Prepared for war, now Bagshot heath we cross,
Where broken gamesters oft repair their loss.
Mr. William Davis was a man very greatly respected for his singular habit of always paying his debts in gold. Paper money—whether notes, bills, or cheques—never passed from him to his creditors. Good, honest guineas, of red, minted gold—tender no man refused—were his only medium. Those who did business with him thought this an eccentricity, but an amiable one; and as the years went on, he accumulated more and more respect.
But in all those years he was in reality a busy highwayman. Many stories are told of him, and by them it appears that he did by no means confine his activities to the neighbourhood of Bagshot. Prudence now and again sent him further afield, to till—to adopt a formula that would have appealed to him as a farmer—comparatively uncropped ground. Thus we find him once ranging so far as Salisbury Plain, and there bidding the coachman, who was driving the Duchess of Albemarle, to rein in his horses, or—presenting a pistol—take the consequences. He had "a long engagement" with postilion, coachman, and two footmen, and wounded them all. He does not appear to have suffered; which does not say much for the marksmanship, the courage, or the resource of the Duchess's guard, whose guardianship was thus proved so ineffectual. But it is a hero-worshipping biographer of highwaymen, who tells the story. The "Golden Farmer" seems on this occasion to have departed from his almost invariable custom, and to have torn the Duchess's diamond rings from her fingers. Probably he would have had her watch also, only the appearance of some other travellers made him prudently fly: followed by a torrent of bad language from Her Grace, who could hold her own with the best, or worst, in that line, having been, before she married General Monk, none other than Nan Clarges, washerwoman, and the daughter of a blacksmith, and well versed in abuse.
Anon, we have the "Golden Farmer" on Finchley Common. He had waited there one day, riding back and forth between four and five hours, hoping for some likely traveller, and none had come. Imagine him, shivering in the bitter blast, and angrily wondering what had become of every one. At last a young gentleman came riding along, unconscious of danger. Up rode the highwayman to him, and gave him a flap across his shoulders with the flat of his hanger.
"How slow you are!" he exclaimed. "A plague on you, to make a man wait on you all the morning! Come, deliver what you have, and be curst, and then go to Hell for orders."
The traveller declared he had nothing about him, but that, the highwayman remarked, was nonsense.
Then, searching the unresisting young gentleman's pockets and taking a gold watch and about one hundred guineas, he gave him three parting strokes on the back, and, telling him in future "not to give his mind to telling lies when an honest gentleman required a small boon of him," cantered away.
One day, having paid his landlord £80, he carefully disguised himself, and in a solitary situation met him with the command to "stand and deliver!"