custom, but he knock't down the hangman in the face of the court, and made very indecent reflections on the court." Nay, at the very gallows, we witnessed this incident:-"The same day, six persons were executed at Tyburn; some of them behaved themselves very impudently, calling for sack, and drank King James's health, and affronted the ordinary at the gallows, and refused his assistance; and bid the people return to their obedience, and send for King James back." While thieves and murderers at the gallows thus had their own way, except in one trifle-that of hanging— the streets were at the mercy of those not yet captured. "Most part of this winter (1690-91) have been so many burglaries committed in this town and the adjacent parts of it, and robberies of persons in the evening, as they walk't the streets, of their hats, periwigs, cloaks, swords, &c. &c., as was never known in the memory of any man living." If an honest man called a hackney-coach, to ride home, he was anything but secure from being strangled. These vehicles were hired as being convenient for assassinations. Clinch, the physician, was made away with in one of them; and when the government resolved to put the hackneycoach system under the regulation of commissioners, the coachmen and their wives raised a riot. The first found their bloody privileges annihilated, and the ladies were horrified at the prospective loss of booty.

It was especially the murderers who were the jolliest at Tyburn. We read of one Paynes, who “had killed five or six persons in a short time" (1694), and he "kickt the ordinary out of the cart at Tyburn, and pulled off his shoes, saying, hee'd contradict the old proverb, and not dye in them." Kicked the ordi

nary out of the cart! We should feel indescribable regret at this insult on the reverend gentleman, were it not for the circumstance that he probably deserved it. The Newgate ordinary in those days was not much, if at all, better than his flock. It was no uncommon thing for a score of highwaymen together to be in Newgate, and they oftener drank than prayed with the ordinary, who preferred punch, as Fielding says, in his Jonathan Wild, the rather that there is nothing said against that liquor in Scripture! Nothing escaped the hands of the highwaymen, - they even stole "the King's pistolls during his stay at Petworth, in Sussex " (1692). If any class was more active than the thieves, it was that of the French privateers, one vessel of which roving species "came up the river (1693), intending to have seized the yacht that carried the money down to pay the fleet, but was taken, and she is now before Whitehall."

It was a narrow escape! But no privateer, no ordinary or extraordinary highwayman, equalled in the pursuit of his peculiar industry the busy individual who (April 27, 1692), "was this day convicted at Session-house, for sacrilege, rape, burglary, murder, and robbing on the highway; all committed in twelve hours' time." The father of iniquity himself could hardly have surpassed this worthy son; whose dexterity and rapid style of performance appear to have saved his neck, for Mr. Luttrell does not record his execution. Not that very severe punishments were not often inflicted, as in an entry for "Tuesday, 4th July" (1693), which tells us that "one Cockburne, a nonjuring person, is banished Scotland for ever."

These details may appear insignificant, but they are not so, in so far as they intimate much of the quality and contents of Luttrell's Brief Relation,-scarcely a page of which is without its crimes and criminals. They reflect, too, with truthful gloominess the aspect of the times, and we will not leave them without adverting to a very celebrated personage, whose name is sometimes taken to be a myth, though his office is acknowledged to be a terrible reality. Under the head of January 1685-6, we find it recorded that "Jack Ketch, the hangman, for affronting the Sheriffs of London, was committed to Bridewell, and is turned out of his place, and one Rose, a butcher, put in." This was ruin for John, and as good as an estate for the butcher. But some men provoke fortune to desert them, and Rose was one of such men. In the May of the year above named, we read that "five men of those condemned at the Sessions were executed at Tyburn one of them was one Pascha Rose, the new hangman, so that now Ketch is restored to his place."

Under the reign of Queen Anne, too, we read that a certain scoundrel named Harris, though one of the Queen's guard, was also a noted highwayman, at the head of a gang, and after much practice was brought very near Tyburn; "but," says Luttrell, 'tis said William Penn, who obtained the Queen's pardon for Harris, condemned for robbing on the highway, has also got a commission for him to be lieutenant of the militia in Pennsylvania, to which plantation he is to be transported." Nor was Harris's vocation ungentlemanly, since gentlemen took to it, and were caught at it, as we find by an entry in Luttrell's diary to the From a paper in the Athenæum on Luttrell's work.

effect that, "Saturday, Sir Charles Burtern, barrt., was committed for robbery on the highway, near St. Alban's."

66

CLAUDE DUVAL

WAS a famous highwayman of the 17th century, who made Holloway, between Islington and Highgate, frequently the scene of his predatory exploits. In Lower Holloway he was long kept in memory by Duval's Lane, which, strangely enough, was previously called Devil's Lane, and more anciently Tolentone Lane. Macaulay, in his History of England, tells us that Claude Duval " took to the road, became captain of a formidable gang," and that it is related "how, at the head of his troop, he stopped a lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds; how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath." Mr. Frith has made this celebrated exploit the subject of one of his wonderful pictures, which has been engraved.

Duval's career was cut short: he was arrested at the Hole-in-the-Wall, in Chandos Street, Covent Garden, and was executed at Tyburn, January 21, 1669, in the twenty-seventh year of his age; and, after lying in state at the Tangier Tavern, St. Giles's, was buried in the middle aisle of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden; his funeral was attended with flambeaux, and a numerous train of mourners, " to the great grief of the women. Within memory, Duval's Lane was so infested with highwaymen, that few persons would venture to peep into it, even in mid-day; in 1831 it was lighted with gas.

JEMMY WHITNEY, THE HANDSOME HIGHWAYMAN,

THIS hero of his day (1692), while jauntily airing himself in Bishopsgate Street, was attacked by the police officials, one of whom he traversed with "a bagonet," during a fight which the intrepid scoundrel sustained for an hour against the officers and a mob. Subsequently, most of his gang were captured, -and among them were a livery stable-keeper, a goldsmith, and a man-milliner! The last must have been an ambitious fellow, for "taking to the road" was looked upon as rather a dignified pursuit ; and no less a person than "Captain Blood, the son of him that stole the crown," was said at this very period to be keeping up his gentility by stopping his Majesty's mails. Whitney, popular as he was, had nothing of the Macheath in him. He was no sooner in irons than he "offers to discover his accomplices, and those that give notice where and when money is conveyed on the road in coaches and waggons, if he may have his pardon." He is compelled, however, to stand to his indictments; and though he is found guilty only on three out of five, as the penalty is death, the difference to him is not material. He is confidently said to have "broke” Newgate, but with "forty pounds weight of iron on his legs." "He had his taylor," says Mr. Luttrell, “ make him a rich embroidered suit, with perug and hat, worth 1007.; but the keeper refused to let him wear them, because they would disguise him from being known.” After conviction he again offered to "peach," and plots having been favourable to villains in times past, “'tis said he has been examined on a design to kill the King."

66