Page:Life of Richard Turpin, a most notorious highwayman.pdf/21

21 the identical one he arrived upon in that city; but on being in the stable, and his rider at play, and all in the space of twenty-four hours, his alibi was admitted; for the magistrates of York could not believe it possible for one horse to cover the ground, being upwards of one hundred and ninety miles, in so short a space. He is reported, upon this occasion, to have used his horse to raw beef upon the bit in his mouth. Some go so far as to say he always rode with fowls guts tied round. Be this so or not, it was a race that equalled, if not surpassed, the first achievements of turf velocity.

Another time he robbed a poor woman returning from Ferrybridge, where she had been to sell some commodities; and soon after hearing she was distressed by her landlord for rent, he contrived to relieve her in the following singular manner. He found out her abode, and threw into the window, through the glass, a leather bag, containing gold and silver to the amount of six pounds; perhaps the produce of a recent robbery.

For the last two years of his life he seemed to have confined his residence mostly to the county of York, where he appears to have been so little known, that his company was chiefly with the best yeomen of the county. He often accompanied the neighbouring gentlemen in their parties of hunting and shooting; and one evening, on a return from an expedition of the latter kind, he saw one of his landlord’s cocks in the street, which he shot at, and killed. One Hall, his neighbour, seeing him shoot the cock, said to him, “ Mr Palmer, you have done wrong to shoot your landlord's cock:” whereupon Palmer said, “if you will stop till I have charged my piece, I will shoot you too.” Mr Hall hearing this, went and told the landlord what Palmer had done and said, and had him immediately apprehended, and on refusing to find sureties, was