Poor Turpin he at last was took;
And carried straight into a jail,
Where his misfortune he does bewail,
O rare Turpin hero,
O rare Turpin O!
Now some do say that he will hang—
Turpin the last of all the gang;
I wish the cock had ne'er been hatched,
For like a fish in the net he's catched.
Pedlars hawked these untutored productions widely over the country, and it will be noticed with some amusement that, just as Robin Hood had been made a popular ballad hero, robbing the rich to give to the poor, and succouring the widow and the orphan, and just as Nevison had been similarly enshrined, so Turpin, who would have been mean enough to rob a poor man of his beer, a poor widow of her last groat, or to steal a penny out of a blind man's pannikin (the worst of crimes), was instantly converted into a blameless martyr. We may, however, readily imagine the ill-treated Mr. Lawrence of Edgewarebury, rubbing his roasted posteriors and vehemently dissenting from that estimate of Turpin.