Moll Cutpurse must needs have a place here, by right of her intimate association with the highwaymen, rather than her own exploits. She was not, in fact, a highway robber at all; nor, of course, was her name Cutpurse, but Mary Frith. The daughter of a shoemaker, whose name, as a reporter of the old school might say, does not "transpire," she was born in Barbican, City of London, in 1592. Tradition tells how she was born with clenched fists: sure sign of a wild and adventurous nature. Her muscles and her spirit alike were mannish. As a girl, she was, in the obsolete language of the seventeenth century, a "tom-rig" and "rump-scuttle"; and a "quarter-staff" was more agreeable to her than a distaff. And not only more agreeable, but more natural, and she worsted many a pretty fellow in fair fight with that weapon, with which only the strong and the active could prevail. Her father proposed to apprentice her to a saddler, but she refused, and she was put aboard a ship bound for Virginia, to be sold into the plantations. It seems a drastic way with a rebellious daughter; but it failed, for Moll escaped before even the ship had left the Port of London. Love never entered into the career of Moll, and as she had the strength of a man and a masculine voice that procured her the name of the "Roaring Girl," she early concluded to wear masculine attire. In Middleton's comedy, written about her when she was still young, he makes a character declare: "She has the spirit of four great parishes, and a voice that will drown all the city." It will thus be seen that she was at an early age well known to those who lived their life in London. And for excellent reasons. She had not only become a member of a gang of thieves and pickpockets, who frequented the Bear Garden in Southwark and other popular resorts, but had graduated with amazing ease and swiftness in the art of slitting pockets and extracting purses, and from that had by force of an organising brain elevated herself into the position of a plotter of robberies and high directress of clyfakers and bung-snatchers. So well was the destination known of most of the watches and trinkets that were continually disappearing, that the owners of them were often knocking at her door in Fleet Street, ready to ransom their property for a well-recognised percentage of its value, before the thieves had returned with it; and they had to be politely requested to call again. In those halcyon days of the receivers of stolen property, before the evil career of Jonathan Wild had caused an Act of Parliament to be passed, dealing with them on the same footing as the actual thieves, much was done in this way of ransom and ready brokerage, and, so long as it was done with discretion, with advantage to all concerned. The owners got their own again, with the expenditure of a comparatively trifling sum, the gang carried on their operations with a large degree of security, and the wily Moll made an excellent income. She was witty and original, and—such was the spirit of the age—she became rather the fashion among the riotous young blades of town, who were then "seeing life." The highwaymen knew her well, and resorted to her house when they had taken watches and jewellery they could not themselves, without the gravest risk, endeavour to sell. They trusted her, and the public, coming to redeem the articles, did the same; and indeed, as intermediary between losers and finders, she was honesty itself: absolutely beyond suspicion.

Thus wagged the merry days until the Civil War altered the complexion of things. The times had been growing, for some few years before, curiously out of joint. The people, once taken with the mad pranks and outrageous humours of the society in which she moved, had grown more serious-minded, and the gay gallants who still continued to "see life" were no longer regarded with indulgence. The ripple of Puritanism that had arisen in the time of James the First and had then been little more than a religious expression, had increased in the time of his son to an overwhelming wave of politico-religious fury. It swept on, blotting out the theatres, frowning down all levity and finally breaking into warfare between the two different ideals cherished by Roundheads and Royalists.

The gallants naturally became Cavaliers, and went warring for their King over the country; but in the City there was a strict, stern way of regarding things that did Moll's business no good. Like all her associates, she was a Royalist. The alliance perhaps does that cause no service in the pages of history; but we must take it as we find it, and make the best or the worst of the fact, just as our own partisanship dictates.

She detailed trusty members of her organisation to persecute, in their own particular way, leading members of the detested party that had acquired political ascendency. On one occasion, while they robbed Lady Fairfax on her way to church, the "Roaring Girl" herself set out, according to the legend, to rob the husband, Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, with her own hands, on Hounslow Heath. It seems beyond belief, but the tale is at any rate a very old one, to be traced back almost as far as her own day. The story tells how she shot Fairfax in the arm, killed two horses ridden by the servants attending him, and secured all the money the general had with him. We may go so far as to concede that this was what the "Roaring Girl" would have rejoiced to do, had it been possible; but imagination refuses to carry us further.

Moll's fortune declined during the long years of the Commonwealth, which fact is, at any rate, something for Cromwellians to plume themselves upon. That she should live to see the Restoration and Charles the Second upon the throne, was one of her most ardent desires. She never doubted that he would be restored, and was careful to leave a sum of twenty pounds, by will, to celebrate the event, if it should happen to be deferred beyond her time. She died of dropsy, just one year before the Restoration took place.