About this time some show is made on behalf of those credulous folk who believe that all highwaymen in the good old times were brave, dashing, highly educated, and extremely handsome; for we find several inquiries after robbers who, before troubles came upon them, held superior positions in society. Here is one of the year 1688:—
WHEREAS Mr Herbert Jones, Attorney-at-Law in the Town of Monmouth, well known by being several years together Under-Sheriff of the same County, hath of late divers times robbed the Mail coming from that town to London, and taken out divers letters and writs, and is now fled from justice, and supposed to have sheltered himself in some of the new-raised troops. These are to give notice that whosoever shall secure the said Herbert Jones, so as to be committed in order to answer these said crimes, may give notice thereof to Sir Thomas Fowles, goldsmith, Temple-bar, London, or to Mr Michael Bohune, mercer, in Monmouth, and shall have a guinea’s reward.
Mr Jones, culpable as he undoubtedly was, seems to have possessed a sense of honour, and probably he served his friends as well as himself by taking the writs from the mail. The reward offered for his apprehension is so paltry in proportion to the outcry raised, that a disinterested reader, i.e., one who has never felt the smart of highway robbery, cannot help hoping that he got clear off, or that at all events he cheated the gallows by earning a soldier’s death “in some of the new-raised troops.” Although Mr Jones was a gentleman thief, and had gentlemanly associates, he and his friends are the exceptions to the rule; for robbers generally are described as a very sad as well as a very ugly lot of reprobates. Also in the same eventful year of delivery we find the following, which appears in the London Gazette, the subject of it having evidently thought to avail himself of the disturbances of the time, but whether successfully or the reverse, does not appear:—