Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/51

 of the Trinity, who had devoted their lives to the redeeming of captives; and in the church a simple tablet still exists to her memory, recording only the fact of her burial and the names of her children.

From the earliest records, Hounslow Heath was a notorious ride for highwaymen. Whether it was on this heath that Claude Duval, really made the knight's lady dance a coranto, and then charged the husband a hundred pounds for it, may be uncertain; but it is certain that Captain Hind, who tried to stop Cromwell, and who did rob Bradshaw and Harrison, infested this wild common. The gallant captain was eventually hung at Worcester, and his head was set up, as a scarecrow to gentlemen of his kidney, over the bridge gate. Hind fought for the king at Worcester, and when the hue and cry was hot after him, artfully and daringly came to London, called himself Brown, changed his wig, dyed his face, and took lodgings at a barber's opposite St. Dunstan's Church; but the worthless barber betrayed the gallant rogue, who swung for it.

There was seldom great daring in the robberies of the highwaymen. They were but poor humbugs. They had houses of intelligence; they had ostlers, drivers of waggons and packhorses, innkeepers, barmaids, turnpike men, and carriers, in their pay. They did not attack armed travellers if they could help it, and when they did so they generally did it by surprise or by force of numbers. They obtained heavy purses and rich boxes of plate, but they had to cast money away by handfuls to their spies and to the constables who tolerated them or aided their escapes. Wild drinking and gambling were the desperate reactions from their dangers and their days of starvation and short commons. Then came the gallops, the short cuts, the flying of gates and brooks, the fording of rivers, to get by moonlight to Hounslow: with every bridle path, and field, and hedge of which district every highwayman was familiar. Then they dashed up to some coach and exchanged shots, or they rammed their pistols through the glass windows, and frightened the ladies into fits, and the men into submission. The watch was drawn from the boot, the jewels from under the cushions; they tossed the spoil into their deep pannier pockets, cursed, threatened, and dashed off. Then eventually they were leaped on in some brandy shop parlour, or were torn down in a savage hue and cry, or were felled by some despairing man, or were betrayed by some jealous mistress. Next came the hard jury and the steel-faced judge, the dim stone room, the staring faces of quidnuncs and heartless men of fashion, the last revel with the turnkey and perhaps the chaplain (for those were odd times), then the unrivetting of the fetters, the presentation of the nosegay, the bellman's mechanical verses, and the grim ride backward up Holborn-hill to Tyburn.

In the reign of William and Mary, Hounslow trembled at the name of Whitney, who, like his successor, Turpin, began life as a butcher. He then kept an inn in Hertfordshire. The best story told of him is that he plundered a gentleman named Long of a hundred pounds in silver. The traveller represented that he had far to go, and did not know where to get money on the road. Whitney at once opened the bag and handed it to him. Long could not resist the opportunity, and drew out a brimming handful. Whitney did not remonstrate, but only said with a smile, as he rode off: "I thought you would have had more conscience, sir." Whitney was at last trapped in a house in Milford-lane, and died in his shoes at a place called Porter's Block, near Smithfield. He was only thirty-four; highwaymen seldom attained old age.

Some heroes get their fame very undeservedly. This is especially the case with Mr. Richard Turpin, who was but a mean and cruel sort of thief, let alone a murderer. He was an Essex butcher, who turned housebreaker, and he and his gang had a cave in Epping Forest, where they and their horses lay in ambuscade. The street ballad writer of 1739 wrote:

It is a curious trait of the times that Turpin was allowed to hold half an hour's conversation with the hangman before he took his leap from the ladder.

John Hawkins, one of the wretches that fed the Hounslow crows in 1722, was the greatest robber of mail coaches on record. He stole the bags of five mail coaches in one morning, of two the next day, and of one the next. His gang of thieves were even so audacious as to stop coaches in Chancery-lane and Lincoln's Inn-fields. They used to go and dine at the Three Pigeons at Brentford; then ride on about six in the evening to the Post House at Hounslow, or to Colnbrook, where they would inquire at what hour the mails were due.

It was by no means uncommon for ruined gamblers and bankrupt tradesmen to take a moonlit ride to the heath to retrieve their shattered fortunes, and in 1750, it is on record that William Parson, the wild son of a baronet, and who had been brought up at Eton, and had been in both the navy and army, committed a robbery on the fatal heath, after his return from transportation, and was hung there in chains to scare the night riders.

But travellers had their artifices as well as highwaymen. Men of audacity, when stopped,