descendant of the old "fighting Veres" and colonel of the Oxford
Blues, a regiment named after him, and not after the city of Oxford.
Despite all these things, which might have made for valiance, he
surrendered like the veriest woman, and submitted to the indignity of
being searched. Rumbold rifled him, and at first found only dice and
cards, until, coming to his breeches pockets, he turned out a "nest
of goldfinches"; that is to say, a heap of guineas. Saying he would
take them home and cage them, Rumbold recommended the Earl to return
to his regiment and attend to his duty, giving him eighteenpence as an
encouragement.
From these examples, it will readily be seen that Maidenhead Thicket
did not obtain its ill repute without due cause.
A number of incredible stories of Rumbold are told, both by Smith and
Johnson, who seem to have made up for the little real information
we have of his more than twenty years' career by writing absolutely
unconvincing fiction around him. He was at last executed at Tyburn in
1689.
"CAPTAIN" JAMES WHITNEY
There is much uncertainty about the parentage and the career of James
Whitney. The small quarto tract entitled _The Jacobite Robber_, which
professes to give a life of Whitney by one who was acquainted with him,
says he was born "in Hertfordshire, of mean, contemptible parentage,
about two years after the Restauration of King Charles." Smith
particularises Stevenage as the place in Hertfordshire, and Johnson,
who copies almost everything in Smith, also adopts Stevenage. Waylen,
on the other hand, who wrote a singularly good and well-informed book
on the highwaymen of Wiltshire, believed Whitney to have been a son
of the Reverend James Whitney, of Donhead St. Andrews, and says the
highwayman practised largely on Salisbury Plain.
The majority, believing in the Hertfordshire origin of Whitney, fortify
their statements by very full and particular accounts of how he was
apprenticed to a butcher at Hitchin. We have here an interpolated story
of how he and his master went to Romford to purchase calves (Essex
calves were so famous that a native of Essex nowadays is still an
"Essex calf"). The owner of one particularly fine calf they greatly
desired to purchase required too much for it. He happened to be also
the keeper of an alehouse, as well as a stock-raiser. While the butcher
and Whitney were refreshing themselves in the house and the butcher
was grumbling because he could not buy the calf at what he considered
a fair price, Whitney thought of an easier way, and whispered to his
master that it would be foolish to give good money for the calf when it
could be had for nothing. The butcher and Whitney thereupon exchanged
knowing winks, and agreed to steal the calf that very night.
Unhappily for them, a man with a performing bear had in the meanwhile
arrived, and the landlord, removing the calf from the stable where it
had been placed, installed the bear in its place.
At last, night having fallen, master-butcher and apprentice paid their
reckoning and prepared to go. Leaving the house, they loitered about
until all was quiet, and then, the two approaching the outhouse where
the calf had been, Whitney went in to fetch it. The bear was resting
its wearied limbs when Whitney's touch roused it. He was astonished
in the dark to feel the calf's hair was so long, and was still more
astonished when he felt the animal rear itself up on its hind legs and
put its arms lovingly round him. Meanwhile the butcher, wondering what
could keep Whitney so long, began softly through the doorway to bid him
be quick.
[Illustration: WHITNEY HUGGED BY THE BEAR.]
Whitney cried out that he could not get away, and he believed the
devil himself had hold of him.
"If it _is_ the old boy," rejoined his master, with a chuckle, "bring
him out. I should like to see what kind of an animal he is."
But Whitney's evident terror and distress soon brought him to the
rescue, and the bear was made to release her prey.
Before Whitney had served his full time with the butcher, his master
cashiered him for idleness. After some little intervening time he
became landlord of a small inn at Cheshunt. He was ever, says the
author of _The Jacobite Robber_, a passionate admirer of good eating
and drinking, especially at other people's expense. The inn, says our
author, was the "Bell" or the "White Bear," he would not be sure which.
If the "Bell," it was a sign he should presently make a noise over
all England; if the "White Bear," a token that the landlord was of as
savage a nature as any wild beast.
As a matter of fact, it appears to have been the "George"; but what
significance may be extracted from that I do not know.
The inn did not pay its way on legitimate trading, and the people of
Cheshunt wondered how Whitney could keep the pot boiling. Yet they
need not have wondered, while they could see and hear, three or four
times a week, a knot of roaring gentlemen, who sang, drank, swore, and
revelled, the landlord himself joining in, until it seemed as if the
place were thronged with old Lucifer and his club-footed emissaries.
