Stand and Deliver! E-Book

David Brandon

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 367

Beschreibung

Why is the highwayman largely perceived as a romantic, glamorous and gallant figure? How is it that men who were really nothing more than bandits, who were often gratuitously violent, sometimes murderers and rapists as well, have become the swashbuckling heroes of history? To put their roles in context, the book probes into the economic, social and technological factors that at certain times made highway robbery highly lucrative and which help to explain why some of its exponents eventually disappeared from the scene. Finally, the legacy of the highwaymen on pub signs, in films and in fiction is discussed. Informative, stimulating and entertaining, from the pen of a true enthusiast, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the dramatic, murky underworld of history.

Leseprobe

To she who must be obeyed

A HISTORY OF

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

DAVID BRANDON

First published in 2001

This edition published in 2010

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© David Brandon, 2001, 2004, 2010, 2011

The right of David Brandon, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 6820 4

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 6821 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Introduction

  1   The Age of Robin Hood

  2   Roads in Medieval Times

  3   Early Highwaymen

  4   Highwaymen and the Civil War

  5   Some Ladies of the Road

  6   The Highways of England Before the Industrial Revolution

  7   Highwaymen After the Restoration of the Monarchy

  8   Some Eighteenth-century Highwaymen

  9   Road Travel in Georgian Times

10   Dick Turpin

11   Policing Before Robert Peel

12   Prisons and Punishment

13   Street Robbery

14   Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard

15   Highway Robbers in Literature and Film

16   Some Places Associated with Highwaymen

17   Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Why is the highwayman perceived as a romantic and glamorous figure? Why have heroes been made out of men who were violent bandits and sometimes murderers and rapists as well? This book attempts to move towards an explanation by examining the activities of some of the best-known highwaymen in England and by trying to describe highway robbery while placing it in its social and economic context. Unlike most other works, it examines highway robbery generally, not just the activities of highwaymen. It covers the period from medieval times to the 1860s, when the citizens of London went in fear of being attacked and robbed by the dreaded garotters.

Mention the word ‘highwayman’ and everyone has the image of a masked, caped, tricorn-hatted, cavalier-like figure astride a handsome roan, moving out of a wayside thicket, pistols at the ready and uttering the immortal command, ‘Stand and Deliver!’. His victims, at least in popular mythology, are well-to-do travellers in their own carriages, on horseback or being conveyed by stage or mail coach. The travellers include a damsel of bewitching beauty who goes into a dramatic, well-timed swoon on catching sight of this menacing yet tantalising robber. The myth continues. The highwayman, because he rides a horse, is likely to be a gentleman by birth. He is gallant and considerate towards his victims, as any gentleman would be. Rumour says that he donates some of the proceeds of his robberies to the district’s most needy citizens. Fashionable and wealthy ladies intercede in court on his behalf when he stands trial and visit him in the condemned cell, fulfilling their own fantasies and providing some last-minute succour to the still defiant miscreant about to embark on his awful last journey.

Highwaymen feature in countless folk-tales and ballads, nearly always cast in this kind of romantic light. Novels, plays and films have consistently placed the highwayman in the role of hero, as a dashing gallant or at the very worst, a likeable rogue. Similar adulation is not extended to other highway robbers such as footpads, pickpockets or those now called muggers. How often do we hear of popular songs celebrating the activities of other members of the criminal fraternity such as pimps, embezzlers or burglars? The reality is that many highwaymen were ruthless cut-throats who had no intention of disbursing the proceeds of their robberies to the meek and needy. For such people they had total contempt. They could stay where they always had been, down at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Meanwhile, fortune favoured the bold and so the highwayman grabbed whatever he could and did so totally without scruple or concern for his victims.

