Richard Turpin, the hero of half a hundred plays, and of many hundred ballads and chap-book histories, now demands our attention. His name stands out, far and away above that of any other of the high-toby fraternity. Not Claude Du Vall himself owns half his celebrity, nor Hind, nor Whitney, nor Sixteen-String Jack. Ballad-mongers, playwrights of the old penny-gaff order, and novelists, with Harrison Ainsworth at their head, have ever united to do him honour and have conspired—innocently as a rule—to deprive another and a worthier highwayman of his due, in order to confer it upon "Dick." The familiar "Dick" itself shows us how the great public long ago took Turpin to its ample bosom, and cherished him, but the student of these things smiles a little sourly as he traces the quite unheroic doings of this exceptionally mean and skulking scoundrel, and fails all the time to note anything of a dashing nature in his very busy but altogether sordid career.

Turpin never rode that famous Ride to York upon Black Bess: another and an earlier than he by some sixty years—the bold and daring Nevison—performed that ride, as we have already shown; and the chivalry, the courtesy, and consideration, generally so much in evidence in the plays and the stories, are by no means found in the many contemporary reports of his doings.

Richard Turpin was born on September 21st, 1705, at the village of Hempstead, in Essex. There are those who find a fanciful appropriateness in the fact, that a man, whose wife was to become a "hempen widow," should have been born at a place so significantly named. Those who are curious enough to seek it, may duly find the record of the future highwayman's baptism in the parish register, and will find the baptism of an elder sister, Maria, recorded nearly three years and a half earlier, April 28th, 1702.

The Reverend William Sworder, vicar of Hempstead, who performed the baptism, and thereafter made an entry of it in his register, was evidently proud of his acquaintance with the language of the ancients, and less pleased with his native tongue, for his entries are generally in Latin: and thus we find the infant Dick and his parents figuring, "Richardus, filius Johannis et Mariae Turpin."

John Turpin at that time kept the inn that even now, somewhat altered perhaps in detail, looks across the road to the circle of pollard trees known as "Turpin's Ring," and thence up to the steep church-path. It was then, it appears, known as the "Bell," but at times is referred to as the "Royal Oak," and is now certainly the "Crown." Such are the difficulties that beset the path of the historian. Nor has this mere nomenclature of the ancestral roof-tree been the only difficulty. Were there not seven cities that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer? In like manner at least one other place, Thaxted, is said to have been Turpin's native home; but with the register as witness we can flatly disprove this, and give the honour of producing the famous person to Hempstead.

The youthful Turpin was apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel, and soon afterwards set up in business for himself at Waltham Abbey, at the same time marrying at East Ham a girl named Hester Palmer, whose father is said to have kept the "Rose and Crown" inn at Bull Beggar's Hole, Clay Hill, Enfield.

As a butcher, he introduced a novel method of business by which, except for the absurd and obstinate old-fashioned prejudices that stood in his way, he might soon have made a handsome competence. This method was simply that of taking your cattle wherever they might best be found, without the tiresome and expensive formality of buying and paying for them. It might conceivably have succeeded, too, except that he worked on too Napoleonic a scale, and stole a herd. It was a herd belonging to one "Farmer Giles," of Plaistow, and unfortunately it was traced to his door, and he had to fly. More restrained accounts, on the other hand, tell us it was only two oxen that were taken.

The Plaistow-Waltham Abbey affair rendered Turpin's situation extremely perilous, and he retired north-east in the Rodings district, generally called in those times "the Hundreds of Essex"—to "Suson," say old accounts, by which Seward-stone is meant.

But although a comparatively safe retreat, it was exceedingly dull, and nothing offered, either in the way of the excitements he now thirsted for, or by way of making a living. He was reduced to the at once mean and dangerous occupation of robbing the smugglers who then infested this, and indeed almost every other, country district. It was mean, because they, very like himself, warred with law and order; and dangerous, because although he might only attack solitary "freetraders," there was that strong fellow-feeling among smugglers that made them most ferociously resent interference with their kind. Turpin probably ran greater risks in meddling with them than he encountered at any other period in his career.

Sometimes he would rob them without any beating about the bush: at others he would make pretence of being a "riding-officer," i.e. a mounted Revenue officer, and would seize their goods "in the King's name."

But that line of business could not last long. Writers on Turpin generally say he wearied of it: but the truth is, he was afraid of the smugglers' vengeance, which, history tells us, could take fearful forms, scarcely credible in a Christian country, did we not know, by the irrefragible evidence of courts of justice, and by the terrible murders by smugglers in Hampshire, duly expiated in 1749, to what lengths those desperate men could go.

He turned again, therefore, to the neighbourhood of Waltham, and, with a few chosen spirits, haunted Epping Forest. There they established themselves chiefly as deer-stealers, and soon formed an excellent illicit connection with unscrupulous dealers in game in London, to whom they consigned many a cartload of venison, which generally travelled up to town covered over with an innocent-looking layer of cabbages, potatoes, or turnips.

But the prices they obtained for these supplies did not, in their opinion, pay them sufficiently for the work they did, or the risks they ran, and they then determined to throw in their lot with a notorious band of housebreakers and miscellaneous evil-doers, dreaded in Essex and in the eastern suburbs of London as "Gregory's Gang." The earliest of their exploits in this new class of venture was the robbing of Mr. Strype, who kept a chandler's shop at Watford, a district hitherto unaffected by them. They cleared the house of everything of any value, without offering Mr. Strype any violence (which was thought to be very good of them) and so disappeared; to reappear always unexpectedly in widely-sundered districts.

Nothing came amiss to them. In one night they robbed both Chingford and Barking churches, but found little worth their while; and then, in a manner most baffling to the authorities of those times, would for a time disband themselves and work separately, or some of them would lie entirely by for a while. An odd one or two would even be taken and hanged, which rendered it more than ever desirable for their surviving brethren to make themselves scarce for a time. But want of money was not long in bringing such generally spendthrift and improvident rogues back again to the calling they had chosen. Several among them were already too well and too unfavourably known as deer-stealers to the verderers of Epping Forest for their reappearance in those glades to be safe, but Turpin, among others, ventured. Mr. Mason, one of the chief of these verderers, rangers, or keepers, was especially active in putting down this poaching, and the gang vowed they would repay him for it. But more immediate schemes claimed their attention. First among these was a plan for robbing a farmhouse at Rippleside, near Barking. There would seem to have been eight or nine of them on this occasion. After their manner, they knocked at the door at night, and when, properly afraid of strangers coming after dark, the people refused to open, they rushed forward in a body and broke the door in. Having bound the farmer, his wife, his son-in-law, and the servant-maid, they ransacked the house, and stole £700.

"This will do!" exclaimed Turpin, captaining the band; adding regretfully, "if it were always so!"

The attack then made by the gang upon the house of Mr. Mason, the vigilant keeper of Epping Forest, was probably determined upon in the first instance from a desire rather to be revenged upon him for interfering with their earlier deer-stealing operations, than from the idea of plunder. Turpin was not present on this occasion, for although he had intended to take part in the act of vengeance, he was at the time in London, squandering his share of the Rippleside robbery, and in too advanced a state of intoxication to meet his accomplices as he had arranged to do.

Rust, Rose, and Fielder were the three concerned in the affair, and it clearly shows the spirit in which they entered upon it, when it is said that, before starting, they bound themselves by oath not to leave anything in the house undamaged. An oath would not necessarily be of any sacred quality of irrevocability with scoundrels of this or any other type, but when the compact fitted in with their own earnest inclinations, there was no difficulty in adhering to it.

