Books: Gentlemen of the Road

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Many a highwayman prided himself on his gallantry, and one of them, James Maclaine, the son of a Presbyterian minister, had such a fetching way with his women victims that when he was captured there was an informal day of mourning throughout the nation. "The first Sunday after his condemnation," wrote Horace Walpole, "three thousand people went to see him"—most of them women.

The George & Gallows. Britain's Age of Highwaymen began to wane with the introduction of detectives by Novelist Henry Fielding, during his term as Commissioner of the Peace in London (1748-54). Yet even in their heyday, the highwaymen could seldom cheat the gallows. If not caught in the act of robbery, they were betrayed by a woman scorned or an accomplice deceived. A few of them escaped from prison (William Nevison, for instance, who hired a quack to spot him with bluing and declare him dead of the plague), but almost all were recaptured and bravely took the long cart ride to Tyburn Tree.

"His heart's not great," wrote a poetical one of their number, "that fears a little rope." On the last ride, the condemned highwayman cracked wise to his friends in the crowds that lined the way, and following a custom established by an early gentleman of the road on his way to the gallows,

. . . stopt at the George for a bottle of sack,

And promised to pay for it when he came back.