CAPTAIN HIND
JAMES HIND, the Master Thief of England, the fearless Captain
of the Highway, was born at Chipping Norton in 1618. His father,
a simple saddler, had so poor an appreciation of his son's
magnanimity, that he apprenticed him to a butcher; but Hind's
destiny was to embrue his hands in other than the blood of oxen,
and he had not long endured the restraint of this common craft
when forty shillings, the gift of his mother, purchased him an
escape, and carried him triumphant and ambitious to London.
Even in his negligent schooldays he had fastened upon a
fitting career. A born adventurer, he sought only enterprise and
command: if a commission in the army failed him, then he would
risk his neck upon the road, levying his own tax and imposing his
own conditions. To one of his dauntless resolution an
opportunity need never have lacked; yet he owed his first
preferment to a happy accident. Surprised one evening in a
drunken brawl, he was hustled into the Poultry Counter, and there
made acquaintance over a fresh bottle with Robert Allen, one of
the
chief rogues in the Park, and a ruffian, who had mastered every
trick in the game of plunder. A dexterous cly-faker, an intrepid
blade, Allen had also the keenest eye for untested talent, and he
detected Hind's shining qualities after the first glass. No
sooner had they paid the price of release, than Hind was admitted
of his comrade's gang; he took the oath of fealty, and by way of
winning his spurs was bid to hold up a traveller on Shooter's
Hill. Granted his choice of a mount, he straightway took the
finest in the stable, with that keen perception of horse-flesh
which never deserted him, and he confronted his first victim in
the liveliest of humours. There was no falter in his voice, no
hint of inexperience in his manner, when he shouted the battle-cry: `Stand and deliver!' The horseman, fearful of his life,
instantly surrendered a purse of ten sovereigns, as to the most
practised assailant on the road. Whereupon Hind, with a flourish
of ancient courtesy, gave him twenty shillings to bear his
charges. `This,' said he, `is for handsale sake '; and thus they
parted in mutual compliment and content.
Allen was overjoyed at his novice's prowess. `Did you not
see,' he cried to his companions, `how he robbed him with a
grace?' And well did the trooper deserve his captain's
compliment, for his art was perfect from the first. In bravery
as in gallantry he knew no rival, and he plundered with so
elegant a style, that only a churlish victim could resent the
extortion. He would as soon have turned
his back upon an enemy as demand a purse uncovered. For every
man he had a quip, for every woman a compliment; nor did he ever
conceal the truth that the means were for him as important as the
end. Though he loved money, he still insisted that it should be
yielded in freedom and good temper; and while he emptied more
coaches than any man in England, he was never at a loss for
admirers.
Under Allen he served a brilliant apprenticeship.
Enrolled as a servant, he speedily sat at the master's right
hand, and his nimble brains devised many a pretty campaign. For
a while success dogged the horse-hoofs of the gang; with wealth
came immunity, and not one of the warriors had the misfortune to
look out upon the world through a grate. They robbed with
dignity, even with splendour. Now they would drive forth in a
coach and four, carrying with them a whole armoury of offensive
weapons; now they would take the road apparelled as noblemen, and
attended at a discreet distance by their proper servants. But
recklessness brought the inevitable disaster; and it was no less
a personage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto
invincible Allen. A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his way
from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the most
of them were forced to surrender. Allen, taken red-handed, swung
at Tyburn; Hind, with his better mount and defter horsemanship,
rode clear away.
The loss of his friend was a lesson in caution, and
henceforth Hind resolved to follow his craft in solitude. He had
embellished his native talent with all the instruction that
others could impart, and he reflected that he who rode alone
neither ran risk of discovery nor had any need to share his
booty. Thus he began his easy, untrammelled career, making time
and space of no account by his rapid, fearless journeys. Now he
was prancing the moors of Yorkshire, now he was scouring the
plain between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but wherever he rode, he
had a purse in his pocket and a jest on his tongue. To recall
his prowess is to ride with him (in fancy) under the open sky
along the fair, beaten road; to put up with him at the busy,
white posthouse, to drink unnumbered pints of mulled sack with
the round-bellied landlord, to exchange boastful stories over the
hospitable fire, and to ride forth in the morning with the joyous
uncertainty of travel upon you. Failure alone lay outside his
experience, and he presently became at once the terror and the
hero of England.