Fielder gained admission to the house by scaling the garden wall and breaking in at the back door, then admitting the other two by the front entrance. Mason was upstairs, sitting with his aged father in his bedroom, when the three suddenly burst in upon them, and, seizing them, bound them hand and foot. They asked the old man if he knew them: he said he did not, and they then carried him downstairs and laid him, helplessly tied up, under the kitchen dresser. Mason, the keeper, had a sack forced over his head and tied round his waist; his little daughter, terrified at what she heard, slipping hurriedly out of bed and out of doors, and hiding in a pigstye.

The revengeful three then entered upon the work of wanton destruction upon which they had come. They first demolished a heavy fourpost bedstead, and then, each armed with a post, systematically visited every room in the house and battered everything to pieces. Carpets, curtains, bedclothing, and linen, and everything that could not be broken, were cut to shreds. Money had not been expected, but in smashing a china punch-bowl that stood somewhat out of the way, on a high shelf, down fell a shower of a hundred and twenty-two guineas, with which they went off, doubly satisfied with revenge and this unlooked-for plunder. They hastened up to London and joined Turpin at the Bun-House in the Rope Fields, and shared their booty fairly with him, although he had not been present to earn his portion—an unusual support of that generally misleading proverb, "There is honour among thieves."

From 1732 and onwards a solitary inn, on the then desolate, remote, and often flooded Hackney Marshes was greatly frequented by Turpin on his way to and from Epping and London. This inn, the "White House" by name, then kept by one Beresford, was the resort of sportsmen interested in cock-fighting. Turpin was known there as a private gentleman. The house was demolished and entirely rebuilt in 1900; but another at Tyler's Ferry, Temple Mills, also a white-faced house, remains, and claims a similar association.

On January 11th, 1735, Turpin and five of his companions, Ned Rust, George Gregory, Fielder, Rose, and Wheeler, went boldly to the house of a Mr. Saunders, a rich farmer at Charlton, Kent, between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, and, having knocked at the door, asked if Mr. Saunders were at home. When they learned that he was within, they rushed immediately into the house and found the farmer, with his wife and some friends, playing at cards. They told the company they would not be injured if they remained quiet, and then proceeded to ransack the house. First seizing a trifle in the way of a silver snuff-box that lay on the card-table, they left a part of their gang to stand guard over the party, while the rest took Mr. Saunders and forced him to act the part of guide, to discover the whereabouts of his valuables. They broke open some escritoires and cupboards, and stole about £100, exclusive of a quantity of plate. Meanwhile, the maid-servant had retreated into her room upstairs and bolted the door, and was calling "Thieves!" at the top of her voice, out of window. But the marauders presently found their way upstairs, broke open the door and secured and silenced her: not, apparently, doing her any considerable injury: and then at leisure thoroughly searched every corner of the house, and gleaned everything of a portable nature that was worth taking. There was no hurry. They discovered some relics of the late Christmas festivities in the larder, in the shape of mince-pies, and sat down impudently, with the master of the house and his friends, to partake of them. One of the gang, by careful foraging, had found a bottle of brandy, and broached it at the table, hospitably offering some to Mr. Saunders and his friends, and assuring them, with a quaint humour, that they were as welcome as could be to it. Mrs. Saunders did not, however, see the humour of it, and was fainting from terror; and so they mixed her some brandy-and-water, to revive her.

At length, having taken everything possible, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, they made off, declaring that if any of the family gave the least alarm within two hours, or if they dared to advertise the marks on the stolen plate, they would infallibly return at some future period, and murder them.

It was afterwards ascertained that they then retired to a public-house in Woolwich, near by, where the robbery had been planned, and soon afterwards crossed the river and resorted to an empty house in Ratcliffe Highway, where they deposited the plunder until they had found a purchaser ready to buy without asking any inconvenient questions.

A week later, the same gang visited the house of a Mr. Sheldon, near Croydon church. They arrived at about seven o'clock in the evening, and, finding the coachman in the stable, immediately gagged and bound him. Then, leaving the stable, they encountered Mr. Sheldon himself, in the yard, come to hear what the unaccustomed sounds of scuffling and struggling in the stable could mean. The unfortunate Mr. Sheldon was then compelled to act as guide over his own house, and to show the gang where all his valuables resided. Jewels, plate, and other valuable articles were removed, together with a sum of eleven guineas; but at the last moment, they returned two guineas, and apologised more or less handsomely for their conduct. They then had the effrontery to repair to the "Half Moon" tavern, close at hand, and to each take a glass of spirits there, and to change one of the guineas of which they had robbed Mr. Sheldon.

The manners of the gang would thus appear to be mending, but their unwonted politeness did not last long, as we shall presently see.

In giving some account of the doings of Turpin, either singly or in association with others, it is desirable, as far as possible, to tell his story largely by the aid, and in the exact words, of the newspapers of the time. Only in this manner is it likely that a charge of exaggeration can be avoided. Where all have boldly enlarged upon the popular theme and have as richly brocaded it as their imaginations permit, to revert to plain facts becomes a healthy exercise.

The London Evening Post of February 6th, 1735, is the original authority for the next two incidents; two of the foremost in all popular accounts of Turpin's life. So much extravagant nonsense has been written, and is still being written, and will yet continue to be written about Dick Turpin, that any original documents about him are particularly valuable. They help to show us what we must discredit and what we may safely retain. Indeed, without such newspaper paragraphs, the conscientious writer, faced with the flood of indubitably spurious Turpin "literature," might in his impatience with its extravagance, refuse to credit any portion of it. But the newspapers of that day serve amply to show that in this case, truth is equally as strange as fiction. Not stranger, as the proverb would have us believe, but certainly as strange.

Thus we read in the London Evening Post: "On Saturday Night last, about Seven o'Clock, five Rogues enter'd the House of the Widow Shelley, at Loughton in Essex, having Pistols etc., and threaten'd to murder the old Lady, if she did not tell them where her Money lay, which she obstinately refusing for some Time, they threaten'd to lay her across the Fire if she did not instantly tell them, which she would not do; but her Son being in the Room, and threaten'd to be murder'd, cry'd out, he would tell them if they would not murder his Mother, and did; whereupon they went up Stairs and took near £100, a Silver Tankard, and other Plate, and all Manner of Household Goods; they afterwards went into the Cellar, and drank several Bottles of Ale and Wine, and broil'd some Meat, eat the Relicts of a Fillet of Veal, etc. While they were doing this, two of their Gang went into Mr. Turkle's, a Farmer's, who rents one End of the Widow's House, and robb'd him of above £20 and then they all went off, taking two of the Farmer's Horses to carry off their Luggage; the Horses were found on Sunday Morning in Old Street; they staid (the Rogues, not the horses) about three Hours in the House."

This house, still in existence, although part of it has been rebuilt, is identified with a place now styled "Priors," but at that time known as "Traps Hill Farm." The heavy outer door, plentifully studded with nail-heads, is said to have been added after this visit.

This incident is probably the original of the story told of Turpin holding the landlady of the "Bull" inn, Shooter's Hill, over the fire; although it is inherently possible that he and his scoundrelly crew, having certainly threatened to do as much at Loughton, and having done the like to a farmer at Edgeware, actually perpetrated the atrocity.

