sentenced to death. No sentence in that court had ever been so popular.
When asked if he had anything to say why this judgment should not be
passed upon him, he handed a paper to the Judge, setting forth the
numbers of criminals he had been instrumental in bringing to Justice,
and in a very feeble voice said: "My lord, I hope I may, even in the
sad condition in which I stand, pretend to some little merit, in
respect of the services I have done my country, in delivering it from
some of the greatest pests with which it was ever troubled. My lord,
I have brought many a bold and daring malefactor to just punishment,
even at the hazard of my own life, my body being covered with scars
received in these undertakings. I presume, my lord, to say I have some
merit, because, at the time these things were done, they were esteemed
meritorious by the Government; and therefore I beg, my lord, some
compassion may be shown, upon the score of these services. I submit
myself wholly to His Majesty's mercy, and humbly beg a favourable
report of my case."
But the law had too long been waiting for him, and his enormities were
too great, for any mercy to be hoped for; and he was left to die. He
did not afford an edifying spectacle in that condemned hold to which he
had consigned so many, reflecting that, as "his Time was but short in
this World," it was necessary to improve it to the best advantage "in
Eating, Drinking, Swearing, Cursing, and talking to his Visitants." His
old crony, the Reverend Thomas Pureney, the Ordinary, he flouted; and,
for the little spiritual consolation he at the last moment required, he
called in an outsider. But this did not prevent Pureney from concocting
a lying account and offering it for sale after his execution. Therein
we read, as though in Wild's own words:
"Finding that there was no room for mercy (and how could I expect
Mercy, who never show'd any?), as soon as I came into the condemned
Hole, I began to think of making a preparation for my Soul; and the
better to bring my stubborn Heart to Repentance, I thought it more
proper to have the advice and the Council and Directions of a Man
of Learning, a Man of sound Judgment in Divinity, and therefore
Application being made to the reverend Mr. _Nicholson_, he very
Christian-like gave me his Assistance: And I hope that my Repentance
has been such as will be accepted in Heaven, into which Place, I trust
in God, my Soul will quickly be received. To part with my Wife, my
dear _Molly_, is so great an Affliction to me, that it touches me
to the Quick, and is like Daggers entering into my Heart. As she is
innocent, and I am the Guilty Man, let her not suffer in her Charracter
and Reputation for my Crimes: Consider that she is a Woman, and how
ungenerous it would be to reflect upon one whose weakness will not
permit her to defend herself so well as her Innocence will carry her.
"And now, good People, you see to what a shameful End my Wickedness has
brought me; take warning therefore by my Example, and let my unhappy
Fate deterr you from following wicked Courses, and cause such of you to
forsake your Crimes, who are now fallen into them. Remember that though
Justice has leaden feet, yet she has Iron hands, and sooner or later
will overtake the unwary Criminal. I am now upon the point of departing
out of this World; joyn with me, therefore, in Prayer while I have
life, and pray to God to receive my poor Soul into his blessed Arms,
and to make us all happy with our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."
All the foregoing was the sheer invention of the egregious Pureney, and
Wild really went unrepentant to his end at Tyburn, May 24th, 1725. He
sought, by taking laudanum, to cheat the gallows of its due, but failed
in the attempt. The day of his execution was one of great rejoicings in
London, and huge crowds lined the way, pelting Wild, as he rode in the
cart, with stones and dirt.
[Illustration: JONATHAN WILD ON THE WAY TO EXECUTION.]
NICHOLAS HORNER
Nicholas Horner was a younger son of the vicar of Honiton, in
Devonshire, and was born in 1687. He was wild and unmanageable almost
from infancy, and showed little promise of remaining in the humble post
of attorney's clerk, in which his father placed him, in London, when
he was seventeen or eighteen years of age. He remained, however, with
the attorney for three years, learning more in the way of drinking and
dicing at the "Devil" and the "Apollo" taverns in the Strand, than of
law in Clement's Inn. He then ran away, and remarked when he exchanged
his quill-pen, his parchments, and his stool in the lawyer's office,
for the pistols, the crape mask, and the mettlesome horse of the
highwayman, that he was only exchanging one branch of the profession
to which he had been articled for another and a higher—becoming a
"highway lawyer," a "conveyancer" and a "collector." Unfortunately for
him, he began to practise in this new branch before he had properly
made himself acquainted with the rudiments of its procedure, and was
in consequence taken in an interview with his first client, and lodged
in Winchester gaol, where he remained for three months before his
trial came on. In the meanwhile, the friends of his family, seeing how
scandalous a thing it would be if a clergyman's son were convicted
of highway robbery, and sentenced to die by the rope of the hangman,
strongly endeavoured to persuade the gentleman whom he had robbed to
fail in identifying him. But their efforts were fruitless, for he was
determined to prosecute, and the trial in due course was held, and the
prisoner found guilty and formally sentenced to death.