Not only was his courage conspicuous; luck also was his
constant companion; and a happy bewitchment protected him for
three years against the possibility of harm. He had been lying
at Hatfield, at the George Inn, and set out in the early morning
for London. As he neared the town-gate, an old beldame begged an
alms of him, and though Hind, not liking her ill-favoured visage,
would have spurred forward, the beldame's glittering eye held his
horse
motionless. `Good woman,' cried Hind, flinging her a crown, `I
am in haste; pray let me pass.' `Sir,' answered the witch,
`three days I have awaited your coming. Would you have me lose
my labour now?' And with Hind's assent the sphinx delivered her
message: `Captain Hind,' said she, `your life is beset with
constant danger, and since from your birth I have wished you
well, my poor skill has devised a perfect safeguard.' With this
she gave him a small box containing what might have been a
sundial or compass. `Watch this star,' quoth she, `and when you
know not your road, follow its guidance. Thus you shall be
preserved from every peril for the space of three years.
Thereafter, if you still have faith in my devotion, seek me
again, and I will renew the virtue of the charm.'
Hind took the box joyfully; but when he turned to murmur a
word of gratitude, the witch struck his nag's flanks with a white
wand, the horse leapt vehemently forward, and Hind saw his
benefactress no more. Henceforth, however, a warning voice spoke
to him as plainly as did the demon to Socrates; and had he but
obeyed the beldame's admonition, he might have escaped a violent
death. For he passed the last day of the third year at the siege
of Youghal, where; deprived of happy guidance, he was seriously
wounded, and whence he presently regained England to his own
undoing.
So long as he kept to the road, his life was one long
comedy. His wit and address were inexhaustible, and
fortune never found him at a loss. He would avert suspicion with
the tune of a psalm, as when, habited like a pious shepherd, he
broke a traveller's head with his crook, and deprived him of his
horse. An early adventure was to force a pot-valiant parson, who
had drunk a cup too much at a wedding, into a rarely farcical
situation. Hind, having robbed two gentlemen's servants of a
round sum, went ambling along the road until he encountered a
parson. `Sir,' said he, `I am closely pursued by robbers. You,
I dare swear, will not stand by and see me plundered.' Before
the parson could protest, he thrust a pistol into his hand, and
bade him fire it at the first comer, while he rode off to raise
the county. Meanwhile the rifled travellers came up with the
parson, who, straightway, mistaking them for thieves, fired
without effect, and then, riding forward, flung the pistol in the
face of the nearest. Thus the parson of the parish was dragged
before the magistrate, while Hind, before his dupe could furnish
an explanation, had placed many a mile between himself and his
adversary.
Though he could on occasion show a clean pair of heels,
Hind was never lacking in valiance; and, another day, meeting a
traveller with a hundred pounds in his pocket, he challenged him
to fight there and then, staked his own horse against the money,
and declared that he should win who drew first blood. `If I am
the conqueror,' said the magnanimous Captain, `I will give you
ten pounds for your journey. If you are favoured of fortune, you
shall
give me your servant's horse.' The terms were instantly
accepted, and in two minutes Hind had run his adversary through
the sword-arm. But finding that his victim was but a poor squire
going to London to pay his composition, he not only returned his
money, but sought him out a surgeon, and gave him the best dinner
the countryside could afford.
Thus it was his pleasure to act as a providence, many a
time robbing Peter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he
might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and
bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which
he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding
on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street
corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was
arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds.
Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt,
cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own
security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, `My friend!' he
exclaimed, `I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay it at
once, or I take your miserable life.' The usurer was obliged to
return the money, with another twenty for interest, and when he
would take the law of the innkeeper, was shown the bond duly
cancelled, and was flogged wellnigh to death for his pains.
So Hind rode the world up and down, redressing grievances
like an Eastern monarch, and rejoicing in the abasement of the
evildoer. Nor was the spirit of
his adventure bounded by the ocean. More than once he crossed
the seas; the Hague knew him, and Amsterdam, though these
somnolent cities gave small occasion for the display of his
talents. It was from Scilly that he crossed to the Isle of Man,
where, being recommended to Lord Derby, he gained high favour,
and received in exchange for his jests a comfortable stipend.
Hitherto, said the Chronicles, thieving was unknown in the
island. A man might walk whither he would, a bag of gold in one
hand, a switch in the other, and fear no danger. But no sooner
had Hind appeared at Douglas than honest citizens were pilfered
at every turn. In dismay they sought the protection of the
Governor, who instantly suspected Hind, and gallantly disclosed
his suspicions to the Captain. `My lord!' exclaimed Hind, a
blush upon his cheek, `I protest my innocence; but willingly will
I suffer the heaviest penalty of your law if I am recognised for
the thief.' The victims, confronted with their robber, knew him
not, picturing to the Governor a monster with long hair and
unkempt beard. Hind, acquitted with apologies, fetched from his
lodging the disguise of periwig and beard. `They laugh who win!'
he murmured, and thus forced forgiveness and a chuckle even from
his judges.
