"WHO GOES HOME?"
Those were the times when Londoners, travelling at night westward from Hyde Park Corner, where the last outpost of civilisation, in the shape of the ultimate watchman's box, was situated, assembled there in parties, armed with bludgeons and blunderbusses, and, so fortified, came thankfully to their destinations in one or other of those solitary country mansions, whose high-walled gardens and heavy doors arouse the astonishment of those modern observers who do not realise the old necessity that existed for residences so situated being planned very much after the style of block-houses in a hostile country.
Nor was it only by night that the fringes of London were made dangerous by highwaymen and footpads. Hyde Park was a fashionable resort, even under the Commonwealth, but even in the early years of the succeeding century it was a dangerous place, as we learn from the following item in Narcissus Luttrell's diary, only one among many such, under date of 1704:
1704. "A Gentleman going from St. James's to Kensington was met and attacked in Hide Park by two Foot Pads, who took from him his Sword, Watch, Perriwig, and Rings, in all to the value of £130, and left him in a deplorable condition."
The highwaymen who terrorised travellers from about 1720 and onwards were still recruited from the ranks of younger sons, from broken gamesters, and from the army; but about this time they were very largely reinforced by a class of men now extinct. The noblemen and the wealthy of the eighteenth century kept up establishments that have long since become things of the past. The "running footmen," for example, who were a feature in every peer's household, trotting in advance of my lord's carriage, are only to be found in books on bygone usages. The Duke of Queensberry, "Old Q," kept the last of them, and he died in 1810. From the footmen, "running" or other, the coachmen, and the other servants of nobility in that age, the roads were very largely peopled with highwaymen. These men had learned in service to imitate all the vices and none of the virtues (although they were few enough) of their masters. Their imitation chiefly led them into gambling, and when they lost their places through their failure to do their duty, and sometimes the robbery of plate and money, that commonly resulted from their devotion to cards and drink, there was nothing easier than to take to the road. They had learned, in their association with the great, something of deportment, they could generally ride a horse, and a cast-off suit of my lord's fully furnished them, in the bad light of a winter's day, with the appearance of gentlemen. Such at that period were many of the "Knights of the Road"; and thus, in spite of the glowing accounts commonly given of the mid-eighteenth century highwaymen, it is not surprising to find that they were, as a general rule, merely sordid fellows, whose idea of repartee was the cold muzzle of a pistol and a "Deliver instantly": embellished with a volley of oaths.
But now and again we happen upon some pleasing play of fancy; as, for instance, when Harry Simms, a really dashing highwayman who was well known as "Gentleman Harry," came upon a gentleman in a postchaise. Harry rode furiously always. "Don't ride your horse so hard, sir," said the gentleman, "or you'll soon ride away all your estate."
"Indeed I shall not," returned Gentleman Harry, "for it lies in several counties."