THE HIGHWAYMEN OF WILTSHIRE AND SALISBURY PLAIN—MR. JOSEPH READER'S
ADVENTURE—THE CHERHILL GANG—"CLIBBORN'S POST"—MURDER OF MR.
MELLISH—CLOSE OF THE HIGHWAYMAN ERA
Many of the stories in these pages are concerned with the doings of
highwaymen in the districts near London, but the neighbourhood of
almost every town was infested in degree, and there are few local
histories, and fewer of the older newspaper files, that do not afford
curious reading in the highway robbery sort, intermingled with
advertisements offering rewards for the apprehension of horse- and
sheep-stealers and fugitive husbands who have left their wives and
families chargeable upon the parish. The neighbourhoods of Devizes
and Salisbury seem to have been exceptionally favoured with these
miscellaneous rascals, no doubt because those two places stood at
either extreme of what long remained the wild and desolate region
including Salisbury Plain, where, although the great roads to Bath and
Exeter brought a considerable traffic, the houses were few and far
between. It was an ideal district for evil-doers, and there are a very
considerable literature and a very startling series of incidents in
this sort, connected with it.[1]
A curious incident is that told on an old broadsheet printed in 1712,
and sold at the usual broadsheet price of one penny, of the hanging
of a highwayman by one of the travellers he attacked. On Saturday,
February 2nd, in that year, a Mr. Nat. Seager, a maltster, took horse
from Shaftesbury for Blandford, to buy corn in Blandford market. He had
only gone two miles and had descended into the plain from the hill-top
town, when "he was attack'd by a Highway-Man and a pistol clap'd to his
Breast, with the Word of Command 'God D—n you, you old Dog, alight and
deliver.'"
Mr. Seager, very much terrified, dismounted, or perhaps, rather,
tumbled off his horse, and threw the man £3 in silver; but the
highwayman was not content with this. "It was not all," he said; and,
rapping out another oath, he drew a broadsword and gave Mr. Seager a
cut on the shoulder. Whereupon Mr. Seager produced twenty-four guineas
more, with which the highwayman rode off contented, leaving the
unfortunate maltster bleeding on the ground.
In a little while there came along the road another traveller, Mr.
Joseph Reader, miller, of Shaftesbury, whistling upon his way,
according to his habit.
"What is the matter?" he asked, surprised to see his friend and
neighbour lying there, all gory.
Seager told him.
"Master," said Reader, "lend me your horse, and I will endeavour to
overtake the rogue, if you will describe him to me."
"He has a great blue coat, and a sorrel horse," replied Seager: and
with that, Reader mounted and hastened the way he had gone.
It was not long before he overtook the highwayman, who was waiting for
more prey, and thought he saw it in Reader. Twice he fired pistols at
him, and twice he missed; and then Reader, who was by far the stronger
of the two, smote him with a cudgel he carried, and dragged him from
his horse. At this moment Seager came up and found them struggling on
the ground, and Reader immediately despatched him for aid.
But when he was gone, and our brave miller had opportunity for
reflection, it occurred to him that his adversary might by some means
get the better of him, after all, before help arrived; and so he stood
the risk of losing the £40 reward due to him for taking a highwayman.
That was a risk not to be entertained, and "therefore," said he, "I'll
e'en hang him myself." And so he did. Striking him insensible, he
dragged the unlucky man to a wayside tree, and hanged him from it by
his own belt.
The highwayman had not long given up the ghost before Seager returned,
at the head of the Sheriff's posse; when the miller learned, much
to his dismay, that, by acting as hangman upon one who had not been
brought to trial, he had put himself in very grave peril.
In fact, the law, resenting this interference with its prerogative, had
a good deal to say to Mr. Joseph Reader, who was brought to trial at
Dorchester before Mr. Justice Coker, at the next assizes, and charged
with murder. Fortunately, he was acquitted, and his resourcefulness
properly acknowledged by a subscription of over £30, made up for him in
Court.
Not only solitary highwaymen, but bands of marauders, scoured the
treeless and hedgeless wastes of Salisbury Plain and its neighbourhood.
One of these was known as the "Cherhill Gang," and chiefly favoured the
locality between Marlborough, Calne, and Devizes. Individual members of
this brotherhood were taken from time to time, hanged at Devizes, and
afterwards gibbeted at a spot high on the downs, between Beckhampton
and Cherhill. The remaining members of the band and the friends and
relations of the departed of course bitterly resented this kind of
post-mortem publicity, and very often they would either come by night
and saw through the post of the gibbet and so bring the whole thing
to the ground, or would climb up the post and bring down the tattered
relics of their friend, swinging there in his chains or his iron cage,
and give it decent burial. There is much to be said in favour of them.
But after this had continued for some time, the authorities hit upon
a plan of binding the lower portion of the gibbet round with iron, of
tarring it, and of driving some hundreds of nails half-way into the
post, just by way of deterrents to climbers and others.
A very pretty story—pretty in its peculiar way—is told of Serjeant
Merewether successfully defending one of the Cherhill Gang at the
assizes, and of his being robbed of his fee that night, by his
interesting client, when on his return home.
Another member of the same gang had the peculiar fancy of stripping
himself perfectly naked, by night, and then springing out of a wayside
bush upon the startled traveller. The unexpected spectacle, he said,
was so alarming that robbery became very easy. But this was probably
only a midsummer freak. Imagination refuses to contemplate even the
most desperate highwaymen in midwinter, when snow-squalls swept
Marlborough Downs, emulating those picturesque figures, the naked
aborigines of the poet's vision:
When, wild in woods, the noble savage ran.
