There is much uncertainty about the parentage and the career of James Whitney. The small quarto tract entitled The Jacobite Robber, which professes to give a life of Whitney by one who was acquainted with him, says he was born "in Hertfordshire, of mean, contemptible parentage, about two years after the Restauration of King Charles." Smith particularises Stevenage as the place in Hertfordshire, and Johnson, who copies almost everything in Smith, also adopts Stevenage. Waylen, on the other hand, who wrote a singularly good and well-informed book on the highwaymen of Wiltshire, believed Whitney to have been a son of the Reverend James Whitney, of Donhead St. Andrews, and says the highwayman practised largely on Salisbury Plain.

The majority, believing in the Hertfordshire origin of Whitney, fortify their statements by very full and particular accounts of how he was apprenticed to a butcher at Hitchin. We have here an interpolated story of how he and his master went to Romford to purchase calves (Essex calves were so famous that a native of Essex nowadays is still an "Essex calf"). The owner of one particularly fine calf they greatly desired to purchase required too much for it. He happened to be also the keeper of an alehouse, as well as a stock-raiser. While the butcher and Whitney were refreshing themselves in the house and the butcher was grumbling because he could not buy the calf at what he considered a fair price, Whitney thought of an easier way, and whispered to his master that it would be foolish to give good money for the calf when it could be had for nothing. The butcher and Whitney thereupon exchanged knowing winks, and agreed to steal the calf that very night.

Unhappily for them, a man with a performing bear had in the meanwhile arrived, and the landlord, removing the calf from the stable where it had been placed, installed the bear in its place.

At last, night having fallen, master-butcher and apprentice paid their reckoning and prepared to go. Leaving the house, they loitered about until all was quiet, and then, the two approaching the outhouse where the calf had been, Whitney went in to fetch it. The bear was resting its wearied limbs when Whitney's touch roused it. He was astonished in the dark to feel the calf's hair was so long, and was still more astonished when he felt the animal rear itself up on its hind legs and put its arms lovingly round him. Meanwhile the butcher, wondering what could keep Whitney so long, began softly through the doorway to bid him be quick.

Whitney cried out that he could not get away, and he believed the devil himself had hold of him.

"If it is the old boy," rejoined his master, with a chuckle, "bring him out. I should like to see what kind of an animal he is."

But Whitney's evident terror and distress soon brought him to the rescue, and the bear was made to release her prey.

Before Whitney had served his full time with the butcher, his master cashiered him for idleness. After some little intervening time he became landlord of a small inn at Cheshunt. He was ever, says the author of The Jacobite Robber, a passionate admirer of good eating and drinking, especially at other people's expense. The inn, says our author, was the "Bell" or the "White Bear," he would not be sure which. If the "Bell," it was a sign he should presently make a noise over all England; if the "White Bear," a token that the landlord was of as savage a nature as any wild beast.

As a matter of fact, it appears to have been the "George"; but what significance may be extracted from that I do not know.

The inn did not pay its way on legitimate trading, and the people of Cheshunt wondered how Whitney could keep the pot boiling. Yet they need not have wondered, while they could see and hear, three or four times a week, a knot of roaring gentlemen, who sang, drank, swore, and revelled, the landlord himself joining in, until it seemed as if the place were thronged with old Lucifer and his club-footed emissaries. These guests were, in fact, highwaymen, as any one might have perceived, from their extravagant living and the unseasonable hours they kept.

At first Whitney had no hand in his customers' doings. As the quaint author of the tract already referred to says:

"It seems the conscientious Mr. Whitney, for all he was a well-wisher to the mathematicks and a friend to the tribe, did not at first care to expose his own dear person on the road; not that any one can justly tax him at the same time with cowardice, or want of valour (for had he been as plentifully stock'd with grace as he was with valour, he had never taken that employment upon him); but he prudently considered with himself that at present he ran no Risque of hanging for harbouring such people, and besides made a comfortable penny of them: Whereas, should he trade for himself, and scour the Highways to the Tune of Dammee, Stand and Deliver, he must certainly at one time or another make a Pilgrimage to Tybourn, and swinging in a Rope he had a Mortal Aversion to, because his Prophetical Grand-Mother had formerly told him it was a dry sort of a death.

