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A Book of Scoundrels

by Charles Whibley

February, 1999 [Etext #1632]

Project Gutenberg Etext A Book of Scoundrels, by Charles Whibley

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A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

by CHARLES WHIBLEY

To the Greeks FOOLISHNESS

I desire to thank the Proprietors of the `National

Observer,' the `New Review,' the `Pall Mall

Gazette,' and `Macmillan's Magazine,' for

courteous permission to reprint certain chapters of

this book.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CAPTAIN HIND

MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD

I. MOLL CUTPURSE

II. JONATHAN WILD

III. A PARALLEL

RALPH BRISCOE

GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK

I. GILDEROY

II. SIXTEEN-STRING JACK

III. A PARALLEL

THOMAS PURENEY

SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE

I. JACK SHEPPARD

II. LOUIS-DOMINIQUE CARTOUCHE

III. A PARALLEL

VAUX

GEORGE BARRINGTON

THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY

I. THE SWITCHER

II. GENTLEMAN HARRY

III. A PARALLEL

DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE

I. DEACON BRODIE

II. CHARLES PEACE

III. A PARALLEL

THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT

MONSIEUR L'ABB<E'>

INTRODUCTION

There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve

suffering or to wreck an empire. Julius C<ae>sar and John Howard

are not the only heroes who have smiled upon the world. In the

supreme adaptation of means to an end there is a constant

nobility, for neither ambition nor virtue is the essential of a

perfect action. How shall you contemplate with indifference the

career of an artist whom genius or good guidance has compelled to

exercise his peculiar skill, to indulge his finer aptitudes? A

masterly theft rises in its claim to respect high above the

reprobation of the moralist. The scoundrel, when once justice is

quit of him, has a right to be appraised by his actions, not by

their effect; and he dies secure in the knowledge that he is

commonly more distinguished, if he be less loved, than his

virtuous contemporaries.

While murder is wellnigh as old as life, property and the pocket

invented theft, late-born among the arts. It was not until

avarice had devised many a cunning trick for the protection of

wealth, until civilisation had multiplied the forms of portable

property, that thieving became a liberal and an elegant

profession. True, in pastoral society, the lawless man was eager

to lift cattle, to break down the barrier between robbery and

warfare. But the contrast is as sharp between the savagery of

the ancient reiver and the polished performance of Captain Hind

as between the daub of the pavement and the perfection of

Velasquez.

So long as the Gothic spirit governed Europe, expressing itself

in useless ornament and wanton brutality, the more delicate

crafts had no hope of exercise. Even the adventurer upon the

road threatened his victim with a bludgeon, nor was it until the

breath of the Renaissance had vivified the world that a gentleman

and an artist could face the traveller with a courteous demand

for his purse. But the age which witnessed the enterprise of

Drake and the triumph of Shakespeare knew also the prowess of the

highwayman and the dexterity of the cutpurse. Though the art

displayed all the freshness and curiosity of the primitives,

still it was art. With Gamaliel Ratsey, who demanded a scene

from Hamlet of a rifled player, and who could not rob a

Cambridge scholar without bidding him deliver an oration in a

wood, theft was already better than a vulgar extortion. Moll

Cutpurse, whose intelligence and audacity were never bettered,

was among the bravest of the Elizabethans. Her temperament was

as large and as reckless as Ben Jonson's own. Neither her tongue

nor her courage knew the curb of modesty, and she was the

first to reduce her craft to a set of wise and imperious rules.

She it was who discovered the secret of discipline, and who

insisted that every member of her gang should undertake no other

enterprise than that for which nature had framed him. Thus she

made easy the path for that other hero, of whom you are told that

his band was made up `of several sorts of wicked artists, of whom

he made several uses, according as he perceived which way every

man's particular talent lay.' This statesman--Thomas Dun was his

name--drew up for the use of his comrades a stringent and stately

code, and he was wont to deliver an address to all novices

concerning the art and mystery of robbing upon the highway.

Under auspices so brilliant, thievery could not but flourish, and

when the Stuarts sat upon the throne it was already lifted above

the level of questioning experiment.

Every art is shaped by its material, and with the variations of

its material it must perforce vary. If the skill of the cutpurse

compelled the invention of the pocket, it is certain that the

rare difficulties of the pocket created the miraculous skill of

those crafty fingers which were destined to empty it. And as

increased obstacles are perfection's best incentive, a finer

cunning grew out of the fresh precaution. History does not tell

us who it was that discovered this new continent of roguery.

Those there are who give the credit to the valiant Moll Cutpurse;

but though the Roaring Girl had wit to conceive a thousand

strange enterprises, she had not the hand to carry them out, and

the first pickpocket must needs have been a man of action.

Moreover, her nickname suggests the more ancient practice, and it

is wiser to yield the credit to Simon Fletcher, whose praises are

chanted by the early historians.

Now, Simon, says his biographer, was `looked upon to be the

greatest artist of his age by all his contemporaries.' The son

of a baker in Rosemary Lane, he early deserted his father's oven

for a life of adventure; and he claims to have been the first

collector who, stealing the money, yet left the case. The new

method was incomparably more subtle than the old: it afforded an

opportunity of a hitherto unimagined delicacy; the wielders of

the scissors were aghast at a skill which put their own

clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation would

have seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that

even when the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the

superfluous scissors still survived, and many a rogue has hanged

upon the Tree because he attempted with a vulgar implement such

feats as his unaided forks had far more easily accomplished.

But, despite the innovation of Simon Fletcher, the highway was

the glory of Elizabeth, the still greater glory of the Stuarts.

`The Laced<ae>monians were the only people,' said Horace Walpole,

`except the English who seem to have put robbery on a right

foot.' And the English of the seventeenth century need fear the

rivalry of no Laced<ae>monian. They were, indeed, the most

valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known. The

Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them

had fought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened

their wits. They were scholars as well as gentlemen; they

tempered their sport with a merry wit; their avarice alone

surpassed their courtesy; and they robbed with so perfect a

regard for the proprieties that it was only the pedant and the

parliamentarian who resented their interference.

Nor did their princely manner fail of its effect upon their

victims. The middle of the seventeenth century was the golden

age, not only of the robber, but of the robbed. The game was

played upon either side with a scrupulous respect for a potent,

if unwritten, law. Neither might nor right was permitted to

control the issue. A gaily attired, superbly mounted highwayman

would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take a purse

from each, though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried him

to Tyburn. But the traveller knew his place: he did what was

expected of him in the best of tempers. Who was he that he

should yield in courtesy to the man in the vizard? As it was

monstrous for the one to discharge his pistol, so the other could

not resist without committing an outrage upon tradition. One

wonders what had been the result if some mannerless reformer had

declined his assailant's invitation and drawn his sword. Maybe

the sensitive art might have died under this sharp rebuff. But

none save regicides were known to resist, and their resistance

was never more forcible than a volley of texts. Thus the High-

toby-crack swaggered it with insolent gaiety, knowing no worse

misery than the fear of the Tree, so long as he followed the

rules of his craft. But let a touch of brutality disgrace his

method, and he appealed in vain for sympathy or indulgence. The

ruffian, for instance, of whom it is grimly recorded that he

added a tie-wig to his booty, neither deserved nor received the

smallest consideration. Delivered to justice, he speedily met

the death his vulgarity merited, and the road was taught the

salutary lesson that wigs were as sacred as trinkets hallowed by

association.

With the eighteenth century the highway fell upon decline. No

doubt in its silver age, the century's beginning, many a

brilliant deed was done. Something of the old policy survived,

and men of spirit still went upon the pad. But the breadth of

the ancient style was speedily forgotten; and by the time the

First George climbed to the throne, robbery was already a sordid

trade. Neither side was conscious of its noble obligation. The

vulgar audacity of a bullying thief was suitably answered by the

ungracious, involuntary submission of the terrified traveller.

From end to end of England you might hear the cry of `Stand and

deliver.' Yet how changed the accent! The beauty of gesture,

the deference of carriage, the ready response to a legitimate

demand--all the qualities of a dignified art were lost for ever.

As its professors increased in number, the note of aristocracy,

once dominant, was silenced. The meanest rogue, who could

hire a horse, might cut a contemptible figure on Bagshot Heath,

and feel no shame at robbing a poor man. Once--in that Augustan

age, whose brightest ornament was Captain Hind--it was something

of a distinction to be decently plundered. A century later there

was none so humble but he might be asked to empty his pocket. In

brief, the blight of democracy was upon what should have remained

a refined, secluded art; and nowise is the decay better

illustrated than in the appreciation of bunglers, whose exploits

were scarce worth a record.

James Maclaine, for instance, was the hero of his age. In a

history of cowards he would deserve the first place, and the

`Gentleman Highwayman,' as he was pompously styled, enjoyed a

triumph denied to many a victorious general. Lord Mountford led

half White's to do him honour on the day of his arrest. On the

first Sunday, which he spent in Newgate, three thousand jostled

for entrance to his cell, and the poor devil fainted three times

at the heat caused by the throng of his admirers. So long as his

fate hung in the balance, Walpole could not take up his pen

without a compliment to the man, who claimed to have robbed him

near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed the white

feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own

hand, the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses'

heads while his accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon

before his arrest, in Court he whimpered and whinnied for

mercy; he was carried to the cart pallid and trembling, and not

even his preposterous finery availed to hearten him at the

gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted to excuse himself

on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. `I have as much

personal courage in an honourable cause,' he exclaimed in a

passage of false dignity, `as any man in Britain; but as I knew I

was committing acts of injustice, so I went to them half loth and

half consenting; and in that sense I own I am a coward indeed.'

The disingenuousness of this proclamation is as remarkable as its

hypocrisy. Well might he brag of his courage in an honourable

cause, when he knew that he could never be put to the test. But

what palliation shall you find for a rogue with so little pride

in his art, that he exercised it `half loth, half consenting'?

It is not in this recreant spirit that masterpieces are achieved,

and Maclaine had better have stayed in the far Highland parish,

which bred him, than have attempted to cut a figure in the larger

world of London. His famous encounter with Walpole should have

covered him with disgrace, for it was ignoble at every point; and

the art was so little understood, that it merely added a leaf to

his crown of glory. Now, though Walpole was far too well-bred to

oppose the demand of an armed stranger, Maclaine, in defiance of

his craft, discharged his pistol at an innocent head. True, he

wrote a letter of apology, and insisted that, had the one pistol-

shot proved fatal, he had another in reserve for himself. But

not even Walpole would have believed him, had not an amiable

faith given him an opportunity for the answering quip: `Can I do

less than say I will be hanged if he is?'

As Maclaine was a coward and no thief, so also he was a snob and

no gentleman. His boasted elegance was not more respectable than

his art. Fine clothes are the embellishment of a true

adventurer; they hang ill on the sloping shoulders of a poltroon.