I will quote here but one of the many old newspaper reports of doings
on this spot, but that a picturesque one. The date is January 1743: "A
captain in the army, who was going to Bath in a postchaise, was stopped
near Sandy Lane by two highwaymen, by one of whom he was told that he
wanted but a guinea, which he hoped to be soon able to pay him again.
The captain gave him the guinea, and the fellow gave the driver a
shilling, and told the gentleman if he was stopped by any one else, to
say 'Virgin Mary,' that being the watchword for the day. They had not
gone far before they were stopped by four persons; but on being given
the watchword, they raised their hats, and rode off."
[Illustration: "CLIBBORN'S POST."]
The visible relics of the highwaymen are few, but among them that
of "Clibborn's Post" is peculiarly interesting. This relic is found
in Hertfordshire, in the neighbourhood of that fine old Elizabethan
manor-house, now a farm, but famed in romance, Queen Hoo Hall. On the
way from Tewin and Queen Hoo Hall to Bramfield, the wooded lane rises
in a curve to the summit of what is known locally as "Open Valley
Hill." Here, on the grassy bank, firmly planted in the soil, stands
a stout, oaken post, carefully bound with strips of iron. This is
"Clibborn's Post," the modern successor of the original stake driven
through the body of a brutal highwayman of that name, shot dead at this
spot in the act of attacking a farmer who was on his way home from
Hertford Market to Datchworth. This occurrence happened on December
28th, 1782. There had, about that time, been many highway robberies
committed on the country roads in this neighbourhood; but no one had
been able to identify the desperado, who had plunged the countryside,
and especially the week-end market folk, into such terror. On this
particular night this farmer was driving home in a cart, accompanied by
a servant named Shock. Just as they reached this spot—then, as now, a
lonely place surrounded by tangled undergrowth and dense plantations—a
man rushed out from the thickets and seized the horse's reins. The
farmer jumped down to struggle with him, but his assailant was getting
the upper hand, and was in the act of unclasping a knife to cut his
throat, when the farmer called out to his servant, who carried a
blunderbuss: "Shoot, Shock, or I am a dead man!" Shock had been afraid
to fire, thinking he might hit the wrong man, but, on this command,
he let fly, and shot the highwayman dead. When they examined the body
they found it to be that of a pieman named Clibborn, a well-known and
ostensibly honest person who frequented the Hertford inns on market
day, selling pies to the farmers and others. He had opportunities of
noting those who would be carrying large sums of money home with them;
and, leaving early, waylaid them in some lonely spot such as this.
It was still, at the close of the eighteenth century, abundantly
possible for peaceful travellers along the roads to be killed by
highwaymen: Mr. Mellish, a city merchant, returning from a day with
the King's hounds, in company with two friends, named Bosanquet and
Pole, having been shot dead by a gang, who attacked and robbed the
carriage in which they were travelling, when near Sipson Green, on the
Bath Road. It was a wanton act, too; the travellers having disbursed
their money on demand, and the carriage already starting off again
for Hounslow when one of the gang fired a shot after it. Mr. Mellish,
sitting with his back to the horses, was struck in the forehead. It
is probable that the highwayman intended no more than to warn the
occupants of the carriage that he and his fellows really were fully
armed, and that they had therefore better hasten away as quickly as
they could; but the intention is immaterial: the unfortunate man was
killed, and the highwaymen were never captured.
The nineteenth century opened badly for the highwaymen, for not only
had the business of banking and the payment of money by cheque grown
largely, but Pitt's Act for Restricting Cash Payments, passed in
1797, had led to fewer large amounts in coin being carried about their
persons by unprotected travellers. Nothing was more remarkable than
the great sums of money that seem to have been carried by all classes
in the periods already discussed; and in those circumstances lay the
highwaymen's opportunity. But now they had fewer and smaller takings
in coin, practically a choice only between watches and jewellery and
bank-notes: very dangerous classes of property to handle unlawfully.
But if their takings were less, their numbers were scarcely fewer; and
the gibbets were still not infrequently replenished. Thus, a highwayman
named Haines was, in May 1799, gibbeted on Hounslow Heath, just where
the Bath and the Exeter roads part company, at the western extremity
of Hounslow town. A curious item in the _Annual Register_ for that
year proves—if proof were wanted—that the spectacle of his hanging had
been a popular sight; for there we read an account of how a party of
eight gentlemen, who had been out for the day to witness the spectacle,
ferried over the Thames to the "Flower Pot" inn at Sunbury that night,
at ten o'clock, presumably with the intention of "making a night of
it." It may not be uncharitable to suppose that they had already taken
more than sufficient, for in crossing the river, the boat was upset and
three of them were drowned.
The stumps of the gibbets that formerly stood at the fork of the Exeter
and the Bath roads, at the western end of Hounslow were discovered in
1899, when the road was excavated for the electric tramways that now
pass the spot.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the approaches to London
again became so dangerous that it was necessary to institute some
kind of protection. This was established in 1805, under the name of
the Bow Street Patrol, and was organised, as its name implies, from
the principal London police-office. This was a forerunner of the
existing horse-patrols of the Metropolitan Police, to be now and
again encountered at night on lonely suburban roads in these far more
secure times of ours. Even Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common grew
comparatively safe when this armed and efficient force got to work.
They were probably not in full existence when the poet Campbell and his
wife, walking on Sydenham Common in that year, were confronted by a
mounted highwayman who demanded their money, with menaces. An alarm was
promptly raised, and he was pursued and captured; when he was found to
be a resident of the neighbourhood.
In the provinces the era of the highwaymen was longer lived. The roads
between Arundel and Chichester were in 1807, for example, haunted by
one Allen, a highwayman who preyed chiefly upon the farmers coming
home with well-filled purses from market. The militia were called out
to capture him, and thus, in these peculiarly glorious circumstances
of war, he was shot dead near Midhurst, while endeavouring to escape
arrest.