As became a gentleman-adventurer, Captain Hind was staunch
in his loyalty to his murdered King. To strip the wealthy was
always reputable, but to rob a Regicide was a masterpiece of
well-doing. A fervent zeal to lighten Cromwell's pocket had
brought
the illustrious Allen to the gallows. But Hind was not one whit
abashed, and he would never forego the chance of an encounter
with his country's enemies. His treatment of Hugh Peters in
Enfield Chace is among his triumphs. At the first encounter the
Presbyterian plucked up courage enough to oppose his adversary
with texts. To Hind's command of `Stand and deliver!' duly
enforced with a loaded pistol, the ineffable Peters replied with
ox-eye sanctimoniously upturned: `Thou shalt not steal; let him
that stole, steal no more,' adding thereto other variations of
the eighth commandment. Hind immediately countered with
exhortations against the awful sin of murder, and rebuked the
blasphemy of the Regicides, who, to defend their own infamy,
would wrest Scripture from its meaning. `Did you not, O monster
of impiety,' mimicked Hind in the preacher's own voice, `pervert
for your own advantage the words of the Psalmist, who said,
“Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of
iron”? Moreover, was it not Solomon who wrote: “Men do not
despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is
hungry”? And is not my soul hungry for gold and the Regicides'
discomfiture?' Peters was still fumbling after texts when the
final argument: `Deliver thy money, or I will send thee out of
the world!' frightened him into submission, and thirty broad
pieces were Hind's reward.
Not long afterwards he confronted Bradshaw near Sherborne,
and, having taken from him a purse fat
with Jacobuses, he bade the Sergeant stand uncovered while he
delivered a discourse upon gold, thus shaped by tradition: `Ay,
marry, sir, this is the metal that wins my heart for ever! O
precious gold, I admire and adore thee as much as Bradshaw,
Prynne, or any villain of the same stamp. This is that
incomparable medicament, which the republican physicians call the
wonder-working plaster. It is truly catholic in operation, and
somewhat akin to the Jesuit's powder, but more effectual. The
virtues of it are strange and various; it makes justice deaf as
well as blind, and takes out spots of the deepest treason more
cleverly than castle-soap does common stains; it alters a man's
constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso's
transfusion of blood can do in seven years. `Tis a great
alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and
those that use them. It miraculously exalts and purifies the
eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the
blackest malefactors. `Tis a mighty cordial for a declining
cause; it stifles faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is
destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes wise men
fools, and fools wise men, and both knaves. The very colour of
this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly
applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and a competent
dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evils of
humanity crave.' Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses of
Bradshaw's coach, and went contemptuously on his way.
But he was not a Cavalier merely in sympathy, nor was he
content to prove his loyalty by robbing Roundheads. He, too,
would strike a blow for his King, and he showed, first with the
royal army in Scotland, and afterwards at Worcester, what he
dared in a righteous cause. Indeed, it was his part in the
unhappy battle that cost him his life, and there is a strange
irony in the reflection that, on the self-same day whereon Sir
Thomas Urquhart lost his precious manuscripts in Worcester's
kennels, the neck of James Hind was made ripe for the halter.
His capture was due to treachery. Towards the end of 1651 he was
lodged with one Denzys, a barber, over against St. Dunstan's
Church in Fleet Street. Maybe he had chosen his hiding-place for
its neighbourhood to Moll Cutpurse's own sanctuary. But a pack
of traitors discovered him, and haling him before the Speaker of
the House of Commons, got him committed forthwith to Newgate.
At first he was charged with theft and murder, and was
actually condemned for killing George Sympson at Knole in
Berkshire. But the day after his sentence, an Act of Oblivion
was passed, and Hind was put upon trial for treason. During his
examination he behaved with the utmost gaiety, boastfully
enlarging upon his services to the King's cause. `These are
filthy jingling spurs,' said he as he left the bar, pointing to
the irons about his legs, `but I hope to exchange them ere long.'
His good-humour remained with him to the end. He jested
in prison as he jested on the road, and it was with a light heart
that he mounted the scaffold built for him at Worcester. His was
the fate reserved for traitors: he was hanged, drawn, and
quartered, and though his head was privily stolen and buried on
the day of execution, his quarters were displayed upon the town
walls, until time and the birds destoyed them utterly.
Thus died the most famous highwayman that ever drew rein
upon an English road; and he died the death of a hero. The
unnumbered crimes of violence and robbery wherewith he might have
been charged weighed not a feather's weight upon his destiny; he
suffered not in the cause of plunder, but in the cause of Charles
Stuart. And in thus excusing his death, his contemporaries did
him scant justice. For while in treasonable loyalty he had a
thousand rivals, on the road he was the first exponent of the
grand manner. The middle of the seventeenth century was, in
truth, the golden age of the Road. Not only were all the
highwaymen Cavaliers, but many a Cavalier turned highwayman.