And Maclaine, with all the ostensible weaknesses of his kind,

would claim regard for the strength that he knew not. He

occupied a costly apartment in St. James's Street; his morning

dress was a crimson damask banjam, a silk shag waistcoat, trimmed

with lace, black velvet breeches, white silk stockings, and

yellow morocco slippers; but since his magnificence added no jot

to his courage, it was rather mean than admirable. Indeed, his

whole career was marred by the provincialism of his native manse.

And he was the adored of an intelligent age; he basked a few

brief weeks in the noonday sun of fashion.

If distinction was not the heritage of the Eighteenth Century,

its glory is that now and again a giant raised his head above the

stature of a prevailing rectitude. The art of verse was lost in

rhetoric; the noble prose, invented by the Elizabethans, and

refined under the Stuarts, was whittled away to common sense by

the admirers of Addison and Steele. Swift and Johnson, Gibbon

and Fielding, were apparitions of strength in an amiable,

ineffective age. They emerged sudden from the impeccable

greyness, to which they afforded an heroic contrast. So, while

the highway drifted--drifted to a vulgar incompetence, the craft

was illumined by many a flash of unexpected genius. The

brilliant achievements of Jonathan Wild and of Jack Sheppard

might have relieved the gloom of the darkest era, and their

separate masterpieces make some atonement for the environing

cowardice and stupidity. Above all, the Eighteenth Century was

Newgate's golden age; now for the first time and the last were

the rules and customs of the Jug perfectly understood. If

Jonathan the Great was unrivalled in the art of clapping his

enemies into prison, if Jack the Slip-string was supreme in the

rarer art of getting himself out, even the meanest criminal of

his time knew what was expected of him, so long as he wandered

within the walled yard, or listened to the ministrations of the

snuff-besmirched Ordinary. He might show a lamentable lack of

cleverness in carrying off his booty; he might prove a too easy

victim to the wiles of the thief-catcher; but he never fell short

of courage, when asked to sustain the consequences of his crime.

Newgate, compared by one eminent author to a university, by

another to a ship, was a republic, whose liberty extended only so

far as its iron door. While there was no liberty without, there

was licence within; and if the culprit, who paid for the smallest

indiscretion with his neck, understood the etiquette of the

place, he spent his last weeks in an orgie of rollicking

lawlessness. He drank, he ate, he diced; he received his

friends, or chaffed the Ordinary; he attempted, through the well-

paid cunning of the Clerk, to bribe the jury; and when every

artifice had failed he went to Tyburn like a man. If he knew not

how to live, at least he would show a resentful world how to die.

`In no country,' wrote Sir T. Smith, a distinguished lawyer of

the time, `do malefactors go to execution more intrepidly than in

England'; and assuredly, buoyed up by custom and the approval of

their fellows, Wild's victims made a brave show at the gallows.

Nor was their bravery the result of a common callousness. They

understood at once the humour and the delicacy of the situation.

Though hitherto they had chaffed the Ordinary, they now listened

to his exhortation with at least a semblance of respect; and

though their last night upon earth might have been devoted to a

joyous company, they did not withhold their ear from the

Bellman's Chant. As twelve o'clock approached--their last

midnight upon earth--they would interrupt the most spirited

discourse, they would check the tour of the mellowest bottle to

listen to the solemn doggerel. `All you that in the condemn'd

hole do lie,' groaned the Bellman of St. Sepulchre's in his

duskiest voice, and they who held revel in the condemned hole

prayed silence of their friends for the familiar cadences:

All you that in the condemn'd hole do lie,

Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die,

Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near,

That you before th' Almighty must appear.

Examine well yourselves, in time repent

That you may not t' eternal flames be sent;

And when St. Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,

The Lord above have mercy on your souls.

Past twelve o'clock!

Even if this warning voice struck a momentary terror into their

offending souls, they were up betimes in the morning, eager to

pay their final debt. Their journey from Newgate to Tyburn was a

triumph, and their vanity was unabashed at the droning menaces of

the Ordinary. At one point a chorus of maidens cast wreaths upon

their way, or pinned nosegays in their coats, that they might not

face the executioner unadorned. At the Crown Tavern they quaffed

their last glass of ale, and told the landlord with many a leer

and smirk that they would pay him on their way back. Though

gravity was asked, it was not always given; but in the Eighteenth

Century courage was seldom wanting. To the common citizen a

violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to the ancient

highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life. And

the highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses

his estate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg

tremble in his own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the

ground so violently, that in other circumstances he would

have roared with pain, and he left the world without a

tremor. In this spirit Cranmer burnt his recreant right hand,

and in either case the glamour of a unique occasion was a

stimulus to courage.

But not even this brilliant treatment of accessories availed to

save the highway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the

profitless pursuit of braggarts and loafers, long before the

abolition of the stage-coach destroyed its opportunity. In the

meantime, however, the pickpocket was master of his trade. His

strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand as delicate as long,

lithe fingers and nimble brains could make it. He had discarded

for ever those clumsy instruments whose use had barred the

progress of the Primitives. The breast-pocket behind the

tightest buttoned coat presented no difficulty to his love of

research, and he would penetrate the stoutest frieze or the

lightest satin, as easily as Jack Sheppard made a hole through

Newgate. His trick of robbery was so simple and yet so

successful, that ever since it has remained a tradition. The

collision, the victim's murmured apology, the hasty scuffle, the

booty handed to the aide-de-camp, who is out of sight before

the hue and cry can be raised--such was the policy advocated two

hundred years ago; such is the policy pursued to day by the few

artists that remain.

Throughout the eighteenth century the art of cly-faking held its

own, though its reputation paled in the glamour of the highway.

It culminated in George Barrington, whose vivid genius persuaded

him to work alone and to carry off his own booty; it still

flourished (in a silver age) when the incomparable Haggart

performed his prodigies of skill; even in our prosaic time some

flashes of the ancient glory have been seen. Now and again

circumstances have driven it into eclipse. When the facile

sentiment of the Early Victorian Era poised the tear of sympathy

upon every trembling eyelid, the most obdurate was forced to

provide himself with a silk handkerchief of equal size and value.

Now, a wipe is the easiest booty in the world, and the Artful

Dodger might grow rich without the exercise of the smallest

skill. But wipes dwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once

more the pickpocket was forced upon cleverness or extinction.

At the same time the more truculent trade of housebreaking was

winning a lesser triumph of its own. Never, save in the hands of

one or two distinguished practitioners, has this clumsy, brutal

pursuit taken on the refinement of an art. Essentially modern,

it has generally been pursued in the meanest spirit of gain.

Deacon Brodie clung to it as to a diversion, but he was an

amateur, without a clear understanding of his craft's

possibilities. The sole monarch of housebreakers was Charles

Peace. At a single stride he surpassed his predecessors; nor has

the greatest of his imitators been worthy to hand on the candle

which he left at the gallows. For the rest, there is small

distinction in breaking windows, wielding crowbars, and battering

the brains of defenceless old gentlemen. And it is to such

miserable tricks as this that he who two centuries since rode

abroad in all the glory of the High-toby-splice descends in these

days of avarice and stupidity. The legislators who decreed that

henceforth the rope should be reserved for the ultimate crime of

murder were inspired with a proper sense of humour and

proportion. It would be ignoble to dignify that ugly enterprise

of to-day, the cracking of suburban cribs, with the same

punishment which was meted out to Claude Duval and the immortal

Switcher. Better for the churl the disgrace of Portland than the

chance of heroism and respect given at the Tree!

And where are the heroes whose art was as glorious as their

intrepidity? One and all they have climbed the ascent of Tyburn.

One and all, they have leaped resplendent from the cart. The

world, which was the joyous playground of highwaymen and

pickpockets, is now the Arcadia of swindlers. The man who once

went forth to meet his equal on the road, now plunders the

defenceless widow or the foolish clergyman from the security of

an office. He has changed Black Bess for a brougham, his pistol

for a cigar; a sleek chimney-pot sits upon the head, which once

carried a jaunty hat, three-cornered; spats have replaced the

tops of ancient times; and a heavy fur coat advertises at once

the wealth and inaction of the modern brigand. No longer does he

roam the heaths of Hounslow or Bagshot; no longer does he track

the grazier to a country fair. Fearful of an encounter, he

chooses for the fields of his enterprise the byways of the

City, and the advertisement columns of the smugly Christian

Press. He steals without risking his skin or losing his

respectability. The suburb, wherein he brings up a blameless,

flat-footed family, regards him as its most renowned benefactor.

He is generally a pillar (or a buttress) of the Church, and

oftentimes a mayor; with his ill-gotten wealth he promotes

charities, and endows schools; his portrait is painted by a

second-rate Academician, and hangs, until disaster overtakes him,

in the town-hall of his adopted borough.

How much worse is he than the High-toby-cracks of old! They were

as brave as lions; he is a very louse for timidity. His conduct

is meaner than the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar that

ever worked a centre-bit. Of art he has not the remotest

inkling: though his greed is bounded by the Bank of England, he

understands not the elegancies of life; he cares not how he

plumps his purse, so long as it be full; and if he were capable

of conceiving a grand effect, he would willingly surrender it for

a pocketed half-crown. This side the Channel, in brief, romance

and the picturesque are dead; and in France, the last refuge of

crime, there are already signs of decay. The Abb<e'> Bruneau

caught a whiff of style and invention from the past. That other

Abb<e'>--Rosslot was his name--shone forth a pure creator: he

owed his prowess to the example of none. But in Paris crime is

too often passionel, and a crime passionel is a crime with a

purpose, which, like the novel with a purpose, is conceived

by a dullard, and carried out for the gratification of the

middle-class.

To whitewash the scoundrel is to put upon him the heaviest

dishonour: a dishonour comparable only to the monstrously

illogical treatment of the condemned. When once a hero has

forfeited his right to comfort and freedom, when he is deemed no

longer fit to live upon earth, the Prison Chaplain, encouraging

him to a final act of hypocrisy, gives him a free pass (so to

say) into another and more exclusive world. So, too, the

moralist would test the thief by his own narrow standard,

forgetting that all professions are not restrained by the same

code. The road has its ordinances as well as the lecture-room;

and if the thief is commonly a bad moralist, it is certain that

no moralist was ever a great thief. Why then detract from a

man's legitimate glory? Is it not wiser to respect `that deep

intuition of oneness,' which Coleridge says is `at the bottom of

our faults as well as our virtues?' To recognise that a fault in

an honest man is a virtue in a scoundrel? After all, he is

eminent who, in obedience to his talent, does prodigies of valour

unrivalled by his fellows. And none has so many opportunities of

various eminence as the scoundrel.