The received wisdom that sees crime as antisocial and deviant sheds little useful light on how the common people saw the activities of reprobates like highwaymen. Neither does it illuminate popular perceptions of the nature of criminal activity and of the role of the authorities in attempting to maintain ‘their’ law and order, ‘their’ property and privileges while all around them large sections of society went without many of life’s necessities. The helpful concepts of ‘social crime’ and the ‘moral economy’ were developed by historians such as E.P. Thompson in the 1970s. They denoted the kind of illegal activity that, even if not intentionally, represented a challenge to the status quo and may have enjoyed considerable support from the mass of the population. Most people warm to Robin Hood whenever he gets one over on corrupt and greedy people like the Bishop of Hereford or the Sheriff of Nottingham. Here is the folk-hero, popular because he cocks a snook at those in positions of power and wealth thereby helping to undermine a status quo that the common people know is deeply flawed. Smugglers and poachers are other criminals whose activities have enjoyed widespread popular approval. The ‘social crime’ concept goes some way towards explaining the selective and irrational nature of popular attitudes towards the different kinds of criminal activity. It is hard to believe, however, that many highwaymen saw themselves as striking a blow against social injustice. The highwayman was there for the money. Many also enjoyed the excitement and the notoriety.

The highwayman may personify some of the aspirations that lie, often well hidden, in most of us. He is a freebooter, a libertarian, a devil-may-care individualist who scorns stifling conventions. Not for him the crushing tedium of a life of diligent but unrewarding toil. His purpose in life was to fill his belly and acquire enough money to enjoy the good life whoring, gambling and drinking with little thought for the morrow, and to do so at the expense of others who may have worked hard for what little they had. In reality the highwayman was a very unlikeable character whose intentions differed little from those of the basest cut-throat or pickpocket also out on the road. For that reason it is hard to grasp why he seems so greatly to have endeared himself to the public.

It undeniably took courage to hold travellers up and highwaymen needed to exude confidence as well as an air of menace and ferocity with which to browbeat their victims. Force of personality could help to avoid the use of physical force. The job required superb horsemanship and stamina because of the need to be out in all weathers and perhaps to ride pell-mell over long distances when being chased. Patience was also needed because the highwayman might wait hours for a suitable opportunity whereupon he would suddenly leap into violent and possibly hazardous action.

Society might have felt some sympathy for the dashing but demobilised cavalry officer after the English Civil War and excused his taking to highway robbery because he had no other useful skill. They did not feel equal compassion and toleration for his subordinate who was a robber on foot, a footpad, a pickpocket or other street nuisance. The highwayman therefore occupies a unique and somewhat contradictory place in that collective consciousness called history.

What kind of society is it that provides the conditions in which highway robbery can thrive? It has flourished in this country at times when the hold of government and of law and order has been tenuous and incomplete. However, society will not have been in a state of complete breakdown, because a prerequisite for the robber was a supply of travellers, preferably affluent, and that required at least some degree of political stability and economic prosperity. Such a situation was to be found in the England of the fourteenth century, frequently wracked by internecine struggles between king and nobility and among the nobles themselves. However, in spite of political and social instability, the country’s trade and commerce were growing and there were abundant pickings along the highways for the bold opportunist. Likewise, in the middle of the seventeenth century the Civil War disrupted the tenor of government but continued economic expansion saw traffic on the roads running at unprecedented levels. A factor that partly helps to explain the public perception of the highwayman is that he frequently operated at times when the forces of government were unpopular and enjoyed no real legitimacy. This made it easy to transform a brutal bandit who was handsome, mysterious, rode a fine horse and was outside the law into a popular hero.

The heyday of the highwayman was unquestionably the eighteenth century and Dick Turpin and others of his ilk benefited from the country’s burgeoning economic expansion which, however, was well ahead of the corresponding development of its judicial, penal and policing systems. Until the nineteenth century these were appropriate to a largely rural and agricultural society but were proving hopelessly inadequate for a society that was undergoing the traumatic changes associated with large-scale population growth and unplanned industrial and urban development. This was the temporary situation that the highwaymen of legend were able to exploit very effectively until overcome by the economic, social and technological changes that were the product of the Industrial Revolution. By the 1830s the highwayman and his modus operandi had become a complete anachronism.

Much that has been written about the highwaymen has been enormously embellished by time and in the telling. The legends that are sometimes the only source of evidence, certainly for the seventeenth century and earlier, provide accounts that are incomplete and with dates and details that often differ. There is no doubt that most if not all of the characters mentioned in the text actually existed and that while there is some basis in fact for the actions with which they are credited, many of the more extravagant details of these adventures can be readily dismissed. They are included for the sake of completeness and because they are frequently entertaining. It should be borne in mind that no official statistics on crime existed in Britain until 1805. A history of highway robbery that dealt only with information that is totally verifiable would be incomplete and probably dull.