His friends were more successful in the petitions they forwarded to
the Queen, herself an excellent Churchwoman, and disposed to stretch a
point that its ministers might be saved from unmerited reproach. Horner
was pardoned on condition that his friends undertook that he should
be sent out of the kingdom within three months, and that they should
undertake to keep him in exile for seven years. It was an excellent
offer, and they accepted, shipping him to India, where he remained for
the stipulated time, passing through many adventures which, although
detailed by Smith, are not concerned with the highway portion of his
career, and are not even remotely credible.
Returning to his native shores, he found both his father and mother
dead, and received from the executors of his father's will the amount
of £500, all his father had to leave him. That sum did not last him
long. What are described as "the pleasures of town" soon brought him
again to his last guinea; and he, of course, once more took to the
road.
"Well overtaken, friend," he said to a farmer he came up with on the
road. "Methinks you look melancholy; pray what ails you, sir? If you
are under any afflictions and crosses in the world, perhaps I may help
to relieve them."
"Ah! my dear sir," replied the farmer, "were I to say I had any losses,
I should lie, for I have been a thriving man all my life, and want for
nothing; but indeed I have crosses enough, for I have a d—d scolding
wife at home, who, though I am the best of husbands to her, and daily
do my best to make her and my children happy, is always raving and
scolding about the house like a madwoman. I am daily almost nagged
out of my life. If there be such a thing as perpetual motion, as some
scientific men say, I'm sure it is in my wife's tongue, for it never
lies still, from morning to night. Scolding is so habitual to her that
she even scolds in her sleep. If any man could tell me how to remedy
it, I have a hundred pounds in gold and silver about me which I would
give him with all my heart, for so great a benefit which I should
receive by the taming of this confounded shrew."
Horner, listening to this most pleasant tune of a hundred pounds, said:
"Sir, I'll just tell the ingredients with which nature first formed a
scold, and thus, the cause of the distemper being known, it will be
easier to effect a cure. You must understand, then, that nature, in
making a scold, first took of the tongues and galls of bulls, bears,
wolves, magpies, parrots, cuckoos, and nightingales, of each a like
number; the tongues and tails of vipers, adders, snails, and lizards,
six each; _aurum fulminans_, aqua fortis, and gunpowder, of each a
pound; the clappers of seventeen bells, and the pestles of thirty
apothecaries' mortars, which becoming all mixed, she calcined them in
Mount Stromboli and dissolved the ashes in water, distilled just under
London Bridge at three-quarters flow-tide, and filtered through the
leaves of Calepin's dictionary, to render the operation more verbal;
after which she distilled it again through a speaking-trumpet, and
closed up the remaining spirits in the mouth of a cannon. Then she
opened the graves of all recently-deceased pettifoggers, mountebanks,
barbers, coffeemen, newsmongers, and fishwives at Billingsgate, and
with the skin of their tongues made a bladder, covered over with
drumheads and filled with storms, tempests, whirlwinds, thunder and
lightning. Lastly, to irradiate the whole elixir, and make it more
churlish, she cut a vein under the tongue of the dog-star, drawing
thence a pound of the most choleric blood; and from which sublimating
the spirits, she mixed them with the foam of a mad dog; and then,
putting all together in the before-mentioned bladder, stitched it up
with the nerves of Socrates' wife."
"A damned compound, indeed." said the farmer; "and surely it must be
impossible for any man to tame a shrew at this rate."
"Not at all," replied Horner, "for when she first begins to be in her
fits, you shall perceive it by the bending of her brows; then apply to
her a plaster of good words: after that, give her a wheedling potion;
and if that will not do, take a bull's tail, and, applying the same
with a strong arm from shoulder to flank, it shall infallibly complete
the cure."
The farmer was very well pleased with this prescription, and, giving
Horner many thanks and treating him liberally at the next inn, they
continued to ride on together. At last, coming to a convenient place,
Horner said, "Please pay me now, sir, for my advice."