The startling paragraph already quoted is followed immediately by another report, a good deal more startling: "On Tuesday Night," it says, very circumstantially, "about Eight o'Clock, five Villains"—it will be noticed that by this time the "Rogues" of the earlier narration have become "Villains," and their conduct, by natural consequence, infinitely more heinous—"came to the House of Mr. Lawrence, a Farmer at Edgewarebury, near Edgeware, in Middlesex, but the Door being bolted, they could not get in, so they went to the Boy who was in the Sheep-house, and compell'd him to call the Maid, who open'd the Door; upon which they rush'd in, bound the Master, Maid, and one Man-Servant, and swore they would murder all the Family, if they did not discover their Money, etc.; they trod the bedding under foot, in case there should be money hidden in it, and took about £10 in Money, Linnen etc., all they could lay their Hands on, broke the old Man's Head, dragg'd him about the House, emptied a kettle of water from the fire over him, which had fortunately only just been placed on it, and ravish'd the Maid, Dorothy Street, using her in a most barbarous Manner, and then went off, leaving the Family bound, lock'd the Door, and took the key away with them: The Son, who came Home soon after they were gone, call'd the Boy to take his Horse, but could make nobody hear, but at last the old Man call'd out, and told him Rogues had been there" (surely, he meant "Villains"), "as they were all bound, and that the Rogues said they would go rob his Brother; whereupon he rode and alarm'd the Town, went to his Brother's, but they had not been there; they pursued them to the Turnpike, and found they had been gone through for London about an Hour. They were all arm'd with Pistols, and one had a Handkerchief all over his Face."

Neither of these accounts mentions the name of Turpin, but these outrages were immediately ascribed to a gang of which he was a member.

The same evening journal of February 11th has a later account: "Mr. Lawrence, the Farmer at Edgeware-Bury, who was robb'd last Week (as we mention'd) lies so ill, of the Bruises etc., he receiv'd, that its question'd whether he'll recover: the Rogues, after he had told them where his Money was, not finding so much as they expected, let his Breeches down, and set him bare—on the Fire, several times; which burnt him prodigiously."

There seems, by this account, to have been much in common between this gang and those "chauffeurs" described by Vidocq in his Memoirs; bands of robbers who pervaded the country districts of France, and adopted the like methods of persuasion with people who could not otherwise be made to disclose the whereabouts of their hoards.

This ferocious attack upon the farm at Edgewarebury was the first of a series in which the gang appeared on horseback. They had already done so well that they felt they could no longer deny themselves the luxury of being fully-furnished highwaymen. But they did not purchase; they merely hired; and imagination pictures some of them as very insufficient cavaliers, holding on by their horses' necks. For it is not given to a footpad, graduating in the higher branch of his profession, instantly to command an easy seat in the saddle; and the scene at the "Old Leaping Bar" inn, High Holborn, whence they set out to ride to the "Ninepin and Bowl" at Edgeware, must have been amusing in the extreme.

Six of Turpin's gang assembled next on the 7th of February at the "White Bear" inn, Drury Lane, and planned to rob the house of a Mr. Francis, a farmer in the then rural fields of Marylebone. Arriving at the farm about dusk, they first saw a man in a cowshed and seized and bound him, declaring they would shoot him if he should dare to make any attempt to break loose, or to cry out. In the stable they found another man, whom they served in the like manner. Scarcely had they done this when they met Mr. Francis at his own garden gate, returning home. Three of the gang laid their hands upon his shoulders and stopped him; and the farmer, thinking it to be a freak of some silly young fellows, out for the evening, was not at all alarmed. "Methinks you are mighty funny, gentlemen," he said good-humouredly; upon which, showing him their pistols in a threatening manner, he saw his mistake.

No harm, they said, should come to him if he would but give his daughter a note by one of them, authorising her to pay bearer a hundred pounds in cash.

Mr. Francis declared he could not do so; he had not anything like that amount in the house; upon which they ran him violently into the stable and tied him up also. Then, knocking at the door of the house, and Miss Francis opening it, they pushed into the passage and secured her as well. The foremost men were particularly rude and violent, but Turpin, who came in at the rear, appears to have remonstrated with them about this gross usage, and to have stopped it: only assuring her that it would be best she remained quiet, and that if she made any resistance she would be treated even worse.

A maid-servant, hearing this, cried out, "Lord, Mrs. Sarah! what have you done?"

One of the gang then struck the maid, and another hit Miss Francis, and swore they would be murdered if they did not hold their peace.

Mrs. Francis, hearing the disturbance from an inner room, called out, "What's the matter?" on which Fielder ran forward, and crying "D——n you, I'll stop your mouth presently!" broke her head with the handle of a whip he carried, and then tied her to a chair.

Miss Francis and the maid were tied to the kitchen-dresser, and Gregory was deputed to watch them, with a pistol in his hand, lest they should cry out for assistance or try to struggle free while the others were raiding the house.

A not very considerable reward met their unhallowed industry; including a silver tankard, a gold watch and chain, a silver medal of Charles the First, a number of minor silver articles, and four or five gold rings. A find of thirty-seven guineas was more to the point, and a brace of pistols was not to be despised. They were even so particular about details, in the hour-and-a-half search they made, that they took away with them such inconsiderable items as a wig, six handkerchiefs, four shirts, a velvet hat, and some pairs of stockings. A frugal and meticulous gang, this!

As a result of these bold attacks in the suburbs of London, a great feeling of indignation and insecurity arose, and a reward of £100 was at once offered for the apprehension of the gang, or of any members of it. Information having come to some of the Westminster peace-officers that these confederates were accustomed to meet in an alehouse situated in a low alley in Westminster, the place was beset, and Turpin, Fielder, Rose, and Wheeler were found there. After a short fight with cutlasses, the last three were secured. No one appears to have been seriously hurt in this affray, except the usual harmless, innocent person, present by mere chance; in this case, a certain Bob Berry, who received a dangerous cut on the arm, below the elbow. Turpin dexterously escaped out of window, and, obtaining a horse (not the celebrated "Black Bess," who never existed outside the imagination of Harrison Ainsworth and the pages of his Rookwood), rode away to fresh fields and pastures new. Fielder and Rose were tried and found guilty, chiefly on the testimony of Wheeler, who turned King's evidence. They were hanged at Tyburn, and afterwards gibbeted.

The Gentleman's Magazine refers shortly to the execution, and includes a certain, or an altogether uncertain, Saunders: "Monday, March 10th, the following malefactors, attended by a guard of fifty soldiers, were executed at Tyburn, appearing bold and undaunted; viz. Rose, Saunders, and Fielder, the Country Robbers." It is significant of the horrors of that era that ten others were hanged in company with them, for various crimes.

The gang was thus broken up, but rogues have, as it were, a magnetic attraction for one another, and Turpin was not long alone. It must have been a dull business waiting solitary on suitable, i.e. dark or foggy, nights in lonely situations for unsuspecting wayfarers; an experience calculated to get on the nerves, and so it is scarcely remarkable that many highwaymen elected to hunt in couples; although in the long run it was safer to work alone and unknown. No fear then of treachery on the part of a trusted comrade, always ready to "make a discovery," as the technical phrase ran, to save his own neck from the rope, a little while longer.

But Turpin seems to have sought, and found, one companion for a little while, for he duly appears in an account of how two gentlemen were robbed about eight o'clock on the evening of July 10th, between Wandsworth and Barnes commons, "by two Highwaymen, suppos'd to be Turpin the Butcher, and Rowden the Pewterer, the remaining two of Gregory's Gang, who robb'd them of their Money and dismounted them; made them pull off their Horse's Bridles, then turning them loose, they rode off towards Roehampton, where a Gentleman was robb'd (as suppos'd by the same Highwaymen), of a Watch and £4 in Money."