Highway robbers were not unique to Britain. The Wild West of the USA has many legendary characters who were bandits or ‘road agents’ and who held up stage coaches and individual travellers, rustled livestock, robbed banks and even, in a few cases, railway trains. Among the pantheon of such characters are notorious outlaws such as Jesse James, the ‘Hole in the Wall Gang’, John Wesley Hardin and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Australia, too, had its ‘Bushrangers’, the most notorious of whom were probably the gang led by Ned Kelly. Their activities were similar but they enjoyed the lucrative bonus of sometimes ambushing and capturing large consignments of gold. Europe also had its highway robbers, frequently operating in gangs. In France, Italy and Spain at least they often seem to have combined banditry with rebellion against an oppressive political system or in some cases foreign domination. As nationalists or freedom fighters they may well have used the proceeds of their robberies to finance their guerrilla activities and have enjoyed the support of substantial sections of the population. It is easy to see how they would become invested with the same aura of popularity as folk-heroes, such as that so readily bestowed on Robin Hood.

Few of these robbers, wherever they were, lived long enough to bask in the adoration and respect of their grandchildren. The majority died young and ingloriously at the hand of the executioner, by injuries sustained when their intended victims retaliated or in shoot-outs with the agents of the law. What distinguishes the British mounted highway robber was that he is reputed to have behaved with a gallantry and courtesy towards his victims that is lacking among his equivalents in other countries. He also seems to have gone to his execution displaying a much greater swagger and an open contempt for the authorities, thereby providing a more entertaining piece of theatre. Finally, the British mounted highway robber seems to have been much less likely to kill his victims than his foreign counterparts. While robbery by highwaymen was commonplace enough to be an everyday event, violence and murder perpetrated during its commission were much less frequent than might be expected where the robber’s own life was at stake if he was caught.

Much of the material in this book concerns events within the orbit of London and that cannot be avoided given the domination of London during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1700 its population was fast approaching half a million, while England’s second city by size, Norwich, could boast no more than 20,000 souls. In the period when highwaymen were most active London contained at least one-tenth of England’s population and much more than one-tenth of the criminal activity. London society was turbulent and violent with a popular culture based around what would now be regarded as excessive drinking and short-term pleasures of an escapist nature. However, it was not just London’s size and wealth that made it the centre of the country’s underworld and criminal activity. These provided motives and opportunities for the criminally inclined. Also significant was the cosmopolitan and ever-changing nature of its population, a consequence of which was its lack of ‘roots’ and of the deference to community, familial and other icons of traditional authority which provided some social cement in the small towns and rural communities of the provinces. London’s economy, despite the diversity of its industrial base, was particularly susceptible to economic fluctuations, meaning that much work in the capital was of a casual, uncertain nature, especially among what we would now categorise as the ‘unskilled’. London had a large underworld that lived exclusively off the gains of criminal activity but it also contained substantial numbers of people who went to and fro between legal and illegal activity in response to the opportunities available. A substratum of people who obtained their income from criminal activity was, of course, not unique to London but the capital’s size and complexity meant that it generally offered richer pickings than anywhere else. For those reasons, robbery around London features largely in these pages.

1

THE AGE OF ROBIN HOOD

Some claim for Robin Hood the title of the first English highwayman. As with other English legendary heroes, information about him is dubious and confused and if he existed at all, it was probably in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. It is possible that his pedigree can be traced back through Philip, Lord of Kyme, to Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, and Judith, who was a niece of William the Conqueror. Waltheof numbered among his titles that of Earl of Huntingdon, with which Robin is associated. However, some of the ancient ballads refer to Robin as a yeoman and therefore from a humbler estate than the nobility. Here some of the stories surrounding Robin Hood are considered, as are the activities of one or two other highway robbers from the period.

