8 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



admired the reckless buoyancy of their enterprising 

 Hves ; have thought how colourless the history of the 

 roads would be without their brilliant presences. I have 

 become acquainted, amongst others, with the dashing 

 Augustin King, educated at Cambridge, hanged at 

 Colchester ; with the great William Nevison, whose 

 name still haunts the hamlets of the northern moors, 

 hanged at York ; with the magnanimous Bliss, hanged at 

 Salisbury ; with the Brothers Weston, the Peaces of the 

 last century, who frequented the best society at 

 Winchelsea, and robbed in the surrounding country, 

 hanged at Tyburn — a cultured pair, whose lives were 

 pleasant, and in death they were not divided ; but I 

 declare that none of them — no, not Turpin himself, the 

 Turpin whose ride to York has been labelled by Macaulay 

 a myth — seem to me to attain to that high standard of 

 elegant rascality displayed b)^ this importation from 

 France. For Claude, alas ! was not a native product. 

 No, to our sorrow we say it, he was born at Domfront, in 

 Normandy, a place very famous for the excellency of 

 the air and the production of mercurial wits. His father 

 moreover was a miller, and his mother a tailor's 

 daughter. Early in life the boy was troubled Vv^ith the 

 stirrings of young ambition. He was wanted by the 

 local police, but was out when they called. He had 

 gone to Paris, where he did odd jobs for Englishmen and 

 got his hand in, and in this improving exercise he 

 continued till the Restoration brought him over to 

 England to be a spectator of the Jubilee. He now 

 entered the service of the Duke of Richmond, gamed, 

 made love, drank (a vice for which his indulgent bio- 

 grapher cannot pardon him, though for our part we admire 

 this graceful participation in a national pastime), soon 

 fell into want of money, took to padding to pay his debts, 

 quiclvly became so accomplished in his business that in 

 a proclamation for the taking several notorious highway- 

 men he liad the honour to be named first. How brilliant 

 a rise to eminence ! What a record for a short public life ! 