Old maps of this district hint, not obscurely, that this was no mere isolated, chance danger in the neighbourhood; for the eye, roaming along those charts, towards Richmond, notes "Thieves' Corner" boldly marked at what is now the junction of the Sheen Road and Queen's Road, where the "Black Horse" of old, a very shy and questionable kind of brick-built, white-washed alehouse, stood until it was pulled down about the year 1902 and rebuilt in the flashy modern style. Adjoining, was, and still is, for that matter, "Pest House Common": cheerful name! while Rocque's map of 1745, not marking that inimical corner, transfers the affected area to the stretch of highway between Marshgate and Manor Road and Richmond Town, and styles it "Thieves' Harbour." On the opposite side, in sharp contrast, is marked "Paradise Row." Rocque also styles the common, "Pestilent Common." Altogether, in fact, a pestilent neighbourhood.

How well-named was "Thieves' Corner" we may perhaps judge from a brief and matter-of-fact account (as though it were but an ordinary occurrence, demanding little notice) of a Reverend Mr. Amey, "a country clergyman who lodges at the 'Star' inn, in the Strand," being robbed two nights earlier than the foregoing robbery "two miles this side of Richmond in Surrey, of his Silver Watch, four Guineas, and some Silver, by two Highwaymen, well-mounted and well-dress'd. The Rogues turn'd his Horse loose and went off towards Richmond."

Again, this time in the Grub Street Journal of July 24th, 1735, we find a trace of the busy Dick, in the following: "Monday, Mr. Omar, of Southwark, meeting between Barnes-Common and Wandsworth, Turpin the butcher, with another person, clapt spurs to his horse, but they coming up with him, oblig'd him to dismount, and Turpin suspecting that he knew him, would have shot him, but was prevented by the other, who pull'd the pistol out of his hand."

On Sunday, August 16th, Turpin and Rowden the Pewterer seem to have been particularly busy and to have had a good day; for it is recorded by the same authority that they robbed several gentlemen on horseback and in coaches. The district they favoured on this occasion was the Portsmouth Road between Putney and Kingston Hill.

In another fortnight's time or so, having made these parts of Surrey too hot to hold them longer, and being apparently unwilling to transfer their activities beyond ten or twelve miles' radius from London, they opened a most aggressive campaign in suburban Kent. "We hear," says the Grub Street Journal of October 16th, "that for about six weeks past, Blackheath has been so infested by two highwaymen (suppos'd to be Rowden and Turpin) that 'tis dangerous for travellers to pass. On Thursday Turpin and Rowden had the insolence to ride through the City at noonday, and in Watling Street they were known by two or three porters, who had not the courage to attack them; they were indifferently mounted, and went towards the bridge; so 'tis thought are gone the Tonbridge road."

It was while patrolling the road towards Cambridge (on Stamford Hill, according to some historians) that Turpin first met Tom King. Observing a well-dressed and well-mounted stranger riding slowly along, Turpin spurred up to him, presented a pistol, and demanded his money. The stranger merely laughed, which threw Turpin into a passion, and he threatened him with instant death if he did not comply. King—for it was he—laughed again, and said, "What! dog eat dog? Come, come, brother Turpin; if you don't know me I know you, and shall be glad of your company."

This was the beginning of an alliance. These brethren in iniquity soon struck up a bargain, and, immediately entering on business, committed so large a number of robberies that no landlord of any wayside inn of the least respectability cared to welcome them, for fear of being indicted for harbouring such guests. Thus situated, they fixed on a spot between the King's Oak and the Loughton road, in Epping Forest, where they made a cave, "large enough to receive them and their horses," says an old account. This was enclosed within a thicket of bushes and brambles, through which they could look, without themselves being observed. From this station they used to issue, and robbed such numbers of persons that at length the very pedlars who travelled the road carried firearms for their defence. At such times when they could not safely stir from this hiding-place, Turpin's wife was accustomed to secretly convey to them such articles of food and such other things as might be necessary to their comfort. When, at a later period, Turpin's cave was discovered, and he was reduced to skulking about the forest, it was found to be by no means a despicable retreat. It was dry, and carpeted with straw, hay, and dry leaves; and such articles as two clean shirts, two pairs of stockings, a piece of ham, a bottle of wine, and some feminine apparel, served to show that this was not altogether an anchorite's cell. Some old accounts go so far as to say that Turpin altogether occupied this cave for six years, but that is not credible.

One day, as Turpin and Tom King were spying up and down the road from their cave, through the screen of furze and bramble that hid them from passers-by, they saw a gentleman driving past whom King knew very well as a rich City merchant, of Broad Street. He was on his way to his country estate at Fairmead Bottom, in a carriage with his children. King made after him, and on the Loughton road called upon the coachman to stop. The merchant, however, was a man of spirit, and offered a resistance, supposing there to be only one highwayman; upon which, King called Turpin, by the name of "Jack," and bid him hold the horses' heads. They then proceeded to take his money, which he parted with, without any further trouble; but strongly demurred to parting with his watch, which he said was a family heirloom, the gift of his father. The altercation, although short, was accompanied by threats and menaces and frightened the children, who persuaded their father to give up the watch; and then an old mourning ring became an object of dispute. Its value was very small, but King insisted upon having it, when Turpin interposed and said they were not so ungentlemanly as to deprive a traveller of such a relic, and bade King desist. This concession prompted the merchant to ask whether they would not, as a favour, permit him to repurchase his watch from them; upon which King said: "Jack, he seems to be a good, honest fellow; shall we let him have the watch?"

"Aye," said Turpin; "do as you will."

The merchant, then inquiring the price, King replied, "Six guineas," adding, "we never sell one for more, even though it be worth six-and-thirty." Then the merchant promised not to discover them, and said he would leave the money at the "Sword Blade" coffee-house in Birchin Lane, and no questions asked.

The Country Journal for April 23rd, 1737, says that on Saturday, April 16th, as a gentleman of West Ham and others were travelling to Epping, "the famous Turpin and a New Companion of his came up and attack'd the Coach, in order to rob it; the Gentleman had a Carbine in the Coach, loaded with Slugs, and seeing them coming, got it ready, and presented it at Turpin, on stopping the Coach, but it flash'd in the Pan; upon which says Turpin 'G—d D—— you, you have miss'd me, but I won't you,' and shot into the Coach at him, but the Ball miss'd him, passing between Him and a Lady in the Coach; and then they rode off towards Ongar, and dined afterwards at Hare Street, and robbed in the Evening several Passengers on the Forest between Loughton and Romford, who knew him; he has not robb'd on that Road for some Time before."

It is possible that this adventure gave Turpin the idea of providing himself with a carbine and slugs in addition to his pistols, for, following the contemporary newspaper record of his movements, we learn from several London papers, notably the London Daily Post and the Daily Advertiser, that when a servant of Thompson, one of the under-keepers of Epping Forest, went in search of him and his retreat in those leafy recesses, with a higgler on Wednesday, May 4th, Turpin shot the man dead with a charge of slugs from a carbine. Detailed accounts set forth how Mr. Thompson's servant, animated with hopes of a hundred pounds reward, went out, armed with a gun, in company with the higgler, in search for Turpin. When they came near his hiding-place, the highwayman saw them, and, taking them for sportsmen, called out that there were no hares near that thicket.

