Thomas Rumbold, born about 1643, at Ipswich, was the son of the usual "poor but honest" parents, and was early apprenticed to a bricklayer in that town. But highly coloured stories of the wonders of London fired his imagination and set him to run away from home before little more than a quarter of his time had been served. He entered upon another kind of apprenticeship in London: nothing less than a voluntary pupilage with a thieves' fraternity; but very shortly left that also and set up for himself as a highwayman. He would seem to have had a career of about twenty-six years in this craft, before the gallows claimed him; so it is quite evident he had found his true vocation. A complete account of his transactions would doubtless make a goodly volume, but they are not recorded at proper length. The earlier years of his highway career seem to be completely lost, and the painstaking Smith, instead of showing us how he advanced from small and timid successes to larger and bolder issues, is obliged to plunge into the midst of his life and begin with an adventure which, if it is not indeed entirely apocryphal, can only have been the extravagant and stupid whim of a very impudent and ingenious fellow, long used to wayside escapades.

Rumbold travelled, says Smith, from London towards Canterbury, along the Dover Road, with the intention of waylaying no less a personage than Dr. Sancroft, the Archbishop, who was coming to London, as Rumbold had been advised, in his travelling chariot. Between Rochester and Sittingbourne he espied the carriage and its attendant servants in the distance, and, tying his horse to a tree, and spreading a tablecloth on the grass of a field open to the road, he sat himself down and began playing hazard with dice-box and dice, all by himself, for some heaps of gold and silver he placed conspicuously on the cloth. Presently the Archbishop's carriage creaked and rumbled ponderously by, in the manner of the clumsy vehicles of that time; and His Grace, curiously observing a man acting so strangely as to play hazard by himself, sent a servant to see what could be the meaning of it.

The servant, coming near, could hear Rumbold swearing at every cast of the dice, about his losses, and asked him what was the meaning of it. To this Rumbold made no reply, and the servant returned to the Right Reverend and informed him the man must surely be out of his wits.

Then the Archbishop himself alighted, and, looking curiously around, and seeing none but Rumbold, asked him whom he played with.

"D——n it, sir!" exclaimed the player, "there's five hundred pounds gone." Then, as His Grace was about to speak again, casting the dice once more, "There goes a hundred more."

"Pr'ythee," exclaimed the Archbishop, "do tell me whom you play with?"

"With the devil," replied Rumbold.

"And how will you send the money to him?"

"By his ambassadors, and considering your Grace as one of them extraordinary, I shall beg the favour of you to carry it to him." He rose, and walking to the carriage, placed six hundred guineas in it, mounted his horse, and rode off along the way he knew the Archbishop had to travel; and, both he and His Grace having refreshed at Sittingbourne, in different houses of entertainment, Rumbold afterwards took the road to London a little in advance of the carriage.

Halting at a convenient place, and placing himself on the grass, in the same manner as before, he again awaited the carriage, this time with but little money spread on the cloth.

The Archbishop again observed him, and this time really believing him to be a mad gamester, was about to make some remark, when Rumbold suddenly cried out joyfully, throwing the dice, "Six hundred pounds!"

"What!" exclaimed the Archbishop, "losing again?"

"No, by G—d!" returned Rumbold, "won six hundred pounds this time. I'll play this hand out, and then leave off, while I'm well."

"And whom have you won of?"

"Of the same person that I left the six hundred pounds for with you, before dinner."

"And how will you get your winnings, my friend?"

"Of his ambassador, to be sure," said Rumbold, drawing his sword. Thereupon, he advanced to the carriage with pistols and drawn sword, and, searching under the carriage-seat, found his own six hundred guineas, and fourteen hundred besides; with which forty pounds weight avoirdupois of bullion, we are gravely told, he got clear off.

The incident is, without a doubt, one of Smith's own inventions—and not one of the best. It serves to show us how entirely lacking in criticism he thought his public, to set before them, without any criticism of his own, such a tale, in which a highwayman who certainly could in real life have been no fool, to have held his own so long on the road, is made to act like an idiot without any advantage likely to be gained by so doing. We see him, in this preposterous story, taking the trouble to carry six hundred guineas with him and playing the fool needlessly, when he might just as well have gone with empty pockets and searched and robbed the carriage with equal success.

More easily to be credited is his robbing of the Earl of Oxford at Maidenhead Thicket. Rumbold was no exquisite, having, as we have already learnt, been merely a bricklayer's apprentice before he assumed the crape mask, and, mounting a horse and sticking a pair of pistols in his belt, took to the road. He often assumed the appearance of a rough country farmer; but he was, at the same time, always a man of expedient. To say of him that he had ostlers and chambermaids in his pay, to give him information of likely travellers, is but to repeat the practice of every eminent hand in the high-toby craft. On the occasion which led to his great exploit here, he had been lurking for some well-laden travellers, who, luckily for them, took some other route, and he was just on the point of riding moodily off when two horsemen rode up the hill. As they drew near he perceived that they were the Earl of Oxford and a servant. That nobleman knew Rumbold (how the acquaintance had been made we are not told), and so it was necessary for the highwayman to assume some sort of disguise. Here we perceive Rumbold's readiness of resource. He threw his long hair over his face, and, holding it in his teeth, rode up in this extraordinary guise and demanded the Earl's purse, with threats to shoot both if it was not immediately forth-coming.

That nobleman was Aubrey De Vere, twentieth and last Earl, the descendant of the old "fighting Veres" and colonel of the Oxford Blues, a regiment named after him, and not after the city of Oxford. Despite all these things, which might have made for valiance, he surrendered like the veriest woman, and submitted to the indignity of being searched. Rumbold rifled him, and at first found only dice and cards, until, coming to his breeches pockets, he turned out a "nest of goldfinches"; that is to say, a heap of guineas. Saying he would take them home and cage them, Rumbold recommended the Earl to return to his regiment and attend to his duty, giving him eighteenpence as an encouragement.

From these examples, it will readily be seen that Maidenhead Thicket did not obtain its ill repute without due cause.

A number of incredible stories of Rumbold are told, both by Smith and Johnson, who seem to have made up for the little real information we have of his more than twenty years' career by writing absolutely unconvincing fiction around him. He was at last executed at Tyburn in 1689.