Part 9

"No, sir," said Horner, "you promised a hundred pounds if any one would find you a remedy for your scolding wife; and a bargain is a bargain all the world over, in the market or on the road": so presenting his pistol at the farmer's head, "d—n me, sir," he continued, "presently deliver your bag, or you are a dead man!"

The farmer delivered the bag, which, if it did not contain quite a hundred pounds, formed an excellent recompense for the time Horner had spent in exercising his fantastic imagination upon him.

Shortly after this exploit, Horner met a gentleman on Hounslow Heath, saluting him with the customary demand to hand over his dibs.

The traveller gave him six guineas, all he had, saying: "Sir, you love money better than I do, to thus venture your neck for it"; to which Horner rejoined, "I follow the way of the world, sir, which now prefers money before friends, or honesty; yea, some before the salvation of their souls; for it is the love of money that makes the unjust judge take a bribe, the corrupt lawyer to plead an evil cause: the physician to kill a man without fear of hanging, and the surgeon to prolong a cure. 'Tis this that makes the tradesman tell a lie in selling his wares; the butcher to blow his veal; the tailor to covet so much cabbage; the miller to cheat in his corn-grinding; the baker to give short weight, and to wear a wooden cravat for it; the shoemaker to stretch his leather, as he does his conscience: and the gentlemen of the pad—such as myself—to wear a Tyburn tippet, or old Storey's cap on some country gallows. So good-day to you, sir, and thank you, and never despise money in a naughty world."

Horner now experienced a sad blow to his self-esteem, in an adventure in which he was made to play a ridiculous part, and to be the butt afterwards of his acquaintances. A lady of considerable position and wealth was travelling from Colchester to London by stage-coach, and happened to be the only passenger for a considerable distance. At Braintree the coachman very politely warned her that, if she had anything of value about her, she had better conceal it, for there were several gay sparks about the neighbouring heath, whom he thought to be highwaymen. Thanking him, the lady placed her gold watch, a purse full of guineas and some valuable lace under the seat; and then disarranged her hair, like poor Ophelia, to act the part of a lunatic.

Presently, Horner rode up to the coach, presented a pistol, and demanded her money. Instantly she opened the coach-door, leapt out, and taking the highwayman by the leg, cried in a very piteous voice, "Oh, dear cousin Tom, I am glad to see you. I hope you'll now rescue me from this rogue of a coachman, for he's carrying me, by my rogue of a husband's orders, to Bedlam, for a mad woman."

"D—n me," replied Horner, "I'm none of your cousin. I don't know you, but you must be mad, and Bedlam is the best place for you."

"Oh! cousin Tom," said she, clinging to him, "but I will go with you, not to Bedlam."

"Do you know this mad creature?" asked the now distracted highwayman of the coachman.

"Yes," he replied, entering into the spirit of the thing; "I know the lady very well. I am now going, by her husband's orders, to London, to put her in a madhouse, but not into Bedlam, as she supposes."

"Take her, then," exclaimed Horner, "even if it were to the devil." So saying, he set spurs to his horse, and made off as fast as he could, for fear of her continuing to claim cousinship with him.

[Illustration: HORNER MEETS HIS MATCH.]

This story, afterwards appearing in the _Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer_, of December 27th, 1718, and coming to Horner's knowledge, he was almost beside himself with rage, at being so easily tricked. The tale enjoyed a wide circulation, and seems to have impressed other travellers; for when Horner soon afterwards adventured down into the West of England, and stopped a carriage near Honiton, in which was a lady travelling from Exeter to London, he beheld another frantic creature with dishevelled hair, who greeted him as "cousin."

"You hypocritical——!" he roared out; "because I was once bit this way by one of your d—d sex, d'ye think I must always be bit so?"

Saying this he turned over every cushion in the carriage, and found under them sufficient for his trouble: a gold watch, and other valuables and money, in all to the value of some two hundred pounds.

But this was Horner's very last stroke of business. He was taken only two hours later, in attempting to rob two gentlemen, and after a patient trial at Exeter, was hanged there on April 3rd, 1719, aged thirty-two.

WALTER TRACEY

"The adventures of this individual," says Johnson, "are neither of interest nor importance." He then proceeds to recount them at considerable length, sufficiently disproving his own words in the course of his narrative.

Tracey was heir to an estate of £900 annual value, in Norfolk. His father, himself a man of liberal education, wished his son to share the like advantage, and sent him to Oxford, where he hoped he would take a degree and then enter the Church. But Walter was a gay and idle blade; thoughtless and reckless. His character was otherwise gentle, open, and generous: so it will be noted that if his recklessness suited him for the profession of highwayman, his alleged mildness of disposition was distinctly a drawback. At the least of it, he seems to have been singularly unfitted for the Church, and, indeed, had never an opportunity of entering it, for his wild life as a student led to his being expelled from the University.