"But at last an Old Experienced Brother of the Pad won him over to his Party, for, finding our Inn-keeper to be notably stored with all those ingredients and qualifications that are requisite to fit a Man for such a Vocation, he was resolved to leave no method unattempted till he had made an absolute conquest of him. In order to effect this, he represents to him the meanness and servile condition of his present calling, how he was obliged to stand cap in hand to every pitiful Rascal that came to spend Six-pence in his house; that with all his care and diligence he only got a little poor contemptible Pittance, scarce sufficient to pay his Brewer and Baker, but on the other hand, if he would be adopted into their society, he would find Money come flowing in like a Spring Tide upon him; he would live delicately, eat and drink of the Best, and in short, get more in an hour than now he did by Nicking, and Frothing and wrong Reckonings for a whole Twelve Month together. That, as for the Gallows, a Man of Courage and Bravery ought never to be afraid of it, and, should the worst come to the worst, better Gentleman by far than himself had made a Journey to the other World in their Shoes and Stockings."

Thus admonished, Whitney stripped off the inn-keeper's apron, sold off his inn, and took to the road, where he distinguished himself among the foremost highway gentry of his time. As his biographer is fain to acknowledge, he proved to have "inherited all the Courage, Boldness, and Dexterity of the famous Claude Du Vall and the Golden Farmer, and the rest of his other noble Predecessors of the Pad."

This admiring authority then proceeds to give us an account of Whitney's first action, and tells how "he encountered a Jolly Red-fac'd Son of the Church bravely Mounted, with a large Canonical Rose in his Ecclesiastical Hat and his Gown fluttering in the Wind. He looked as if he had been hung round with Bladders. Him, within two miles of St. Albans, he accosts after this manner, 'Reverend Sir, the Gentlemen of your Coat having, in all conscience, enough preached up the edifying Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, and now I am fully resolved to try the experiment, whether you Believe your own Doctrine, and whether you are able to Practise it. Therefore, worthy sir, in the name of the above-mentioned Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, make no opposition, I beseech you, but deliver up the filthy Lucre you carry about you.'

"Now you must know that this rosy-gilled Levite had the wicked sum of six-score and ten guineas clos'd up in the waistband of his breeches, designed as a present to a worthy gentleman that lately helped him to a fat living (for you must not call it Symony for all the world, but christen it by the name of Gratitude, and so forth) but Captain Whitney, who, it seems, did not understand any of these softening distinctions, soon eased him of his Mammon, but not without a great deal of expostulation on the Levite's part, and, what was more barbarous, stript him of his spick-and-span new sacerdotal habit, sent his Horse home before him, to prepare his family, and having bound him to his good behaviour, left him all alone to his contemplations in an adjoining wood."

He then met a poor clergyman in threadbare gown, riding a sorry Rosinante, whose poor ribs in a starved body looked like the bars of a bird-cage. What would the typical outlaw, from the days of Robin Hood, onwards, have done in such a rencounter? Why, he would have given the poor divine the new robe and some money; and this Whitney did; handing him four or five bags of the best, saying: "Here is that will buy you a dozen or so of clean bands!" "Thus," says the biographer, "our brave Captain dispensed charities with one hand and plundered with the other."

One day, patrolling Bagshot Heath, he met a gentleman, and desired his purse and watch.

"Sir," said the gentleman, "'tis well you spoke first, for I was just going to say the same thing to you."

"Why then," quoth Whitney, "are you a gentleman-thief?"

"Yes," replied the stranger, "but I have had very bad success to-day, for I have been riding up and down all this morning, without meeting with any prize."

Whitney, upon hearing this doleful tale, wished him better luck, and took his leave.

That night, Whitney and this strange traveller chanced to stay at the same inn, but Whitney had so changed his dress in the meanwhile, and altered his manner, that he was not recognised. He heard his acquaintance of that morning telling another guest how smartly he had outwitted a highwayman that day, and had saved a hundred pounds by his ready wit; and this revelation of how easily he had been hoodwinked made him determined, if it were at all possible, to take his revenge on the morrow. Meanwhile, he listened to the conversation.

The guest, who had been told of the adventure, replied that he also had a considerable sum upon him, and that he would like, if it were agreeable, to travel next day in company with so ready-witted a traveller.

Accordingly, the next morning they set forth together, and Whitney followed, a quarter of an hour later. He soon overtook them, and then, wheeling suddenly about, demanded their purses.

"We were going to say the same to you, sir," replied the ready-witted one.

"Were you so?" asked our hero; "and are you of my profession, then?"

"Yes," they both chorused.