The qualities which may profitably be applied to a cross life are

uncommon and innumerable. It is not given to all men to be

light-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which

shall face an enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of

a wall, which shall track its prey to a well-defended lair,

is far rarer than a law-abiding cowardice. The recklessness that

risks all for a present advantage is called genius, if a

victorious general urge it to success; nor can you deny to the

intrepid Highwayman, whose sudden resolution triumphs at an

instant of peril, the possession of an admirable gift. But all

heroes have not proved themselves excellent at all points. This

one has been distinguished for the courtly manner of his attack,

that other for a prescience which discovers booty behind a coach-

door or within the pocket of a buttoned coat. If Cartouche was a

master of strategy, Barrington was unmatched in another branch;

and each may claim the credit due to a peculiar eminence. It is

only thus that you may measure conflicting talents: as it were

unfair to judge a poet by a brief experiment in prose, so it

would be monstrous to cheapen the accomplishments of a

pickpocket, because he bungled at the concealment of his gains.

A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an

enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect

of talent--an effect which has not too often been rehearsed.

There is no reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last

point in the game, should not go to his death without swagger and

without remorse. At least he might comfort himself with such

phrases as `a dance without the music,' and he has not often been

lacking in courage. What he has missed is dignity: his

pitfalls have been unctuosity, on the one side, bravado on the

other. It was the Prison Ordinary, who first misled him into the

assumption of a piety which neither preacher nor disciple

understood. It was the Prison Ordinary, who persuaded him to

sign his name to a lying confession of guilt, drawn up in

accordance with a foolish and inexorable tradition, and to

deliver such a last dying speech as would not disappoint the mob.

The set phrases, the vain prayer offered for other sinners, the

hypocritical profession of a superior righteousness, were neither

noble nor sincere. When Tom Jones (for instance) was hanged, in

1702, after a prosperous career on Hounslow Heath, his biographer

declared that he behaved with more than usual `modesty and

decency,' because he `delivered a pretty deal of good advice to

the young men present, exhorting them to be industrious in their

several callings.' Whereas his biographer should have discovered

that it is not thus that your true hero bids farewell to frolic

and adventure.

As little in accordance with good taste was the last appearance

of the infamous Jocelin Harwood, who was swung from the cart in

1692 for murder and robbery. He arrived at Tyburn insolently

drunk. He blustered and ranted, until the spectators hissed

their disapproval, and he died vehemently shouting that he would

act the same murder again in the same case. Unworthy, also, was

the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland, a notorious bully of

the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, he hurled them

into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. `My father and mother

often told me,' he cried, `that I should die with my shoes on;

but you may all see that I have made them both liars.' A great

man dies not with so mean a jest, and Tyburn was untouched to

mirth by Shotland's facile humour.

On the other hand, there are those who have given a splendid

example of a brave and dignified death. Brodie was a sorry

bungler when at work, but a perfect artist at the gallows. The

glory of his last achievement will never fade. The muttered

prayer, unblemished by hypocrisy, the jest thrown at George

Smith--a metaphor from the gaming-table--the silent adjustment of

the cord which was to strangle him, these last offices were

performed with an unparalleled quietude and restraint. Though he

had pattered the flash to all his wretched accomplices, there was

no trace of the last dying speech in his final utterances, and he

set an example of a simple greatness, worthy to be followed even

to the end of time. Such is the type, but others also have given

proof of a serene temper. Tom Austin's masterpiece was in

another kind, but it was none the less a masterpiece. At the

very moment that the halter was being put about his neck, he was

asked by the Chaplain what he had to say before he died. `Only,'

says he, `there's a woman yonder with some curds and whey, and I

wish I could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged,

because I don't know when I shall see any again.' There is a

brave irrelevance in this very human desire, which is beyond

praise.

Valiant also was the conduct of Roderick Audrey, who after a

brief but brilliant career paid his last debt to the law in 1714.

He was but sixteen, and, says his biographer, `he went very

decent to the gallows, being in a white waistcoat, clean napkin,

white gloves, and an orange in one hand.' So well did he play

his part, that one wonders Jack Ketch did not shrink from the

performance of his. But throughout his short life, Roderick

Audrey--the very name is an echo of romance!--displayed a

contempt for whatever was common or ugly. Not only was his

appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved, as

none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than

a singing-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he

espied a sideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate

flutter through an open window into the parlour, he would follow

upon the excuse of recovery, and, once admitted, would carry off

as much silver as he could conceal. None other ever attempted so

graceful an artifice, and yet Audrey's journey to Tyburn is even

more memorable than the story of his gay accomplice.

But it is not only the truly great who have won for themselves an

enduring reputation. There are men, not a few, esteemed, like

the popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish

gift, some facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled

the fancy, not the understanding of the world. The coward

and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by

accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century

Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the greatest of highwaymen,

as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has been extolled in

novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still bepraised

for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; the death of

Black Bess has drawn floods of tears down the most callous

cheeks. And the truth is that Turpin was never a gentleman of

the road at all! Black Bess is as pure an invention as the

famous ride to York. The ruffian, who is said to have ridden the

phantom mare from one end of England to the other, was a common

butcher, who burned an old woman to death at Epping, and was very

properly hanged at York for the stealing of a horse which he

dared not bestride.

Not one incident in his career gives colour to the splendid myth

which has been woven round his memory. Once he was in London,

and he died at York. So much is true; but there is naught to

prove that his progress from the one town to the other did not

occupy a year. Nor is there any reason why the halo should have

been set upon his head rather than upon another's. Strangest

truth of all, none knows at what moment Dick Turpin first shone

into glory. At any rate, there is a gap in the tradition, and

the chap-books of the time may not be credited with this vulgar

error. Perhaps it was the popular drama of Skelt which put

the ruffian upon the black mare's back; but whatever the date of

the invention, Turpin was a popular hero long before Ainsworth

sent him rattling across England. And in order to equip this

butcher with a false reputation, a valiant officer and gentleman

was stripped of the credit due to a magnificent achievement. For

though Turpin tramped to York at a journeyman's leisure, Nicks

rode thither at a stretch--Nicks the intrepid and gallant, whom

Charles II., in admiration of his feat, was wont to call

Swiftnicks.

This valiant collector, whom posterity has robbed for Turpin's

embellishment, lived at the highest moment of his art. He knew

by rote the lessons taught by Hind and Duval; he was a fearless

rider and a courteous thief. Now, one morning at five of the

clock, he robbed a gentleman near Barnet of <Pd>560, and riding

straight for York, he appeared on the Bowling Green at six in the

evening. Being presently recognised by his victim, he was

apprehended, and at the trial which followed he pleaded a

triumphant alibi. But vanity was too strong for discretion,

and no sooner was Swiftnicks out of danger, than he boasted, as

well he might, of his splendid courage. Forthwith he appeared a

popular hero, obtained a commission in Lord Moncastle's regiment,

and married a fortune. And then came Turpin to filch his glory!

Nor need Turpin have stooped to a vicarious notoriety, for he

possessed a certain rough, half conscious humour, which was not

despicable. He purchased a new fustian coat and a pair of

pumps, in which to be hanged, and he hired five poor men at ten

shillings the day, that his death might not go unmourned. Above

all, he was distinguished in prison. A crowd thronged his cell

to identify him, and one there was who offered to bet the keeper

half a guinea that the prisoner was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin

whispered the keeper, `Lay him the wager, you fool, and I will go

you halves.' Surely this impudent indifference might have kept

green the memory of the man who never rode to York!

If the Scoundrel may claim distinction on many grounds, his

character is singularly uniform. To the anthropologist he might

well appear the survival of a savage race, and savage also are

his manifold superstitions. He is a creature of times and

seasons. He chooses the occasion of his deeds with as scrupulous

a care as he examines his formidable crowbars and jemmies. At

certain hours he would refrain from action, though every

circumstance favoured his success: he would rather obey the

restraining voice of a wise, unreasoning wizardry, than fill his

pockets with the gold for which his human soul is ever hungry.

There is no law of man he dares not break but he shrinks in

horror from the infringement of the unwritten rules of savagery.

Though he might cut a throat in self-defence, he would never walk

under a ladder; and if the 13th fell on a Friday, he would starve

that day rather than obtain a loaf by the method he best

understands. He consults the omens with as patient a

divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries an

amulet in his pocket, though it be but a pebble or a polished

nut, he is filled with an irresistible courage. For him the

worst terror of all is the evil eye, and he would rather be

hanged by an unsuspected judge than receive an easy stretch from

one whose glance he dared not face. And while the anthropologist

claims him for a savage, whose civilisation has been arrested at

brotherhood with the Solomon Islanders, the politician might

pronounce him a true communist, in that he has preserved a

wholesome contempt of property and civic life. The pedant,

again, would feel his bumps, prescribe a gentle course of

bromide, and hope to cure all the sins of the world by a

municipal Turkish bath. The wise man, respecting his

superstitions, is content to take him as he finds him, and to

deduce his character from his very candid history, which is

unaffected by pedant or politician.

Before all things, he is sanguine; he believes that Chance, the

great god of his endeavour, fights upon his side. Whatever is

lacking to-day, to-morrow's enterprise will fulfil, and if only

the omens be favourable, he fears neither detection nor the

gallows. His courage proceeds from this sanguine temperament,

strengthened by shame and tradition rather than from a self-

controlled magnanimity; he hopes until despair is inevitable, and

then walks firmly to the gallows, that no comrade may suspect the

white feather. His ambition, too, is the ambition of the

savage or of the child; he despises such immaterial

advantages as power and influence, being perfectly content if he

have a smart coat on his back and a bottle of wine at his elbow.

He would rather pick a lock than batter a constitution, and the

world would be well lost, if he and his doxy might survey the

ruin in comfort.

But if his ambition be modest, his love of notoriety is

boundless. He must be famous, his name must be in the mouths of

men, he must be immortal (for a week) in a rough woodcut. And

then, what matters it how soon the end? His braveries have been

hawked in the street; his prowess has sold a Special Edition; he

is the first of his race, until a luckier rival eclipses him.

Thus, also, his dandyism is inevitable: it is not enough for him

to cover his nakedness--he must dress; and though his taste is

sometimes unbridled, it is never insignificant. Indeed, his

biographers have recorded the expression of his fancy in coats

and small-clothes as patiently and enthusiastically as they have

applauded his courage. And truly the love of magnificence, which

he shares with all artists, is sincere and characteristic. When

an accomplice of Jonathan Wild's robbed Lady M----n at Windsor,

his equipage cost him forty pounds; and Nan Hereford was arrested

for shoplifting at the very moment that four footmen awaited her

return with an elegant sedan-chair.

His vanity makes him but a prudish lover, who desires to woo less

than to be wooed; and at all times and through all moods he

remains the primeval sentimentalist. He will detach his life

entirely from the catchwords which pretend to govern his actions;

he will sit and croon the most heartrending ditties in

celebration of home-life and a mother's love, and then set forth

incontinently upon a well-planned errand of plunder. For all his

artistry, he lacks balance as flagrantly as a popular politician

or an advanced journalist. Therefore it is the more remarkable

that in one point he displays a certain caution: he boggles at a

superfluous murder. For all his contempt of property, he still

preserves a respect for life, and the least suspicion of

unnecessary brutality sets not only the law but his own fellows

against him. Like all men whose god is Opportunity, he is a

reckless gambler; and, like all gamblers, he is monstrously

extravagant. In brief, he is a tangle of picturesque qualities,

which, until our own generation, was incapable of nothing save

dulness.