These guests were, in fact, highwaymen, as any one might have
perceived, from their extravagant living and the unseasonable hours
they kept.
At first Whitney had no hand in his customers' doings. As the quaint
author of the tract already referred to says:
"It seems the conscientious Mr. Whitney, for all he was a well-wisher
to the mathematicks and a friend to the tribe, did not at first care
to expose his own dear person on the road; not that any one can justly
tax him at the same time with cowardice, or want of valour (for had
he been as plentifully stock'd with grace as he was with valour, he
had never taken that employment upon him); but he prudently considered
with himself that at present he ran no Risque of hanging for harbouring
such people, and besides made a comfortable penny of them: Whereas,
should he trade for himself, and scour the Highways to the Tune of
_Dammee, Stand and Deliver_, he must certainly at one time or another
make a Pilgrimage to _Tybourn_, and swinging in a Rope he had a Mortal
Aversion to, because his Prophetical Grand-Mother had formerly told him
it was a dry sort of a death.
"But at last an Old Experienced Brother of the Pad won him over to his
Party, for, finding our Inn-keeper to be notably stored with all those
ingredients and qualifications that are requisite to fit a Man for
such a Vocation, he was resolved to leave no method unattempted till
he had made an absolute conquest of him. In order to effect this, he
represents to him the meanness and servile condition of his present
calling, how he was obliged to stand cap in hand to every pitiful
Rascal that came to spend Six-pence in his house; that with all his
care and diligence he only got a little poor contemptible Pittance,
scarce sufficient to pay his Brewer and Baker, but on the other hand,
if he would be adopted into their society, he would find Money come
flowing in like a Spring Tide upon him; he would live delicately, eat
and drink of the Best, and in short, get more in an hour than now he
did by Nicking, and Frothing and wrong Reckonings for a whole Twelve
Month together. That, as for the Gallows, a Man of Courage and Bravery
ought never to be afraid of it, and, should the worst come to the
worst, better Gentleman by far than himself had made a Journey to the
other World in their Shoes and Stockings."
Thus admonished, Whitney stripped off the inn-keeper's apron, sold off
his inn, and took to the road, where he distinguished himself among
the foremost highway gentry of his time. As his biographer is fain to
acknowledge, he proved to have "inherited all the Courage, Boldness,
and Dexterity of the famous Claude Du Vall and the Golden Farmer, and
the rest of his other noble Predecessors of the Pad."
This admiring authority then proceeds to give us an account of
Whitney's first action, and tells how "he encountered a Jolly Red-fac'd
Son of the Church bravely Mounted, with a large Canonical Rose in his
Ecclesiastical Hat and his Gown fluttering in the Wind. He looked as
if he had been hung round with Bladders. Him, within two miles of St.
Albans, he accosts after this manner, 'Reverend Sir, the Gentlemen of
your Coat having, in all conscience, enough preached up the edifying
Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, and now I am fully
resolved to try the experiment, whether you Believe your own Doctrine,
and whether you are able to Practise it. Therefore, worthy sir, in the
name of the above-mentioned Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, make
no opposition, I beseech you, but deliver up the filthy Lucre you carry
about you.'
"Now you must know that this rosy-gilled Levite had the wicked sum of
six-score and ten guineas clos'd up in the waistband of his breeches,
designed as a present to a worthy gentleman that lately helped him
to a fat living (for you must not call it Symony for all the world,
but christen it by the name of Gratitude, and so forth) but Captain
Whitney, who, it seems, did not understand any of these softening
distinctions, soon eased him of his Mammon, but not without a great
deal of expostulation on the Levite's part, and, what was more
barbarous, stript him of his spick-and-span new sacerdotal habit, sent
his Horse home before him, to prepare his family, and having bound him
to his good behaviour, left him all alone to his contemplations in an
adjoining wood."
He then met a poor clergyman in threadbare gown, riding a sorry
Rosinante, whose poor ribs in a starved body looked like the bars of a
bird-cage. What would the typical outlaw, from the days of Robin Hood,
onwards, have done in such a rencounter? Why, he would have given the
poor divine the new robe and some money; and this Whitney did; handing
him four or five bags of the best, saying: "Here is that will buy you
a dozen or so of clean bands!" "Thus," says the biographer, "our brave
Captain dispensed charities with one hand and plundered with the other."
