THE YOUNGER SONS—JUDGE POPHAM—SHAKESPEAREAN HIGHWAYMEN—THE "CAVALIER"
BRIGANDS—A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGIOUS TRACT
No doubt many of the "highwaymen's" escapades in the times of Henry the
Eighth and Queen Elizabeth were the coltish pranks of high-spirited
young men of family, or the freaks of university students. To assume a
disguise, to buckle on a sword, and then take to the highway, singly or
in bands, would be just the kind of adventure to tickle the fancy of
such youths, and the danger that lay behind it all was really rather
an appetising spice than a discouragement. The tradition of Henry the
Fifth, when yet Prince of Wales, robbing on Gad's Hill for pastime, was
still current, and Shakespeare had just revived it, and invested the
doings of the Prince and Falstaff and their merry men with the glamour
of the stage, which even then set the fashion.
Such a young man, according to Aubrey, was John Popham, afterwards Sir
John, and Chief Justice of the King's Bench. "In his youthful days,"
says Aubrey, "he was a stout and skilful man at sword and buckler as
any in that age, and wild enough in his recreations, consorting with
profligate companions, and even at times wont to take a purse with
them."
This wild fellow became, as a member of Parliament and a judge, an
extremely severe personage in dealing with the class of people with
whom we thus learn him to have associated. Partly his work was the Act
of 1589, which prescribed banishment (or, as later times phrased it,
"transportation") "into such parts beyond the seas as shall be at any
time hereafter for that purpose assigned."
Shakespeare's highwaymen are, as a rule, gentlemen. Such were the
outlaws who in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ waylaid Valentine and
Speed in the forest. They had been banished from Verona and Mantua
merely for such trivial and essentially gentlemanly peccadilloes as an
attempt to abduct an heiress, and stabbing another gentleman to the
heart. Too bad!
They found Valentine so presentable a young man that, finding he had no
property to lose, they immediately proposed to make him their captain.
They were prepared to do him homage, and be ruled by him. "But if thou
scorn our courtesy, thou diest."
Making the best of circumstances—being rather prepared to captain a
band of desperadoes than lose his life, Valentine consented, with one
proviso:
"I take your offer, and will live with you;
Provided that you do no outrages
On silly women, or poor passengers."
To which the outlaws indignantly reply that they "detest such vile,
base practices."
The doings of Falstaff and Prince Hal in their highway robbery exploits
on Gad's Hill are classic farce, with elements of probability, although
Sir John Fastolf, the original Falstaff, was introduced by Shakespeare
without the slightest warranty: the real Sir John having been no
dissolute, cowardly old man, but a brave and stern soldier, who had
warred nobly for King and country for forty years.
The point of view from which the gentlemen highwaymen regarded
themselves is admirably set forth in the play of _Sir John Oldcastle_,
produced in 1600. The stage is generally regarded as the mirror of
life, and thus, when "Sir John à Wrotham" is made to introduce himself
to the audience, by frankly acknowledging he was, "in plain terms, a
thief; yet, let me tell you, too, an honest thief," we doubtless have
the real mental attitude of the "collectors"—as they were pleased to
fancifully style themselves—set forth. He goes on to declare himself,
in the good old Robin Hood vein, to be "one that will take it where
it may be spared, and spend it freely in good fellowship." A modern
company-promoter, of the Whitaker Wright type, might say as much, but
even if true, it would not be held an excuse.
The same outlook upon life is observed in _The Cashiered Soldier_,
a tract published in 1643. It represents that warrior out of work
exclaiming:
"To beg is base, as base as pick a purse;
To cheat, more base of all theft—that is worse.
Nor beg nor cheat will I—I scorn the same;
But while I live, maintain a soldier's name.
I'll purse it, I,—the highway is my hope;
His heart's not great that fears a little rope."
Again, Bishop Earle, in his _Microcosmography_, shows us how the
highwaymen were recruited. Speaking of the sorrows of younger sons, and
narrating the shifts to which they were often reduced, he says: "Others
take a more crooked path, through the King's highway, where at length
the vizard is plucked off, and they strike fair for Tyburne."
