Our present hero, John Clavel, who was born in 1603, was heir-presumptive to his uncle, the Dorset squire. Whether that uncle kept him shorter of money than an heir should be, or whether he was a gamester who sought to repair his losses at cards or dice by the hazard of the road, who shall say? Not I. Perhaps he even robbed on the highway for sheer joy of it: such sportsmen were not unknown. But, by all accounts and just inferences, he had been no mere amateur, out for a solitary adventure, when he was laid by the heels and cast into the King's Bench Prison. He had made an occupation of highway robbery.
Thus we read, in one of the News Letters written by Joseph Mead, that purveyor of London intelligence to country gentlemen in 1626: "February 11th, Mr. Clavell, a gentleman, a knight's eldest son (?), a great highway robber, and of posts, was, together with a soldier, his companion, arraigned and condemned, on Monday last, at the King's Bench bar. He pleaded for himself that he had never struck or wounded any man, had never taken anything from their bodies, as rings, etc., never cut their girths or saddles, or done them, when he robbed, any corporeal violence. He was, with his companion, reprieved. He sent the following verses to the King, for mercy:
I that have robb'd so oft, am now bid stand;
Death and the law assault me, and demand
My life and means. I never used men so;
But having ta'en their money, let them go.
Yet must I die! And is there no reliefe?
The King of Kings had mercy on a thiefe!
So may our gracious King too, if he please,
Without his council, grant me a release.