"No," replied Mr. Thompson's man, "but I have found a Turpin!" and, presenting his gun, required him to surrender.

Turpin, replying to him in a friendly manner, and at the same time gradually retreating into the cave, slyly seized his carbine, and shot him in the stomach.

He then fled from the Forest, and was reported, by the London Daily Post of May 12th, to have been very nearly captured in the small hours of the morning of the 11th by three peace-officers, who, late the night before, received information that he proposed to sleep at a certain house near Wellclose Square. Three men accordingly beset the house, but they were observed by a woman on the look-out, and Turpin, hurriedly aroused, fled through the roof, and over the chimneypots of the adjoining houses.

It will be observed by these various newspaper paragraphs and scattered notices, that Turpin was always changing his associates, and it is obvious that the stories which would have us believe he and Tom King set up an exclusive partnership, are not to be implicitly believed. Turpin and the many of his kind, with whom he associated from time to time, no doubt, worked together or apart, or in alliance with others, just as changing circumstances from week to week dictated.

Tom King is usually said to have been killed under dramatic circumstances in the yard of the "Red Lion" inn, at the corner of the Whitechapel Road and Leman Street; but although we read much of him in the picturesque romances of the highway, it is by no means easy to trace Tom's movements, and he remains, whatever brave figure he may be in fiction, a very shadowy figure as seen in recorded facts. He, it appears, was one of three brothers. The other two were named Matthew and Robert, and it was really Matthew King who was mortally wounded in the yard of the "Red Lion" in 1737, in the affray with the Bow Street runners. The newspapers of the time record how, a week later, he died of his wounds in the New Prison, Clerkenwell, on May 24th.

The affair was the outcome of Turpin having stolen a fine horse of considerable celebrity at that time, a racehorse named "White Stockings," belonging to a Mr. Major, who, riding it, was overtaken one evening by Turpin, Tom King, and a new ally of theirs, named Potter, near the "Green Man," Epping. Turpin made him dismount and exchange horses, and took away his riding-whip; and then the three confederates went their way to London.

Mr. Major immediately made his loss known at the "Green Man," to Mr. Bayes, the landlord, who at once said: "I daresay Turpin has done it, or one of that crew," and then advised him the best thing to do would be to get a number of handbills immediately printed, describing the horse, and offering a reward. It was characteristic of the thoroughpaced rascality of Turpin, that the very horse he had compelled Mr. Major to change with him was stolen. It was identified as one that had been missing from Plaistow marshes. And the saddle had been stolen too, and was afterwards claimed.

Although this was on Saturday night, the handbills were at once struck off and put into circulation, and by Monday morning information was brought to the "Green Man," that a horse answering the description of "White Stockings," had been left at the "Red Lion," in the Whitechapel Road. The innkeeper went to the house with some Bow Street runners, determined to wait there until some one called for the horse; and about eleven o'clock at night Matthew King came for it. When he was seized, he declared he had bought the animal; but a whip he held in his hand proved to be the identical one stolen by Turpin, and although a portion of the handle had been broken off, Mr. Major's name could still be read on it. An offer was made to Matthew King, that he would be released if he would disclose the actual robber, and he thereupon said it was a stout man in a white duffel coat, who was at that moment waiting in the street.

A movement was then made to capture the man in the duffel coat, who proved to be Tom King; but he resisted and fired at his would-be captors. The pistol merely flashed in the pan, and King then attempted to draw another; but it got twisted in his pocket, and Bayes' hands were being laid upon him, when he cried out to Turpin, who was waiting on horseback at a little distance, "Dick, shoot him, or we are taken, by God!"

Turpin was heavily armed. Nothing less than three brace of pistols contented him, in addition to a carbine slung across his back. He fired, and shot (the stories say) Tom King.

"Dick, you have shot me; make off," the wounded man is represented as saying, but is afterwards said to have cursed him for a coward, and to have informed the authorities that if they wanted him, he might most likely be found at a certain place on Hackney Marsh: indicating, no doubt, the "White House."

Turpin is indeed said to have at once made for that retreat and to have exclaimed, "What shall I do? where shall I go? d——n that Dick Bayes, I'll be the death of him, for I have lost the best fellow I ever had in my life. I shot poor King in endeavouring to kill that dog."

That is the accepted version, but it seems to be incorrect in several particulars. As before mentioned, Matthew King was the victim of that ill-considered aim. A somewhat different account is given in Turpin's alleged confessions to the hangman, printed in the, in most respects, reliable pamphlet narrating his life and trial, published in York in four editions in 1739. In those pages Turpin "said he was confederate with one King, who was executed in London some time since, and that once, being very near taken, he fired a pistol in the crowd, and by mistake, shot the said King in the thigh, who was coming to rescue him."

That entirely reverses the position, and may or may not be an imperfectly recollected account of what Turpin said.

There is no doubt that a Tom King, a highwayman, was executed at Tyburn, in 1753, many years after the Tom King who was supposed to have been shot dead.

If Turpin had been really so terrified for his safety after the Whitechapel affair as represented, he must speedily have recovered himself, for he was busy all that month in his vocation. Comrades might die tragically, but his own pockets, always leaking like a colander, must be replenished. Really, however narrowly the career of this much-discussed highwayman is scanned, it seems hopeless to paint a consistent picture of him. He was, by the testimony of many witnesses, a cowardly fellow, not often with sufficient resolution to rob unaccompanied, and even on those occasions when he did play a lone hand, he wore a perfect armoury of weapons and attacked only the unarmed. One Gordon, lying at Newgate on a charge of highway robbery, told how he had once proposed to Turpin that himself and his brother, Turpin, and another should seize the money going down to pay the King's ships at Portsmouth. They were to stand in a very narrow pass and with swords and pistols attack the convoy. The scheme recalls the fine mid-seventeenth century exploits of "Mulled Sack" and his contemporaries, and if the enterprise had been undertaken, a splendid booty might have become theirs. But Turpin's courage failed him, and he backed out. Gordon said he was sure Turpin would be guilty of many cowardly actions, and die like a dog. His career, although a busy one, never touched great heights, and was commonly concerned with mean thefts and raids, but he must have been possessed of some nerve to continue actively robbing in the neighbourhood of London where he was so well known, after a hundred pounds was advertised to be waiting for any one who brought about his arrest. It is not merely a tradition that he so continued: we have the facts abundantly in the public prints of the time.

Thus, the London Magazine has this note respecting him: "The noted Highwayman, Turpin the Butcher, (who lately kill'd a Man who endeavour'd to take him on Epping Forest) this Night robbed several Gentlemen in their Coaches and Chaises at Holloway and the back Lanes at Islington, and took from them several Sums of Money. One of the Gentlemen signified to him that he had reigned a long Time, and Turpin replied, ''Tis no matter for that. I am not afraid of being taken by you; therefore don't stand hesitating, but give me the Cole.'" (Or, by another account, "the coriander-seed.")

A London newspaper of the close of May is found stating that "Turpin, the renown'd Butcher-Highwayman, committed a robbery almost every day this month."

But these were his last exploits in the neighbourhood of London. The position presently grew so difficult that the merest elementary instincts of self-preservation suggested a flight to other scenes.