The biographies of highwaymen given later in these pages, fully
illustrate the position of affairs in the succeeding age, and show that
the country swarmed with highway robbers after the conclusion of the
Civil War between King and Parliament. Many of them were impoverished
cavaliers, but the most prominent were only pretended gentlemen, who
used any Royalist sympathies they may have had in giving a specious
excuse for their misdeeds. Captain Hind is typical of these plundering
fellows in the era of the Commonwealth. So many were they, and so
formidable, travelling, as they often did, in bands, that it became the
business of the troops, at the conclusion of the war, to hunt out all
such associated brigands.
On September 17th, 1649, General Fairfax issued a proclamation
addressed to the commanders of "every respective regiment of horse,"
urging them to activity in the apprehension of all robbers, and
promising high rewards for everyone captured. To this a Royalist
print, the _Man in the Moon_, sarcastically rejoined that the "House
of Robbers"—by which the House of Commons was meant—had voted for the
next six months a reward of £10 for the taking of every burglar or
highway-robber, "the State's officers exempted."
The proclamation, however, had its due effect, for on December 24th,
no fewer than twenty-eight malefactors, principally of the classes
specified, were all gibbeted together at Tyburn. Among them was "one
Captain Reynolds, who was of the King's party in Cornwall, at the
disbanding of the Lord Hopton's army at Truro.... His carriage was very
bold, and, as he was going to be turned off, he cried: 'God bless King
Charles: Vive le Roi.'"
But they were generally defiant at the last, whether Royalists or mere
purse-takers; whether of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries.
Conscience, which makes cowards of all, did not awake and begin to
unnerve these candidates for Jack Ketch until the very opening of the
nineteenth century.
Thus, in the olden times we find the condemned highwaymen nearly always
nursing the grievance of their doom, and speaking of Justice and her
emissaries as their "enemies"; as witness Thomas Hill, executed July
19th, 1694. Was he penitent at Tyburn? Not at all. His last words
were, "God bless all my friends, and let all my enemies be hanged
as I am"; and, adds his biographer "other reflecting and abusive
Expressions."
Although it might well seem, after an extensive course of reading in
the thoughts and deeds of those times, that the country was entirely
populated by two classes: the scoundrels who were always trying to
evade Justice, and the officers of the law, continually occupied
in tracing them, an unobtrusive residuum of well-intentioned and
well-conducted people existed. We do not, it is true, hear much of
them, which is only to be expected; but they existed, nevertheless, and
were often as anxious to save sinners as any modern tract-distributor.
A curious seventeenth-century four-page leaflet in the British Museum,
styled _A Terrible and Seasonable Warning_, shows something of the
well-meaning forces, as well as a good deal of the superstition, of
the time, in an account of how a young man named Abraham Joiner,
aged between seventeen and eighteen, described as a ballast-man, of
Shakesby's Walk, near Shadwell church, was saved at the last moment
from becoming a footpad or a highwayman. It is nothing more nor less
than a seventeenth-century ancestor—and a very badly printed one—of
the modern religious tracts produced nowadays by the million, in a
rather hopeless endeavour to save hurrying sinners, often too anxiously
wondering how they are to live in this world, without troubling about
the next.
The young man began to keep bad company, and in especial that of one
Ann Turner, who said she must have money, and he must by some means get
it for her. Abraham went home in a desperate frame of mind. He thought
of the several ways (none of them honest ones) in which money in a
sufficiency might suddenly be obtained; and frightened his mother by
saying he must and would get some, even though he asked the devil to
help him to it.
"In this Humour," we learn, "he went out to the _Cock_ and _Lyon_
in King Street, where there came into A Room to him a Person in a
Dark-colour'd Habit, and ask'd him what made him so Melancholly? If
he wanted Money, he cou'd help him to it, and bid him meet him the
next Night, which he at first told him he wou'd do; but afterwards
suspecting it might be the Devil, he told him he cou'd not meet him at
the time, then bid him meet him on _Sunday_, behind _Stepney_ church,
which he consented to do, and, going away, gave him a Pistole in gold
(a coin, not a firearm) after which the Young Man grew uneasy in his
Mind, and going home show'd his Brother, who advis'd him to throw the
Money away, assuring him it could be none but the Devil, which very
much terrified the young man, so that he threw the Money away, and was
taken with a sudden trembling, and falling on his knees, besought God
to forgive him.
