With Allowance
London. Printed for D. M. 1674.
By this it appears that Jackson's Christian name was Francis, and that the robbery, in which he and his associates (so anxious that their reputations should not be fouled by false reports) were finally surprised and taken, was committed on the Exeter Road, between Hounslow and Staines, early in the morning of March 18th. The gang had already, on March 16th, impudently robbed the Windsor coach in broad daylight, between Cranford and Hounslow, and actually in sight of about a dozen gentlemen, well armed and mounted, who pursued them for five or six miles before they were lost sight of.
The country was thoroughly aroused, and the hue-and-cry out for them; and it therefore argues great rashness, or impudence, that they should, two days later, and in the same neighbourhood, rob other coaches.
The gang engaged that day comprised James Slader, Walter Parkhurst, John Williams, John White, and Francis Jackson. After robbing two coaches in Bedfont Lane, supposing themselves observed by a gentleman's servant out hunting in a green livery, they struck off across country for Acton; the liveried servant hurrying after them. They then made in the direction of Harrow-on-the-Hill, suspecting themselves pursued all the way, but seeing no one until they reached that little town, where they found forty or fifty men, ready to receive them with guns, pitchforks, and all sorts of weapons.
The inference at this point is that the gang had made much slower progress across country than the hue-and-cry had done.
Turning from this embattled front, they made their way down the hill and at the bottom found "a great number" of horse and foot ready to receive them. Although these horse and foot were so numerous, the highwaymen, in their "Confession," claim to have compelled them to fly into the houses for shelter; and so rode on to Paddington, and thence to Kilburn and Hendon, and from Hendon to Hampstead Heath, hotly engaged all the way. It was between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning when they had reached Harrow, and six o'clock by the time they were come upon Hampstead Heath, and the daylight was then fading out of the March evening. Their powder and shot had nearly all been expended about two o'clock, and some of their swords lost or broken, and most of them sorely wounded or bruised. Prominent among the combatants in this extraordinary running fight was a Lifeguardsman, "who fought with a great deal of courage most part of that day."
On Hampstead Heath there were two hundred men arrayed against these five exhausted highwaymen, who stood at bay in the grim hollow road at North End as night fell, and fought the contest out to the inevitable end. They fought an hour there, some with swords, and others with pistols. Slader, with a last shot, killed one Edward Kemp, and was then himself mortally wounded; and Jackson ran one Henry Miller through the left side with his rapier, so that he died immediately.