Isaac Darkin was the son of a cork-cutter in Eastcheap, and was born about 1740; too late to appear in the stirring pages of Alexander Smith or Charles Johnson, in which he would have made, we may be sure, an admired figure. All those who knew him, on the road or in the domestic circle, agreed that he was a handsome fellow; and travellers, in particular, noticed his taking ways. These were first displayed in 1758, when he robbed Captain Cockburn near Chelmsford. No less taking, in their own especial way, were the police of the neighbourhood in that time, for they speedily apprehended Isaac, and lodged him in Springfield gaol. He was duly arraigned at the next assizes, and no fewer than eight indictments were then preferred against him. He pleaded guilty to the robbing of Captain Cockburn, but not guilty on the other counts; and was, after a patient trial, found guilty on the first and acquitted on the others. He was then sentenced to death, but was eventually respited on account of his youth, and finally pardoned on condition that he enlisted in the 48th Regiment of foot, then serving in the West Indies, at Antigua. Drafted with others aboard a ship lying in the lower reaches of the Thames, presently to set sail for that distant shore, he effected his escape, almost at the moment of up-anchor, by dint of bribing the captain of a merchant vessel lying alongside, to whom he promised so much as a hundred pounds to help him out. He was smuggled aboard the merchantman, and so cunningly disguised that when a search-party, suspecting his whereabouts, boarded the ship, and searched it, even to the hold, they did not recognise him in a particularly rough and dirty sailor who was swearing nautical oaths among the ship's company on deck. So the transport-vessel sailed without him, and he, assuming the name of Dumas, rioted all through the West of England, robbing wealthy travellers and gaily spending his takings on what he loved best: fine clothes and fine ladies. He was so attentive to business that he speedily made a name for himself, the name of a daring votary of the high toby. This reputation rendered it politic on his part to enlist in the Navy, so that in case of being arrested for highway robbery, he could prove himself to have a respectable occupation, that would help to discredit the charge of being a highwayman.

He soon became a valued recruit, and was promoted to midshipman; and it is quite likely that if he had been sent on active service he would have distinguished himself in a more reputable career than that in which he was so soon to die. But his duties kept him for considerable periods in port, and he seems to have had ample leave from them; for we find him hovering near Bath and gaily robbing the wealthy real or imagined invalids going to, or returning from, the waters.

On the evening of June 22nd, 1760, he fell in with Lord Percival, travelling by post-chaise over Clarken Down, near Bath, and robbed him of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen guineas—my lord could not positively swear to the exact amount. He then made off in the gathering twilight, and galloped across country, to Salisbury Plain and the little village of Upavon, where he was arrested in a rustic alehouse, and sent thence to Salisbury gaol. At his trial he indignantly denied being a highwayman, or that he was an Englishman. He declared his name was Dumas, that he had lately come from Guadaloupe, where he had taken a part in the late military operations; and said that the so-styled "suspicious behaviour" and damaging admissions he was charged with, when arrested at the inn, were merely the perplexities of a foreigner, when suddenly confronted by hostile strangers.

This special pleading did not greatly deceive judge or jury, but the prosecution broke down upon a technical detail, and Darkin was acquitted; not, however, without an affecting address to the prisoner from the judge, Mr. Justice Willmott, who urged him to amend his ways, while there was yet time.

It is thus quite sufficiently evident that, although the Court was bound to acquit the prisoner, no one had the least doubt of his guilt. His narrow escape does not appear to have impressed Darkin, or "Dumas"; but he was anxious enough to be off, as we learn from a contemporary account of the proceedings, in which it is quaintly said: "He discovered great Impatience 'till he had got off his Fetters and was discharged, which was about five o'clock in the evening, when he immediately set out for London in a post-chaise."

The fair ladies of Salisbury sorrowed when he was gone. They had been constant in visiting him in prison, and had regarded him as a hero, and Lord Percival as a disagreeable hunks. The hero-worship he received is properly noted in the account of his life, trial, and execution, issued in haste from an Oxford press in 1761, shortly after the final scene had been enacted. In those pages we read: "During Mr. Dumas' imprisonment at Salisbury, we find his sufferings made a deep impression upon the tender Hearts of the Ladies, some of whom, having visited him in his Confinement, his obliging Manner, genteel Address, lively Disposition, and whole Deportment so struck them that his Fame soon became the Discourse of the Tea Table; and at the happy Termination of His Affair with my Lord Percival, produced between them the following Copy of Verses:

But in the short space of six weeks from his acquittal at Salisbury and his triumphal exit in a post-chaise for London, he was again arrested on a charge of highway robbery, this time for robbing a Mr. Gammon at Nettlebed, on the road to Oxford. Committed to trial at Newgate, he was transferred to Oxford gaol, and tried there on March 6th. He had up to now been phenomenally fortunate, but things at this crisis looked a great deal more serious. He acknowledged "he had experienced many narrow scrapes, but never such a d—d one as this," and he was presently found guilty and condemned to death, this time without any extenuating circumstances being found.

Isaac Darkin was what in our times would be called a "superior person." Slang he disdained to use, bad language was anathema to him; and if he did, indeed, condescend to describe a person of mean understanding as "a cake," or "a flat," that was the most he permitted himself. His delicacy was so great that he never mentioned a "robbery," a "robber," or a "highwayman," but spoke instead of persons who had been "injured," or of "the injured parties." And as he was so nice in his language, so he was particular in his dress and deportment. As an eulogist of him said, not without a little criticism: "He was possessed of too great a share of pride for his circumstances in life, and retained more of it to the last than was becoming in a person in his unhappy situation. He had a taste for elegance in every respect; was remarkably fond of silk stockings, and neat in his linen; had his hair dressed in the most fashionable manner every morning; his polished fetters were supported round his waist by a sword-belt, and tied up at his knees with ribbon."

Although but the son of a cork-cutter, he had lived, in the estimation of his contemporaries, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman he spent his last days, and if he did indeed seem to boast a little when, a few days before his execution, he declared he had been nine times in gaol, and seven times tried on a capital charge, that was merely a pardonable professional exaggeration. His claim to have gleaned over six hundred guineas from the road has, on the other hand, the look of an under-estimate. The rumbustious fellows of a hundred years earlier would have thought that very bad business; they often took much more in a single haul. But times were changing, and not for the better, from the highwaymen's point of view.

Isaac Darkin died like a gentleman, without apparent fear, and without bravado, at Oxford, on March 23rd, 1761, and was at that time, as himself remarked, without apparent pathos or truckling to weak sentiment, "not twenty-one."