It is asserted that Robin and King John were deadly foes because both were intent on winning the favours of Maid Marian. Her father would have nothing to do with John’s avid pursuit of his daughter’s favours because the King was a notorious philanderer. Maid Marian is believed to have been the daughter of Robert, Earl Fitzwalter, who is buried at Little Dunmow church in Essex. Legend says that she staunchly maintained her purity until Robin was pardoned so that when he was no longer an outlaw, she could marry him with the full blessing of the Church. The churlish King John, however, is supposed to have been so outraged by the continuing rejection of his lecherous advances that after Robin died he sent her a gift of a poisoned egg, which she unwittingly consumed, promptly collapsing in a terminal swoon. King John has not enjoyed a ‘good press’ but the story of the poisoned egg sent by a frustrated swain to an unattainable female turns up frequently, and every time with a different sender and with different women recipients. The veracity of these stories may be questioned but the frequency with which Maid Marian appears in ballads suggests that she is useful if only because her presence maintains the romantic interest.

‘Robin Hood’ or very similar names were by no means uncommon in medieval England. Spice is added to the legends by the idea that he was born into the nobility but was then dispossessed and became the country’s most wanted outlaw. These tales go on to say that he was pardoned by the King and had his estates restored. However, such was his love for the greenwood that he turned his back on a life at court and returned to his precious freebooting life. It must be remembered that an outlaw of these times was a pariah, officially repudiated by the law and cast out of the community, being left to fend for himself and to live as a fugitive, dependent on his own skills and a large amount of luck. Intelligent, brave and resourceful Robin may have been, but he was forced to take to the by-ways and forests with little option but to live by illegal hunting and robbery. He appears to have been a natural leader and to have surrounded himself with a band of faithful followers. He also enjoyed the adoration of the ordinary people, who saw him as their champion against the hated and oppressive Forest Laws and all the other injustices and insults that were heaped upon them.

Some scholars believe Robin to be a relic of ancient north European pagan beliefs. A robber with something of the folk-hero about him, and a somewhat similar name, turns up in contemporary France. It has even been suggested by the English anthropologist Margaret Murray1 that ‘Robin Hood’ was a generic name for grandmasters of the witch-cult throughout northern Europe and that the name meant ‘Robin with a Hood’, referring to an important part of the ceremonial attire worn by such figures at the Sabbat. Even if his provenance is accepted as English, then it is puzzling that so many locations appear to commemorate his name. Robin Hood was certainly a peripatetic fellow. His name is obviously synonymous with Sherwood Forest but elsewhere across the United Kingdom are natural features such as hills, bays and tors by which he is commemorated, while innumerable spreading oaks across Britain are also ascribed to him.

Sherwood Forest does seem a particularly appropriate locality for a plucky outlaw who dressed in Lincoln Green and loved nothing better than alfresco banquets of venison, washed down with best English ale. In Sherwood Forest stands the Major Oak, which reputedly was a trysting place for Robin and his Merrie Men. Until a few years ago there was a hollow tree called Robin Hood’s Larder where legend says that the outlaws used to hang their venison. The neighbourhood is positively cluttered with Robin Hood associations. Nearby are Fountain Dale, perhaps the home of the saintly looking but roguish Friar Tuck, and Edwinstowe, where Robin and Maid Marian were reputedly married. Close by are Robin Hood’s Cave, Robin Hood’s Hill, Robin Hood’s Meadow and various other places bearing his name.

In the part of the Forest that has now disappeared under suburban Nottingham, Robin is said to have met the King, although we do not know which one, who on this occasion was disguised as a monk. They fought and the King is supposed to have dealt Robin such a blow with a sturdy stave that he knocked him out and carried him off to the court where, rather curiously, Robin was fêted and had his land and titles restored to him. There is no factual evidence to substantiate any of this. However, most kings of the period were obsessed with hunting and it is therefore likely that all of them from Richard I to Edward II would indeed have hunted in Sherwood Forest. The Major Oak and Robin Hood’s Larder, however, would not even have been acorns in the thirteenth century.

If Robin existed, did he really spend time plundering the rich and being a general nuisance to the powersthat-be in the Nottingham area? Many early ballads describe him as ‘Robin of Barnsdale’ and he and his Merrie Men get up to a variety of escapades in this locality, not far from Pontefract in Yorkshire and close to the Great North Road. This would have made it an ideal location for a band of desperadoes who numbered highway robbery among their activities. One ballad mentions how ‘Robin of Barnsdale’ manages to outwit a sheriff in this area. There is not necessarily a contradiction between Robin being active around Barnsdale and also in the Nottingham area. Sherwood Forest was vast and its northern fringes would only have been about 30 miles south of Barnsdale. We can assume that outlaws would frequently have varied the site of their activities, particularly when there was a hue and cry.