"In this condition, Mr. Constable, the Minister of the Parish, was sent
for, and Mr. Symons, who Pray'd by him till the time was over when he
had promis'd to meet the Person he had seen, and Mr. Constable and
the other Divines us'd many Prayers and exhortations with him, and at
length so comforted him that 'tis hoped the Devil will have no further
Power over him, if he takes this timely Warning of the Mercies of God."
[Illustration: "A TERRIBLE AND SEASONABLE WARNING."]
Then follow "Some of the Prayers." The first page shows a very
respectable-looking devil and a very greatly terrified young man; also
some black-cassocked clergymen on their knees, very earnestly praying.
A curious broadsheet tract of about a century and a half later,
entitled _Wild Robert_, may be fitly noticed here. Like the earlier
tract, it was a purely religious publication; but the time had gone by
for supernatural terrors to be invoked. Poetry, of sorts, is brought to
bear, instead:
[Illustration: THE END OF WILD ROBERT.]
THE EXECUTION OF WILD ROBERT.
_Being a Warning to all Parents._
WILD ROBERT was a graceless Youth,
And bold in every sin
In early life with petty thefts,
His course he did begin.
But those who deal in lesser sins,
In great will soon offend;
And petty thefts, not check'd betimes,
In murder soon may end.
And now, like any beast of prey,
Wild Robert shrunk from view,
Save when at eve on Bagshot Heath
He met his harden'd crew.
With this fierce crew Wild Robert there
On plunder set his mind;
And watch'd and prowl'd the live-long night
To rob and slay mankind.
But God, whose vengeance never sleeps,
Tho' He delays the blow,
Can in a single moment lay
The prosperous villain low.
One night, a fatal night indeed!
Within a neigh'bring wood,
A harmless passenger he robb'd,
And dy'd his hands in blood.
The direful deed perform'd, he went
To shew his golden spoils,
When vengeful Justice, unawares,
Surpris'd him in her toils.
Wild Robert seiz'd, at once was known,
(No crape had hid his face)
Imprison'd, tried, condemn'd to die!
Soon run was Robert's race.
Since short the time the laws allow
To murderers doom'd to die,
How earnest shou'd the suppliant wretch
To Heaven for mercy cry!
But he, alas! no mercy sought,
Tho' summon'd to his fate;
The Cart drew near the Gallows Tree,
Where throng'd spectators wait.
Slow as he past no pious tongue
Pour'd forth a pitying pray'r;
Abhorrence all who saw him felt,
He, horror and despair.
And now the dismal death-bell toll'd,
The fatal cord was hung,
While sudden, deep and dreadful shrieks,
Burst forth amidst the throng.
Hark! 'tis his mother's voice he hears!
Deep horror shakes his frame;
'Tis rage and fury fill his breast,
Not pity, love, or shame.
"One moment hold!" the mother cries,
"His life one moment spare,
One kiss, my miserable child,
My Robert, once so dear!"
"Hence, cruel mother, hence," he said,
"Oh! deaf to nature's cry;
Your's is the fault I liv'd abhorr'd
And unlamented die.
"You gave me life, but with it gave
What made that life a curse;
My sins uncurb'd, my mind untaught,
Soon grew from bad to worse.
"I thought that if I 'scap'd the stroke
Of man's avenging rod,
All would be well, and I might mock
The vengeful pow'r of GOD.
"My hands no honest trade were taught,
My tongue no pious pray'r;
Uncheck'd I learnt to break the laws,
To pilfer, lie, and swear.
"The Sabbath bell that toll'd to church,
To me unheeded rung;
God's holy name and word I curs'd
With my blaspheming tongue.
"No mercy now, your ruin'd child
Of heav'n can dare implore,
I mocked at grace, and now I fear
My day of grace is o'er.
"Blame not the law which dooms your son,
Compar'd with you 'tis mild;
'Tis you have sentenc'd me to death,
To hell have doom'd your child."
He spoke, and fixing fast the cord,
Resigned his guilty breath;
Down at his feet his mother fell,
By conscience struck with death.
Ye parents, taught by this sad tale,
Avoid the path she trod;
And teach your sons in early years
The fear and love of GOD.
So shall their days, tho' doom'd to toil,
With peace and hope be blest;
And heav'n, when life's short task is o'er,
Receive their souls to rest.
The price of this improving publication was one halfpenny, and no one,
observing the dramatic picture with which it begins, or reading the
verses, will be disposed to think value for money was not given. Let us
hope the parents of that age duly profited by the advice given!