In midst of this busy time, Wilson succeeded to some small property in Yorkshire, and left to claim it, and shortly afterwards William Hawkins and Wright were arrested in the exercise of their adopted trade, and William Hawkins, to save himself, impeached the others and earned his liberty by that treachery. Wright might have done so; but he was one of those rare chivalrous characters who oftener live in the pages of novels than in real life, and he held his peace, for the sake of the traitor Hawkins's wife and children. He died in his chivalry, too, for he was convicted and hanged; while William Hawkins went free, and presently crossed to Holland with his brother and the brotherhood's money. They returned when this had all gone; and met Ralph Wilson in London, whither he had returned, after disposing of his inheritance in Yorkshire for £350. He had already lost all this in gambling when his old friends found him. He, the Hawkins brothers, and George Sympson then set about plans for robbing the Harwich mail, in April, 1722; but as that mail, they declared, was "as uncertain as the wind," they decided they could not afford the time to wait on the road for it; and agreed to turn their attention to the Bristol postboys, or their mail, instead.
JOHN HAWKINS AND GEORGE SYMPSON ROBBING THE BRISTOL MAIL.
They fixed upon Hounslow Heath as the most suitable spot for the job, April 16th and 18th. "The meaning of taking the mail twice," explains Wilson, in his "Full and Impartial Account," "was to get the halves of some bank bills, the first halves whereof we took out of the mail on Monday morning." In the pages of Captain Charles Johnson we see Sympson and John Hawkins, represented in a large copper-plate engraving, engaged in robbing two postboys and binding them with rope. The great size of the highwaymen and the diminutive character of the postboys seemed to make it an easy task.
The Post Office was roused to fury by this latest of many impudent mail-robberies; and Wilson, while taking his ease at the Moorgate Coffee House in the City, and listening to the gossip, a week later, heard of a great hue-and-cry undertaken. Seriously alarmed by this, he contemplated taking a sea-passage to Newcastle, but was traced by one of the stolen notes and arrested before he could get aboard. The officers took him at once to the Post Office, where no less a personage than the Postmaster-General himself examined him; but he disclaimed all knowledge of the affair, and repeated his denials when he was re-examined the following morning.
Meanwhile the Post Office had also secured John Hawkins and Sympson, and had them detained in the Gatehouse. The Post Office officials then appear to have in the most Machiavellian way played off one against the other. They knew well enough that criminals were usually too eager to save their own necks to care about anything in the way of loyalty to their companions, and that they were always ready to turn evidence against them. In this case there seems to have been keen competition to be first with the confession; but Wilson's evidence was selected, and it convicted John Hawkins and Sympson, who were executed on May 21st, 1722, their bodies being afterwards hanged in chains at the end of Longford Lane, three miles on the London side of Colnbrook.
There is a considerable literature, in the form of old chapbooks, about these confederates: notably an account by William Hawkins, the surviving brother of John. Although himself at an earlier period an informer, having purchased his liberty at the price of his confederate, Wright's, life, he is found vehemently attacking Wilson for the same deed, in respect of his brother.
A mysterious affair, which has never been properly cleared up, was the death of Twysden, Bishop of Raphoe, in 1752. An Irish Bishop, even although a Kentish man of ancient descent, did not perhaps rank very high upon the Episcopal bench, but he was sufficiently exalted to make the innuendo that he had died from being shot on the Heath while taking purses at the pistol-muzzle a very startling one.
Grantley Berkeley says: "The Lord Bishop Twysden, of Raphoe, a member of the old Kentish family of that name, was found suspiciously out at night on Hounslow Heath, and was most unquestionably shot through the body. A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine asked, 'Was this the bishop who was taken ill on Hounslow Heath, and so carried back to his friend's house (? Osterley Park), where he died of an inflammation of the bowels?'"