for this, and on coming out of gaol took permanently to the highway, where he soon achieved a still greater notoriety. With half-a-dozen comrades he robbed a government waggon conveying money to the army, and dispersed the twenty troopers who escorted it, by attacking them as they were watering their horses. The waggon contained £4000, intended to pay the troops quartered at Oxford and Gloucester. Another account states that near Wheatley, Cottington put a pistol to the carrier’s head and bade him stand, at which both carter and guard rode off for their lives, fearing an ambuscade. The town of Reading he laid under frequent contribution, breaking into a jeweller’s shop in that town and carrying off the contents, which he sported on his person in London. Again at Reading, hearing that the Receiver-General was about to send £6000 to London in an ammunition waggon, he entered the receiver’s house, bound the family, and decamped with the money. Being by this time so notorious a character, he was arrested on suspicion, and committed for trial at Abingdon Assizes. There, however, being flush of cash, he found means to corrupt the jury and secure acquittal, although Judge Jermyn exerted all his skill to hang him. His fame was now at its zenith. He became the burthen of street songs—a criminal hero who laughed the gallows to scorn. But about this time he was compelled to fly the country for the murder of Sir John Bridges, with whose wife he had had an intrigue. He made his way to Cologne, to the Court of Charles II., whom he robbed of plate worth £1500. Then he returned to England, after making overtures to Cromwell, to whom he offered certain secret papers if he might be allowed to go scot free. But he was brought to the gallows, and nobly deserved his fate.
Claude Duval is another hero whose name is familiar to all readers of criminal chronology. A certain halo of romance surrounds this notorious and most successful highwayman. Gallant and chivalrous in his bearing towards the fair sex, he would spare a victim’s pockets for the pleasure of dancing a “corranto” with the gentleman’s wife. The money he levied so recklessly he lavished as freely in intrigue. His success with the sex is said to have been extraordinary, both in London and in Paris. “Maids, widows, and wives,” says a contemporary account, “the rich, the poor, the noble, the vulgar, all submitted to the powerful Duval.” When justice at length overtook him, and he was cast for death, crowds of ladies visited him in the condemned hold; many more in masks were present at his execution. After hanging he lay in state in the Tangier Tavern at St. Giles, in a room draped with black and covered with escutcheons; eight wax tapers surrounded his bier, and “as many tall gentlemen in long cloaks.” Duval was a Frenchman by birth—a native of Domfront in Normandy, once a village of evil reputation. Its curé was greatly surprised, it is said, at finding that he baptized as many as a hundred children and yet buried nobody. At first he congratulated himself in residing in an air producing such longevity; but on closer inquiry he found that all who were born at Domfront were hanged at Rouen.
Duval did not long honour his native country with his presence. On the restoration of Charles II. he came to London as footman to a person of quality; but soon took to the road. Numerous stories are told of his boldness, his address, and fertility of resource. One of the most amusing is that in which he got an accomplice to dress up a mastiff in a cow’s-hide, put horns on his head, and let him down a chimney into a room where a bridal merry-making was in progress. Duval, who was one of the guests, dexterously profited by the general dismay to lighten the pockets of an old farmer whom he had seen secreting a hundred pounds. When the money was missed it was supposed that the devil had flown away with it. On another occasion, having revisited France, he ingratiated himself with a wealthy priest by pretending to possess the secret of the philosopher’s stone. This he effected by stirring up a potful of molten inferior metal with a stick, within which were enclosed a number of sprigs of pure gold, as black lead is in a pencil. When the baser metals were consumed by the fire, the pure gold remained at the bottom of the pot. Overjoyed at Duval’s skill as an alchemist, the priest made him his confidant and bosom friend, revealing him his secret hoards, and how they were bestowed. One day, when the priest was asleep after dinner, Duval gagged and bound him, removed his keys, unlocked his strong boxes, and went off with all the valuables he could carry. Duval was also an adroit card-sharper, and won considerable sums at play by “slipping a card”; and he was most astute in laying and winning wagers on matters he had previously fully mastered. His career was abruptly terminated by his capture when drunk at a tavern in Chandos St., and he was executed, after ten years of triumph, at the early age of twenty-seven.