"I thought the entertainment I provided for you just now at the inn was
all the satisfaction you required," retorted the surprised farmer.
"No, sir," said Horner, "you promised a hundred pounds if any one would
find you a remedy for your scolding wife; and a bargain is a bargain
all the world over, in the market or on the road": so presenting his
pistol at the farmer's head, "d—n me, sir," he continued, "presently
deliver your bag, or you are a dead man!"
The farmer delivered the bag, which, if it did not contain quite a
hundred pounds, formed an excellent recompense for the time Horner had
spent in exercising his fantastic imagination upon him.
Shortly after this exploit, Horner met a gentleman on Hounslow Heath,
saluting him with the customary demand to hand over his dibs.
The traveller gave him six guineas, all he had, saying: "Sir, you
love money better than I do, to thus venture your neck for it"; to
which Horner rejoined, "I follow the way of the world, sir, which
now prefers money before friends, or honesty; yea, some before the
salvation of their souls; for it is the love of money that makes the
unjust judge take a bribe, the corrupt lawyer to plead an evil cause:
the physician to kill a man without fear of hanging, and the surgeon
to prolong a cure. 'Tis this that makes the tradesman tell a lie in
selling his wares; the butcher to blow his veal; the tailor to covet so
much cabbage; the miller to cheat in his corn-grinding; the baker to
give short weight, and to wear a wooden cravat for it; the shoemaker to
stretch his leather, as he does his conscience: and the gentlemen of
the pad—such as myself—to wear a Tyburn tippet, or old Storey's cap on
some country gallows. So good-day to you, sir, and thank you, and never
despise money in a naughty world."
Horner now experienced a sad blow to his self-esteem, in an adventure
in which he was made to play a ridiculous part, and to be the butt
afterwards of his acquaintances. A lady of considerable position
and wealth was travelling from Colchester to London by stage-coach,
and happened to be the only passenger for a considerable distance.
At Braintree the coachman very politely warned her that, if she had
anything of value about her, she had better conceal it, for there were
several gay sparks about the neighbouring heath, whom he thought to be
highwaymen. Thanking him, the lady placed her gold watch, a purse full
of guineas and some valuable lace under the seat; and then disarranged
her hair, like poor Ophelia, to act the part of a lunatic.
Presently, Horner rode up to the coach, presented a pistol, and
demanded her money. Instantly she opened the coach-door, leapt out,
and taking the highwayman by the leg, cried in a very piteous voice,
"Oh, dear cousin Tom, I am glad to see you. I hope you'll now rescue me
from this rogue of a coachman, for he's carrying me, by my rogue of a
husband's orders, to Bedlam, for a mad woman."
"D—n me," replied Horner, "I'm none of your cousin. I don't know you,
but you must be mad, and Bedlam is the best place for you."
"Oh! cousin Tom," said she, clinging to him, "but I will go with you,
not to Bedlam."
"Do you know this mad creature?" asked the now distracted highwayman of
the coachman.
"Yes," he replied, entering into the spirit of the thing; "I know the
lady very well. I am now going, by her husband's orders, to London, to
put her in a madhouse, but not into Bedlam, as she supposes."
"Take her, then," exclaimed Horner, "even if it were to the devil." So
saying, he set spurs to his horse, and made off as fast as he could,
for fear of her continuing to claim cousinship with him.
[Illustration: HORNER MEETS HIS MATCH.]
This story, afterwards appearing in the _Weekly Journal, or British
Gazetteer_, of December 27th, 1718, and coming to Horner's
knowledge, he was almost beside himself with rage, at being so easily
tricked. The tale enjoyed a wide circulation, and seems to have
impressed other travellers; for when Horner soon afterwards adventured
down into the West of England, and stopped a carriage near Honiton, in
which was a lady travelling from Exeter to London, he beheld another
frantic creature with dishevelled hair, who greeted him as "cousin."
"You hypocritical——!" he roared out; "because I was once bit this way
by one of your d—d sex, d'ye think I must always be bit so?"
Saying this he turned over every cushion in the carriage, and found
under them sufficient for his trouble: a gold watch, and other
valuables and money, in all to the value of some two hundred pounds.
But this was Horner's very last stroke of business. He was taken
only two hours later, in attempting to rob two gentlemen, and after
a patient trial at Exeter, was hanged there on April 3rd, 1719, aged
thirty-two.