Historians have located a number of men called Robert or Robin Hood or Hod in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in places as dispersed as Cirencester in Gloucestershire and Wakefield in West Yorkshire. All of them seem to have engaged in activities that were likely to bring them to the attention of the authorities. Perhaps the most likely candidate is a ‘Robert Hood’, whose name appears in a Pipe Roll. This was an account that had to be rendered by all sheriffs and it included details of tax liabilities in the area over which he had jurisdiction as well as the sheriff’s own expenses. The date of this particular document is 1226 and Robert Hood is described as a ‘fugitive’. It is not known, of course, whether this is indeed the famed outlaw but it is about the right time and place. The reign of Henry III started in 1216 and lasted for fifty-six years. This monarch successfully used his influence to promote a wide range of progressive economic activities and political institutions, but also presided over an appalling increase in banditry and other social disorders. It may be that in Sherwood Forest or elsewhere a band of outlaws, poachers and highway robbers existed who were well organised and who contained a force of particularly skilled archers who robbed the well-to-do. Perhaps they also acted as defenders of the poor against the more overt depredations of the rapacious barons.

The character of Robin Hood is highlighted in innumerable ballads, some of which possibly date from the period when the outlaw was alive but the majority of which were written in the eighteenth century and later. The ballad was a treasured vehicle for oral history and for entertainment in medieval England. Rather than being sung, it is likely that entertainers recited ballads and it is also probable that the stories grew or altered in the telling. Nobody wanted to hear about a dull, upright fellow with no known vices and so there would have been a natural tendency to embellish the stories in order to make them more interesting and to encourage the audience to want more. Among the Sloane documents in the British Museum there is an anonymous account of Robin’s life that states that he was born in about 1160 at a place called Lockesley either in Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire. However, there is no Lockesley in either of those counties and the best we can do is Loxley in Staffordshire, a short distance from Uttoxeter, Loxley in Warwickshire or Loxley in the vicinity of Sheffield, which has various associations with Robin. Another ancient chronicler states that Robin was a Yorkshireman from Wakefield who took part in Thomas of Lancaster’s rebellion in 1322. There are many other unsubstantiated assertions about Robin’s origins.

It is interesting to note that three separate Scottish chroniclers from the fifteenth century all refer to Robin Hood as if there was not the slightest doubt that they were discussing an actual historical person. Obviously, it is not known what sources of information they drew on but the requirements of modern historiography, which rightly expect historians to provide verifiable supporting evidence for their working hypotheses, did not exist when these chroniclers were active. It is essential to maintain a healthy scepticism about such writings, but this does not mean that they should simply be dismissed. It is interesting to note, however, that there was a popular fifteenth-century proverb, ‘Many speak of Robin Hood that never bent his bow’. This could be taken as suggesting that even then there were doubts in the minds of the populace as to whether this folk-hero had ever actually existed.

Perhaps Robin is a combination of bits and pieces, of robbers and rebels who did exist but about whom the stories have changed with the telling. The myth is a very potent one and even without embellishments and exaggerations, it is easy to see how it took root and became part of popular culture. The times in which Robin is supposed to have lived sharply demarcated those with power from the vast majority who had none. The King, the barons and the senior clergy all fought, duped and double-crossed each other in their search for greater power and wealth but were united about the necessity of exploiting the common people and keeping them in their place. As Christina Hole has said, ‘Robin Hood was essentially a people’s hero.’2 Perhaps Robin, the man who haunted the thickets, forests and byways of England, accosting affluent travellers and persuading them to lighten their purses, was vicariously the fulfilment of what all the ordinary folk wanted to do – turn the tables on the rich and powerful. Robin outwitted vindictive sheriffs and cunning, greedy, worldly bishops, which was what they themselves would all like to have done. He defied the iniquitous Forest Laws of his day and ate till he was replete with the King’s game. He apparently carried out his robberies courteously and happily disbursed the proceeds of his robberies to the poor and needy. That alone would guarantee a place in popular folk-mythology. In addition Robin was healthy and handsome, strong and audacious, a good lover, a man with a mischievous sense of humour, gracious and loyal to his friends. He is a cameo of the person everyone would like to be. He went round righting wrongs, rescuing languishing maidens, hunting in the royal forests, killing and roasting deer for alfresco banquets, all the time cocking a snook at the rich and powerful. It really did not matter that he perhaps never actually existed in this form at all.

Further confusion is caused by the existence of a play and more ballads featuring Robin Hood and various of his associates who often came to be known or at least referred to by the names of the characters they habitually played. So we hear of a Robert Stafford from Sussex whose name appears as ‘Friar Tuck’ in documents recording the fact that he failed to answer a summons for trespass in the early 1430s. A related difficulty concerns the supposed grave of Little John at Hathersage in Derbyshire. When it was opened it was found to contain bones of the size we might expect of a giant but there is no way to ascertain whether these remains are indeed those of Little John himself. He is supposed to have died peacefully in the neighbourhood although they could perhaps be the remains of an actor of very generous dimensions who played the named role. The Robin Hood plays may have been part of the ancient ceremonies associated with May Day, which leads some scholars to believe that Robin Hood never existed as such but was a surviving relic of ancient pagan practices, a symbolic ‘green man’.

There is a strong and persistent tradition that Robin Hood died at Kirklees Priory, not far from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and was buried in the woods close by. It is said that in his dotage, troubled in mind and body, he repaired to this priory for refuge and treatment. The prioress, despite her conventual vows, was a malicious and perfidious virago working hand-in-glove with Robin’s many enemies and, while pretending to nurse him back to health, in fact allowed him, whether by neglect or deliberately, to bleed to death. Robin, realising that he was undone, is then said to have chosen his resting place by shooting two arrows out of the window of his cell and giving instructions that he was to be buried where they fell. One arrow rose high into the air, testimony even at this stage to Robin’s skills in archery, but it plummeted straight into the nearby River Calder. The second, however, descended into the park surrounding the priory. The reputed site of his grave is about 500 yards from the farmhouse standing on the site of the priory and containing some remains of its fabric.

It is not difficult to see how the idea of Robin Hood could in time and in different circumstances evolve into a new hero, the highwayman, because the latter had some of the same attributes that made Robin such an engaging if probably illusory figure. The highwayman was to be found on the road, robbing travellers. Especially when they rode in their own carriages, on horseback or aboard a stagecoach, they were likely to be at least moderately well-to-do. Courage and derring-do were needed by the highwayman. Also, because he rode a horse he was probably a gentleman. Was it not part of Robin’s attraction that he was supposed to have been a member of the nobility fallen from grace, perhaps the rightful Earl of Huntingdon who went on to turn against the very class that had humiliated and disinherited him? The highwayman too was a ‘gentleman of the road’ and the fact that he was likely to rob all and sundry and had no intention of distributing his booty among the indigent and deprived people of the area tended to be forgotten.

In considering both Robin and the highwaymen there is the same problem of inadequate and conflicting evidence. Robin’s earliest mention in literature seems to be in William Langland’s Piers Plowman, written between the late 1360s and mid-1380s. In this a drunken priest confesses that he cannot repeat the Lord’s Prayer but that he can recite a ‘rhyme of Robin Hood’. A more detailed account of his doings appeared from the pen of Wynkyn de Worde in 1495. Those who wrote about Robin, unless they were the querulous Sheriff of Nottingham, outwitted yet again and writing indignantly to Prince John, seem to have done so in a eulogistic style that carried over seamlessly into the general tenor of most writing about highwaymen. This despite the fact that the behaviour of most highwaymen was the opposite of Robin’s dashing gallantry.