The Bible and the Newgate Calendar--these twain were George

Borrow's favourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the

pedant will applaud the preference. For the annals of the

`family' are distinguished by an epic severity, a fearless

directness of speech, which you will hardly match outside the

Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But the Newgate

Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the result

of a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first,

with their bold type, their coarse paper, and their clumsy,

characteristic woodcuts--the chap-books, which none can

contemplate without an enchanted sentiment. Here at last you

come upon a literature, which has been read to pieces. The very

rarity of the slim, rough volumes, proves that they have been

handed from one greedy reader to another, until the great

libraries alone are rich enough to harbour them. They do not

boast the careful elegance of a famous press: many of them came

from the printing-office of a country town: yet the least has a

simplicity and concision, which are unknown in this age of

popular fiction. Even their lack of invention is admirable: as

the same woodcut might be used to represent Guy, Earl of Warwick,

or the last highwayman who suffered at Tyburn, so the same

enterprise is ascribed with a delightful ingenuousness to all the

heroes who rode abroad under the stars to fill their pockets.

The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey delighted England in

1605, and was the example of after ages. The anecdote of the

road was already crystallised, and henceforth the robber was

unable to act contrary to the will of the chap-book. Thus there

grew up a folk-lore of thievery: the very insistence upon the

same motive suggests the fairytale, and, as in the legends of

every country, there is an identical element which the

anthropologists call `human'; so in the annals of adventure there

is a set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of

thievery. The industrious hacks, to whom we owe the

entertainment of the chap-books, being seedy parsons or lawyers'

clerks, were conscious of their literary deficiencies: they

preferred to obey tradition rather than to invent ineptitudes.

So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue through the

unnumbered lives of three centuries. And if, being a

philosopher, you neglect the obvious plagiarism, you may induce

from these similarities a cunning theory concerning the

uniformity of the human brain. But the easier explanation is, as

always, the more satisfactory; and there is little doubt that in

versatility the thief surpassed his historian.

Had the chap-books still been scattered in disregarded corners,

they would have been unknown or misunderstood. Happily, a man of

genius came in the nick to convert them into as vivid and

sparkling a piece of literature as the time could show. This was

Captain Alexander Smith, whose Lives of the Highwaymen,

published in 1719, was properly described by its author as `the

first impartial piece of this nature which ever appeared in

English.' Now, Captain Smith inherited from a nameless father no

other patrimony than a fierce loyalty to the Stuarts, and the

sanguine temperament which views in horror a well-ordered life.

Though a mere foundling, he managed to acquire the rudiments, and

he was not wholly unlettered when at eighteen he took to the

road. His courage, fortified by an intimate knowledge of the

great tradition, was rewarded by an immediate success, and he

rapidly became the master of so much leisure as enabled him to

pursue his studies with pleasure and distinction. When his

companions damned him for a milksop, he was loftily contemptuous,

conscious that it was not in intelligence alone that he was their

superior. While the Stuarts were the gods of his idolatry, while

the Regicides were the fiends of his frank abhorrence, it was

from the Elizabethans that he caught the splendid vigour of his

style; and he owed not only his historical sense, but his living

English to the example of Philemon Holland. Moreover, it is to

his constant glory that, living at a time that preferred as well

to attenuate the English tongue as to degrade the profession of

the highway, he not only rode abroad with a fearless courtesy,

but handled his own language with the force and spirit of an

earlier age.

He wrote with the authority of courage and experience. A

hazardous career had driven envy and malice from his dauntless

breast. Though he confesses a debt to certain `learned and

eminent divines of the Church of England,' he owed a greater debt

to his own observation, and he knew--none better--how to

recognise with enthusiasm those deeds of daring which only

himself has rivalled. A master of etiquette, he distributed

approval and censure with impartial hand; and he was quick to

condemn the smallest infraction of an ancient law. Nor was he

insensible to the dignity of history. The best models were

always before him. With admirable zeal he studied the manner

of such masters as Thucydides and Titus Livius of Padua. Above

all, he realised the importance of setting appropriate speeches

in the mouths of his characters; and, permitting his heroes to

speak for themselves, he imparted to his work an irresistible air

of reality and good faith. His style, always studied, was

neither too low nor too high for his subject. An ill-balanced

sentence was as hateful to him as a foul thrust or a stolen

advantage.

Abroad a craftsman, he carried into the closet the skill and

energy which distinguished him when the moon was on the heath.

Though not born to the arts of peace, he was determined to prove

his respect for letters, and his masterpiece is no less pompous

in manner than it is estimable in tone and sound in reflection.

He handled slang as one who knew its limits and possibilities,

employing it not for the sake of eccentricity, but to give the

proper colour and sparkle to his page; indeed, his intimate

acquaintance with the vagabonds of speech enabled him to compile

a dictionary of Pedlar's French, which has been pilfered by a

whole battalion of imitators. Moreover, there was none of the

proverbs of the pavement, those first cousins of slang, that

escaped him; and he assumed all the licence of the gentleman-

collector in the treatment of his love-passages.

Captain Smith took the justest view of his subject.

For him robbery, in the street as on the highway,

was the finest of the arts, and he always revered it for its

own sake rather than for vulgar profit. Though, to deceive the

public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed his

admiration in deed of a `highwayman who robs like a gentleman.'

`There is a beauty in all the works of nature,' he observes in

one of his wittiest exordia, `which we are unable to define,

though all the world is convinced of its existence: so in every

action and station of life there is a grace to be attained, which

will make a man pleasing to all about him and serene in his own

mind.' Some there are, he continues, who have placed `this

beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probable that they

could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust and an

appearance of satisfaction.' Notwithstanding that the word

`vice' is used in its conventional sense, we have here the key to

Captain Smith's position. He judged his heroes' achievements

with the intelligent impartiality of a connoisseur, and he

permitted no other prejudice than an unfailing loyalty to

interrupt his opinion.

Though he loved good English as he loved good wine, he was never

so happy as when (in imagination) he was tying the legs of a

Regicide under the belly of an ass. And when in the manner of a

bookseller's hack he compiled a Comical and Tragical History of

the Lives and Adventures of the most noted Bayliffs, adoration

of the Royalists persuaded him to miss his chance. So brave a

spirit as himself should not have looked complacently upon the

officers of the law, but he saw in the glorification of the

bayliff another chance of castigating the Roundheads, and

thus he set an honorific crown upon the brow of man's natural

enemy. `These unsanctified rascals,' wrote he, `would run into

any man's debt without paying him, and if their creditors were

Cavaliers they thought they had as much right to cheat 'em, as

the Israelites had to spoil the Egyptians of their ear-rings and

jewels.' Alas! the boot was ever on the other leg; and yet you

cannot but admire the Captain's valiant determination to

sacrifice probability to his legitimate hate.

Of his declining years and death there is no record. One likes

to think of him released from care, and surrounded by books,

flowers, and the good things of this earth. Now and again,

maybe, he would muse on the stirring deeds of his youth, and more

often he would put away the memory of action to delight in the

masterpiece which made him immortal. He would recall with

pleasure, no doubt, the ready praise of Richard Steele, his most

appreciative critic, and smile contemptuously at the baseness of

his friend and successor, Captain Charles Johnson. Now, this

ingenious writer was wont to boast, when the ale of Fleet Street

had empurpled his nose, that he was the most intrepid highwayman

of them all. `Once upon a time,' he would shout, with an

arrogant gesture, `I was known from Blackheath to Hounslow, from

Ware to Shooter's Hill.' And the truth is, the only `crime' he

ever committed was plagiarism. The self-assumed title of

Captain should have deceived nobody, for the braggart never

stole anything more difficult of acquisition than another man's

words. He picked brains, not pockets; he committed the greater

sin and ran no risk. He helped himself to the admirable

inventions of Captain Smith without apology or acknowledgment,

and, as though to lighten the dead-weight of his sin, he never

skipped an opportunity of maligning his victim. Again and again

in the very act to steal he will declare vaingloriously that

Captain Smith's stories are `barefaced inventions.' But doubt

was no check to the habit of plunder, and you knew that at every

reproach, expressed (so to say) in self-defence, he plied the

scissors with the greater energy. The most cunning theft is the

tag which adorns the title-page of his book:

Little villains oft submit to fate

That great ones may enjoy the world in state.

Thus he quotes from Gay, and you applaud the aptness of the

quotation, until you discover that already it was used by Steele

in his appreciation of the heroic Smith! However, Johnson has

his uses, and those to whom the masterpiece of Captain Alexander

is inaccessible will turn with pleasure to the General History

of the lives and adventures of the most Famous Highwaymen,

Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c., and will feel no regret that for

once they are receiving stolen goods.

Though Johnson fell immeasurably below his predecessor in

talent, he manifestly excelled him in scholarship. A sojourn at

the University had supplied him with a fine assortment of Latin

tags, and he delighted to prove his erudition by the citation of

the Chronicles. Had he possessed a sense of humour, he might

have smiled at the irony of committing a theft upon the historian

of thieves. But he was too vain and too pompous to smile at his

own weakness, and thus he would pretend himself a venturesome

highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed, so

far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believe

him the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and

The Successful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would

quote:

Johnson, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,

Means not, but blunders round about a meaning

Thus, ignoring the insult, he would plume himself after his

drunken fashion that he, too, was an enemy of Pope.

Yet Johnson has remained an example. For the literature of

scoundrelism is as persistent in its form as in its folk-lore.

As Harman's Caveat, which first saw the light in 1566, serves

as a model to an unbroken series of such books, as The London

Spy, so from Johnson in due course were developed the Newgate

Calendar, and those innumerable records, which the latter half

of the Eighteenth Century furnished us forth. The celebrated

Calendar was in its origin nothing more than a list of

prisoners printed in a folio slip. But thereafter it became the

Malefactor's Bloody Register, which we know. Its plan and

purpose were to improve the occasion. The thief is no longer

esteemed for an artist or appraised upon his merits: he is the

awful warning, which shall lead the sinner to repentance.

`Here,' says the preface, `the giddy thoughtless youth may see as

in a mirror the fatal consequences of deviating from virtue';

here he may tremble at the discovery that `often the best talents

are prostituted to the basest purposes.' But in spite of `the

proper reflections of the whole affair,' the famous Calendar

deserved the praise of Borrow. There is a directness in the

narration, which captures all those for whom life and literature

are something better than psychologic formul<ae>. Moreover, the

motives which drive the brigand to his doom are brutal in their

simplicity, and withal as genuine and sincere as greed, vanity,

and lust can make them. The true amateur takes pleasure even in

the pious exhortations, because he knows that they crawl into

their place, lest the hypocrite be scandalised. But with years

the Newgate Calendar also declined, and at last it has followed

other dead literatures into the night.

