"CLIBBORN'S POST."
The visible relics of the highwaymen are few, but among them that of "Clibborn's Post" is peculiarly interesting. This relic is found in Hertfordshire, in the neighbourhood of that fine old Elizabethan manor-house, now a farm, but famed in romance, Queen Hoo Hall. On the way from Tewin and Queen Hoo Hall to Bramfield, the wooded lane rises in a curve to the summit of what is known locally as "Open Valley Hill." Here, on the grassy bank, firmly planted in the soil, stands a stout, oaken post, carefully bound with strips of iron. This is "Clibborn's Post," the modern successor of the original stake driven through the body of a brutal highwayman of that name, shot dead at this spot in the act of attacking a farmer who was on his way home from Hertford Market to Datchworth. This occurrence happened on December 28th, 1782. There had, about that time, been many highway robberies committed on the country roads in this neighbourhood; but no one had been able to identify the desperado, who had plunged the countryside, and especially the week-end market folk, into such terror. On this particular night this farmer was driving home in a cart, accompanied by a servant named Shock. Just as they reached this spot—then, as now, a lonely place surrounded by tangled undergrowth and dense plantations—a man rushed out from the thickets and seized the horse's reins. The farmer jumped down to struggle with him, but his assailant was getting the upper hand, and was in the act of unclasping a knife to cut his throat, when the farmer called out to his servant, who carried a blunderbuss: "Shoot, Shock, or I am a dead man!" Shock had been afraid to fire, thinking he might hit the wrong man, but, on this command, he let fly, and shot the highwayman dead. When they examined the body they found it to be that of a pieman named Clibborn, a well-known and ostensibly honest person who frequented the Hertford inns on market day, selling pies to the farmers and others. He had opportunities of noting those who would be carrying large sums of money home with them; and, leaving early, waylaid them in some lonely spot such as this.
It was still, at the close of the eighteenth century, abundantly possible for peaceful travellers along the roads to be killed by highwaymen: Mr. Mellish, a city merchant, returning from a day with the King's hounds, in company with two friends, named Bosanquet and Pole, having been shot dead by a gang, who attacked and robbed the carriage in which they were travelling, when near Sipson Green, on the Bath Road. It was a wanton act, too; the travellers having disbursed their money on demand, and the carriage already starting off again for Hounslow when one of the gang fired a shot after it. Mr. Mellish, sitting with his back to the horses, was struck in the forehead. It is probable that the highwayman intended no more than to warn the occupants of the carriage that he and his fellows really were fully armed, and that they had therefore better hasten away as quickly as they could; but the intention is immaterial: the unfortunate man was killed, and the highwaymen were never captured.
The nineteenth century opened badly for the highwaymen, for not only had the business of banking and the payment of money by cheque grown largely, but Pitt's Act for Restricting Cash Payments, passed in 1797, had led to fewer large amounts in coin being carried about their persons by unprotected travellers. Nothing was more remarkable than the great sums of money that seem to have been carried by all classes in the periods already discussed; and in those circumstances lay the highwaymen's opportunity. But now they had fewer and smaller takings in coin, practically a choice only between watches and jewellery and bank-notes: very dangerous classes of property to handle unlawfully.
But if their takings were less, their numbers were scarcely fewer; and the gibbets were still not infrequently replenished. Thus, a highwayman named Haines was, in May 1799, gibbeted on Hounslow Heath, just where the Bath and the Exeter roads part company, at the western extremity of Hounslow town. A curious item in the Annual Register for that year proves—if proof were wanted—that the spectacle of his hanging had been a popular sight; for there we read an account of how a party of eight gentlemen, who had been out for the day to witness the spectacle, ferried over the Thames to the "Flower Pot" inn at Sunbury that night, at ten o'clock, presumably with the intention of "making a night of it." It may not be uncharitable to suppose that they had already taken more than sufficient, for in crossing the river, the boat was upset and three of them were drowned.
The stumps of the gibbets that formerly stood at the fork of the Exeter and the Bath roads, at the western end of Hounslow were discovered in 1899, when the road was excavated for the electric tramways that now pass the spot.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the approaches to London again became so dangerous that it was necessary to institute some kind of protection. This was established in 1805, under the name of the Bow Street Patrol, and was organised, as its name implies, from the principal London police-office. This was a forerunner of the existing horse-patrols of the Metropolitan Police, to be now and again encountered at night on lonely suburban roads in these far more secure times of ours. Even Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common grew comparatively safe when this armed and efficient force got to work. They were probably not in full existence when the poet Campbell and his wife, walking on Sydenham Common in that year, were confronted by a mounted highwayman who demanded their money, with menaces. An alarm was promptly raised, and he was pursued and captured; when he was found to be a resident of the neighbourhood.
In the provinces the era of the highwaymen was longer lived. The roads between Arundel and Chichester were in 1807, for example, haunted by one Allen, a highwayman who preyed chiefly upon the farmers coming home with well-filled purses from market. The militia were called out to capture him, and thus, in these peculiarly glorious circumstances of war, he was shot dead near Midhurst, while endeavouring to escape arrest.