THOMAS SIMPSON: "OLD MOB"
The name of Thomas Simpson arouses no emotions of love or hate, of fear or of admiration. He is just "Thomas Simpson," plebeian, undistinguished amid the other hundreds of Thomas Simpsons who have worn a commonplace name throughout a commonplace career, and so ended; the world appreciably no better for their existence, and certainly not noticeably worse. There have been perhaps thousands of Thomas Simpsons, but there has been only one "Old Mob." The Thomas Simpson, who rose to fame with that picturesque nickname, was born at Romsey, in the New Forest, in the first half of the seventeenth century. We are told little of his early life, and merely learn that he continued to live at Romsey as his only home, "until he had five children and some grandchildren." His education, we further learn, without surprise—for it was the seventeenth century, you know—"appears to have been greatly neglected." It was impudence, however, more than anything, more even than courage, that ever made the successful highwayman: the 'ologies were useless on the hard high road, under stars, when a carriage worth robbing drew nigh; nor even would the elementary three R's help a man any the better to thrust a pistol through a window and cry "Stand!"
Old Mob had little education and less manners. Your Du Valls and Captain Hinds might bring the manners of society and the refinements of the ball-room into the keen air of the highway; for him there was but the rasping tongue of command and the contact of the cold muzzle of his pistol with your nose. He ranged the south and west of England very freely, and is found on one occasion in the Eastern Counties.
Accounts of his career generally open with his encountering a certain Sir Bartholomew Shower, between Honiton and Exeter. The road in the neighbourhood of Honiton Clyst is still little frequented, and at that time must have been singularly lonely. Old Mob called upon the knight to "stand and deliver," and Sir Bartholomew delivered accordingly, and with a pleasing readiness because he had the merest trifle on him, and thought to have thus escaped easily. But Old Mob was disappointed, and proportionably wroth: "My demands, sir, are very large and pressing," he said, "and therefore you must instantly draw a bill for one hundred and fifty pounds and remain in the next field for security till I have received the money."
The knight vainly protested that there was no one in Exeter who had so large a sum by him, but Old Mob would take no denial and led him a long distance away from the road, tied him to a tree, and compelled him to draw a bill for the amount on a goldsmith in the city. Then he rode into Exeter, duly cashed it and, returning, released his prisoner. "Sir," his biographer reports him as saying, "I am come with a habeas corpus to remove you out of your present captivity"; which he did, leaving him to walk home the distance of three miles.
This last remark attributed to Old Mob, the uneducated, is no doubt a biographical frill, inserted to fitly round off the incident. What should he know of habeas corpus? This was a vice of which the biographer of the knights of the road could by no means rid themselves.
It was upon the road between Newmarket and London that Old Mob halted the carriage of no less a personage than Louise de la Kérouaille, the notorious Frenchwoman, favourite of Charles the Second, whom that monarch had created Duchess of Portsmouth.
"OLD MOB" ROBS THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.