Meanwhile the broadside had enjoyed an unbroken and prosperous

career. Up and down London, up and down England, hurried the

Patterer or Flying Stationer. There was no murder, no theft, no

conspiracy, which did not tempt the Gutter Muse to doggerel.

But it was not until James Catnach came up from Alnwick to London

(in 1813), that the trade reached the top of its prosperity. The

vast sheets, which he published with their scurvy couplets, and

the admirable picture, serving in its time for a hundred

executions, have not lost their power to fascinate. Theirs is

the aspect of the early woodcut; the coarse type and the

catchpenny headlines are a perpetual delight; as you unfold them,

your care keeps pace with your admiration; and you cannot feel

them crackle beneath your hand without enthusiasm and without

regret. He was no pedant--Jemmy Catnach; and the image of his

ruffians was commonly as far from portraiture, as his verses were

remote from poetry. But he put together in a roughly artistic

shape the last murder, robbery, or scandal of the day. His

masterpieces were far too popular to live, and if they knew so

vast a circulation as 2,500,000 they are hard indeed to come by.

And now the art is wellnigh dead; though you may discover an

infrequent survival in a country town. But how should Catnach,

were he alive to-day, compete with the Special Edition of an

evening print?

The decline of the Scoundrel, in fact, has been followed by the

disappearance of chap-book and broadside. The Education Act,

which made the cheap novel a necessity, destroyed at a blow the

literature of the street. Since the highwayman wandered, fur-

coated, into the City, the patterer has lost his occupation.

Robbery and murder have degenerated into Chinese puzzles,

whose solution is a pleasant irritant to the idle brain. The

misunderstanding of Poe has produced a vast polyglot literature,

for which one would not give in exchange a single chapter of

Captain Smith. Vautrin and Bill Sykes are already discredited,

and it is a false reflection of M. Dupin, which dazzles the eye

of a moral and unimaginative world. Yet the wise man sighs for

those fearless days, when the brilliant Macheath rode vizarded

down Shooter's Hill, and presently saw his exploits set forth,

with the proper accompaniment of a renowned and ancient woodcut,

upon a penny broadside.

CAPTAIN HIND

JAMES HIND, the Master Thief of England, the fearless Captain of

the Highway, was born at Chipping Norton in 1618. His father, a

simple saddler, had so poor an appreciation of his son's

magnanimity, that he apprenticed him to a butcher; but Hind's

destiny was to embrue his hands in other than the blood of oxen,

and he had not long endured the restraint of this common craft

when forty shillings, the gift of his mother, purchased him an

escape, and carried him triumphant and ambitious to London.

Even in his negligent schooldays he had fastened upon a fitting

career. A born adventurer, he sought only enterprise and

command: if a commission in the army failed him, then he would

risk his neck upon the road, levying his own tax and imposing his

own conditions. To one of his dauntless resolution an

opportunity need never have lacked; yet he owed his first

preferment to a happy accident. Surprised one evening in a

drunken brawl, he was hustled into the Poultry Counter, and there

made acquaintance over a fresh bottle with Robert Allen, one of

the chief rogues in the Park, and a ruffian, who had mastered

every trick in the game of plunder. A dexterous cly-faker, an

intrepid blade, Allen had also the keenest eye for untested

talent, and he detected Hind's shining qualities after the first

glass. No sooner had they paid the price of release, than Hind

was admitted of his comrade's gang; he took the oath of fealty,

and by way of winning his spurs was bid to hold up a traveller on

Shooter's Hill. Granted his choice of a mount, he straightway

took the finest in the stable, with that keen perception of

horse-flesh which never deserted him, and he confronted his first

victim in the liveliest of humours. There was no falter in his

voice, no hint of inexperience in his manner, when he shouted the

battle-cry: `Stand and deliver!' The horseman, fearful of his

life, instantly surrendered a purse of ten sovereigns, as to the

most practised assailant on the road. Whereupon Hind, with a

flourish of ancient courtesy, gave him twenty shillings to bear

his charges. `This,' said he, `is for handsale sake '; and thus

they parted in mutual compliment and content.

Allen was overjoyed at his novice's prowess. `Did you not see,'

he cried to his companions, `how he robbed him with a grace?'

And well did the trooper deserve his captain's compliment, for

his art was perfect from the first. In bravery as in gallantry

he knew no rival, and he plundered with so elegant a style, that

only a churlish victim could resent the extortion. He would as

soon have turned his back upon an enemy as demand a purse

uncovered. For every man he had a quip, for every woman a

compliment; nor did he ever conceal the truth that the means were

for him as important as the end. Though he loved money, he still

insisted that it should be yielded in freedom and good temper;

and while he emptied more coaches than any man in England, he was

never at a loss for admirers.

Under Allen he served a brilliant apprenticeship. Enrolled as a

servant, he speedily sat at the master's right hand, and his

nimble brains devised many a pretty campaign. For a while

success dogged the horse-hoofs of the gang; with wealth came

immunity, and not one of the warriors had the misfortune to look

out upon the world through a grate. They robbed with dignity,

even with splendour. Now they would drive forth in a coach and

four, carrying with them a whole armoury of offensive weapons;

now they would take the road apparelled as noblemen, and attended

at a discreet distance by their proper servants. But

recklessness brought the inevitable disaster; and it was no less

a personage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto

invincible Allen. A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his

way from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the

most of them were forced to surrender. Allen, taken red-handed,

swung at Tyburn; Hind, with his better mount and defter

horsemanship, rode clear away.

The loss of his friend was a lesson in caution, and

henceforth Hind resolved to follow his craft in solitude. He

had embellished his native talent with all the instruction that

others could impart, and he reflected that he who rode alone

neither ran risk of discovery nor had any need to share his

booty. Thus he began his easy, untrammelled career, making time

and space of no account by his rapid, fearless journeys. Now he

was prancing the moors of Yorkshire, now he was scouring the

plain between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but wherever he rode, he

had a purse in his pocket and a jest on his tongue. To recall

his prowess is to ride with him (in fancy) under the open sky

along the fair, beaten road; to put up with him at the busy,

white posthouse, to drink unnumbered pints of mulled sack with

the round-bellied landlord, to exchange boastful stories over the

hospitable fire, and to ride forth in the morning with the joyous

uncertainty of travel upon you. Failure alone lay outside his

experience, and he presently became at once the terror and the

hero of England.

Not only was his courage conspicuous; luck also was his constant

companion; and a happy bewitchment protected him for three years

against the possibility of harm. He had been lying at Hatfield,

at the George Inn, and set out in the early morning for London.

As he neared the town-gate, an old beldame begged an alms of him,

and though Hind, not liking her ill-favoured visage, would have

spurred forward, the beldame's glittering eye held his horse

motionless. `Good woman,' cried Hind, flinging her a crown,

`I am in haste; pray let me pass.' `Sir,' answered the witch,

`three days I have awaited your coming. Would you have me lose

my labour now?' And with Hind's assent the sphinx delivered her

message: `Captain Hind,' said she, `your life is beset with

constant danger, and since from your birth I have wished you

well, my poor skill has devised a perfect safeguard.' With this

she gave him a small box containing what might have been a

sundial or compass. `Watch this star,' quoth she, `and when you

know not your road, follow its guidance. Thus you shall be

preserved from every peril for the space of three years.

Thereafter, if you still have faith in my devotion, seek me

again, and I will renew the virtue of the charm.'

Hind took the box joyfully; but when he turned to murmur a word

of gratitude, the witch struck his nag's flanks with a white

wand, the horse leapt vehemently forward, and Hind saw his

benefactress no more. Henceforth, however, a warning voice spoke

to him as plainly as did the demon to Socrates; and had he but

obeyed the beldame's admonition, he might have escaped a violent

death. For he passed the last day of the third year at the siege

of Youghal, where; deprived of happy guidance, he was seriously

wounded, and whence he presently regained England to his own

undoing.

So long as he kept to the road, his life was one long comedy.

His wit and address were inexhaustible, and fortune never

found him at a loss. He would avert suspicion with the tune of a

psalm, as when, habited like a pious shepherd, he broke a

traveller's head with his crook, and deprived him of his horse.

An early adventure was to force a pot-valiant parson, who had

drunk a cup too much at a wedding, into a rarely farcical

situation. Hind, having robbed two gentlemen's servants of a

round sum, went ambling along the road until he encountered a

parson. `Sir,' said he, `I am closely pursued by robbers. You,

I dare swear, will not stand by and see me plundered.' Before

the parson could protest, he thrust a pistol into his hand, and

bade him fire it at the first comer, while he rode off to raise

the county. Meanwhile the rifled travellers came up with the

parson, who, straightway, mistaking them for thieves, fired

without effect, and then, riding forward, flung the pistol in the

face of the nearest. Thus the parson of the parish was dragged

before the magistrate, while Hind, before his dupe could furnish

an explanation, had placed many a mile between himself and his

adversary.

Though he could on occasion show a clean pair of heels, Hind was

never lacking in valiance; and, another day, meeting a traveller

with a hundred pounds in his pocket, he challenged him to fight

there and then, staked his own horse against the money, and

declared that he should win who drew first blood. `If I am the

conqueror,' said the magnanimous Captain, `I will give you ten

pounds for your journey. If you are favoured of fortune, you

shall give me your servant's horse.' The terms were

instantly accepted, and in two minutes Hind had run his adversary

through the sword-arm. But finding that his victim was but a

poor squire going to London to pay his composition, he not only

returned his money, but sought him out a surgeon, and gave him

the best dinner the countryside could afford.

Thus it was his pleasure to act as a providence, many a time

robbing Peter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he

might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and

bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which

he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding

on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street

corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was

arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds.

Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt,

cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own

security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, `My friend!' he

exclaimed, `I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay it at

once, or I take your miserable life.' The usurer was obliged to

return the money, with another twenty for interest, and when he

would take the law of the innkeeper, was shown the bond duly

cancelled, and was flogged wellnigh to death for his pains.

So Hind rode the world up and down, redressing grievances like an

Eastern monarch, and rejoicing in the abasement of the evildoer.

Nor was the spirit of his adventure bounded by the ocean.

More than once he crossed the seas; the Hague knew him, and

Amsterdam, though these somnolent cities gave small occasion for

the display of his talents. It was from Scilly that he crossed

to the Isle of Man, where, being recommended to Lord Derby, he

gained high favour, and received in exchange for his jests a

comfortable stipend. Hitherto, said the Chronicles, thieving was

unknown in the island. A man might walk whither he would, a bag

of gold in one hand, a switch in the other, and fear no danger.