One day, patrolling Bagshot Heath, he met a gentleman, and desired his
purse and watch.
"Sir," said the gentleman, "'tis well you spoke first, for I was just
going to say the same thing to you."
"Why then," quoth Whitney, "are you a gentleman-thief?"
"Yes," replied the stranger, "but I have had very bad success to-day,
for I have been riding up and down all this morning, without meeting
with any prize."
Whitney, upon hearing this doleful tale, wished him better luck, and
took his leave.
That night, Whitney and this strange traveller chanced to stay at
the same inn, but Whitney had so changed his dress in the meanwhile,
and altered his manner, that he was not recognised. He heard his
acquaintance of that morning telling another guest how smartly he had
outwitted a highwayman that day, and had saved a hundred pounds by his
ready wit; and this revelation of how easily he had been hoodwinked
made him determined, if it were at all possible, to take his revenge on
the morrow. Meanwhile, he listened to the conversation.
The guest, who had been told of the adventure, replied that he also
had a considerable sum upon him, and that he would like, if it were
agreeable, to travel next day in company with so ready-witted a
traveller.
Accordingly, the next morning they set forth together, and Whitney
followed, a quarter of an hour later. He soon overtook them, and then,
wheeling suddenly about, demanded their purses.
"We were going to say the same to you, sir," replied the ready-witted
one.
"Were you so?" asked our hero; "and are you of my profession, then?"
"Yes," they both chorused.
"If you are," said Whitney, "I suppose you remember the old proverb,
'Two of a trade can never agree'; so you must not expect any favour on
that score. But to be plain, gentlemen, the trick will do no longer: I
know you very well, and must have your hundred pounds, sir; and your
'considerable sum,' sir," turning to the other; "let it be what it
will, or I shall make bold to send a brace of bullets through each of
your heads. You, Mr. Highwayman, should have kept your secret a little
longer, and not have boasted so soon of having outwitted a thief.
There is now nothing for you to do but to deliver or die!"
These terrible words threw them into a sad state of consternation. They
were unwilling enough to lose their money, but even more unwilling to
forfeit their lives; therefore, of two evils they promptly chose the
least, and resigned their wealth.
Whitney then met on Hounslow Heath, one Mr. Hull, a notorious usurer,
who lived in the Strand. He could hardly have chosen a wretch more in
love with money, and therefore less willing to part with it. When the
dreadful words, "Stand and deliver!" were spoken, he trembled like a
paralytic and began arguing that he was a very poor man, had a large
family of children, and would be utterly ruined if the highwayman were
so hard-hearted as to take his money. Besides, it was a most illegal,
also dangerous, action, to steal; to say nothing of the moral obliquity
of those who did so.
"You dog in a doublet," exclaimed the now angered Whitney, "do you
pretend to preach morality to an honester man than yourself. You make
a prey of all mankind, and grind to death with eight and ten per cent.
This once, however, sir, I shall oblige you to lend me what you have,
without bond, consequently without interest: so make no more words."
The usurer thereupon reluctantly produced eighteen guineas, and handed
them over with an ill grace, scowling darkly at the highwayman, and
telling him he hoped one day to have the pleasure of seeing him riding
up Holborn Hill, backwards.
It was a foolish thing to remind a gentleman of the road that he would
probably some day be an occupant of the cart, travelling to Tyburn.
Whitney had already turned to go when these words fell upon his ear;
but he now turned back, thoroughly enraged.
"Now, you old rogue," said he, "let me see what a figure a man makes
when he rides backwards, and let me have the pleasure, at least, of
beholding you first in that posture."
With that, he pulled Hull off his horse, and then setting him on the
animal's back again, face to tail, tied his legs together, and then
gave the horse two or three cuts, so that it cantered smartly away and
never stopped until Hounslow was reached; where the people, who knew
the money-lender well and liked him little, had a hearty laugh at his
expense before they untied him.
Whitney always affected to appear generous and noble. Meeting one day
with a gentleman named Long, on Newmarket Heath, and having robbed
him of a hundred pounds in silver, which he found in the traveller's
portmanteau, tied up in a great bag, the gentleman told him he had a
great way yet to go, and, as he was unknown upon the road, was likely
to suffer great inconvenience and hardship, if he had not at least some
small sum. Would he not give him back a trifle, to meet his travelling
expenses?
