This admiring authority then proceeds to give us an account of Whitney's first action, and tells how "he encountered a Jolly Red-fac'd Son of the Church bravely Mounted, with a large Canonical Rose in his Ecclesiastical Hat and his Gown fluttering in the Wind. He looked as if he had been hung round with Bladders. Him, within two miles of St. Albans, he accosts after this manner, 'Reverend Sir, the Gentlemen of your Coat having, in all conscience, enough preached up the edifying Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, and now I am fully resolved to try the experiment, whether you Believe your own Doctrine, and whether you are able to Practise it. Therefore, worthy sir, in the name of the above-mentioned Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, make no opposition, I beseech you, but deliver up the filthy Lucre you carry about you.'
"Now you must know that this rosy-gilled Levite had the wicked sum of six-score and ten guineas clos'd up in the waistband of his breeches, designed as a present to a worthy gentleman that lately helped him to a fat living (for you must not call it Symony for all the world, but christen it by the name of Gratitude, and so forth) but Captain Whitney, who, it seems, did not understand any of these softening distinctions, soon eased him of his Mammon, but not without a great deal of expostulation on the Levite's part, and, what was more barbarous, stript him of his spick-and-span new sacerdotal habit, sent his Horse home before him, to prepare his family, and having bound him to his good behaviour, left him all alone to his contemplations in an adjoining wood."
He then met a poor clergyman in threadbare gown, riding a sorry Rosinante, whose poor ribs in a starved body looked like the bars of a bird-cage. What would the typical outlaw, from the days of Robin Hood, onwards, have done in such a rencounter? Why, he would have given the poor divine the new robe and some money; and this Whitney did; handing him four or five bags of the best, saying: "Here is that will buy you a dozen or so of clean bands!" "Thus," says the biographer, "our brave Captain dispensed charities with one hand and plundered with the other."
One day, patrolling Bagshot Heath, he met a gentleman, and desired his purse and watch.
"Sir," said the gentleman, "'tis well you spoke first, for I was just going to say the same thing to you."
"Why then," quoth Whitney, "are you a gentleman-thief?"
"Yes," replied the stranger, "but I have had very bad success to-day, for I have been riding up and down all this morning, without meeting with any prize."
Whitney, upon hearing this doleful tale, wished him better luck, and took his leave.
That night, Whitney and this strange traveller chanced to stay at the same inn, but Whitney had so changed his dress in the meanwhile, and altered his manner, that he was not recognised. He heard his acquaintance of that morning telling another guest how smartly he had outwitted a highwayman that day, and had saved a hundred pounds by his ready wit; and this revelation of how easily he had been hoodwinked made him determined, if it were at all possible, to take his revenge on the morrow. Meanwhile, he listened to the conversation.