By a proclamation issued in the London Gazette of June 25th, 1737, "His Majesty was pleased to promise his most gracious pardon to any of the Accomplices of Richard Turpin who shall discover him, so that he may be apprehended and convicted of the Murder, or any of the Robberies he has committed; as likewise a Reward of £200 to any Person or Persons who shall discover the said Criminal, so that he may be apprehended and convicted as aforesaid; over and above all other Rewards to which they may be entitled." In this proclamation, Turpin is described as being 5 feet 9 inches in height, and it further appears that he was not by any means the prepossessing and even elegant figure he presents in the engraving that shows him reclining exquisitely in his cave; dainty boots on his feet, and a ladylike hand thrown over his carbine. He had high cheekbones, his face tapered to a narrow point at his chin, and he was deeply pitted with small-pox.

Really, he was, it will be gathered, not an engaging ruffian; but there is, unfortunately, no portrait existing which can lay the slightest claim to be authentic. A rough woodcut, no doubt from the strictly unauthentic imagination of the wood engraver, or the wood-chopper who engraved, or rather hewed it out, appears in one of the popular old chap-books, and shows him to have rather a plentiful development of chin and an expression that somewhat baffles description, but which conveys the very decided impression that he was not the kind of person one would much like to meet in a lonely lane on a dark night.

Rowden the Pewterer, whom we have shown to have accompanied Turpin so frequently in 1735, chiefly in his adventures in Surrey, was taken about this time and transported in July 1737.

With the price of £200 upon his head, and with the additional promise of a pardon for any accomplice who would betray him, Turpin's position was now more than ever desperate. He fully realised this, and took the only possible course, that of removing himself into the country, far away from his accustomed haunts. After three months at Long Sutton, in Lincolnshire, he appears to have selected Yorkshire as the safest part, and staying some time at the ferry-house. Brough, and then at Market Cave and North Cave, to have settled at Welton, ten miles from Beverley, in October 1737. There he posed as a gentleman horse-dealer, Palmer by name. Sometimes he would range southward to Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, but always where he went the farmers and others missed their horses, in the most mysterious way. No one suspected the "gentleman" horse-dealer, who mixed freely in the company of the Yorkshire yeomen and knew a thing or two about cock-fighting and proved himself a singularly good judge of stock—qualities which would render any one popular at that time, with the Yorkshire tykes. His ugly mug was a mere accident, and as for his rough manners, why the tykes themselves were rough and ready, and so they easily excused, or perhaps even did not notice, his overbearing ways.

But his evil temper got the better of him one day, when, returning from a shooting expedition, and being perhaps half-drunk, he wantonly shot one of his neighbour's fowls. When the owner resented this, Turpin, or "Palmer," threatened to serve him in the same way (i.e. "if he would only stay till he had charged his piece, he would shoot him too"), and in the result he was arrested on a charge of brawling, at the "Green Man" inn. When he came before the magistrates in Quarter Sessions at Beverley, the singular fact was discovered that this man, so well known in the neighbourhood, had many acquaintances, but no friends who would speak to his character or go bail for him. It then appeared that he had come as an entire stranger to the district less than two years earlier; and in short, in one way and another, it was all at once discovered that he was a suspicious character, whose doings had better be investigated. He was accordingly remanded, and enquiries resulted in his being charged with stealing a black mare, blind of the near eye, off Heckington Common, in Lincolnshire, near Sleaford. He had declared himself a native of Long Sutton, and said his father lived there and his sister kept house for him. He had been, he continued, in business there, but had been obliged to abscond, owing to his having contracted some debts he found himself unable to pay, in an unfortunate transaction in which he had bought some sheep that had proved to be diseased. Enquiries proved these statements to be entirely false. He had no relations at Long Sutton, but he was known there, and badly wanted, as a sheep-stealer, suspected also of horse-stealing.

It is significant of Turpin's activity in horse-stealing, that the Worcester Journal of September 29th, 1738, has the following curious item: "A few days since, the Father of the noted Turpin was committed to Chelmsford Gaol, for having in his Possession a Horse supposed to be stolen out of Lincolnshire, which, he pleads, was left with him by his Son, to pay for Diet and Lodging." Research fails to discover the result of this committal.

John Palmer, or Richard Turpin, was sent from Beverley to York Castle to stand his trial at the assizes for stealing the horse from Heckington; and from his grim dungeon cell, still in existence in the Castle, he wrote a letter to his brother, or, according to the evidence at his trial, his brother-in-law, at Hempstead, asking him to be a referee as to character:

York, Feb. 6, 1639.
"Dear Brother,

"I am sorry to acquaint you that I am now under confinement in York Castle, for horse-stealing. If I could procure an evidence from London to give me a character, that would go a great way towards my being acquitted. I had not been long in this county before my being apprehended, so that it would pass off the readier. For heaven's sake, my dear brother, do not neglect me; you will know what I mean when I say,

"I am, your's,
"John Palmer."

The letter was not prepaid, and the recipient, not recognising the handwriting of the address, refused to receive it and pay the sixpence demanded. As it happened, Mr. Smith, the schoolmaster who had taught Turpin to write, saw the letter, and recognising the handwriting, carried it to the magistrates, so that it might legally be opened, and perhaps the very much wanted Turpin be arrested from the information it possibly contained. Perhaps this public-spirited person really thought he saw a chance of obtaining the £200 reward offered; but, however that may be, the letter disclosed the fact that Turpin was lying in prison at York, and Smith eventually appeared at the trial and identified him. It is not known who, if indeed any one, received the reward.

The rumour that Turpin had been taken, and was a prisoner in York Castle, was no sooner circulated than people flocked from all parts to get a sight of him, and debates ran very high whether he was the real person or not. This making a holiday show of a prisoner in his cell seems odd to us moderns; but it was then, as we see constantly in these pages, the usual thing, and a practice that greatly enriched the turnkeys; or the warders, as we should call them.

Among others who visited Turpin was a young fellow who pretended to know the famous highwayman. After having looked for a considerable time at the prisoner, he turned to the warder on duty, and said he would bet him half a guinea this was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin, in his turn inclining to the warder, whispered, with cynical humour, "Lay him the wager, you fool, and I'll go you halves!"

The trial of "John Palmer, alias Paumer, alias Richard Turpin," as the official account of the proceedings has it, took place at the York Assizes, March 22nd, 1739, "before the Hon. Sir William Chapple, one of His Majesty's Justices of the Court of King's Bench, for stealing a black gelding, the property of Thomas Creasy."

Thomas Creasy deposed that in the August of 1738 he was owner of the black gelding, and missed it on the eighteenth of the month. He had hired men and horses, and had ridden some forty miles to try and obtain news of its whereabouts, and had paid criers to cry it in different market towns. He had also told one Richard Grasby of his loss, and described the animal to him, and at a later date Grasby told him his horse was at an inn called the "Blue Bell" at Beverley. He then went to Beverley and saw the landlord of the "Blue Bell," and described the horse to him as a black gelding, with a little star on his forehead. The landlord then took him to the stable and showed him the horse.

James Smith was then called, and asked if he knew the prisoner at the bar. He said he did. He had known him at Hempstead, in Essex, where he was born. He had known him since he was a child. His name was Richard Turpin, and his father kept the "Bell" inn in that village. Richard Turpin had married one of his maids. It was about five years since he had last seen him. He had taught him at school, and there was no doubt whatever that this was the same man.

Asked how it happened that, living so far distant as Essex, he came to be present as a witness at this trial, he said that at the Hempstead post-office one day he observed a letter directed to Turpin's brother-in-law, who had refused to pay the postage on it. Looking narrowly at the handwriting, he thought he recognised it as that of Richard Turpin, whom he had taught to write. Turpin then being very much in demand by the magistrates, he took the letter forthwith to a local Justice of the Peace, who opened it, and found it was sent from York Castle, and purported to come from one "John Palmer."