Our precious, delightful humbug, Johnson, greedily telling the story of the highwayman and omitting no scandalous detail from the task in which he revelled, halts at this point to make an insincere moral reflection, which he felt would be called for by some of his readers, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, when morals and improving discourses were alike at a heavy discount.

"The road to vice," he remarks, with his tongue in his cheek, "is of easy access, and, fascinating as it appears when you proceed, it closes behind, and leaves nothing on the retrospect but ruggedness and gloom. Tracey had entered the delusive path, and though he had the wish, possessed not the fortitude, to retrace his steps."

That was bad for Tracey. He and his companions, we learn, for some time amused their parents with various artifices; "but were at last denied any further pecuniary assistance." In this Micawberish high-falutin style, are Tracey's experiences told.

To fill their pockets, Tracey and his friends went upon the road. Expelled from the University, he reformed for awhile, and made his way through England until he arrived in Cheshire, where he took service with a wealthy grazier. He soon became fond of the country, and reconciled to his now humble lot, and being a youth of elegant appearance, and possessing very pleasing and fascinating manners, his friendship was courted by every one. He was proficient in music and singing, and often, when the toils of the day were over, the villagers would assemble at his master's door, and "measure their gay steps to the sound of his violin; 'in fact, as Mr. Micawber might say,' they danced to his fiddling."

The country girls vied with one another for his attention; but the grazier's daughter (or perhaps the prospect of the grazier's money) was the object of his choice; and so firmly had he gained the esteem of his master, that their marriage was agreed upon, and at length celebrated with every mark of happiness and satisfaction.

For a time he remained happy in this condition of life; especially as his wife had brought a part of her father's property with her. He managed farm and stock with skill and industry, and might have become an ornament and a shining light in the Cheshire cheese-farming, only for the vagabond blood in him. He found a respectable life insufferably dull after his early riotous days; and was so loud in his praise of town and its delights, that he at length disturbed the content of his wife and his father-in-law as well, and induced them to realise all their property, and to accompany him to London, where, he said, he expected to procure some lucrative situation.

Johnson, perhaps thinking this to be too great a demand upon the credulity of his readers, feels constrained to add at this point a criticism of his own. "It was no small proof of the influence he had over the resolutions and actions of others, that he could thus induce a country farmer to forget his accustomed habits, and follow an adventurous son-in-law into scenes with which he was altogether unacquainted." We may heartily agree with him here.

Having disposed of their joint stock and other property, they proceeded to London by way of Trentham, in Staffordshire, where they intended to rest for a day or two. In the house where they stayed Tracey met some of his old college friends, with whom he spent a jovial time. This confirmed him in his desire to return to his former extravagant way of living, and he seems instantly to have lost all his new-found honesty and sense of responsibility, under the influence of this old acquaintance.

Early next morning he arose and, stealing his father-in-law's pocket-book, and everything of value that lay handy, went off on his horse, and thus, without a word of farewell, disappeared. "Thus," remarks our author, ready with the moralising reflections we know he really detested, "he in a moment blasted the good hopes which the reader must have entertained of him; and his future serves only to confirm that contempt which every honourable mind must feel for him, after so infamous an action. Every endeavour to discover his retreat proved ineffectual, and his wife and father-in-law never heard of him again, until he expiated his crimes by an ignominious death."

It appears that Tracey proceeded to Coventry, where he alighted at an inn, in which he observed an unusual stillness. Entering the house, and hearing sounds of quarrelling upstairs, his curiosity led him to enquire what was amiss, and walking abruptly into one of the rooms, surprised the innkeeper and his wife in a heated dispute. The innkeeper, an elderly man, had married a woman much younger than himself, and had discovered, too late, that she had really been angling for his money, rather than for himself: hence these disagreements.

The dispute ran high as Tracey entered. Both husband and wife were eager to state their respective grievances, and he listened patiently. Having heard both sides, he summed up judicially.

"Money," he said, "has been the cause of this confusion. Without it you may live in peace and quietness; so, for your own sakes, hand me at once the money you possess"; handling a loaded pistol significantly the while. He took first eighty-five guineas, and then his farewell.

On his way south he met a young Oxonian, whom he accompanied as far as Ware, where they passed the evening in great harmony and friendship. Proceeding next day, Tracey frequently remarked that his companion's valise—a prosperous-looking article—was certainly too weighty for him. But, in constantly recurring to the subject, he aroused his companion's suspicions that this pleasant fellow, whom he had picked up on the road, was none other than a highwayman. He said nothing of his suspicion, but was resolved to be even with him. Presently, remarking that he was travelling to take up his degree of Master of Arts, he hinted that he had with him, in his portmanteau, sixty pounds for his expenses.

"Have you so?" said Tracey. "That is very convenient for me at this time, for I want to borrow just such a sum, and you could not lend it to a better person than myself."

So, without more ado, he helped himself to the valise, untying it from the other's horse and strapping it on his own.

The student poured forth the most lamentable entreaties, and begged Tracey not to thus deprive him of what was to establish his future prospects in life. The money, he declared, was all borrowed, and if it were sto—— er! _borrowed_ from him at this juncture, he had not the least prospect of ever being able to repay it.

All these tears and protestations moved Tracey only so far as to give him his own purse, containing some four pounds, to carry him on for a few days. He then disappeared down a bye-road with the valise, and the student saw him no more, and perhaps had no wish to see him again; for, as Tracey discovered when he halted at the next hedge-row alehouse and unstrapped the valise, the sixty pounds was purely imaginary, and its contents were nothing but two old shirts, half a dozen dirty collars, a ragged and threadbare student's gown, a pair of stockings minus the feet, a pair of shoes with but one heel between them, a comb, some needles and thread, and a ham. The picturesque force of the sucking highwayman's language when he discovered these treasures, and how simply he had been taken in, must have considerably astonished the landlord of that wayside tavern.

The biographers of Ben Jonson mention his once being robbed by Tracey in very humorous style. Tracey met the poet, whom he knew well by sight, on a road in Buckinghamshire, and demanded his purse. To this "Rare Ben," as his epitaph in Westminster Abbey styles him, answered in the following impromptu:

"Fly, villain! hence, or by thy coat of steel, I'll make thy heart my leaden bullet feel; And send that thricely thievish soul of thine To Hell, to be the Devil's valentine."

Upon which Tracey is supposed to have replied:

"Art thou great Ben? or the revivèd ghost Of famous Shakespeare? or some drunken host, Who, being tipsy with thy muddy beer, Dost think thy rhymes will daunt my soul with fear?

"Nay, know, base slave, that I am one of those Can take a purse as well in verse as prose; And when thou'rt dead, can write upon thy hearse, 'Here lies a poet who was robbed in verse.'"

This ingenious reply disarmed Jonson, who thus discovered that he had both a wit and a knave to contend with. He endeavoured to save his money, but to no purpose, and had to resign it to the man who, it seemed, could rhyme better, impromptu, than himself, and at greater length. This was not the only misfortune that befel Jonson on this journey; for, when within two or three miles of London, he was attacked by a gang of thieves, who knocked him from his horse, bound him hand and foot, and threw him into a park, where some other wayfarers who had shared the same fate were lying. One of his unfortunate companions calling out that he and his wife and children were undone, another, who was tied up also, said, "Pray, if you are all undone come and undo me"; which afforded Ben a hearty laugh, and a subject upon which he afterwards expressed his poetical powers.

Tracey was not one of your common highwaymen who expended their money as fast as they earned it. He was of a saving disposition, and after some time amassed sufficient to keep him in comfort during the rest of his life. Unfortunately there is little dependence to be placed upon the honesty of the world, as Tracey found, for the person to whom he had entrusted his savings embezzled them; and so our highwayman's intention to retire was upset, and he was reduced to going once more upon the road. His hand seems by this time to have lost its cunning, or else he had the very worst luck, for he was soon taken, in an attempt to rob the Duke of Buckingham; and, after being brought to trial at Winchester, was executed there in 1634, aged thirty-eight.

NED WICKS

The famous Edward Wicks—more famous as "Ned," one of the favourites of the romancing Harrison Ainsworth—was born in 1684, and was the son of an innkeeper at Coventry. His father had him properly grounded in reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, with the ambition of seeing him a clerk, but the youthful Edward shunned the desk, and for a few months filled the post of exciseman. The excisemen of that day were looked upon with that suspicion and hatred with which tax-gatherers, tithe-collectors, landlords, people who render accounts for payment, and the like vermin, have ever been regarded from the earliest times, and ever will be by all right-minded folk; and Edward soon quitted the unpopular post of gauger, not only because of its unpopularity, but for reasons not altogether unconnected with an inability to make his accounts balance. His reasons for the change are, however, put in a different light by Smith, who, with sardonic humour, says: "Not thinking that a post sufficient to cheat Her Majesty's subjects, he was resolved to impose upon 'em more by taking all they had on the highway." Or, in milder fashion, according to Johnson, "he chose rather to gather contributions for himself than for the King." For "King" read "Queen," for Wicks practised in the reign of Queen Anne.

The first two interviews he held with travellers upon the highway were successful, but the third brought him misfortune, for he was apprehended near Croydon, and sent to prison in the Marshalsea, a doleful hold, at that time said to be "a lively representation of the Iron Age, since nothing but gingling of keys and rattling of shackles and bolts and grates are here to be heard."

His third attempt would no doubt have remained also his last, had it not been for the exertions of his friends, who, during the interval between his arrest and the trial at Sessions, got at the prosecutor and bribed him with sixty guineas, to fail in identifying him. As the prosecutor had been robbed of only thirty shillings, he profited largely by the transaction and was doubtless sorry it could not be often repeated.

Wicks was accordingly acquitted, on the failure of this suborned prosecutor to swear to him; and was immediately on the road again; this time in partnership with a certain Joe Johnson, alias Saunders. Near Colnbrook they held up a stage-coach containing four gentlemen, one of whom discharged a blunderbuss at the luckless Joe, who received seven or eight bullets, and was thus wounded so severely that he was easily seized: the more easily in that Wicks instantly made off, with the speed of the wind. The "chivalry" of the highwaymen, of which we read so much in novels, was an elusive thing, and was apt to be altogether missing in the stress of danger. The highwayman who would stand by a wounded comrade was a very rare bird: so rare, indeed, that we are inclined to doubt his existence.

Joe Johnson, committed to prison, was charged by one Woolley with an earlier robbery, of a silver watch and some money, and was found guilty and hanged at Tyburn, February 7th, 1704, aged twenty-two.

The fate of the companion whom he had so basely deserted in the moment of his greatest need did not warn Wicks from his perilous career, and we are assured that he "pursued his wicked courses with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction." One day he overtook the Duke of Marlborough at St. Albans, but His Grace had too large a retinue for it to be safe to venture an attack, and so the great Churchill escaped, for once in a way.

Then, riding on towards Cheshunt, he found his way to a little cottage in a bye-road, where he discovered a poor old woman, bitterly weeping. She told him she was a poor widow, with no money to pay her rent, and expected the landlord every moment to come and seize what few goods she had.

Wicks bade her rest contented, and he would make things easy; and, pulling off the richly laced clothes he wore, and putting on an old coat the woman lent him, he awaited the arrival of the hard-hearted landlord; who presently came and demanded payment. Ned thereupon, rising out of the chimney-corner with a short pipe in his mouth, said, "I understand, sir, that my sister here, poor woman, is behindhand for rent, and that you design to seize her goods, but as she is a desolate widow and hath not wherewithal to pay you at present, I hope you will take so much pity and compassion on her mean circumstances as not to be too severe: pray let me persuade you to have a little forbearance."

Said the landlord, "Don't talk to me of forbearance; I'll not pity people to ruin myself. I'll have my money. I want my rent, and if I am not paid now, I'll seize her goods forthwith, and turn her out of my house."

When Ned found that no entreaties or persuasions would prevail, he said, "Come, come, let's see a receipt in full, and I'll pay it."

Accordingly the receipt was given, and the rent paid, and the landlord made ready to go.

But Wicks warned him of the dangers of the roads. "'Tis drawing towards night, sir, and there are many robbers about. I would advise you to stay here till to-morrow, and go in the morning."

"No, no!" exclaimed the landlord impatiently, "I'll go now. I can go seven miles before dark. I don't care what robbing there is abroad. Besides, I am not afraid of being robbed by any one man, be he whom he may."

So, taking his horse, away he rode, and Wicks, hastily re-assuming his fine clothes, quietly after him, at a cautious interval.

Taking a circuitous course and putting his mare to a hand-gallop, Wicks was already waiting the landlord at the edge of a dark pond on a lonely stretch of road, when the old man rode by. In that situation, as the shades of night were falling, he robbed him of the rent and of as much beside, which he later kept for his honest brokerage, after making the widow a present of the original amount. Hastening back to the cottage, he had already resumed the rustic clothes and was seated in the chimney corner, when a knocking came at the door. It was the landlord returning to tell the story of his woes. He said he had been robbed by a rogue in a lace coat, who swore a thousand oaths at him.

"I told you how unsafe it was," said Wicks, from his corner; "but you would not take my advice."

The landlord begged leave to stay the night, and went the following morning upon his way.

The obvious criticism of this is that, having already been robbed, his best and safest course would have been to make haste on his way home, the remainder of the journey, without turning back.