The ballads certainly portray Robin as a hail-fellow-wellmet, a back-slapping sort of a chap, friendly and cheerful to all except hypocritical prelates, shifty, scheming sheriffs with their obsequious underlings, and zealous verderers and forest rangers. Robin was a bandit but the ballads and stories suggest that he loved nothing better than a jape at the expense of such people and took particular delight in duping them with a variety of cunning disguises. He and his men were therefore merry rather than actually mischievous. It is claimed that he never harmed any party that had one or more women in it. It is also said that he was devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary and made every attempt, in spite of the attendant dangers, to attend Mass. Yet for all this piety, Robin could be ferocious and on one occasion is supposed to have taken part in desperate fighting in the streets of Nottingham during which, with an exhibitionist flourish, he decapitated his arch-enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

One of the legendary highway robbers from before the age of highwaymen is Thomas Dun. It is said that he came from Bedfordshire and lived at about the end of the eleventh century. He seems to have been a gratuitously violent and cruel man who thought that the best way of evading capture was to leave no living witnesses to his robberies. On one occasion, so it is said, he heard that a group of lawyers was to assemble at an inn in Bedford for a social dinner. He arrived at the inn before them and bustled about self-importantly so that the landlord took him for a servant of the lawyers. The lawyers when they got there took him for a servant of the inn. In this dual role he ensured that the meal and the service were of the best. The lawyers were happy to pay for their meals through him and it was only after they had had a long wait for their change that they discovered the deception. Dun had made a thorough job of it and had not only taken the money but their hats and cloaks as well and additionally he had relieved the landlord of some of his best silver. This story turns up in various guises and is simply popular wish fulfilment. Lawyers have never been the most liked of people and ordinary folk would have warmed to the idea of some brave fellow duping them in this way.

There is also a story about Dun and a similarly disliked character, the Sheriff of Bedford. He decided to suppress the band of desperadoes that Dun had surrounded himself with. He sent a large troop of soldiers against Dun’s band but they were totally routed. Eleven soldiers were captured and immediately hanged, after having been stripped of their distinctive uniforms. A few days later a group of what appeared to be sheriff’s men appeared at the gates of a nearby castle. They said they had reason to believe that the notorious villain Thomas Dun had secreted himself somewhere inside the castle. They easily gained admission, overcame the small garrison and then ransacked the place, removing much valuable booty. A few days later the Sheriff, who had been severely reprimanded for allowing his retainers to commit such an act, hanged one of them who he believed was the ringleader. This precipitated a celebration by Dun’s men because it was of course they who had carried out the audacious robbery. This story too seems highly unlikely. Somewhere there is probably a scrap of truth but the rest is embellishment to glorify Dun and belittle the Sheriff and his underlings.

Another hero commemorated in ballads is Gamelyn, who seems to have lived in the middle of the fourteenth century. He was the third son of a man of considerable wealth and was placed under the guardianship of his eldest brother on his father’s demise. This brother wilfully misappropriated the estates due to Gamelyn who could do little until he came of age. At the banquet called to celebrate his majority, Gamelyn complained bitterly about his brother’s unscrupulousness. In front of the assembled guests, his elder brother mocked him and ordered him to be tied to a post and whipped for his audacity. This seemed to be a signal for all those who had suffered in silence to rise up and give Gamelyn’s brother and his understrappers the thrashing of their lives. Led by Gamelyn himself, they did so to such effect that the Sheriff was called in and Gamelyn and his men had to take to the forest as fugitives from the law. They got together with a band of existing outlaws and led by Gamelyn they became highway robbers specialising in holding up rich clerics and thereby assuring themselves of the respect of the oppressed peasantry. Gamelyn heard that his brother was mistreating the vassals on his estates and decided very nobly to take up the case on their behalf at the forthcoming shire court. What he did not know was that his brother had meanwhile been made Sheriff and when Gamelyn presented himself before the court, he was promptly bound in chains as an outlaw. Gamelyn’s middle brother Sir Ote turned up unexpectedly and offered his sureties that his younger brother would appear at the next assize. While Gamelyn went back to the forest and resumed his career of highway robbery, his eldest brother set about packing the jury for the forthcoming court case. This blackguard of course handpicked a jury of compliant liars and lickspittles. Gamelyn failed to appear and it looked as if Sir Ote would pay for his gesture of fraternal love by being hanged in his younger brother’s place. Just at the right moment Gamelyn and his followers, armed to the teeth, swept into the court and insisted that a new jury be sworn in. They then arraigned the Sheriff, his followers and the displaced jury, condemned them to death for their actions and hanged them. Gamelyn then rode to London to pay homage to the King who responded by making Sir Ote the Sheriff and Gamelyn the Chief Justice of the Forest. Never was there a clearer case of poacher turned gamekeeper.

