i64 THE COACHING ERA 



black masks, pistols, gay apparel and fine horses, forced 

 the public, or at least that part of it which was not being 

 robbed at the time, to regard them with romance. For 

 the most part they were brutal, degenerate men, yet 

 such was the glamour of their calling, and the fame of 

 the stories gathered round their names, that they were 

 quite unworthily regarded almost in the light of heroes 

 by the country-folk; though the general supposition 

 that they robbed the rich to pay the poor is not borne 

 out by a close perusal of their lives. "Light come, light 

 go " was their motto, and the proceeds of their robberies 

 were spent in licentious and profligate pleasures. 



The road came to be looked upon as such a respeftable 

 profession that men who would have scorned the very 

 suggestion of soiling their hands with trade or honest 

 work took to it as a means of repairing their fallen 

 fortunes. Road-struck youths thought they saw in it a 

 short cut to wealth, and in 1774 a newspaper recounted 

 that seven highwaymen recently captured proved to be 

 boys from eighteen to twenty belonging to well-to-do 

 and respe6fable families. 



There were not wanting instances of gentlemen who 

 lived unsuspefted among their neighbours, to all appear- 

 ances honest country squires, leading monotonous and 

 blameless lives, but who, as a matter of fa6f, were 

 highwaymen who sallied out at night intent on robbery. 

 The most notorious of these supposed country gentle- 

 men, the brothers Weston, lived at Winchelsea and 

 have been immortalized by Thackeray in his novel 

 Dennis Duval, 