The justices had sent him a subpoena to appear for the prosecution at York. He had been shown into the prison yard, and there he had seen and recognised Turpin, who was there under the name of Palmer.

"Palmer," then informed that he might ask Mr. Smith any questions he desired, merely replied he did not know him.

Mr. Edward Saward, of Hempstead, then called and asked if he knew prisoner, said he did. He was born and brought up at the "Bell," kept by his father, John Turpin. He had known him twenty-two years. ("Upon my soul, I have," he added; to which counsel rejoined, "My friend, you have sworn once already; you need not swear again.") "I knew him ever since he was a boy and lived at the 'Bell.' He lived with his father there, and I was friendly with him. I knew him also after he had set up for himself, and I have bought a great many good joints of meat from him." The prisoner had at first affected not to know him; but afterwards had acknowledged the acquaintance, and had added: "Let's bung our eyes up with drink."

The prisoner's sole defence was that he had bought the horse; but he could produce no evidence to show he had actually done so, and could not mention the name of the person from whom he had bought him, nor the place where the transaction had been completed.

The jury had no difficulty in returning a verdict of "guilty," and, indeed, did so without leaving the court. Turpin was then formally sentenced to death.

He wrote to his father, and made great efforts to obtain a reduction of his sentence to transportation; but without result. A letter received from his father was a feature of a pamphlet, detailing his trial and adventures, published at York in April 1739. There is no reason to doubt its genuine character:

March 29, 1739.

Dear Child,

"I received you Letter this Instant, with a great deal of grief; according to your Request, I have writ to your Brother John, and Madam Peek, to make what intercession can be made to Col. Watson, in order to obtain Transportation for your Misfortune; which, had I £100 I would freely part with it to do you good; and for God's Sake, give your whole Mind to beg of God to pardon your many Transgressions, which the Thief upon the Cross received Pardon for at the last Hour, tho' a very great Offender. The Lord be your Comfort, and receive you into his eternal Kingdom.

"I am yours Distress'd,
"Yet Loving Father,
"John Turpin.
"Hemstead.

"All our Loves to you, who are in much Grief to subscribe ourselves your distressed Brother and Sister, with Relations."

Turpin principally concerned himself in those twenty-six days that bridged the distance between sentence and execution in joking, drinking with the many visitors who came to see him, and telling stories of his adventures. He turned a deaf ear to the ministrations of the Ordinary, and was infinitely more concerned that he should make a last "respectable" appearance in this world, on the scaffold, than for his welfare in the next. Nothing would satisfy him but new clothes, a brand-new fustian frock, and a smart pair of pumps to die in. On the morning before the fatal April 17th he gave the hangman £3 10s. 0d., to be divided among five men, who were to follow him as mourners, and were to be furnished with black hat-bands and mourning gloves. When the time came, and he went in the tumbril to be turned off upon York's place of execution at Knavesmire, he bowed to the ladies and flourished his hat like a hero. It is true that when he had arrived at the tragic place his leg trembled, but he stamped it down impatiently. He talked for half an hour with the hangman, until the crowd began to grow impatient, but then mounted the ladder provided, and threw himself off in the most resolute fashion. He had the reward of his courage, for he died in a moment.

It should here be explained that hanging in those old times, before the drop had been introduced, was generally a cruel and clumsy method. As a rule, the culprit was driven up in the cart immediately under the gallows, and the noose then adjusted round his neck. When all was ready, the cart was simply drawn away and the victim left hanging, to be slowly and agonisingly suffocated. Thus the horrible spectacle was often witnessed of compassionate persons—and sometimes the relations of the hanging man—pulling his legs to more speedily end his sufferings. In the museum at Dorchester there may to this day be seen two heavy weights made for the purpose of thus shortening the misery of criminals hanged at the gaol there, and bearing the word MERCY.

It sometimes happened, in those days, that a criminal would be ineffectually hanged, and afterwards cut down and revived. "Half-hanged Smith" was a burglar who obtained his nickname in this manner at Tyburn; but he was convicted, a few years later, of a similar crime, and effectually hanged on that occasion. Another, cut down and revived, declared the sensation of being hanged was sufficiently bad, but that of being restored to life was indescribably agonising, and said he wished those hanged who had cut him down.

The shocking old alternative to being slowly hanged when the cart was withdrawn was the method by which criminals with sufficient courage were enabled to anticipate the modern drop, by throwing themselves off the ladder, and so securing an instant and practically painless death. But this was making the condemned their own executioners, and, to all intents and purposes, suicides. It also required a considerable amount of resolution.

Turpin's body lay in state for a day and a night at the "Blue Boar" inn, Castlegate, York, and was buried the following morning in the churchyard of St. George's, Fishergate Postern. That evening it was disinterred by some of the city surgeons, for dissection, but the mob, with whom Turpin had already become a hero, determined that his remains should not be dishonoured, rescued the body and reinterred it in lime, so as to effectually prevent any other attempts.

The Ride to York and Black Bess are alike myths, but the spot was long pointed out upon the racecourse at York (perhaps it still is), where that gallant mare sank down exhausted and died. So strong a hold have myths upon the imagination, that it is hardly possible the most painstaking historian will succeed in popularly discrediting the bona fides of that ride, invented and so stirringly described by Harrison Ainsworth in 1834, in his Rookwood.

Ainsworth was the unconscious predisposing cause of much of Skelt's Juvenile Drama, that singular collection of remarkably mild plays for toy theatres, allied with terrific scenes and the most picturesque figures conceived, drawn and engraved in the wildest spirit of melodrama, and in the most extravagant attitudes. No such scenery ever existed as that drawn by Skelt's anonymous artists. It was a decided improvement upon Nature; and no heroes so heroic and no villains so villainous could possibly have lived and moved as those imagined by his staff of draughtsmen. Dick Turpin was of course in the forefront of the thirty-three plays published by Skelt, and the pictured characters do full justice—and perhaps a trifle over—to the entirely illegitimate fame Turpin has acquired. You see them reproduced here, engraved line for line from Skelt, scattered over the pages of this reconsideration of Turpin. Firstly, you have the great brethren, Turpin and Tom King, themselves, mounted on noble steeds that stretch themselves gallantly in their stride; and then you have Sir Ralph Rookwood and that intelligent officer, Simon Sharpscent, also on horseback, hurrying off in company, but upon the trail of the highwaymen. Simon Sharpscent, you will observe, has in his hand a something that looks not unlike a Field Marshal's bÂton. It is the police-officer's crown-tipped staff of office; and producing it he will presently say, dramatically: "I arrest you in the King's name!"

Always, with the remarkable exception of the group of "Highwaymen Carousing," these characters are intensely dramatic in their attitudes; but the carousing highwaymen are unexpectedly wooden; although they look capable of being daredevil fellows when the generous wine, or the old ale—whichever it may be—has done its work. Even the "Maid of the Inn" is a creature of romance.