"If you are," said Whitney, "I suppose you remember the old proverb, 'Two of a trade can never agree'; so you must not expect any favour on that score. But to be plain, gentlemen, the trick will do no longer: I know you very well, and must have your hundred pounds, sir; and your 'considerable sum,' sir," turning to the other; "let it be what it will, or I shall make bold to send a brace of bullets through each of your heads. You, Mr. Highwayman, should have kept your secret a little longer, and not have boasted so soon of having outwitted a thief. There is now nothing for you to do but to deliver or die!"

These terrible words threw them into a sad state of consternation. They were unwilling enough to lose their money, but even more unwilling to forfeit their lives; therefore, of two evils they promptly chose the least, and resigned their wealth.

Whitney then met on Hounslow Heath, one Mr. Hull, a notorious usurer, who lived in the Strand. He could hardly have chosen a wretch more in love with money, and therefore less willing to part with it. When the dreadful words, "Stand and deliver!" were spoken, he trembled like a paralytic and began arguing that he was a very poor man, had a large family of children, and would be utterly ruined if the highwayman were so hard-hearted as to take his money. Besides, it was a most illegal, also dangerous, action, to steal; to say nothing of the moral obliquity of those who did so.

"You dog in a doublet," exclaimed the now angered Whitney, "do you pretend to preach morality to an honester man than yourself. You make a prey of all mankind, and grind to death with eight and ten per cent. This once, however, sir, I shall oblige you to lend me what you have, without bond, consequently without interest: so make no more words."

The usurer thereupon reluctantly produced eighteen guineas, and handed them over with an ill grace, scowling darkly at the highwayman, and telling him he hoped one day to have the pleasure of seeing him riding up Holborn Hill, backwards.

It was a foolish thing to remind a gentleman of the road that he would probably some day be an occupant of the cart, travelling to Tyburn. Whitney had already turned to go when these words fell upon his ear; but he now turned back, thoroughly enraged.

"Now, you old rogue," said he, "let me see what a figure a man makes when he rides backwards, and let me have the pleasure, at least, of beholding you first in that posture."

With that, he pulled Hull off his horse, and then setting him on the animal's back again, face to tail, tied his legs together, and then gave the horse two or three cuts, so that it cantered smartly away and never stopped until Hounslow was reached; where the people, who knew the money-lender well and liked him little, had a hearty laugh at his expense before they untied him.

Whitney always affected to appear generous and noble. Meeting one day with a gentleman named Long, on Newmarket Heath, and having robbed him of a hundred pounds in silver, which he found in the traveller's portmanteau, tied up in a great bag, the gentleman told him he had a great way yet to go, and, as he was unknown upon the road, was likely to suffer great inconvenience and hardship, if he had not at least some small sum. Would he not give him back a trifle, to meet his travelling expenses?

Whitney opened the bag of silver, and held it out at arm's length towards him, saying: "Here, take what you have occasion for."

Mr. Long then put in his hand, and took out a handful, as much as he could hold; to which Whitney made no sort of objection, but only said, with a laugh: "I thought you would have had more conscience."

Smith tells a long story of how Whitney and his band one day met a well-known preacher, a Mr. Wawen, lecturer at Greenwich Church, and, easing him of his purse, made him preach a sermon on the subject of thieving. A very similar story is told of Sir Gosselin (?Joscelin) Denville and his outlaws, who in the reign of Edward the Second did surprising things all over England, not least among them the waylaying and robbing of a Dominican monk, Bernard Sympson by name, in a wood between Henley-on-Thames and Marlow, and afterwards compelling him to preach a sermon to like effect. Captain Dudley is said to have done the same; and indeed, whether it were the slitting of a weasand ("couper gorge, par ma foy," as Pistol might say), the taking of a purse, or the kissing a pretty woman, the highwaymen of old were all-round experts. But that they should have so insatiable a taste for "firstly, secondly, and thirdly, and then finally, dear brethren," I will not believe. Some ancient traditional highway robber once did so much, no doubt, and the freak has been duly fathered on others of later generations: just as the antique jests at the expense of College dons at Oxford and Cambridge are furbished up anew to fit the present age.

The Reverend Mr. Wawen responded as well as he could manage to Whitney's invitation, and, whether it be genuine or a sheer invention of Alexander Smith's, it is certainly ingenious, and much better reading than that said to have been preached by the Dominican monk, some three hundred and fifty years earlier.

"Gentlemen," began the lecturer from Greenwich church, "my text is THEFT; which, not to be divided into sentences or syllables, being but one word, which itself is only a monosyllable, necessity therefore obliges me to divide it into letters, which I find to be these five, T. H. E. F. T., Theft. Now T, my beloved, is Theological; H is Historical; E is Exegetical; F is Figurative; and T is Tropological.