William Nevison, a native-born member of the same fraternity, may be called, says Raine, “the Claude Duval of the north. The chroniclers of his deeds have told us of his daring and his charities, for he gave away to the poor much of the money he took from the rich.” Nevison was born at Pontefract in 1639, and began as a boy by stealing his father’s spoons. When chastised by the schoolmaster for this offence, he bolted with his master’s horse, having first robbed his father’s strong box. After spending some time in London thieving, he went to Flanders and served, not without distinction, in a regiment of English volunteers commanded by the Duke of York. He returned presently to England, and took to the road. Stories are told of him similar to those which made Duval famous. Nevison was on the king’s side, and never robbed Royalists. He was especially hard on usurers. On one occasion he eased a Jew of his ready money, then made him sign a note of hand for five hundred pounds, which by hard riding he cashed before the usurer could stop payment. Again, he robbed a bailiff who had just distrained a poor farmer for rent. The proceeds of the sale, which the bailiff thus lost, Nevison restored to the farmer. In the midst of his career, having made one grand coup, he retired from business and spent eight years virtuously with his father. At the old man’s death he resumed his evil courses, and was presently arrested and thrown into Leicester Gaol. From this he escaped by a clever stratagem. A friendly doctor having declared he had the plague, gave him a sleeping draught, and saw him consigned to a coffin as dead. His friend demanded the body, and Nevison passed the gates in the coffin. Once outside, he was speedily restored to life, and resumed his old ways. He now extended his operations to the capital, and it was soon after this that he gained the soubriquet, given by Charles II., it is said, of “Swift Nick.” There seems to be very little doubt that Nevison was actually the hero of the great ride to York, commonly credited to Turpin. The story goes that he robbed a gentleman at Gadshill, then riding to Gravesend, crossed the Thames and galloped across Essex to Chelmsford. After baiting he rode on to Cambridge, and Godmanchester, thence to Huntingdon, where he baited his mare and slept for an hour; after that, holding to the north road, and not galloping his horse all the way, reached York the same afternoon. Having changed his clothes, he went to the bowling-green, where he made himself noticeable to the Lord Mayor. By and by, when recognized and charged with the robbery at Gadshill, Nevison called upon the mayor to prove that he had seen him at York; whereupon he was acquitted, “on the bare supposition that it was impossible for a man to be at two places so remote on one and the same day.”
Nevison appears to have been arrested and in custody in 1676. He was tried for his life, but reprieved and drafted into a regiment at Tangier. He soon deserted, and returning to England, again took to the road. He was next captured at Wakefield, tried, and sentenced to death; but escaped from prison, to be finally taken up for a trifling robbery, for which he suffered at York. The depositions preserved by the Surtees’ Society show that he was the life and centre of a gang of highway robbers who worked in association. They levied black mail upon the whole country side; attended fairs, race meetings, and public gatherings, and had spies and accomplices, inn-keepers and ostlers, who kept them informed of the movements of travellers, and put them in the way of “likely jobs” to be done. Drovers and farmers who paid a tax to them escaped spoliation; but all others were very roughly handled. The gang had its head-quarters at the Talbot Inn, Newark, where they kept a room by the year, and met at regular intervals to divide the proceeds of their robberies.
Many instances are recorded of another crime somewhat akin to highway robbery. The forcible abduction of heiresses was nothing new; but it was now prosecuted with more impudence and daring than heretofore. Luttrell tells us, under date 1st June, 1683, that one Mrs. Synderfin, a rich widow, was taken out of her carriage on Hounslow Heath, by a Captain Clifford and his comrades. They carried her into France to “Calice” against her will, and with much barbarous ill-usage made her marry Clifford. Mrs. Synderfin or Clifford was, however, rescued, and brought back to
