"Do you know who I am, fellow?" demanded that haughty lady, indignant at being stopped by so mean-looking an object.
Now, for such as the Duchess of Portsmouth and her kind to ask such a question of a highwayman was singularly rash. Captain Alexander Smith and "Captain" Charles Johnson, in their folio volumes of the Lives of the Highwaymen, published in 1719 and 1742, respectively, describe Old Mob's reply, either in his own words, or excogitated out of their own inner consciousness, according to their own ideas of probability; but these present pages are in octavo volumes and this is the twentieth century, and for one of these reasons, or both—as you please—it is really not possible to reprint the vigorous reply of Old Mob to the Duchess's request. He not only told her who she was, but also, in the sheerest unornamental language, what she was, as well. Among other things: "You are maintained at the public expense. I know that all the courtiers depend upon your smiles, and that even the King is your slave. But what of all that? A gentleman-collector upon the road is a greater man, and more absolute than His Majesty is at Court. You may now say, madam, that a single highwayman has exercised his authority where Charles the Second of England has often begged a favour."
Her grace continued to gaze upon him with a lofty air, and told him he was a very insolent fellow: that she would give him nothing, and that he should certainly suffer for his insolence. "Touch me if you dare!" she exclaimed.
"Madame," rejoined the highwayman, "that haughty French spirit will do you no good here. I am an English freebooter, and I insist upon it, as my native right, to seize all foreign commodities! Your money is indeed English, but it is forfeited, as being the fruit of English folly. All you possess is confiscated, as being bestowed upon one so worthless. I am King here, madame! I have use for money, as well as he. The public pay for his follies, and so they must for mine." And Old Mob thereupon gathered in two hundred pounds in gold, "a very rich necklace which her Royal paramour had lately given her," a gold watch, and two diamond rings.
You will observe an intolerable tendency in Old Mob to moral reflections: as though he were one who had missed his vocation, and would have been more legitimately employed in improving the occasion from the pulpit. And not only Old Mob held forth in this manner. His contemporaries—if we may believe Messrs. Smith and Johnson—did the like: in very unclerical fashion, it is true, for they sandwiched their preaching with the most horrible oaths and blasphemies: all duly printed at length by those authorities, without the decent veil of the blushing "——," or the discreet "*." It was a singularly mixed method; but the preachments are all of so singular a likeness that we may shrewdly suspect them to be the inventions of their biographers. The cursings and revilings we may take as being the highwayman's very own. They were instinctively employed to strike terror into the hearts of unfortunate wayfarers, just as in olden Chinese warfare the pig-tailed warriors came on with grimaces and with shields pictured with hideous masks.
"Old Mob" then met "Old Gadbury, the Astrologer," and stopping him and demanding his money, "the Starry Prophet began to plead Poverty, but this did not move him at all to Compassion."
"You lying Rogue," quoth he, "can you that possess all the Seven Planets of Free-hold, and let them out on Lease to the Stationers' Company, plead Poverty to me. No, no, you must not sham Poverty to me; come, come, your Money presently, or this Pistol, shall be worse to you than the raging Dog Star that threatens Death and Diseases to a Country."
And "Old Gadbury" had thereupon to make a speedy delivery.
The next most outstanding enterprise of Old Mob was the halting of Judge Jeffreys in his coach, some time later than that Judge's assize of blood in the West. The highwayman, setting suddenly upon the equipage, disabled the two servants who accompanied it, and then demanded his lordship's money.
"I am Sir George Jeffreys," quietly remarked the judge, with a world of meaning, as he severely eyed the pistol presented at him. That plain statement was designed to send a pang of apprehension through the aggressor; and, indeed, the lowering presence of the judge had made many a prisoner brought before him quail; but Old Mob, by the best accounts, does not appear to have been greatly impressed. He was ready as ever with his moral remarks.