Although Ainsworth invented Turpin's Ride to York, he certainly did not invent Black Bess, nor did he conceive the ride as an attempt to establish an alibi; for he shows him hotly pursued by the officers of the law, nearly all the way. In Ainsworth's pages you find no reason why the ride should have been undertaken. I have elsewhere remarked that Ainsworth invented Black Bess, as well as robbed Swiftnicks of the glory of the ride; but a further acquaintance with the literature of the early part of the nineteenth century discloses the curious fact that Horace Smith in 1825, in a volume entitled Gaieties and Gravities, included a story called "Harry Halter," in which that highwayman hero is represented as sitting at the "Wig and Water Spaniel," in Monmouth Street, with his friends of the same persuasion, Ned Noose, and Old Charley Crape, and singing the ballad of

Turpin and the Bishop

Here we certainly find Black Bess, not treated to two capital letters, and only referred to as "his black mare Bess" (it was reserved for Ainsworth to discover the worth of the alliteration and the demand it made for two capital B's), but we thus have traced the invention of that coal-black steed one remove further back, and there it must rest, for a time, at any rate.

It seems pretty clear that Smith was acquainted with the exploit of Swiftnicks, but why he transferred the ride to Turpin, and the purpose of establishing an alibi to Gloucester, does not appear, unless indeed he wanted a rhyme to "Foster."

Dickens, who wrote Pickwick in 1836, eleven years after Gaieties and Gravities was published, had evidently read Smith's book, for in Chapter XLIII. we find Sam Weller represented as singing to the coachman a condensed and greatly altered version, beginning:

That Swiftnicks actually performed the famous ride was generally believed, as elsewhere described in these pages; and unless any later evidence can be adduced to deprive him of the credit, he must continue to enjoy it. But it is curious to note that riding horseback between York and London under exceptional circumstances has often been mentioned. A prominent instance is the wager accepted by John Lepton, esquire to James the First, that he would ride six times between London and York on six consecutive days. Fuller, in his Worthies, tells us all about it. He first set out on May 20th, 1606, from Aldersgate, London, and completed the journey before nightfall, returning the next day; and so on until he had won the wager, "to the great praise of his strength in acting, than to his discretion in undertaking it," says Fuller, with an unwonted sneer.

Turpin was certainly described in his own lifetime as "the noted," "the renowned," "the famous," but those were merely newspaper phrases, and the notability, the renown, or the fame commented upon in to-day's paper is, we are by way of seeing in our own age, the oblivion of next week. The London Magazine, commenting briefly on his execution, styles him a "mean and stupid wretch," and that estimate of him is little likely ever to be revised, although it may readily and justly be amplified by the epithets "brutal" and "cowardly." The brutalities of himself and his associates kept the suburbs of London for a while in terror, but he evidently had made little impression on the mind of Captain Charles Johnson, whose book on The General History of Highwaymen, published in 1742, three years after Turpin's execution, has no mention of him.

Yet, side by side with these facts, we are confronted with the undoubted immediate ballad fame he acquired in the north, of which here are two pitiful specimen verses:

Pedlars hawked these untutored productions widely over the country, and it will be noticed with some amusement that, just as Robin Hood had been made a popular ballad hero, robbing the rich to give to the poor, and succouring the widow and the orphan, and just as Nevison had been similarly enshrined, so Turpin, who would have been mean enough to rob a poor man of his beer, a poor widow of her last groat, or to steal a penny out of a blind man's pannikin (the worst of crimes), was instantly converted into a blameless martyr. We may, however, readily imagine the ill-treated Mr. Lawrence of Edgewarebury, rubbing his roasted posteriors and vehemently dissenting from that estimate of Turpin.

But the ballad-writers did not pretend to historical accuracy, or to grammar, scansion, or anything but a rude way of appealing to the feelings of the rustics, whose lives of unremitting toil for poor wages embittered them more than they knew against the rich; to this extent, that they imagined virtue resided solely in the lowly cot, and vice and oppressive feelings exclusively in the lordly hall. Those who were poor were virtuous, and the highwayman who emptied the pockets of the rich performed a meritorious service. Hence ballads like the following grievous example, in which Turpin appears, in spite of well-ascertained facts, to have been executed at Salisbury:

Turpen's Appeal to the Judge in his defence; or the Gen'rous Robber

Printed and sold by J. Pitts, 6, Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials

It is of course possible that this ballad was not meant for Dick Turpin at all; for, so widespread in rural districts had his fame early grown, that "Turpin" became almost a generic name for local highwaymen, just as after Julius CÆsar all the Emperors of Rome were CÆsars. It was a name to conjure with: and this no doubt goes some way to explain the infinitely many alleged "Turpin's haunts" in widely separated districts: places Turpin could not have found time to haunt, unless he had been a syndicate.

Away down in Wiltshire, in the neighbourhood of Trowbridge, between Keevil and Bulkington, and in a soggy level plain watered by an affluent of the Wiltshire Avon, there stands in a wayside ditch a hoary object called "Turpin's Stone," inscribed, in letters now almost entirely obliterated,

This curious wayside relic may be found on the boundary-line of the parishes of Bulkington and Keevil, near a spot oddly named Brass Pan Bridge, and standing in an evil-smelling ditch that receives the drainage of the neighbouring pigsties. It is a battered and moss-grown object, and its inscription, despite the local version of it given above, is not really decipherable, as a whole. "Turpin" may be read, easily enough, but if the word above it is meant for "Dick," why then the sculptor of it spelled the name "Dicq," a feat of illiterate ingenuity that rather staggers belief. Brake-loads of Wiltshire archÆologists have visited the spot in summer, when county antiquaries mostly archÆlogise, and, braving typhoid fever, have descended into the ditch and sought to unravel the mystery of this Sphinx: without result.

The village of Poulshot, birthplace of Thomas Boulter, a once-dreaded highwayman, is not far off, and it is possible that Boulter, who had a very busy and distinguished career on the highways of England in general, and of Salisbury Plain in particular, [2] may have been named locally "Dick Turpin," after the hero who died at York under tragical circumstances, with the aid of a rope, in 1739. Boulter himself ended in that way in 1778, at Winchester, and so the transference of names was quite possible. He, it is significant to note, had a mare named "Black Bess," which he stole in 1736 from Mr. Peter DelmÉ's stables at Erle Stoke.

There are Turpin "relics" and associations at the "Spaniards," on Hampstead Heath, and we find the Times of August 22nd, 1838, saying: "The rear of the houses on Holborn Bridge has for many years been the receptacle for characters of the most daring and desperate condition. There, in a secret manÈge (now a slaughter-house for her species), did Turpin suffer his favourite Black Bess to repose for many a night previously to her disastrous journey to York." The Times had evidently swallowed the Ride to York story whole, and relished it.

Another, and more cautious commentator says, "He shot people like partridges. Many wild and improbable stories are told of him, such as his rapid ride to York, his horse chewing a beef-steak on the way; but, setting these aside, he was hardy and cruel enough to shine as a mighty malefactor. He seems, to quote the Newgate jest, to have been booked, at his very birth, for the Gravesend Coach that leaves at eight in the morning."

"Many years ago," we read in Pink's History of Clerkenwell, "a small leather portmanteau was found at the 'Coach and Horses' tavern, at Hockley-in-the-Hole, with the ends of wood, large enough to contain a change of linen, besides other little etceteras. On the inner side of the lid, lightly cut in the surface of the leather, is the name, 'R. TVRPIN.' Whether or no this portmanteau (such an one as horsemen formerly carried behind them, strapped to the saddle), belonged to that famous highwayman," says Pink, "we will not attempt to decide."

But here there should not be much room for doubt. The relic was probably genuine. It was illustrated in Pink's book, but the whereabouts of it are not now known.

The irons worn by Turpin in his cell at York Castle are now preserved in the York Museum, together with those used for Nevison. They have a total weight of 28 lb.