WALTER TRACEY
"The adventures of this individual," says Johnson, "are neither
of interest nor importance." He then proceeds to recount them at
considerable length, sufficiently disproving his own words in the
course of his narrative.
Tracey was heir to an estate of £900 annual value, in Norfolk. His
father, himself a man of liberal education, wished his son to share
the like advantage, and sent him to Oxford, where he hoped he would
take a degree and then enter the Church. But Walter was a gay and idle
blade; thoughtless and reckless. His character was otherwise gentle,
open, and generous: so it will be noted that if his recklessness
suited him for the profession of highwayman, his alleged mildness of
disposition was distinctly a drawback. At the least of it, he seems to
have been singularly unfitted for the Church, and, indeed, had never an
opportunity of entering it, for his wild life as a student led to his
being expelled from the University.
Our precious, delightful humbug, Johnson, greedily telling the story
of the highwayman and omitting no scandalous detail from the task in
which he revelled, halts at this point to make an insincere moral
reflection, which he felt would be called for by some of his readers,
even in the middle of the eighteenth century, when morals and improving
discourses were alike at a heavy discount.
"The road to vice," he remarks, with his tongue in his cheek, "is of
easy access, and, fascinating as it appears when you proceed, it closes
behind, and leaves nothing on the retrospect but ruggedness and gloom.
Tracey had entered the delusive path, and though he had the wish,
possessed not the fortitude, to retrace his steps."
That was bad for Tracey. He and his companions, we learn, for some time
amused their parents with various artifices; "but were at last denied
any further pecuniary assistance." In this Micawberish high-falutin
style, are Tracey's experiences told.
To fill their pockets, Tracey and his friends went upon the road.
Expelled from the University, he reformed for awhile, and made his
way through England until he arrived in Cheshire, where he took
service with a wealthy grazier. He soon became fond of the country,
and reconciled to his now humble lot, and being a youth of elegant
appearance, and possessing very pleasing and fascinating manners, his
friendship was courted by every one. He was proficient in music and
singing, and often, when the toils of the day were over, the villagers
would assemble at his master's door, and "measure their gay steps to
the sound of his violin; 'in fact, as Mr. Micawber might say,' they
danced to his fiddling."
The country girls vied with one another for his attention; but the
grazier's daughter (or perhaps the prospect of the grazier's money) was
the object of his choice; and so firmly had he gained the esteem of his
master, that their marriage was agreed upon, and at length celebrated
with every mark of happiness and satisfaction.
For a time he remained happy in this condition of life; especially
as his wife had brought a part of her father's property with her. He
managed farm and stock with skill and industry, and might have become
an ornament and a shining light in the Cheshire cheese-farming, only
for the vagabond blood in him. He found a respectable life insufferably
dull after his early riotous days; and was so loud in his praise of
town and its delights, that he at length disturbed the content of his
wife and his father-in-law as well, and induced them to realise all
their property, and to accompany him to London, where, he said, he
expected to procure some lucrative situation.
Johnson, perhaps thinking this to be too great a demand upon the
credulity of his readers, feels constrained to add at this point a
criticism of his own. "It was no small proof of the influence he
had over the resolutions and actions of others, that he could thus
induce a country farmer to forget his accustomed habits, and follow
an adventurous son-in-law into scenes with which he was altogether
unacquainted." We may heartily agree with him here.
Having disposed of their joint stock and other property, they proceeded
to London by way of Trentham, in Staffordshire, where they intended
to rest for a day or two. In the house where they stayed Tracey met
some of his old college friends, with whom he spent a jovial time.
This confirmed him in his desire to return to his former extravagant
way of living, and he seems instantly to have lost all his new-found
honesty and sense of responsibility, under the influence of this old
acquaintance.
Early next morning he arose and, stealing his father-in-law's
pocket-book, and everything of value that lay handy, went off on his
horse, and thus, without a word of farewell, disappeared. "Thus,"
remarks our author, ready with the moralising reflections we know he
really detested, "he in a moment blasted the good hopes which the
reader must have entertained of him; and his future serves only to
confirm that contempt which every honourable mind must feel for him,
after so infamous an action. Every endeavour to discover his retreat
proved ineffectual, and his wife and father-in-law never heard of him
again, until he expiated his crimes by an ignominious death."