"Now the theological part of my text is in two portions, firstly, in this world, and secondly, in the world to come. In this world, the effects it works are T, tribulation; H, hatred; E, envy; F, fear; and T, torment. For what greater tribulation can befall a man than to be debarred from sweet liberty, by a close confinement in a nasty prison, which must needs be a perfect representation of the Iron Age, since nothing is heard there but the jingling of shackles, bolts, grates, and keys; these last, my beloved, as large as that put up for a weathercock on St. Peter's steeple in Cornhill.

"However, I must own that you highwaymen may be a sort of Christians whilst under this tribulation, because ye are a kind of martyrs, and suffer really for the truth. Again, ye have the hatred of all honest people, as well as the envy of gaolers if you go under their jurisdiction without money in your pockets. I am sure all of your profession are very sensible that a gaoler expects, not only to distil money out of your irregularities, but also to grow fat by your curses; wherefore his ears are stopped to the cries of others, as God's are to his, and good reason too; for, lay the life of a man in one scale, and his fees in the other, he would lose the first to obtain the second.

"Next, ye are always in as much fear of being apprehended as poor tradesmen in debt are of the Serjeant, who goes muffled like a thief too, and always carries the marks of one, for he steals upon a man cowardly, plucks him by the throat, and makes him stand till he fleeces him. Only the thief is more valiant and the honester man of the two.

"And then, when ye are apprehended, nothing but torment ensues; for when ye are once clapt up in gaol, as I have hinted before, you soon come under the hangman's clutches, and he hangs you up, like so many dogs, for using those scaring words, 'Stand and deliver!'

"The effect which theft works in the world to come is eternal, and there is no helping it. I shall therefore proceed to the historical part of my text, which will prove, from ancient history, that the art of Theft is of some antiquity, inasmuch as that Paris stole Helen, Theseus stole Ariadne, and Jason stole Medea. However, antiquity ought to be no plea for vice, since laws, both Divine and human, forbid base actions, especially theft. For history again informs us that Sciron was thrown headlong into the sea for thieving: Cacus was killed by Hercules: Sisyphus was cut in pieces; Brunellus was hanged for stealing the ring of Angelicus; and the Emperor Frederick the Third condemned all thieves to the galleys.

"The Exegetical part of my text is a sort of commentary on what was first said, when I set forth that your transgressions were a breach of both divine and humane ordinances, which are utterly repugnant to all manner of theft; wherefore, if ye are resolved to pursue these courses still, note, my respect is such to you, although you have robbed me, that if you can but keep yourselves from being ever taken, I'll engage to keep you always from being hanged.

"The figurative part of my text is still to be set forth. Though I call you 'gentlemen,' yet in my heart I think ye to be all rogues; but I mollify my spleen by a Charientismus, which is a figure or form of speech mitigating hard matters with pleasant words. Thus, a certain man being apprehended, and brought before Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, for railing against him, and being demanded by Alexander why he and his company had so done, he made answer: 'Had not the wine been all drunk, we had spoken much worse.' Whereby he signified that those words proceeded rather from wine than malice, by which free and pleasant confession he assuaged Alexander's great displeasure, and obtained remission.

"But now, coming to the Tropological part of my text, which signifies drawing a word from its proper and genuine signification to another sense, as, in calling you most famous thieves; I desire your most serious attention, and that you will embrace this exhortation of St. Paul the apostle. 'Let him that stole, steal no more.' Or else the letters of my text point towards a tragical conclusion; for T, 'take care;' H, 'hanging;' E, 'ends not'; F, 'felony;' T, 'at Tyburn.'"

The parson having ended his sermon, which some of Whitney's gang took down in shorthand, they were so well pleased with what he had preached, that they were contented to pay him tithes; so, counting over the money they had taken from him, and finding it to be just ten pounds, they gave him ten shillings for his pains, and then rode away to seek whom they might next devour.

He then met Lord L—— shortly afterwards, near London, and robbed him single-handed. Knowing that his lordship moved in close attendance upon the King, William the Third, and perhaps being keenly conscious that the many serious robberies committed by himself and his men were drawing the net uncomfortably close around them, he made an offer to compound with the authorities. He said if the King would give him an indemnity for past offences, he would bring in thirty of his gang, for military service in Flanders. So saying, he whistled, and, quite in the Roderick Dhu style, twenty or thirty mounted bandits at once appeared.

Whitney, having thus given proofs of his words, continued that, if the King refused his offer, His Majesty might send a troop of Dutchmen to apprehend him and his, but they would find it a hard task to take any, and that he and his men would stand on their defence, and bid them defiance.

