The careers of the highwaymen were, in the vast majority of cases, remarkably short, and they were, for the most part, cut off in the full vigour of their manly strength and beauty. The accursed shears of Fate—or, to be more exact, a rope dangling from a beam—ended them before experience had come to revise their methods and fit them out with the artistry of the expert.

But few were so summarily ended as the unfortunate Robert Snooks. This person, a native of Hungerford, was in the year 1800 living at Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, in the immediate neighbourhood of Boxmoor. He had often observed the postboy carrying the well-filled mail-bags across the lonely flat of Boxmoor, and (he is described as having been of remarkably fine physical proportions) thought how easy a thing it would be to frighten him into giving them up. Accordingly, on one sufficiently dark night, he waited upon the moor for the postboy, stopped him, and, adopting a threatening demeanour, instructed him to carry the bags to a solitary spot and then go about his business. The frightened official immediately hurried off to the postmaster of the district: one Mr. Page, of the "King's Arms," Berkhamstead, and told his tale; leaving Snooks to ransack the bags and take what he thought valuable.

The bags, turned inside out, were found, the next morning, with a heap of letters, torn open and fluttering in all directions across the fields. It subsequently appeared that the highwayman had secured a very considerable booty, one letter alone having contained £5 in notes. The postboy did not know the man who had terrorised him: only that he was a "big man"; but the simultaneous disappearance of Snooks left no reasonable doubt as to who it was.

This was Snooks's first essay in the dangerous art, and it proved also his last. Hurrying to London, he took up his abode in Southwark, and presently had the dubious satisfaction of reading the reward-bills issued, offering £300 for his capture. After a while he thought himself comparatively safe, and was emboldened to make an effort at negotiating one of the notes he still held. Afraid to do this in person, he thought he might see what would happen if he tried to pass one of the notes through the intermediary of the servant of the house where he was lodging, and accordingly sent her to purchase a piece of cloth for a coat, handing her a five-pound note. The tradesman evidently found something suspicious about the note thus tendered, and returned it, with the message that "there must be some mistake." Whether the tradesman would have followed this up by communicating any suspicions he may have had to the authorities does not appear; but "the wicked flee when no man pursueth," and Snooks hurried off to what was undoubtedly the most dangerous place for him. He fled to Hungerford, his birthplace; yet, strange to say, he long evaded capture, and it was not until 1802 that he was arrested, on the information of a postboy who had been to school with him. He was in due course brought to trial at Hertford Assizes, found guilty, and sentenced to death. It was judged expedient, as a warning to others, that he should be executed on the scene of his crime, the selection of the spot falling to Mr. Page, who, besides being postmaster of Berkhamstead, was High Constable of the Hundred of Dacorum. As a further warning, and one likely to be of some permanence, it was originally proposed to gibbet the body of the defunct Snooks on the same spot; so that, swinging there in chains on the moor, it might hint to others the folly of doing likewise. But the time was growing full late for such exhibitions; the inhabitants of the district protested, and this further project was abandoned.

Journeying from Hertford gaol on the morning of the fatal March 11th, 1802, Snooks, according to a surviving tradition, was given a final glass of ale at the "Swan" inn, at the corner of Box Lane, and is said to have remarked to the rustics hastening to the scene of execution: "Don't hurry; there'll be no fun till I get there."

The usual large and unruly crowd, that could always be reckoned upon on such melancholy occasions, was present, and seemed to regard the event as no more serious than a fair. To those thus assembled, Robert Snooks, standing in the cart under the gallows, held forth in a moral address:

"Good people, I beg your particular attention to my fate. I hope this lesson will be of more service to you than the gratification of the curiosity which brought you here. I beg to caution you against evil doing, and most earnestly entreat you to avoid two evils, namely, 'Disobedience to parents'—to you youths I particularly give this caution—and 'The breaking of the Sabbath.' These misdeeds lead to the worst of crimes: robbery, plunder, bad women, and every evil course. It may by some be thought a happy state to be in possession of fine clothes and plenty of money, but I assure you no one can be happy with ill-gotten treasure. I have often been riding on my horse and passed a cottager's door, whom I have seen dressing his greens, and perhaps had hardly a morsel to eat with them. He has very likely envied me in my station, who, though at that time in possession of abundance, was miserable and unhappy. I envied him, and with most reason, for his happiness and contentment. I can assure you there is no happiness but in doing good. I justly suffer for my offences, and hope it will be a warning to others. I die in peace with God and all the world."

The horse was then whipped up, the cart drawn away from beneath the gallows-tree, and Robert Snooks had presently paid the harsh penalty of his crime. He had behaved with remarkable courage, and, espying an acquaintance in the crowd, offered him his watch if he would promise to see that his body received Christian burial. But the man, unwilling to be recognised as a friend of the criminal, made no response, and Snooks's body was buried at the foot of the gallows. A hole was dug there, and a truss of straw divided. Half was flung in first; the body upon that, and the second half on top. The hangman had half-stripped the body, declaring the clothes to be his perquisite, and would have entirely stripped it, had not the High Constable interfered, insisting that some regard should be had to decency.

A slow-moving feeling of compassion for the unhappy wretch took possession of some of the people of Hemel Hempstead, who on the following day procured a coffin, reopened the grave, and, placing the body in the coffin, thus gave it some semblance of civilised interment; but, those being the times of the body-snatchers, doubts have been expressed of the body being really there. It is thought that the body-snatchers may afterwards have visited the lonely spot and again resurrected it.

Two rough pieces of the local "plum-pudding stone" were afterwards placed on the grave, and remained until recent years.

Boxmoor is not now the lonely place it was. The traveller who seeks Snooks's grave may find it by continuing northward from Apsley End, passing under the railway bridges, and coming to a little roadside inn called the "Friend at Hand." Opposite this, on the right-hand side of the road, and between this road and the railway embankment runs a long narrow strip of what looks like meadow land, enclosed by an iron fence, This is really a portion of Boxmoor. At a point, a hundred and fifty yards past the inn, look out sharply for a clump of five young horse-chestnut trees growing on the moor. Close by them is a barren space of reddish earth, with a grassy mound, a piece of conglomerate, or "pudding-stone," and a newer stone inscribed "Robert Snooks, 11 March, 1802." This has been added since 1905, and duly keeps the spot in mind.