Both Robin Hood and Gamelyn appear to have come from privileged, landowning backgrounds but not from the ranks of the higher nobility. They are both idealised champions of the oppressed classes and vicariously, on their behalf, frequently outwit venal and corrupt law officers and unsaintly, self-seeking high clergy. One theme these two characters share is respect for the rightful king but hatred of the avaricious barons who have managed to arrogate the right to hunt in the royal forests and exclude from them the poor folk for whom these places often provide desperately needed food. It is in striking a blow for the commonalty that Robin Hood and Gamelyn, to a lesser extent, have been celebrated. No such plaudits were extended to the other gangs of robbers who in medieval times were based in the forests and engaged in rustling, extortion, theft and a range of other activities seen as being purely for their own gain.

Professor Eric Hobsbawm in his acute and innovative monograph on social banditry examines the concept of the ‘noble robber’, and suggests nine criteria that may be applied when evaluating the lives and activities of those bandits around whom an aura of popular folk-heroism has developed.3 They are not born to a life of crime but come to it as a result of a miscarriage of justice. They remedy injustices perpetrated on the poor and weak; they take from the rich and give to the poor; they kill only in self-defence or for revenge but never gratuitously. Although outlawed or outcast, they eventually return to an honoured place in the community which, in spirit at least, they never really left. They are admired, assisted and supported by the ordinary people; their death is the result of betrayal; they are loyal to the rightful and just monarch but refuse to accept the authority of petty oppressors. They are also widely considered to have the ability to appear and disappear at will and to be invulnerable.

If Robin Hood existed, he certainly fulfilled most of these criteria but it would be hard to say the same so unequivocally about highwaymen. Some certainly came from wealthy families and suffered the sequestration of their property at the time of the English Civil War but few were philanthropically inclined, many were extremely violent and most died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, although some were indeed betrayed. A number of those who operated at about the time of the Civil War were extremely loyal to the Stuart dynasty, the members of which they considered to be the rightful rulers of the country. None of them turned out to be invisible or invulnerable, however, although it did seem impossible at one time to find shackles that Jack Sheppard could not break out of, while Dick Turpin was said to have the uncanny ability to appear simultaneously in two far-distant places. They rarely enjoyed a dotage basking in the admiration of the community, family and friends, although some certainly enjoyed the plaudits of the crowd as they ascended the scaffold.

Popular myths develop a life of their own and as they do reality retreats before rumour. The ‘noble robber’ idea is highly pervasive and served a need. Robin Hood ballads appeared during the fourteenth century but Robin himself does not become a hero until the sixteenth century. Highwaymen soon found delicious notoriety. By the eighteenth century, women from society’s uppermost echelons visited condemned highwaymen in their prison cells and the exploits of highwaymen began to feature in countless folk-tales and ballads. Novels, plays and films continue to appear and usually cast the highwayman in the role of hero, a dashing fellow, a likeable rogue. Rarely are burglars or rapists viewed in a similarly favourable light, yet some highwaymen also indulged in these activities. A particular type of criminal, the highwayman, has been singled out for admiration in this way. Other highway robbers such as footpads and muggers receive no adulatory literature. Even the image of pirates who have sometimes been portrayed as glamorous, swashbuckling characters, is tempered by the widespread feeling that, when all is said and done, they were little more than ruthless cut-throats.

Robin Hood therefore can be said to have his place in a continuum that began in medieval England, developed in Elizabeth I’s time, gathered pace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and reached its apogee in the Dick Turpin type of popular hero of nineteenth-century romantic fiction. Vestiges of this process can be descried with the admiration extended in certain circles to the Great Train Robbers and perhaps to a lesser degree to the Kray Brothers.

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ROADS IN MEDIEVAL TIMES

Robin Hood, according to some accounts, lived in the fourteenth century. It is worth considering both the roads of that period and the travellers who made their way along them. This will help to give some idea of what a highway robber like Robin might have expected to encounter when he and his men went in search of sustenance at the expense of others.