pistols, called on him to halt and deliver. The stranger’s response was that he was about to do exactly the same thing. He told Whitney that he too was a highwayman. They agreed to go their separate ways. However, in the evening Whitney, still in disguise, dropped into an inn for refreshment and heard the same man holding forth about how he had outwitted a highwayman and saved the hundred pounds he was carrying by pretending to be a highwayman himself. Whitney ascertained that the man was staying at the inn and took a room himself. Next morning he watched the pseudo-highwayman trot off down the road and, wearing another disguise, followed and caught him up. The man used the same ploy again but Whitney was ready for it and must have taken great pleasure in relieving the boasting impostor of his £100. By the standards of his kind, Whitney seems to have lacked malice and shunned violence where possible, but these redeeming features were of no use when he was finally captured. He was executed either in 1693 or 1694.
Jack Bird was from Lincolnshire and, like James Whitney, had been apprenticed to a respectable trade, in this case as a baker. It bored him, so he ran away and joined the Army, deserted and then made for Holland, where he was arrested after committing a robbery. He was sentenced to hard labour something very much against his natural inclination and so the authorities placed him in chains and put him in a large tank which then started filling up with water, much to Bird’s alarm. They provided him with a hand pump and told him they would be back in about an hour’s time to see whether he had changed his mind about performing physical labour or had drowned. When they returned, Bird was vigorously pumping away.
Having completed his sentence, Bird made his way back to England, stole a horse and started life as a highwayman. His career on the road was fairly unexceptional until one day he held up a coach containing a somewhat quirky baron, his chaplain and two servants. Bird demanded their money and the baron offered him 20 guineas if he would fight him for it. The chaplain, however, intervened and took his master’s place. It was clear that the chaplain was no mean pugilist and Bird was hard pressed but eventually he prevailed. The baron was most generous in his praise and declared that it was the first time he had seen the chaplain worsted. He handed over the 20 guineas without demur. Bird was arrested and charged with a number of robberies, found guilty and hanged in 1690.
These may have seemed good times for highwaymen. The hold of the forces of law and order was, at best, tenuous and the roads were becoming busier and busier. The temptation of quick money was too much for the men whose activities have been described. However, few cheated the hangmen and died of natural causes.