Broken at their King's defeat, a hundred captains took pistol and
vizard, and revenged themselves as freebooters upon the King's
enemies. And though Hind was outlaw first and royalist
afterwards, he was still the most brilliant collector of them
all. If he owed something to his master, Allen, he added from
the storehouse of his own genius a host of new precepts, and was
the first to establish an enduring tradition.
Before all things he insisted upon courtesy; a
guinea stolen by an awkward ruffian was a sorry theft; levied by
a gentleman of the highway, it was a tribute paid to courage by
generosity. Nothing would atone for an insult offered to a lady;
and when it was Hind's duty to seize part of a gentlewoman's
dowry on the Petersfield road, he not only pleaded his necessity
in eloquent excuse, but he made many promises on behalf of
knight-errantry and damsels in distress. Never would he extort a
trinket to which association had given a sentimental worth;
during a long career he never left any man, save a Roundhead,
penniless upon the road; nor was it his custom to strip the
master without giving the man a trifle for his pains. His
courage, moreover, was equal to his understanding. Since he was
afraid of nothing, it was not his habit to bluster when he was
not determined to have his way. When once his pistol was
levelled, when once the solemn order was given, the victim must
either fight or surrender; and Hind was never the man to decline
a combat with any weapons and in any circumstances.
Like the true artist that he was, he neglected no detail
of his craft. As he was a perfect shot, so also he was a
finished horseman; and his skill not only secured him against
capture, but also helped him to the theft of such horses as his
necessities required, or to the exchange of a worn-out jade for a
mettled prancer. Once upon a time a credulous farmer offered
twenty pounds and his own gelding for the Captain's mount. Hind
struck a bargain at once,
and as they jogged along the road he persuaded the farmer to set
his newly-purchased horse at the tallest hedge, the broadest
ditch. The bumpkin failed, as Hind knew he would fail; and,
begging the loan for an instant of his ancient steed, Hind not
only showed what horsemanship could accomplish, but straightway
rode off with the better horse and twenty pounds in his pocket.
So marvellously did his reputation grow, that it became a
distinction to be outwitted by him, and the brains of innocent
men were racked to invent tricks which might have been put upon
them by the illustrious Captain. Thus livelier jests and madder
exploits were fathered upon him than upon any of his kind, and he
has remained for two centuries the prime favourite of the chap-books.
Robbing alone, he could afford to despise pedantry: did he
meet a traveller who amused his fancy he would give him the pass-word (`the fiddler's paid,' or what not), as though the highway
had not its code of morals; nor did he scruple, when it served
his purpose, to rob the bunglers of his own profession. By this
means, indeed, he raised the standard of the Road and warned the
incompetent to embrace an easier trade. While he never took a
shilling without sweetening his depredation with a joke, he was,
like all humorists, an acute philosopher. `Remember what I tell
you,' he said to the foolish persons who once attempted to rob
him, the master-thief of England, `disgrace not yourself for
small sums, but aim high, and for great ones; the least will
bring
you to the gallows.' There, in five lines, is the whole
philosophy of thieving, and many a poor devil has leapt from the
cart to his last dance because he neglected the counsel of the
illustrious Hind. Among his aversions were lawyers and thief-catchers. `Truly I could wish,' he exclaimed in court, `that
full-fed fees were as little used in England among lawyers as the
eating of swine's flesh was among the Jews.' When you remember
the terms of friendship whereon he lived with Moll Cutpurse, his
hatred of the thief-catcher, who would hang his brother for `the
lucre of ten pounds, which is the reward,' or who would swallow a
false oath `as easily as one would swallow buttered fish,' is a
trifle mysterious. Perhaps before his death an estrangement
divided Hind and Moll. Was it that the Roaring Girl was too
anxious to take the credit of Hind's success? Or did he harbour
the unjust suspicion that when the last descent was made upon him
at the barber's, Moll might have given a friendly warning?
Of this he made no confession, but the honest thief was
ever a liberal hater of spies and attorneys, and Hind's prudence
is unquestioned. A miracle of intelligence, a master of style,
he excelled all his contemporaries and set up for posterity an
unattainable standard. The eighteenth century flattered him by
its imitation; but cowardice and swagger compelled it to limp
many a dishonourable league behind. Despite the single
inspiration of dancing a corant upon the green, Claude Duval,
compared to Hind,
was an empty braggart. Captain Stafford spoiled the best of his
effects with a more than brutal vice. Neither Mull-Sack nor the
Golden Farmer, for all their long life and handsome plunder, are
comparable for an instant to the robber of Peters and Bradshaw.
They kept their fist fiercely upon the gold of others, and cared
not by what artifice it was extorted. Hind never took a
sovereign meanly; he approached no enterprise which he did not
adorn. Living in a true Augustan age, he was a classic among
highwaymen, the very Virgil of the Pad.