[Illustration: WHITNEY AND THE USURER.]
Whitney opened the bag of silver, and held it out at arm's length
towards him, saying: "Here, take what you have occasion for."
Mr. Long then put in his hand, and took out a handful, as much as he
could hold; to which Whitney made no sort of objection, but only said,
with a laugh: "I thought you would have had more conscience."
Smith tells a long story of how Whitney and his band one day met a
well-known preacher, a Mr. Wawen, lecturer at Greenwich Church, and,
easing him of his purse, made him preach a sermon on the subject of
thieving. A very similar story is told of Sir Gosselin (?Joscelin)
Denville and his outlaws, who in the reign of Edward the Second did
surprising things all over England, not least among them the waylaying
and robbing of a Dominican monk, Bernard Sympson by name, in a wood
between Henley-on-Thames and Marlow, and afterwards compelling him
to preach a sermon to like effect. Captain Dudley is said to have
done the same; and indeed, whether it were the slitting of a weasand
("_couper gorge, par ma foy_," as Pistol might say), the taking of
a purse, or the kissing a pretty woman, the highwaymen of old were
all-round experts. But that they should have so insatiable a taste for
"firstly, secondly, and thirdly, and then finally, dear brethren," I
will not believe. Some ancient traditional highway robber once did so
much, no doubt, and the freak has been duly fathered on others of later
generations: just as the antique jests at the expense of College dons
at Oxford and Cambridge are furbished up anew to fit the present age.
The Reverend Mr. Wawen responded as well as he could manage to
Whitney's invitation, and, whether it be genuine or a sheer invention
of Alexander Smith's, it is certainly ingenious, and much better
reading than that said to have been preached by the Dominican monk,
some three hundred and fifty years earlier.
"Gentlemen," began the lecturer from Greenwich church, "my text is
THEFT; which, not to be divided into sentences or syllables, being but
one word, which itself is only a monosyllable, necessity therefore
obliges me to divide it into letters, which I find to be these five, T.
H. E. F. T., Theft. Now T, my beloved, is Theological; H is Historical;
E is Exegetical; F is Figurative; and T is Tropological.
"Now the theological part of my text is in two portions, firstly, in
this world, and secondly, in the world to come. In this world, the
effects it works are T, tribulation; H, hatred; E, envy; F, fear; and
T, torment. For what greater tribulation can befall a man than to be
debarred from sweet liberty, by a close confinement in a nasty prison,
which must needs be a perfect representation of the Iron Age, since
nothing is heard there but the jingling of shackles, bolts, grates, and
keys; these last, my beloved, as large as that put up for a weathercock
on St. Peter's steeple in Cornhill.
"However, I must own that you highwaymen may be a sort of Christians
whilst under this tribulation, because ye are a kind of martyrs,
and suffer really for the truth. Again, ye have the hatred of all
honest people, as well as the envy of gaolers if you go under their
jurisdiction without money in your pockets. I am sure all of your
profession are very sensible that a gaoler expects, not only to distil
money out of your irregularities, but also to grow fat by your curses;
wherefore his ears are stopped to the cries of others, as God's are to
his, and good reason too; for, lay the life of a man in one scale, and
his fees in the other, he would lose the first to obtain the second.
"Next, ye are always in as much fear of being apprehended as poor
tradesmen in debt are of the Serjeant, who goes muffled like a thief
too, and always carries the marks of one, for he steals upon a man
cowardly, plucks him by the throat, and makes him stand till he fleeces
him. Only the thief is more valiant and the honester man of the two.
"And then, when ye are apprehended, nothing but torment ensues; for
when ye are once clapt up in gaol, as I have hinted before, you soon
come under the hangman's clutches, and he hangs you up, like so many
dogs, for using those scaring words, 'Stand and deliver!'