But no sooner had Hind appeared at Douglas than honest citizens

were pilfered at every turn. In dismay they sought the

protection of the Governor, who instantly suspected Hind, and

gallantly disclosed his suspicions to the Captain. `My lord!'

exclaimed Hind, a blush upon his cheek, `I protest my innocence;

but willingly will I suffer the heaviest penalty of your law if I

am recognised for the thief.' The victims, confronted with their

robber, knew him not, picturing to the Governor a monster with

long hair and unkempt beard. Hind, acquitted with apologies,

fetched from his lodging the disguise of periwig and beard.

`They laugh who win!' he murmured, and thus forced forgiveness

and a chuckle even from his judges.

As became a gentleman-adventurer, Captain Hind was staunch in his

loyalty to his murdered King. To strip the wealthy was always

reputable, but to rob a Regicide was a masterpiece of well-doing.

A fervent zeal to lighten Cromwell's pocket had brought the

illustrious Allen to the gallows. But Hind was not one whit

abashed, and he would never forego the chance of an encounter

with his country's enemies. His treatment of Hugh Peters in

Enfield Chace is among his triumphs. At the first encounter the

Presbyterian plucked up courage enough to oppose his adversary

with texts. To Hind's command of `Stand and deliver!' duly

enforced with a loaded pistol, the ineffable Peters replied with

ox-eye sanctimoniously upturned: `Thou shalt not steal; let him

that stole, steal no more,' adding thereto other variations of

the eighth commandment. Hind immediately countered with

exhortations against the awful sin of murder, and rebuked the

blasphemy of the Regicides, who, to defend their own infamy,

would wrest Scripture from its meaning. `Did you not, O monster

of impiety,' mimicked Hind in the preacher's own voice, `pervert

for your own advantage the words of the Psalmist, who said,

``Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of

iron''? Moreover, was it not Solomon who wrote: ``Men do not

despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is

hungry''? And is not my soul hungry for gold and the Regicides'

discomfiture?' Peters was still fumbling after texts when the

final argument: `Deliver thy money, or I will send thee out of

the world!' frightened him into submission, and thirty broad

pieces were Hind's reward.

Not long afterwards he confronted Bradshaw near Sherborne, and,

having taken from him a purse fat with Jacobuses, he bade the

Sergeant stand uncovered while he delivered a discourse upon

gold, thus shaped by tradition: `Ay, marry, sir, this is the

metal that wins my heart for ever! O precious gold, I admire and

adore thee as much as Bradshaw, Prynne, or any villain of the

same stamp. This is that incomparable medicament, which the

republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster. It is

truly catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit's

powder, but more effectual. The virtues of it are strange and

various; it makes justice deaf as well as blind, and takes out

spots of the deepest treason more cleverly than castle-soap does

common stains; it alters a man's constitution in two or three

days, more than the virtuoso's transfusion of blood can do in

seven years. `Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous

principles of rebellion, and those that use them. It

miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors

behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors. `Tis a

mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction or

schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and

brimstone. In a word, it makes wise men fools, and fools wise

men, and both knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is

bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that

is in a decent manner, and a competent dose, it infallibly

performs all the cures which the evils of humanity crave.' Thus

having spoken, he killed the six horses of Bradshaw's coach, and

went contemptuously on his way.

But he was not a Cavalier merely in sympathy, nor was he content

to prove his loyalty by robbing Roundheads. He, too, would

strike a blow for his King, and he showed, first with the royal

army in Scotland, and afterwards at Worcester, what he dared in a

righteous cause. Indeed, it was his part in the unhappy battle

that cost him his life, and there is a strange irony in the

reflection that, on the self-same day whereon Sir Thomas Urquhart

lost his precious manuscripts in Worcester's kennels, the neck of

James Hind was made ripe for the halter. His capture was due to

treachery. Towards the end of 1651 he was lodged with one

Denzys, a barber, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet

Street. Maybe he had chosen his hiding-place for its

neighbourhood to Moll Cutpurse's own sanctuary. But a pack of

traitors discovered him, and haling him before the Speaker of the

House of Commons, got him committed forthwith to Newgate.

At first he was charged with theft and murder, and was actually

condemned for killing George Sympson at Knole in Berkshire. But

the day after his sentence, an Act of Oblivion was passed, and

Hind was put upon trial for treason. During his examination he

behaved with the utmost gaiety, boastfully enlarging upon his

services to the King's cause. `These are filthy jingling spurs,'

said he as he left the bar, pointing to the irons about his legs,

`but I hope to exchange them ere long.' His good-humour remained

with him to the end. He jested in prison as he jested on the

road, and it was with a light heart that he mounted the scaffold

built for him at Worcester. His was the fate reserved for

traitors: he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and though his

head was privily stolen and buried on the day of execution, his

quarters were displayed upon the town walls, until time and the

birds destoyed{sic} them utterly.

Thus died the most famous highwayman that ever drew rein upon an

English road; and he died the death of a hero. The unnumbered

crimes of violence and robbery wherewith he might have been

charged weighed not a feather's weight upon his destiny; he

suffered not in the cause of plunder, but in the cause of Charles

Stuart. And in thus excusing his death, his contemporaries did

him scant justice. For while in treasonable loyalty he had a

thousand rivals, on the road he was the first exponent of the

grand manner. The middle of the seventeenth century was, in

truth, the golden age of the Road. Not only were all the

highwaymen Cavaliers, but many a Cavalier turned highwayman.

Broken at their King's defeat, a hundred captains took pistol and

vizard, and revenged themselves as freebooters upon the King's

enemies. And though Hind was outlaw first and royalist

afterwards, he was still the most brilliant collector of them

all. If he owed something to his master, Allen, he added from

the storehouse of his own genius a host of new precepts, and was

the first to establish an enduring tradition.

Before all things he insisted upon courtesy; a guinea stolen

by an awkward ruffian was a sorry theft; levied by a gentleman of

the highway, it was a tribute paid to courage by generosity.

Nothing would atone for an insult offered to a lady; and when it

was Hind's duty to seize part of a gentlewoman's dowry on the

Petersfield road, he not only pleaded his necessity in eloquent

excuse, but he made many promises on behalf of knight-errantry

and damsels in distress. Never would he extort a trinket to

which association had given a sentimental worth; during a long

career he never left any man, save a Roundhead, penniless upon

the road; nor was it his custom to strip the master without

giving the man a trifle for his pains. His courage, moreover,

was equal to his understanding. Since he was afraid of nothing,

it was not his habit to bluster when he was not determined to

have his way. When once his pistol was levelled, when once the

solemn order was given, the victim must either fight or

surrender; and Hind was never the man to decline a combat with

any weapons and in any circumstances.

Like the true artist that he was, he neglected no detail of his

craft. As he was a perfect shot, so also he was a finished

horseman; and his skill not only secured him against capture, but

also helped him to the theft of such horses as his necessities

required, or to the exchange of a worn-out jade for a mettled

prancer. Once upon a time a credulous farmer offered twenty

pounds and his own gelding for the Captain's mount. Hind struck

a bargain at once, and as they jogged along the road he

persuaded the farmer to set his newly-purchased horse at the

tallest hedge, the broadest ditch. The bumpkin failed, as Hind

knew he would fail; and, begging the loan for an instant of his

ancient steed, Hind not only showed what horsemanship could

accomplish, but straightway rode off with the better horse and

twenty pounds in his pocket. So marvellously did his reputation

grow, that it became a distinction to be outwitted by him, and

the brains of innocent men were racked to invent tricks which

might have been put upon them by the illustrious Captain. Thus

livelier jests and madder exploits were fathered upon him than

upon any of his kind, and he has remained for two centuries the

prime favourite of the chap-books.

Robbing alone, he could afford to despise pedantry: did he meet a

traveller who amused his fancy he would give him the pass-word

(`the fiddler's paid,' or what not), as though the highway had

not its code of morals; nor did he scruple, when it served his

purpose, to rob the bunglers of his own profession. By this

means, indeed, he raised the standard of the Road and warned the

incompetent to embrace an easier trade. While he never took a

shilling without sweetening his depredation with a joke, he was,

like all humorists, an acute philosopher. `Remember what I tell

you,' he said to the foolish persons who once attempted to rob

him, the master-thief of England, `disgrace not yourself for

small sums, but aim high, and for great ones; the least will

bring you to the gallows.' There, in five lines, is the

whole philosophy of thieving, and many a poor devil has leapt

from the cart to his last dance because he neglected the counsel

of the illustrious Hind. Among his aversions were lawyers and

thief-catchers. `Truly I could wish,' he exclaimed in court,

`that full-fed fees were as little used in England among lawyers

as the eating of swine's flesh was among the Jews.' When you

remember the terms of friendship whereon he lived with Moll

Cutpurse, his hatred of the thief-catcher, who would hang his

brother for `the lucre of ten pounds, which is the reward,' or

who would swallow a false oath `as easily as one would swallow

buttered fish,' is a trifle mysterious. Perhaps before his death

an estrangement divided Hind and Moll. Was it that the Roaring

Girl was too anxious to take the credit of Hind's success? Or

did he harbour the unjust suspicion that when the last descent

was made upon him at the barber's, Moll might have given a

friendly warning?

Of this he made no confession, but the honest thief was ever a

liberal hater of spies and attorneys, and Hind's prudence is

unquestioned. A miracle of intelligence, a master of style, he

excelled all his contemporaries and set up for posterity an

unattainable standard. The eighteenth century flattered him by

its imitation; but cowardice and swagger compelled it to limp

many a dishonourable league behind. Despite the single

inspiration of dancing a corant upon the green, Claude Duval,

compared to Hind, was an empty braggart. Captain Stafford

spoiled the best of his effects with a more than brutal vice.

Neither Mull-Sack nor the Golden Farmer, for all their long life

and handsome plunder, are comparable for an instant to the robber

of Peters and Bradshaw. They kept their fist fiercely upon the

gold of others, and cared not by what artifice it was extorted.

Hind never took a sovereign meanly; he approached no enterprise

which he did not adorn. Living in a true Augustan age, he was a

classic among highwaymen, the very Virgil of the Pad.

MOLL CUTPURSE AND

JONATHAN WILD

MOLL CUTPURSE

THE most illustrious woman of an illustrious age, Moll Cutpurse

has never lacked the recognition due to her genius. She was

scarce of age when the town devoured in greedy admiration the

first record of her pranks and exploits. A year later Middleton

made her the heroine of a sparkling comedy. Thereafter she

became the favourite of the rufflers, the commonplace of the

poets. Newgate knew her, and Fleet Street; her manly figure was

as familiar in the Bear Garden as at the Devil Tavern; courted

alike by the thief and his victim, for fifty years she lived a

life brilliant as sunlight, many-coloured as a rainbow. And she

is remembered, after the lapse of centuries, not only as the

Queen-Regent of Misrule, the benevolent tyrant of cly-filers and

heavers, of hacks and blades, but as the incomparable Roaring

Girl, free of the playhouse, who perchance presided with Ben

Jonson over the Parliament of Wits.