It appears that Tracey proceeded to Coventry, where he alighted at
an inn, in which he observed an unusual stillness. Entering the
house, and hearing sounds of quarrelling upstairs, his curiosity
led him to enquire what was amiss, and walking abruptly into one of
the rooms, surprised the innkeeper and his wife in a heated dispute.
The innkeeper, an elderly man, had married a woman much younger than
himself, and had discovered, too late, that she had really been angling
for his money, rather than for himself: hence these disagreements.
The dispute ran high as Tracey entered. Both husband and wife were
eager to state their respective grievances, and he listened patiently.
Having heard both sides, he summed up judicially.
"Money," he said, "has been the cause of this confusion. Without it you
may live in peace and quietness; so, for your own sakes, hand me at
once the money you possess"; handling a loaded pistol significantly the
while. He took first eighty-five guineas, and then his farewell.
On his way south he met a young Oxonian, whom he accompanied as far as
Ware, where they passed the evening in great harmony and friendship.
Proceeding next day, Tracey frequently remarked that his companion's
valise—a prosperous-looking article—was certainly too weighty for
him. But, in constantly recurring to the subject, he aroused his
companion's suspicions that this pleasant fellow, whom he had picked up
on the road, was none other than a highwayman. He said nothing of his
suspicion, but was resolved to be even with him. Presently, remarking
that he was travelling to take up his degree of Master of Arts, he
hinted that he had with him, in his portmanteau, sixty pounds for his
expenses.
"Have you so?" said Tracey. "That is very convenient for me at this
time, for I want to borrow just such a sum, and you could not lend it
to a better person than myself."
So, without more ado, he helped himself to the valise, untying it from
the other's horse and strapping it on his own.
The student poured forth the most lamentable entreaties, and begged
Tracey not to thus deprive him of what was to establish his future
prospects in life. The money, he declared, was all borrowed, and if it
were sto—— er! _borrowed_ from him at this juncture, he had not the
least prospect of ever being able to repay it.
All these tears and protestations moved Tracey only so far as to give
him his own purse, containing some four pounds, to carry him on for a
few days. He then disappeared down a bye-road with the valise, and the
student saw him no more, and perhaps had no wish to see him again; for,
as Tracey discovered when he halted at the next hedge-row alehouse and
unstrapped the valise, the sixty pounds was purely imaginary, and its
contents were nothing but two old shirts, half a dozen dirty collars,
a ragged and threadbare student's gown, a pair of stockings minus the
feet, a pair of shoes with but one heel between them, a comb, some
needles and thread, and a ham. The picturesque force of the sucking
highwayman's language when he discovered these treasures, and how
simply he had been taken in, must have considerably astonished the
landlord of that wayside tavern.
The biographers of Ben Jonson mention his once being robbed by Tracey
in very humorous style. Tracey met the poet, whom he knew well by
sight, on a road in Buckinghamshire, and demanded his purse. To this
"Rare Ben," as his epitaph in Westminster Abbey styles him, answered in
the following impromptu:
"Fly, villain! hence, or by thy coat of steel,
I'll make thy heart my leaden bullet feel;
And send that thricely thievish soul of thine
To Hell, to be the Devil's valentine."
Upon which Tracey is supposed to have replied:
"Art thou great Ben? or the revivèd ghost
Of famous Shakespeare? or some drunken host,
Who, being tipsy with thy muddy beer,
Dost think thy rhymes will daunt my soul with fear?
"Nay, know, base slave, that I am one of those
Can take a purse as well in verse as prose;
And when thou'rt dead, can write upon thy hearse,
'Here lies a poet who was robbed in verse.'"
This ingenious reply disarmed Jonson, who thus discovered that he had
both a wit and a knave to contend with. He endeavoured to save his
money, but to no purpose, and had to resign it to the man who, it
seemed, could rhyme better, impromptu, than himself, and at greater
length. This was not the only misfortune that befel Jonson on this
journey; for, when within two or three miles of London, he was attacked
by a gang of thieves, who knocked him from his horse, bound him hand
and foot, and threw him into a park, where some other wayfarers who
had shared the same fate were lying. One of his unfortunate companions
calling out that he and his wife and children were undone, another,
who was tied up also, said, "Pray, if you are all undone come and undo
me"; which afforded Ben a hearty laugh, and a subject upon which he
afterwards expressed his poetical powers.