"The effect which theft works in the world to come is eternal, and
there is no helping it. I shall therefore proceed to the historical
part of my text, which will prove, from ancient history, that the art
of Theft is of some antiquity, inasmuch as that Paris stole Helen,
Theseus stole Ariadne, and Jason stole Medea. However, antiquity ought
to be no plea for vice, since laws, both Divine and human, forbid base
actions, especially theft. For history again informs us that Sciron
was thrown headlong into the sea for thieving: Cacus was killed by
Hercules: Sisyphus was cut in pieces; Brunellus was hanged for stealing
the ring of Angelicus; and the Emperor Frederick the Third condemned
all thieves to the galleys.
"The Exegetical part of my text is a sort of commentary on what was
first said, when I set forth that your transgressions were a breach of
both divine and humane ordinances, which are utterly repugnant to all
manner of theft; wherefore, if ye are resolved to pursue these courses
still, note, my respect is such to you, although you have robbed me,
that if you can but keep yourselves from being ever taken, I'll engage
to keep you always from being hanged.
"The figurative part of my text is still to be set forth. Though I call
you 'gentlemen,' yet in my heart I think ye to be all rogues; but I
mollify my spleen by a _Charientismus_, which is a figure or form of
speech mitigating hard matters with pleasant words. Thus, a certain
man being apprehended, and brought before Alexander the Great, King
of Macedon, for railing against him, and being demanded by Alexander
why he and his company had so done, he made answer: 'Had not the wine
been all drunk, we had spoken much worse.' Whereby he signified that
those words proceeded rather from wine than malice, by which free and
pleasant confession he assuaged Alexander's great displeasure, and
obtained remission.
"But now, coming to the Tropological part of my text, which signifies
drawing a word from its proper and genuine signification to another
sense, as, in calling you most famous thieves; I desire your most
serious attention, and that you will embrace this exhortation of St.
Paul the apostle. 'Let him that stole, steal no more.' Or else the
letters of my text point towards a tragical conclusion; for T, 'take
care;' H, 'hanging;' E, 'ends not'; F, 'felony;' T, 'at Tyburn.'"
The parson having ended his sermon, which some of Whitney's gang took
down in shorthand, they were so well pleased with what he had preached,
that they were contented to pay him tithes; so, counting over the money
they had taken from him, and finding it to be just ten pounds, they
gave him ten shillings for his pains, and then rode away to seek whom
they might next devour.
He then met Lord L—— shortly afterwards, near London, and robbed him
single-handed. Knowing that his lordship moved in close attendance
upon the King, William the Third, and perhaps being keenly conscious
that the many serious robberies committed by himself and his men were
drawing the net uncomfortably close around them, he made an offer to
compound with the authorities. He said if the King would give him an
indemnity for past offences, he would bring in thirty of his gang, for
military service in Flanders. So saying, he whistled, and, quite in the
Roderick Dhu style, twenty or thirty mounted bandits at once appeared.
Whitney, having thus given proofs of his words, continued that, if the
King refused his offer, His Majesty might send a troop of Dutchmen to
apprehend him and his, but they would find it a hard task to take any,
and that he and his men would stand on their defence, and bid them
defiance.
There is little or nothing of the "Jacobite Robber" in the stories told
of Whitney; but it seems to have been fully recognised that he was
a somewhat belated adherent of James the Second. He gathered around
him a gang that varied in numbers according to circumstances, but was
occasionally about thirty strong. These he was enabled by his superior
courage and resource to captain; and with the imposing mounted force
they presented, he laid many important and wealthy personages under
contribution near London. It was doubtless his gang that stopped and
robbed the great Duke of Marlborough of five hundred guineas near
London Colney, on the night of August 23rd, 1692, and as a Jacobite,
Whitney would be particularly pleased at the doing of it. It is almost
equally certain that the numerous other rich hauls about that time on
the St. Albans road were the handiwork of Whitney's party. On December
6th, 1692, there was a pitched battle between Whitney's force and a
troop of dragoon patrols, near Barnet. One dragoon was killed, and
several wounded, and Whitney is most circumstantially said to have then
been captured; but as an even more circumstantial account tells us,
with a wealth of detail, how he was finally captured in Bishopsgate
Street, on December 31st, this cannot be altogether correct.
Was it, we wonder, his professed Jacobite views that made many
travellers so good-humoured with him as they are said to have been when
he lightened their pockets? A fellowship in political views does not in
our own days necessarily make a stranger free of our purse. Whitney,
for example, meeting Sir Richard B—— between Stafford and Newport,
accosted him with a "How now? whither away?"