Du Vall's biographer then ranges from sarcasm to an indignant defence of his birth and parentage.
"There are some," he says, "that confidently aver he was born in Smock Alley, without Bishopsgate, that his father was a cook, and sold boiled beef and porridge; but their report is as false as it is defamatory and malicious."
"It was easy," he continues, "to disprove this in several ways, but the chief argument against it was this: If he had been born in Smock Alley, he would not have been a Frenchman, but if he had not been a Frenchman, it was quite impossible he should have been so much beloved in life and lamented in death by the English ladies."
Early in life, a wandering priest who happened upon his parents' humble dwelling, found a mark upon his head as of two crowns: a sure sign, said the priest, that he was to be a traveller. Then, adopting something of the rôle of a fortune-teller, he declared the boy would never be long without money; and, wherever he went, "he would always have the exceeding favour of women of the highest condition."
The rustic miller and his wife looked upon the priest as an oracle, but wondered how such fortune would come to pass. Nothing visible on the horizon of their lives warranted any such expectations. They were miserably poor, and kept themselves but little warmed by that comparative honesty of which we have already read. So when Claude grew to the age of thirteen or fourteen, he was turned adrift from the old home, to fend for himself. His parents did what they could, but that did not amount to much. A little less unexpected honesty on their part would have enabled him, no doubt, to enter upon the world under better circumstances: but as it was, the best they could do was to buy him shoes and stockings—things he had never before known—and a second-hand suit of clothes. This outfit, and twenty sous given him at parting, was all his property. As he went they threw an old shoe after him for luck, and bid him go seek his fortune.
The boy made his way to Rouen in the first instance. There he was promised a ride to Paris on one of the post-horses he saw in the courtyard of an inn, if he would earn that lift by helping stable them for the night. He willingly agreed, and was fortunate to meet at the same inn a number of English youths, who, with their tutors, were returning by way of Paris to England. In return for such use as he could be to them in practising their insufficient French, they employed and fed him for the few days they remained in the country.
In Paris, according to our admiring but discriminating biographer, "he lived unblameably during this time, unless you esteem it a fault to be scabby, and a little given to filching; qualities very frequent in persons of his nation and condition." So, employed about stables and inn-yards in Paris, he continued until the Restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660 brought about the return of many exiles. In the service of one of the many "persons of Quality" who then crossed the Channel, went Claude Du Vall, who by this time was seventeen years of age.
The joy that expressed itself all over England at the return of Charles the Second degenerated into riotous excess. Dissipation and every species of profligacy abounded among upper and middle classes, and the servants of the wealthy were apt pupils of their masters in these excesses. Highwaymen, whose profession had languished miserably under the Commonwealth's later rule, reappeared on every road, and were drawn from all classes. Footmen and lackeys found a singular fascination in the occupation of the high-toby crack, and early among them was Du Vall, who in a short time became so dexterous in his new employment, that he had the honour of being the first named in a long list of highwaymen proclaimed in the London Gazette.
It has already been acknowledged that violence had no part in the methods of this artist, and he would have scorned, you may be sure, the ruffianly, and even murderous acts of a later generation of the craft, who not only despoiled travellers of their goods, but rendered the roads dangerous to life and limb. His chief exploit, upon Hampstead Heath, is classical, and is set forth so eloquently, and with such an engaging profusion of capital letters, in the Memoires that one cannot do better than quote it. By this account it would appear that he was the captain of a gang: