But these were his last exploits in the neighbourhood of London. The position presently grew so difficult that the merest elementary instincts of self-preservation suggested a flight to other scenes.

By a proclamation issued in the London Gazette of June 25th, 1737, "His Majesty was pleased to promise his most gracious pardon to any of the Accomplices of Richard Turpin who shall discover him, so that he may be apprehended and convicted of the Murder, or any of the Robberies he has committed; as likewise a Reward of £200 to any Person or Persons who shall discover the said Criminal, so that he may be apprehended and convicted as aforesaid; over and above all other Rewards to which they may be entitled." In this proclamation, Turpin is described as being 5 feet 9 inches in height, and it further appears that he was not by any means the prepossessing and even elegant figure he presents in the engraving that shows him reclining exquisitely in his cave; dainty boots on his feet, and a ladylike hand thrown over his carbine. He had high cheekbones, his face tapered to a narrow point at his chin, and he was deeply pitted with small-pox.

Really, he was, it will be gathered, not an engaging ruffian; but there is, unfortunately, no portrait existing which can lay the slightest claim to be authentic. A rough woodcut, no doubt from the strictly unauthentic imagination of the wood engraver, or the wood-chopper who engraved, or rather hewed it out, appears in one of the popular old chap-books, and shows him to have rather a plentiful development of chin and an expression that somewhat baffles description, but which conveys the very decided impression that he was not the kind of person one would much like to meet in a lonely lane on a dark night.

With the price of £200 upon his head, and with the additional promise of a pardon for any accomplice who would betray him, Turpin's position was now more than ever desperate. He fully realised this, and took the only possible course, that of removing himself into the country, far away from his accustomed haunts. After three months at Long Sutton, in Lincolnshire, he appears to have selected Yorkshire as the safest part, and staying some time at the ferry-house. Brough, and then at Market Cave and North Cave, to have settled at Welton, ten miles from Beverley, in October 1737. There he posed as a gentleman horse-dealer, Palmer by name. Sometimes he would range southward to Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, but always where he went the farmers and others missed their horses, in the most mysterious way. No one suspected the "gentleman" horse-dealer, who mixed freely in the company of the Yorkshire yeomen and knew a thing or two about cock-fighting and proved himself a singularly good judge of stock—qualities which would render any one popular at that time, with the Yorkshire tykes. His ugly mug was a mere accident, and as for his rough manners, why the tykes themselves were rough and ready, and so they easily excused, or perhaps even did not notice, his overbearing ways.

But his evil temper got the better of him one day, when, returning from a shooting expedition, and being perhaps half-drunk, he wantonly shot one of his neighbour's fowls. When the owner resented this, Turpin, or "Palmer," threatened to serve him in the same way (i.e. "if he would only stay till he had charged his piece, he would shoot him too"), and in the result he was arrested on a charge of brawling, at the "Green Man" inn. When he came before the magistrates in Quarter Sessions at Beverley, the singular fact was discovered that this man, so well known in the neighbourhood, had many acquaintances, but no friends who would speak to his character or go bail for him. It then appeared that he had come as an entire stranger to the district less than two years earlier; and in short, in one way and another, it was all at once discovered that he was a suspicious character, whose doings had better be investigated. He was accordingly remanded, and enquiries resulted in his being charged with stealing a black mare, blind of the near eye, off Heckington Common, in Lincolnshire, near Sleaford. He had declared himself a native of Long Sutton, and said his father lived there and his sister kept house for him. He had been, he continued, in business there, but had been obliged to abscond, owing to his having contracted some debts he found himself unable to pay, in an unfortunate transaction in which he had bought some sheep that had proved to be diseased. Enquiries proved these statements to be entirely false. He had no relations at Long Sutton, but he was known there, and badly wanted, as a sheep-stealer, suspected also of horse-stealing.

It is significant of Turpin's activity in horse-stealing, that the Worcester Journal of September 29th, 1738, has the following curious item: "A few days since, the Father of the noted Turpin was committed to Chelmsford Gaol, for having in his Possession a Horse supposed to be stolen out of Lincolnshire, which, he pleads, was left with him by his Son, to pay for Diet and Lodging." Research fails to discover the result of this committal.

John Palmer, or Richard Turpin, was sent from Beverley to York Castle to stand his trial at the assizes for stealing the horse from Heckington; and from his grim dungeon cell, still in existence in the Castle, he wrote a letter to his brother, or, according to the evidence at his trial, his brother-in-law, at Hempstead, asking him to be a referee as to character:

York, Feb. 6, 1639.

"Dear Brother,

"I am sorry to acquaint you that I am now under confinement in York Castle, for horse-stealing. If I could procure an evidence from London to give me a character, that would go a great way towards my being acquitted. I had not been long in this county before my being apprehended, so that it would pass off the readier. For heaven's sake, my dear brother, do not neglect me; you will know what I mean when I say,

"I am, your's,
"John Palmer."

The letter was not prepaid, and the recipient, not recognising the handwriting of the address, refused to receive it and pay the sixpence demanded. As it happened, Mr. Smith, the schoolmaster who had taught Turpin to write, saw the letter, and recognising the handwriting, carried it to the magistrates, so that it might legally be opened, and perhaps the very much wanted Turpin be arrested from the information it possibly contained. Perhaps this public-spirited person really thought he saw a chance of obtaining the £200 reward offered; but, however that may be, the letter disclosed the fact that Turpin was lying in prison at York, and Smith eventually appeared at the trial and identified him. It is not known who, if indeed any one, received the reward.

The rumour that Turpin had been taken, and was a prisoner in York Castle, was no sooner circulated than people flocked from all parts to get a sight of him, and debates ran very high whether he was the real person or not. This making a holiday show of a prisoner in his cell seems odd to us moderns; but it was then, as we see constantly in these pages, the usual thing, and a practice that greatly enriched the turnkeys; or the warders, as we should call them.

Among others who visited Turpin was a young fellow who pretended to know the famous highwayman. After having looked for a considerable time at the prisoner, he turned to the warder on duty, and said he would bet him half a guinea this was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin, in his turn inclining to the warder, whispered, with cynical humour, "Lay him the wager, you fool, and I'll go you halves!"

The trial of "John Palmer, alias Paumer, alias Richard Turpin," as the official account of the proceedings has it, took place at the York Assizes, March 22nd, 1739, "before the Hon. Sir William Chapple, one of His Majesty's Justices of the Court of King's Bench, for stealing a black gelding, the property of Thomas Creasy."

Thomas Creasy deposed that in the August of 1738 he was owner of the black gelding, and missed it on the eighteenth of the month. He had hired men and horses, and had ridden some forty miles to try and obtain news of its whereabouts, and had paid criers to cry it in different market towns. He had also told one Richard Grasby of his loss, and described the animal to him, and at a later date Grasby told him his horse was at an inn called the "Blue Bell" at Beverley. He then went to Beverley and saw the landlord of the "Blue Bell," and described the horse to him as a black gelding, with a little star on his forehead. The landlord then took him to the stable and showed him the horse.

James Smith was then called, and asked if he knew the prisoner at the bar. He said he did. He had known him at Hempstead, in Essex, where he was born. He had known him since he was a child. His name was Richard Turpin, and his father kept the "Bell" inn in that village. Richard Turpin had married one of his maids. It was about five years since he had last seen him. He had taught him at school, and there was no doubt whatever that this was the same man.

Asked how it happened that, living so far distant as Essex, he came to be present as a witness at this trial, he said that at the Hempstead post-office one day he observed a letter directed to Turpin's brother-in-law, who had refused to pay the postage on it. Looking narrowly at the handwriting, he thought he recognised it as that of Richard Turpin, whom he had taught to write. Turpin then being very much in demand by the magistrates, he took the letter forthwith to a local Justice of the Peace, who opened it, and found it was sent from York Castle, and purported to come from one "John Palmer."

The justices had sent him a subpœna to appear for the prosecution at York. He had been shown into the prison yard, and there he had seen and recognised Turpin, who was there under the name of Palmer.

"Palmer," then informed that he might ask Mr. Smith any questions he desired, merely replied he did not know him.

Mr. Edward Saward, of Hempstead, then called and asked if he knew prisoner, said he did. He was born and brought up at the "Bell," kept by his father, John Turpin. He had known him twenty-two years. ("Upon my soul, I have," he added; to which counsel rejoined, "My friend, you have sworn once already; you need not swear again.") "I knew him ever since he was a boy and lived at the 'Bell.' He lived with his father there, and I was friendly with him. I knew him also after he had set up for himself, and I have bought a great many good joints of meat from him." The prisoner had at first affected not to know him; but afterwards had acknowledged the acquaintance, and had added: "Let's bung our eyes up with drink."

The jury had no difficulty in returning a verdict of "guilty," and, indeed, did so without leaving the court. Turpin was then formally sentenced to death.

He wrote to his father, and made great efforts to obtain a reduction of his sentence to transportation; but without result. A letter received from his father was a feature of a pamphlet, detailing his trial and adventures, published at York in April 1739. There is no reason to doubt its genuine character:

March 29, 1739.

Dear Child,

"I received you Letter this Instant, with a great deal of grief; according to your Request, I have writ to your Brother John, and Madam Peek, to make what intercession can be made to Col. Watson, in order to obtain Transportation for your Misfortune; which, had I £100 I would freely part with it to do you good; and for God's Sake, give your whole Mind to beg of God to pardon your many Transgressions, which the Thief upon the Cross received Pardon for at the last Hour, tho' a very great Offender. The Lord be your Comfort, and receive you into his eternal Kingdom.

"I am yours Distress'd,
"Yet Loving Father,
"John Turpin.
"Hemstead.

"All our Loves to you, who are in much Grief to subscribe ourselves your distressed Brother and Sister, with Relations."

Turpin principally concerned himself in those twenty-six days that bridged the distance between sentence and execution in joking, drinking with the many visitors who came to see him, and telling stories of his adventures. He turned a deaf ear to the ministrations of the Ordinary, and was infinitely more concerned that he should make a last "respectable" appearance in this world, on the scaffold, than for his welfare in the next. Nothing would satisfy him but new clothes, a brand-new fustian frock, and a smart pair of pumps to die in. On the morning before the fatal April 17th he gave the hangman £3 10s. 0d., to be divided among five men, who were to follow him as mourners, and were to be furnished with black hat-bands and mourning gloves. When the time came, and he went in the tumbril to be turned off upon York's place of execution at Knavesmire, he bowed to the ladies and flourished his hat like a hero. It is true that when he had arrived at the tragic place his leg trembled, but he stamped it down impatiently. He talked for half an hour with the hangman, until the crowd began to grow impatient, but then mounted the ladder provided, and threw himself off in the most resolute fashion. He had the reward of his courage, for he died in a moment.

It should here be explained that hanging in those old times, before the drop had been introduced, was generally a cruel and clumsy method. As a rule, the culprit was driven up in the cart immediately under the gallows, and the noose then adjusted round his neck. When all was ready, the cart was simply drawn away and the victim left hanging, to be slowly and agonisingly suffocated. Thus the horrible spectacle was often witnessed of compassionate persons—and sometimes the relations of the hanging man—pulling his legs to more speedily end his sufferings. In the museum at Dorchester there may to this day be seen two heavy weights made for the purpose of thus shortening the misery of criminals hanged at the gaol there, and bearing the word MERCY.

It sometimes happened, in those days, that a criminal would be ineffectually hanged, and afterwards cut down and revived. "Half-hanged Smith" was a burglar who obtained his nickname in this manner at Tyburn; but he was convicted, a few years later, of a similar crime, and effectually hanged on that occasion. Another, cut down and revived, declared the sensation of being hanged was sufficiently bad, but that of being restored to life was indescribably agonising, and said he wished those hanged who had cut him down.

The shocking old alternative to being slowly hanged when the cart was withdrawn was the method by which criminals with sufficient courage were enabled to anticipate the modern drop, by throwing themselves off the ladder, and so securing an instant and practically painless death. But this was making the condemned their own executioners, and, to all intents and purposes, suicides. It also required a considerable amount of resolution.

Turpin's body lay in state for a day and a night at the "Blue Boar" inn, Castlegate, York, and was buried the following morning in the churchyard of St. George's, Fishergate Postern. That evening it was disinterred by some of the city surgeons, for dissection, but the mob, with whom Turpin had already become a hero, determined that his remains should not be dishonoured, rescued the body and reinterred it in lime, so as to effectually prevent any other attempts.

The Ride to York and Black Bess are alike myths, but the spot was long pointed out upon the racecourse at York (perhaps it still is), where that gallant mare sank down exhausted and died. So strong a hold have myths upon the imagination, that it is hardly possible the most painstaking historian will succeed in popularly discrediting the bona fides of that ride, invented and so stirringly described by Harrison Ainsworth in 1834, in his Rookwood.

Ainsworth was the unconscious predisposing cause of much of Skelt's Juvenile Drama, that singular collection of remarkably mild plays for toy theatres, allied with terrific scenes and the most picturesque figures conceived, drawn and engraved in the wildest spirit of melodrama, and in the most extravagant attitudes. No such scenery ever existed as that drawn by Skelt's anonymous artists. It was a decided improvement upon Nature; and no heroes so heroic and no villains so villainous could possibly have lived and moved as those imagined by his staff of draughtsmen. Dick Turpin was of course in the forefront of the thirty-three plays published by Skelt, and the pictured characters do full justice—and perhaps a trifle over—to the entirely illegitimate fame Turpin has acquired. You see them reproduced here, engraved line for line from Skelt, scattered over the pages of this reconsideration of Turpin. Firstly, you have the great brethren, Turpin and Tom King, themselves, mounted on noble steeds that stretch themselves gallantly in their stride; and then you have Sir Ralph Rookwood and that intelligent officer, Simon Sharpscent, also on horseback, hurrying off in company, but upon the trail of the highwaymen. Simon Sharpscent, you will observe, has in his hand a something that looks not unlike a Field Marshal's bâton. It is the police-officer's crown-tipped staff of office; and producing it he will presently say, dramatically: "I arrest you in the King's name!"

Always, with the remarkable exception of the group of "Highwaymen Carousing," these characters are intensely dramatic in their attitudes; but the carousing highwaymen are unexpectedly wooden; although they look capable of being daredevil fellows when the generous wine, or the old ale—whichever it may be—has done its work. Even the "Maid of the Inn" is a creature of romance.

Although Ainsworth invented Turpin's Ride to York, he certainly did not invent Black Bess, nor did he conceive the ride as an attempt to establish an alibi; for he shows him hotly pursued by the officers of the law, nearly all the way. In Ainsworth's pages you find no reason why the ride should have been undertaken. I have elsewhere remarked that Ainsworth invented Black Bess, as well as robbed Swiftnicks of the glory of the ride; but a further acquaintance with the literature of the early part of the nineteenth century discloses the curious fact that Horace Smith in 1825, in a volume entitled Gaieties and Gravities, included a story called "Harry Halter," in which that highwayman hero is represented as sitting at the "Wig and Water Spaniel," in Monmouth Street, with his friends of the same persuasion, Ned Noose, and Old Charley Crape, and singing the ballad of

Turpin and the Bishop

Here we certainly find Black Bess, not treated to two capital letters, and only referred to as "his black mare Bess" (it was reserved for Ainsworth to discover the worth of the alliteration and the demand it made for two capital B's), but we thus have traced the invention of that coal-black steed one remove further back, and there it must rest, for a time, at any rate.

It seems pretty clear that Smith was acquainted with the exploit of Swiftnicks, but why he transferred the ride to Turpin, and the purpose of establishing an alibi to Gloucester, does not appear, unless indeed he wanted a rhyme to "Foster."

Dickens, who wrote Pickwick in 1836, eleven years after Gaieties and Gravities was published, had evidently read Smith's book, for in Chapter XLIII. we find Sam Weller represented as singing to the coachman a condensed and greatly altered version, beginning:

That Swiftnicks actually performed the famous ride was generally believed, as elsewhere described in these pages; and unless any later evidence can be adduced to deprive him of the credit, he must continue to enjoy it. But it is curious to note that riding horseback between York and London under exceptional circumstances has often been mentioned. A prominent instance is the wager accepted by John Lepton, esquire to James the First, that he would ride six times between London and York on six consecutive days. Fuller, in his Worthies, tells us all about it. He first set out on May 20th, 1606, from Aldersgate, London, and completed the journey before nightfall, returning the next day; and so on until he had won the wager, "to the great praise of his strength in acting, than to his discretion in undertaking it," says Fuller, with an unwonted sneer.

Turpin was certainly described in his own lifetime as "the noted," "the renowned," "the famous," but those were merely newspaper phrases, and the notability, the renown, or the fame commented upon in to-day's paper is, we are by way of seeing in our own age, the oblivion of next week. The London Magazine, commenting briefly on his execution, styles him a "mean and stupid wretch," and that estimate of him is little likely ever to be revised, although it may readily and justly be amplified by the epithets "brutal" and "cowardly." The brutalities of himself and his associates kept the suburbs of London for a while in terror, but he evidently had made little impression on the mind of Captain Charles Johnson, whose book on The General History of Highwaymen, published in 1742, three years after Turpin's execution, has no mention of him.

Yet, side by side with these facts, we are confronted with the undoubted immediate ballad fame he acquired in the north, of which here are two pitiful specimen verses:

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.

But the ballad-writers did not pretend to historical accuracy, or to grammar, scansion, or anything but a rude way of appealing to the feelings of the rustics, whose lives of unremitting toil for poor wages embittered them more than they knew against the rich; to this extent, that they imagined virtue resided solely in the lowly cot, and vice and oppressive feelings exclusively in the lordly hall. Those who were poor were virtuous, and the highwayman who emptied the pockets of the rich performed a meritorious service. Hence ballads like the following grievous example, in which Turpin appears, in spite of well-ascertained facts, to have been executed at Salisbury:

Turpen's Appeal to the Judge in his defence; or the Gen'rous Robber

Printed and sold by J. Pitts, 6, Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials

It is of course possible that this ballad was not meant for Dick Turpin at all; for, so widespread in rural districts had his fame early grown, that "Turpin" became almost a generic name for local highwaymen, just as after Julius Cæsar all the Emperors of Rome were Cæsars. It was a name to conjure with: and this no doubt goes some way to explain the infinitely many alleged "Turpin's haunts" in widely separated districts: places Turpin could not have found time to haunt, unless he had been a syndicate.

Away down in Wiltshire, in the neighbourhood of Trowbridge, between Keevil and Bulkington, and in a soggy level plain watered by an affluent of the Wiltshire Avon, there stands in a wayside ditch a hoary object called "Turpin's Stone," inscribed, in letters now almost entirely obliterated,

This curious wayside relic may be found on the boundary-line of the parishes of Bulkington and Keevil, near a spot oddly named Brass Pan Bridge, and standing in an evil-smelling ditch that receives the drainage of the neighbouring pigsties. It is a battered and moss-grown object, and its inscription, despite the local version of it given above, is not really decipherable, as a whole. "Turpin" may be read, easily enough, but if the word above it is meant for "Dick," why then the sculptor of it spelled the name "Dicq," a feat of illiterate ingenuity that rather staggers belief. Brake-loads of Wiltshire archæologists have visited the spot in summer, when county antiquaries mostly archælogise, and, braving typhoid fever, have descended into the ditch and sought to unravel the mystery of this Sphinx: without result.

The village of Poulshot, birthplace of Thomas Boulter, a once-dreaded highwayman, is not far off, and it is possible that Boulter, who had a very busy and distinguished career on the highways of England in general, and of Salisbury Plain in particular, [2] may have been named locally "Dick Turpin," after the hero who died at York under tragical circumstances, with the aid of a rope, in 1739. Boulter himself ended in that way in 1778, at Winchester, and so the transference of names was quite possible. He, it is significant to note, had a mare named "Black Bess," which he stole in 1736 from Mr. Peter Delmé's stables at Erle Stoke.

There are Turpin "relics" and associations at the "Spaniards," on Hampstead Heath, and we find the Times of August 22nd, 1838, saying: "The rear of the houses on Holborn Bridge has for many years been the receptacle for characters of the most daring and desperate condition. There, in a secret manège (now a slaughter-house for her species), did Turpin suffer his favourite Black Bess to repose for many a night previously to her disastrous journey to York." The Times had evidently swallowed the Ride to York story whole, and relished it.

Another, and more cautious commentator says, "He shot people like partridges. Many wild and improbable stories are told of him, such as his rapid ride to York, his horse chewing a beef-steak on the way; but, setting these aside, he was hardy and cruel enough to shine as a mighty malefactor. He seems, to quote the Newgate jest, to have been booked, at his very birth, for the Gravesend Coach that leaves at eight in the morning."

"Many years ago," we read in Pink's History of Clerkenwell, "a small leather portmanteau was found at the 'Coach and Horses' tavern, at Hockley-in-the-Hole, with the ends of wood, large enough to contain a change of linen, besides other little etceteras. On the inner side of the lid, lightly cut in the surface of the leather, is the name, 'R. TVRPIN.' Whether or no this portmanteau (such an one as horsemen formerly carried behind them, strapped to the saddle), belonged to that famous highwayman," says Pink, "we will not attempt to decide."