Hind remained in the sanctuary afforded by the Scilly Isles for eight months, and then travelled to the Isle of Man, where he sojourned thirteen weeks. There had been little scope for his peculiar activities on Scilly, but he found more opportunities on the Isle of Man, the kingdom at that time of my lord the Earl of Derby, to whom he obtained an introduction. He even became what modern diplomats would describe as a persona grata in that island Court. Robbery had been unknown in this most fortunate of the Fortunate Isles before ever Hind set foot there; but with his advent a perfect epidemic of highway robbery prevailed. The Manxmen would have been of the densest had they not connected the coming of Hind with these disasters, and they laid their suspicions before the Governor, Sir Philip Musgrave, who, with Hind by his side, in good-fellowship thought the insinuation absurdly ungenerous. Hind declared his innocence, but protested his willingness to suffer the extremest penalty of the island laws, if he were recognised for the thief. This offer was not so impetuously ingenuous as it looked, for, naturally, if he were so recognised, he would perforce, in the usual course of affairs, be made to suffer; and secondly, he had already taken the precaution of robbing in disguise. The Manxmen had come to the Governor with tales of an aged, hairy man, with long hair and beard; and confronted with the youthful Cavalier-like Hind, protested with apologies, that this was not the man. And then, when they were gone, what must our tricksy Captain do but produce, for the Governor's amusement, the shameless wigs and costumes in which he had masqueraded. There must have been a deal of fellow-feeling in that Governor, and little humour. Your true humorist could not possibly have resisted the obvious conclusion to the screaming farce, and would have had Hind fettered and sent off at once to the deepest dungeon available.
HIND SHOWS HIS DISGUISE.
Hind then went across the Border into Scotland, where preparations were afoot for an armed invasion of England on behalf of Charles the Second. At Stirling he loyally kissed the hand of His Majesty and offered his services, not in taking purses on the road, but in fighting for the cause. The King commended him to the Duke of Buccleuch, and he came south and fought for Charles (the "King of Scots," as the Republicans were pleased to call him) at the disastrous Battle of Worcester. Escaping in the headlong flight, he hid himself in London. Near the close of that year, 1651, lodging in the name of James Brown, in the house of one Denzys, who exercised the trade of a barber over against St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, in Fleet Street, he was betrayed to the Republican party and carried before the Speaker of the House of Commons, who, after a lengthy examination "in regard to his late engagement with Charles Stewart, and whether he was the man that accompanied the Scots king for the furtherance of his escape," committed him in irons to the Gatehouse. There was a choice before his captors of the charge to be preferred. At first he was removed to Newgate, and tried at the sessions for highway robbery. A rude woodcut in a biography shows him, visited by his wife and father, at this stage of affairs, with a pitiful verse beneath.
The charges not being sustained by sufficient evidence, he was sent under a strong guard to Reading, there to be tried, March 1st, 1652, for the murder of George Symson at Knowl Hill. Convicted of this, he would forthwith have been hanged, had it not been for an Act of Oblivion that had been passed, securing an indemnity for "all past offences." This, apparently, did not include the offence of high treason; and so reduced, much against their will, to making a political martyr of Hind, the high personages of the Commonwealth, after endeavouring to dispose of him on the ignoble charges of highway robbery and murder, removed him by Order in Council to Worcester gaol, where he was condemned for high treason.
Behold! at last, the saddest sight of all;
Poor Hind! Now in the hole at Newgate lies,