There is little or nothing of the "Jacobite Robber" in the stories told of Whitney; but it seems to have been fully recognised that he was a somewhat belated adherent of James the Second. He gathered around him a gang that varied in numbers according to circumstances, but was occasionally about thirty strong. These he was enabled by his superior courage and resource to captain; and with the imposing mounted force they presented, he laid many important and wealthy personages under contribution near London. It was doubtless his gang that stopped and robbed the great Duke of Marlborough of five hundred guineas near London Colney, on the night of August 23rd, 1692, and as a Jacobite, Whitney would be particularly pleased at the doing of it. It is almost equally certain that the numerous other rich hauls about that time on the St. Albans road were the handiwork of Whitney's party. On December 6th, 1692, there was a pitched battle between Whitney's force and a troop of dragoon patrols, near Barnet. One dragoon was killed, and several wounded, and Whitney is most circumstantially said to have then been captured; but as an even more circumstantial account tells us, with a wealth of detail, how he was finally captured in Bishopsgate Street, on December 31st, this cannot be altogether correct.

Was it, we wonder, his professed Jacobite views that made many travellers so good-humoured with him as they are said to have been when he lightened their pockets? A fellowship in political views does not in our own days necessarily make a stranger free of our purse. Whitney, for example, meeting Sir Richard B—— between Stafford and Newport, accosted him with a "How now? whither away?"

"To London," replied the knight; whereupon Whitney troubled him for £4.

Then, much to our surprise, we read of Sir Richard, who appears to have known Whitney very well by sight, saying, "Captain, I'll give you a breakfast, with a fowl or two." It would have come more naturally to read that he offered to give him in charge!

Whitney politely declined, but said he would drink to the knight's health then and there; and, halting a passing waggon, broached a cask out of it on the spot.

In spite of a conflict of testimony, it seems to be clearly established that Whitney was finally captured on December 31st, 1692. He appears to have at some earlier time been taken, after a desperate fight with a "bagonet," and lodged in Newgate, whence he broke out with a four-pound weight on each leg. On this last occasion he made a determined resistance at the door of the house in which he was beset, fighting for over an hour with the officers and the mob. Most of his gang were afterwards captured; including a livery-stable keeper, a goldsmith, and a man-milliner.

Whitney appears to have been a man of medium height, to have had a scarred face, and to have lost one thumb: sliced off, probably, in one of his encounters with the patrols.

He endeavoured to purchase his liberty by "offering to discover his accomplices, and those that give notice where and when money is conveyed on the road in coaches and waggons." This offer was not accepted, and the order went forth that he was to be hanged at the Maypole in the Strand. Then he shifted his ground to include more startling secrets that he was ready to divulge, "if he may have his pardon." Jacobite plots were the commonplaces of that day. King James was not greatly liked by even the most ardent Jacobite, but King William was detested, and even those who had placed William on the throne did so merely as a political expedient. Thus the personally unpopular King was for ever harassed with plots hatched to assassinate him; and when Whitney hinted, not obscurely, that he could tell terrible tales if he would, it was thought advisable to have the highwayman out in a sedan-chair and to take him to Kensington, under escort, that he might be examined, touching these plots. But it was soon discovered that he really knew nothing and that his idle "confessions" and "revelations" had no basis in fact.

He was not content to remain in Newgate in worn and shabby clothes.

"He had his taylor," says Luttrell, "make him a rich embroidered suit, with perug and hat, worth £100; but the keeper refused to let him wear them, because they would disguise him from being known."

That somewhat obscure phrase seems to mean that Whitney intended, under cover of his fine new suit, to make a dash for liberty.

His execution was finally fixed for February 1st, 1693, at Porter's Block, Smithfield. He made a very proper and a singularly restrained and well-chosen speech at the fatal spot:

"I have been a very great offender, both against God and my country, by transgressing all laws, human and divine. I believe there is not one here present but has often heard my name before my confinement, and have seen a large catalogue of my crimes, which have been made public since. Why should I then pretend to vindicate a life stained with deeds of violence? The sentence passed on me is just, and I can see the footsteps of Providence, which I had before profanely laughed at, in my apprehension and conviction. I hope the sense which I have of these things has enabled me to make my peace with Heaven, the only thing that is now of any concern to me. Join in your prayers with me, my dear countrymen, that God will not forsake me in my last moments."

"He seem to dye very penitent," says the original chronicler of these things: "and was an hour and a halfe in the cart before being turned off."