She was born in the Barbican at the heyday of England's

greatness, four years after the glorious defeat of the Armada,

and had to her father an honest shoemaker. She came into the

world (saith rumour) with her fist doubled, and even in the

cradle gave proof of a boyish, boisterous disposition. Her

girlhood, if the word be not an affront to her mannish character,

was as tempestuous as a wind-blown petticoat. A very `tomrig and

rump-scuttle,' she knew only the sports of boys: her war-like

spirit counted no excuse too slight for a battle; and so valiant

a lad was she of her hands, so well skilled in cudgel-play, that

none ever wrested a victory from fighting Moll. While other

girls were content to hem a kerchief or mark a sampler, Moll

would escape to the Bear Garden, and there enjoy the sport of

baiting, whose loyal patron she remained unto the end. That

which most bitterly affronted her was the magpie talk of the

wenches. `Why,' she would ask in a fury of indignation, `why

crouch over the fire with a pack of gossips, when the highway

invites you to romance? Why finger a distaff, when a

quarterstaff comes more aptly to your hand?'

And thus she grew in age and stature, a stranger to the soft

delights of her sex, her heart still deaf to the trivial voice of

love. Had not a wayward accident cumbered her with a kirtle, she

would have sought death or glory in the wars; she would have gone

with Colonel Downe's men upon the road; she would have sailed to

the Spanish Main for pieces of eight. But the tyranny of

womanhood was as yet supreme, and the honest shoemaker, ignorant

of his daughter's talent, bade her take service at a

respectable saddler's, and thus suppress the frowardness of her

passion. Her rebellion was instant. Never would she abandon the

sword and the wrestling-booth for the harmless bodkin and the

hearthstone of domesticity. Being absolute in refusal, she was

kidnapped by her friends and sent on board a ship, bound for

Virginia and slavery. There, in the dearth of womankind, even so

sturdy a wench as Moll might have found a husband; but the

enterprise was little to her taste, and, always resourceful, she

escaped from shipboard before the captain had weighed his anchor.

Henceforth she resolved her life should be free and chainless as

the winds. Never more should needle and thread tempt her to a

womanish inactivity. As Hercules, whose counterpart she was,

changed his club for the distaff of Omphale, so would she put off

the wimple and bodice of her sex for jerkin and galligaskins. If

she could not allure manhood, then would she brave it. And

though she might not cross swords with her country's foes, at

least she might levy tribute upon the unjustly rich, and confront

an enemy wherever there was a full pocket.

Her entrance into a gang of thieves was beset by no difficulty.

The Bear Garden, always her favourite resort, had made her

acquainted with all the divers and rumpads of the town. The

time, moreover, was favourable to enterprise, and once again was

genius born into a golden age. The cutting of purses was an

art brought to perfection, and already the more elegant practice

of picking pockets was understood. The transition gave scope for

endless ingenuity, and Moll was not slow in mastering the theory

of either craft. It was a changing fashion of dress, as I have

said, which forced a new tactic upon the thief; the pocket was

invented because the hanging purse was too easy a prey for the

thievish scissors. And no sooner did the world conceal its

wealth in pockets than the cly-filer was born to extract the

booty with his long, nimble fingers. The trick was managed with

an admirable forethought, which has been a constant example to

after ages. The file was always accompanied by a bull:, whose

duty it was to jostle and distract the victim while his pockets

were rifled. The bung, or what not, was rapidly passed on to the

attendant rub, who scurried off before the cry of STOP THIEF!

could be raised.

Thus was the craft of thieving practised when Moll was enrolled a

humble member of the gang. Yet nature had not endowed her with

the qualities which ensure an active triumph. `The best signs

and marks of a happy, industrious hand,' wrote the hoyden, `is a

long middle finger, equally suited with that they call the fool's

or first finger.' Now, though she was never a clumsy jade, the

practice of sword-play and quarterstaff had not refined the

industry of her hands, which were the rather framed for strength

than for delicacy. So that though she served a willing

apprenticeship, and eagerly shared the risks of her chosen

trade, the fear of Newgate and Tyburn weighed heavily upon her

spirit, and she cast about her for a method of escape. Avoiding

the danger of discovery, she was loth to forego her just profit,

and hoped that intelligence might atone for her sturdy, inactive

fingers. Already she had endeared herself to the gang by

unnumbered acts of kindness and generosity; already her

inflexible justice had made her umpire in many a difficult

dispute. If a rascal could be bought off at the gallows' foot,

there was Moll with an open purse; and so speedily did she

penetrate all the secrets of thievish policy, that her counsel

and comfort were soon indispensable.

Here, then, was her opportunity. Always a diplomatist rather

than a general, she gave up the battlefield for the council

chamber. She planned the robberies which defter hands achieved;

and, turning herself from cly-filer to fence, she received and

changed to money all the watches and trinkets stolen by the gang.

Were a citizen robbed upon the highway, he straightway betook

himself to Moll, and his property was presently returned him at a

handsome price. Her house, in short, became a brokery. Hither

the blades and divers brought their purchases, and sought the

ransom; hither came the outraged victims to buy again the jewels

and rings which thievish fingers had pinched. With prosperity

her method improved, until at last her statesmanship controlled

the remotest details of the craft. Did one of her gang get to

work overnight and carry off a wealthy swag, she had due

intelligence of the affair betimes next morning, so that,

furnished with an inventory of the booty, she might make a just

division, or be prepared for the advent of the rightful owner.

So she gained a complete ascendency over her fellows. And when

once her position was assured, she came forth a pitiless

autocrat. Henceforth the gang existed for her pleasure, not she

for the gang's; and she was as urgent to punish insubordination

as is an empress to avenge the heinous sin of treason. The

pickpocket who had claimed her protection knew no more the

delight of freedom. If he dared conceal the booty that was his,

he had an enemy more powerful than the law, and many a time did

contumacy pay the last penalty at the gallows. But the faithful

also had their reward, for Moll never deserted a comrade, and

while she lived in perfect safety herself she knew well how to

contrive the safety of others. Nor was she content merely to

discharge those duties of the fence for which an instinct of

statecraft designed her. Her restless brain seethed with plans

of plunder, and if her hands were idle it was her direction that

emptied half the pockets in London. Having drilled her army of

divers to an unparalleled activity, she cast about for some fresh

method of warfare, and so enrolled a regiment of heavers, who

would lurk at the mercers' doors for an opportunity to carry off

ledgers and account-books. The price of redemption was fixed

by Moll herself, and until the mercers were aroused by

frequent losses to a quicker vigilance, the trade was profitably

secure.

Meanwhile new clients were ever seeking her aid, and, already

empress of the thieves, she presently aspired to the friendship

and patronage of the highwaymen. Though she did not dispose of

their booty, she was appointed their banker, and vast was the

treasure entrusted to the coffers of honest Moll. Now, it was

her pride to keep only the best company, for she hated stupidity

worse than a clumsy hand, and they were men of wit and spirit who

frequented her house. Thither came the famous Captain Hind, the

Regicides' inveterate enemy, whose lofty achievements Moll, with

an amiable extravagance, was wont to claim for her own. Thither

came the unamiably notorious Mull Sack, who once emptied

Cromwell's pocket on the Mall, and whose courage was as

formidable as his rough-edged tongue. Another favourite was the

ingenious Crowder, whose humour it was to take the road habited

like a bishop, and who surprised the victims of his greed with

ghostly counsel. Thus it was a merry party that assembled in the

lady's parlour, loyal to the memory of the martyred king, and

quick to fling back an offending pleasantry.

But the house in Fleet Street was a refuge as well as a resort,

the sanctuary of a hundred rascals, whose misdeeds were not too

flagrantly discovered. For, while Moll always allowed discretion

to govern her conduct, while she would risk no present

security for a vague promise of advantages to come, her secret

influence in Newgate made her more powerful than the hangman and

the whole bench of judges. There was no turnkey who was not her

devoted servitor, but it was the clerk of Newgate to whom she and

her family were most deeply beholden. This was one Ralph

Briscoe, as pretty a fellow as ever deserted the law for a bull-

baiting. Though wizened and clerkly in appearance, he was of a

lofty courage; and Moll was heard to declare that had she not

been sworn to celibacy, she would have cast an eye upon the

faithful Ralph, who was obedient to her behests whether at Gaol

Delivery or Bear Garden. For her he would pack a jury or get a

reprieve; for him she would bait a bull with the fiercest dogs in

London. Why then should she fear the law, when the clerk of

Newgate and Gregory the Hangman fought upon her side?

For others the arbiter of life and death, she was only thrice in

an unexampled career confronted with the law. Her first occasion

of arrest was so paltry that it brought discredit only on the

constable. This jack-in-office, a very Dogberry, encountered

Moll returning down Ludgate Hill from some merry-making, a

lanthorn carried pompously before her. Startled by her attire he

questioned her closely, and receiving insult for answer, promptly

carried her to the Round House. The customary garnish made her

free or the prison, and next morning a brief interview with

the Lord Mayor restored Moll to liberty but not to forgetfulness.

She had yet to wreak her vengeance upon the constable for a

monstrous affront, and hearing presently that he had a rich uncle

in Shropshire, she killed the old gentleman (in imagination) and

made the constable his heir. Instantly a retainer, in the true

garb and accent of the country, carried the news to Dogberry, and

sent him off to Ludlow on the costliest of fool's errands. He

purchased a horse and set forth joyously, as became a man of

property; he limped home, broken in purse and spirit, the hapless

object of ridicule and contempt. Perhaps he guessed the author

of this sprightly outrage; but Moll, for her part, was far too

finished a humorist to reveal the truth, and hereafter she was

content to swell the jesting chorus.

Her second encounter with justice was no mere pleasantry, and it

was only her marvellous generalship that snatched her career from

untimely ruin and herself from the clutch of Master Gregory. Two

of her emissaries had encountered a farmer in Chancery Lane.

They spoke with him first at Smithfield, and knew that his pocket

was well lined with bank-notes. An improvised quarrel at a

tavern-door threw the farmer off his guard, and though he

defended the money, his watch was snatched from his fob and duly

carried to Moll. The next day the victim, anxious to repurchase

his watch, repaired to Fleet Street, where Moll generously

promised to recover the stolen property. Unhappily security

had encouraged recklessness, and as the farmer turned to leave he

espied his own watch hanging among other trinkets upon the wall.

With a rare discretion he held his peace until he had called a

constable to his aid, and this time the Roaring Girl was lodged

in Newgate, with an ugly crime laid to her charge.

Committed for trial, she demanded that the watch should be left

in the constable's keeping, and, pleading not guilty when the

sessions came round, insisted that her watch and the farmer's

were not the same. The farmer, anxious to acknowledge his

property, demanded the constable to deliver the watch, that it

might be sworn to in open court; and when the constable put his

hand to his pocket the only piece of damning evidence had

vanished, stolen by the nimble fingers of one of Moll's officers.

