No harm, they said, should come to him if he would but give his daughter a note by one of them, authorising her to pay bearer a hundred pounds in cash.
Mr. Francis declared he could not do so; he had not anything like that amount in the house; upon which they ran him violently into the stable and tied him up also. Then, knocking at the door of the house, and Miss Francis opening it, they pushed into the passage and secured her as well. The foremost men were particularly rude and violent, but Turpin, who came in at the rear, appears to have remonstrated with them about this gross usage, and to have stopped it: only assuring her that it would be best she remained quiet, and that if she made any resistance she would be treated even worse.
A maid-servant, hearing this, cried out, "Lord, Mrs. Sarah! what have you done?"
One of the gang then struck the maid, and another hit Miss Francis, and swore they would be murdered if they did not hold their peace.
Mrs. Francis, hearing the disturbance from an inner room, called out, "What's the matter?" on which Fielder ran forward, and crying "D——n you, I'll stop your mouth presently!" broke her head with the handle of a whip he carried, and then tied her to a chair.
Miss Francis and the maid were tied to the kitchen-dresser, and Gregory was deputed to watch them, with a pistol in his hand, lest they should cry out for assistance or try to struggle free while the others were raiding the house.
A not very considerable reward met their unhallowed industry; including a silver tankard, a gold watch and chain, a silver medal of Charles the First, a number of minor silver articles, and four or five gold rings. A find of thirty-seven guineas was more to the point, and a brace of pistols was not to be despised. They were even so particular about details, in the hour-and-a-half search they made, that they took away with them such inconsiderable items as a wig, six handkerchiefs, four shirts, a velvet hat, and some pairs of stockings. A frugal and meticulous gang, this!
As a result of these bold attacks in the suburbs of London, a great feeling of indignation and insecurity arose, and a reward of £100 was at once offered for the apprehension of the gang, or of any members of it. Information having come to some of the Westminster peace-officers that these confederates were accustomed to meet in an alehouse situated in a low alley in Westminster, the place was beset, and Turpin, Fielder, Rose, and Wheeler were found there. After a short fight with cutlasses, the last three were secured. No one appears to have been seriously hurt in this affray, except the usual harmless, innocent person, present by mere chance; in this case, a certain Bob Berry, who received a dangerous cut on the arm, below the elbow. Turpin dexterously escaped out of window, and, obtaining a horse (not the celebrated "Black Bess," who never existed outside the imagination of Harrison Ainsworth and the pages of his Rookwood), rode away to fresh fields and pastures new. Fielder and Rose were tried and found guilty, chiefly on the testimony of Wheeler, who turned King's evidence. They were hanged at Tyburn, and afterwards gibbeted.
The Gentleman's Magazine refers shortly to the execution, and includes a certain, or an altogether uncertain, Saunders: "Monday, March 10th, the following malefactors, attended by a guard of fifty soldiers, were executed at Tyburn, appearing bold and undaunted; viz. Rose, Saunders, and Fielder, the Country Robbers." It is significant of the horrors of that era that ten others were hanged in company with them, for various crimes.
The gang was thus broken up, but rogues have, as it were, a magnetic attraction for one another, and Turpin was not long alone. It must have been a dull business waiting solitary on suitable, i.e. dark or foggy, nights in lonely situations for unsuspecting wayfarers; an experience calculated to get on the nerves, and so it is scarcely remarkable that many highwaymen elected to hunt in couples; although in the long run it was safer to work alone and unknown. No fear then of treachery on the part of a trusted comrade, always ready to "make a discovery," as the technical phrase ran, to save his own neck from the rope, a little while longer.