Thus with admirable trickery and a perfect sense of dramatic

effect she contrived her escape, and never again ran the risk of

a sudden discovery. For experience brought caution in its train,

and though this wiliest of fences lived almost within the shadow

of Newgate, though she was as familiar in the prison yard as at

the Globe Tavern, her nightly resort, she obeyed the rules of

life and law with so precise an exactitude that suspicion could

never fasten upon her. Her kingdom was midway between robbery

and justice. And as she controlled the mystery of thieving so,

in reality, she meted out punishment to the evildoer. Honest

citizens were robbed with small risk to life or property.

For Moll always frowned upon violence, and was ever ready to

restore the booty for a fair ransom. And the thieves, driven by

discipline to a certain humanity, plied their trade with an

obedience and orderliness hitherto unknown. Moll's then was no

mean achievement. Her career was not circumscribed by her trade,

and the Roaring Girl, the daredevil companion of the wits and

bloods, enjoyed a fame no less glorious than the Queen of

Thieves.

`Enter Moll in a frieze jerkin and a black safeguard.' Thus in

the old comedy she comes upon the stage; and truly it was by her

clothes that she was first notorious. By accident a woman, by

habit a man, she must needs invent a costume proper to her

pursuits. But she was no shrieking reformer, no fanatic spying

regeneration in a pair of breeches. Only in her attire she

showed her wit; and she went to a bull-baiting in such a dress as

well became her favourite sport. She was not of those who `walk

in spurs but never ride.' The jerkin, the doublet, the

galligaskins were put on to serve the practical purposes of life,

not to attract the policeman or the spinster. And when a

petticoat spread its ample folds beneath the doublet, not only

was her array handsome, but it symbolised the career of one who

was neither man nor woman, and yet both. After a while, however,

the petticoat seemed too tame for her stalwart temper, and she

exchanged it for the great Dutch slop, habited in which unseemly

garment she is pictured in the ancient prints.

Up and down the town she romped and scolded, earning the name

which Middleton gave her in her green girlhood. `She has the

spirit of four great parishes,' says the wit in the comedy, `and

a voice that will drown all the city.' If a gallant stood in the

way, she drew upon him in an instant, and he must be a clever

swordsman to hold his ground against the tomboy who had laid low

the German fencer himself. A good fellow always, she had ever a

merry word for the passer-by, and so sharp was her tongue that

none ever put a trick upon her. Not to know Moll was to be

inglorious, and she `slipped from one company to another like a

fat eel between a Dutchman's fingers.' Now at Parker's Ordinary,

now at the Bear Garden, she frequented only the haunts of men,

and not until old age came upon her did she endure patiently the

presence of women.

Her voice and speech were suited to the galligaskin. She was a

true disciple of Maltre Fran<c,>ois, hating nothing so much as

mincing obscenity, and if she flavoured her discourse with many a

blasphemous quip, the blasphemy was `not so malicious as

customary.' Like the blood she was, she loved good ale and wine;

and she regarded it among her proudest titles to renown that she

was the first of women to smoke tobacco. Many was the pound of

best Virginian that she bought of Mistress Gallipot, and the

pipe, with monkey, dog, and eagle, is her constant emblem. Her

antic attire, the fearless courage of her pranks, now and again

involved her in disgrace or even jeopardised her freedom; but

her unchanging gaiety made light of disaster, and still she

laughed and rollicked in defiance of prude and pedant.

Her companion in many a fantastical adventure was Banks, the

vintner of Cheapside, that same Banks who taught his horse to

dance and shod him with silver. Now once upon a time a right

witty sport was devised between them. The vintner bet Moll

<Pd>20 that she would not ride from Charing Cross to Shoreditch

astraddle on horseback, in breeches and doublet, boots and spurs.

The hoyden took him up in a moment, and added of her own devilry

a trumpet and banner. She set out from Charing Cross bravely

enough, and a trumpeter being an unwonted spectacle, the eyes of

all the town were clapped upon her. Yet none knew her until she

reached Bishopsgate, where an orange-wench set up the cry, `Moll

Cutpurse on horseback!' Instantly the cavalier was surrounded by

a noisy mob. Some would have torn her from the saddle for an

imagined insult upon womanhood, others, more wisely minded,

laughed at the prank with good-humoured merriment. Every minute

the throng grew denser, and it had fared hardly with roystering

Moll, had not a wedding and the arrest of a debtor presently

distracted the gaping idlers. As the mob turned to gaze at the

fresh wonder, she spurred her horse until she gained Newington by

an unfrequented lane. There she waited until night should cover

her progress to Shoreditch, and thus peacefully she returned

home to lighten the vintner's pocket of twenty pounds.

The fame of the adventure spread abroad, and that the scandal

should not be repeated Moll was summoned before the Court of

Arches to answer a charge of appearing publicly in mannish

apparel. The august tribunal had no terror for her, and she

received her sentence to do penance in a white sheet at Paul's

Cross during morning-service on a Sunday with an audacious

contempt. `They might as well have shamed a black dog as me,'

she proudly exclaimed; and why should she dread the white sheet,

when all the spectators looked with a lenient eye upon her

professed discomfiture?' For a halfpenny,' she said, `she would

have travelled to every market-town of England in the guise of a

penitent,' and having tippled off three quarts of sack she

swaggered to Paul's Cross in the maddest of humours. But not all

the courts on earth could lengthen her petticoat, or contract the

Dutch slop by a single fold. For a while, perhaps, she chastened

her costume, yet she soon reverted to the ancient mode, and to

her dying day went habited as a man.

As bear baiting was the passion of her life, so she was

scrupulous in the care and training of her dogs. She gave them

each a trundle-bed, wrapping them from the cold in sheets and

blankets, while their food would not have dishonoured a

gentleman's table. Parrots, too, gave a sense of colour and

companionship to her house; and it was in this love of pets,

and her devotion to cleanliness, that she showed a trace of

dormant womanhood. Abroad a ribald and a scold, at home she was

the neatest of housewives, and her parlour, with its mirrors and

its manifold ornaments, was the envy of the neighbours. So her

trade flourished, and she lived a life of comfort, of plenty

even, until the Civil War threw her out of work. When an

unnatural conflict set the whole country at loggerheads, what

occasion was there for the honest prig? And it is not surprising

that, like all the gentlemen adventurers of the age, Moll

remained most stubbornly loyal to the King's cause. She made the

conduit in Fleet Street run with wine when Charles came to London

in 1638; and it was her amiable pleasantry to give the name of

Strafford to a clever, cunning bull, and to dub the dogs that

assailed him Pym, Hampden, and the rest, that right heartily she

might applaud the courage of Strafford as he threw off his unwary

assailants.

So long as the quarrel lasted, she was compelled to follow a

profession more ancient than the fence's; for there is one

passion which war itself cannot extinguish. When once the King

had laid his head `down as upon a bed,' when once the Protector

had proclaimed his supremacy, the industry of the road revived;

and there was not a single diver or rumpad that did not declare

eternal war upon the black-hearted Regicides. With a laudable

devotion to her chosen cause, Moll despatched the most

experienced of her gang to rob Lady Fairfax on her way to

church; and there is a tradition that the Roaring Girl,

hearing that Fairfax himself would pass by Hounslow, rode forth

to meet him, and with her own voice bade him stand and deliver.

One would like to believe it; yet it is scarce credible. If

Fairfax had spent the balance of an ignominious career in being

plundered by a band of loyal brigands, he would not have had time

to justify the innumerable legends of pockets emptied and pistols

levelled at his head. Moreover, Moll herself was laden with

years, and she had always preferred the council chamber to the

battlefield. But it is certain that, with Captain Hind and Mull

Sack to aid, she schemed many a clever plot against the

Roundheads, and nobly she played her part in avenging the

martyred King.

Thus she declined into old age, attended, like Queen Mary, by her

maids, who would card, reel, spin, and beguile her leisure with

sweet singing. Though her spirit was untamed, the burden of her

years compelled her to a tranquil life. She, who formerly never

missed a bull-baiting, must now content herself with tick-tack.

Her fortune, moreover, had been wrecked in the Civil War. Though

silver shells still jingled in her pocket, time was she knew the

rattle of the yellow boys. But she never lost courage, and died

at last of a dropsy, in placid contentment with her lot.

Assuredly she was born at a time well suited to her genius. Had

she lived to-day, she might have been a `Pioneer'; she might even

have discussed some paltry problem of sex in a printed obscenity.

In her own freer, wiser age, she was not man's detractor, but

his rival; and if she never knew the passion of love, she was

always loyal to the obligation of friendship. By her will she

left twenty pounds to celebrate the Second Charles's restoration

to his kingdom; and you contemplate her career with the single

regret that she died a brief year before the red wine, thus

generously bestowed, bubbled at the fountain.

JONATHAN WILD

WHEN Jonathan Wild and the Count La Ruse, in Fielding's

narrative, took a hand at cards, Jonathan picked his opponent's

pocket, though he knew it was empty, while the Count, from sheer

force of habit, stacked the cards, though Wild had not a farthing

to lose. And if in his uncultured youth the great man stooped to

prig with his own hand, he was early cured of the weakness: so

that Fielding's picture of the hero taking a bottle-screw from

the Ordinary's pocket in the very moment of death is entirely

fanciful. For `this Machiavel of Thieves,' as a contemporary

styled him, left others to accomplish what his ingenuity had

planned. His was the high policy of theft. If he lived on terms

of familiar intimacy with the mill-kens, the bridle-culls, the

buttock-and-files of London, he was none the less the friend and

minister of justice. He enjoyed the freedom of Newgate and the

Old Bailey. He came and went as he liked: he packed juries, he

procured bail, he manufactured evidence; and there was scarce an

assize or a sessions passed but he slew his man.

The world knew him for a robber, yet could not refuse his

brilliant service. At the Poultry Counter, you are told, he laid

the foundations of his future greatness, and to the Poultry

Counter he was committed for some trifling debt ere he had fully

served his apprenticeship to the art and mystery of buckle-

making. There he learned his craft, and at his enlargement he

was able forthwith to commence thief-catcher. His plan was

conceived with an effrontery that was nothing less than genius.

On the one side he was the factor, or rather the tyrant, of the

cross-coves: on the other he was the trusted agent of justice,

the benefactor of the outraged and the plundered. Among his

earliest exploits was the recovery of the Countess of G--d--n's

chair, impudently carried off when her ladyship had but just

alighted; and the courage wherewith he brought to justice the

murderers of one Mrs. Knap, who had been slain for some trifling

booty, established his reputation as upon a rock. He at once

advertised himself in the public prints as Thief-Catcher General

of Great Britain and Ireland, and proceeded to send to the

gallows every scoundrel that dared dispute his position.

His opportunities of gain were infinite. Even if he did not

organise the robbery which his cunning was presently to discover,