William Barton was condemned to remain seven years far from England. He returned before the expiration of his term, sought out his wife in London, and resumed the robberies that had already brought about his sentence. His mere return was sufficient to cost him his life; yet it was the assault upon a viscount’s carriage that brought him once more before his judges. Of all the journeys he was wont to recount, the one that drew him back to his own kin was destined to be his last.
William Barton was born in Thames Street, London. His father, a man described by the chronicle as restless and given over to all manner of vices, departed for Jamaica with a female companion and a venture of goods which he intended to sell or employ upon a plantation. He left the child to the care of his mother, without securing him any means of subsistence. The boy subsequently found a home with his grandfather, who kept a substantial cook-shop in Covent Garden. The old man took him under his protection, showing him great tenderness and indulgence. Customers frequently bestowed small gifts of money upon young Will; taken together, these might well have afforded him cause to rest content with his lot.
Barton, however, dreamed of foreign voyages. Despite his grandfather’s admonitions, he took to the sea to join his father, whom he imagined to have grown wealthy in the West Indies. In Jamaica, no such fortune awaited him. His father was dead; the woman who had accompanied him had established herself upon a plantation, and Barton found it impossible to dislodge her. He therefore returned to sea, earning his bread as best he could.
The vessel aboard which he sailed was soon seized by the Spaniards on suspicion of carrying contraband goods. Barton and his shipmates were made prisoners and carried to Spain. According to the narrative, they initially endured harsh treatment and meager rations; as they neared the coast, their condition appears to have somewhat improved. Once put ashore, they were confined in a prison where Barton thought of nothing but escape. The English prisoners were ordered to repair an ancient wall in the outer yard. As the foundations required rebuilding, Barton and another man took advantage of the labor to pick the pockets of the Spanish soldiers and gather their gunpowder into a small bag. They laid this charge beneath that part of the wall within their reach and set it alight. The blast threw down some two yards of masonry; seizing upon the consternation of their guards, they scrambled through the breach and fled the prison.
Scarcely free, the fugitives sought sanctuary in a monastery. The friars fed them, sheltered them when the jailer came in pursuit, and took them into their service alongside the other domestics. This hospitality afforded them both sustenance and safety, yet Barton and his companion were unwilling to tarry. Under cover of night, they forced the outer gates and reached an English ship on the point of weighing anchor. Once aboard, they learned that the religious fathers had already agreed with the captain to defray the cost of their passage. Their flight had thus earned them nothing beyond the hazard of recapture or of wandering destitute; had they but waited, they might have departed in safety by the very means their hosts had provided.
Having returned to England, Barton enlisted in the army and served through several campaigns in Flanders. His officers favored him, so the chronicle relates, and he appeared upon the verge of being appointed paymaster-sergeant. The conclusion of the war arrived just as this advancement seemed assured; his regiment was disbanded, and he found himself without employment. He retained a fondness for recounting the adventures he had witnessed under arms. Two of these narratives concern robberies which he ascribed to his years of travel, and which the chronicle preserves as his own tales.
The first took place near Brussels, involving the Baron de Casteja, a nobleman of Spanish extraction. The baron had long been addicted to gaming, squandering his estate; having inherited upward of one hundred thousand crowns from his brother, he relapsed into play. He received a first remittance of forty thousand crowns. Accompanied by his wife, he set out for Brussels under the pretext of seeking an advancement for their son, carrying twenty thousand crowns upon his person. The baron forgot his design during an entertainment and lost the entire sum at the tables. Having returned home, he remained in sullen ill-humor for a week, then secretly assembled a second sum of twenty thousand crowns while preparing another journey.
The baroness, fearful for her son’s future, confided in her majordomo. The latter drew three servants and the lady’s page into the plot, subsequently enlisting Barton and another Englishman quartered in the vicinity. The chronicle states that they were engaged for a trifling sum. The baroness procured disguises, caused the touch-holes of the firearms carried by her husband and his two attendants to be spiked, and herself donned male attire. At nightfall, she emerged from a wood with her small band and fell upon the baron upon the highway. The gentleman could offer no resistance; the troop seized the twenty thousand crowns. The baroness settled the money upon her son, and the baron, struck by the loss of that which was to maintain his household, permanently renounced gaming. The chronicle presents this escapade as the occasion whence Barton conceived a liking for highway robbery; it reports it, nevertheless, merely as a story related by Barton himself, unsupported by further evidence.
Barton likewise related that, following his capture by the French, he had served an impoverished Gascon officer in a garrison town upon the frontier. Games of chance were prohibited there, and the provosts were required to inspect lodgings in order to punish offenders. The Gascon had entered into an understanding with a countryman and comrade of his, a notorious gamester, who apprised him of the houses where players gathered. The captain, Barton, and another man disguised themselves as officers charged with maintaining public order; almost nightly, they entered these dwellings with a rabble at their heels, extorting money from the gamesters, who mistook them for the lawful authorities. In this exploit, as it is told, Barton took part in these fraudulent visitations, while the intelligence was supplied by the captain’s confederate. Here again, the account comes down to us solely from his own mouth, as recorded by the chronicler.
The chronicle imputes a measure of Barton’s crimes to his affection for his wife. He could not endure to see her labor for her bread, and sought to procure her an easy livelihood, even at the hazard of the gallows. The narrator adds that he had brought back from his travels a remarkable dexterity in concerting his robberies, and that he was wont to profess a maxim comparing the highwayman to the conqueror, maintaining that the value of the spoil was all that distinguished them. Such judgments belong to the author’s moral portraiture; the enterprises he records nonetheless reveal the manner in which Barton laid his snares.
One day, upon the road, Barton espied a traveling coach. His companion, an old soldier, rode forward to observe its occupants: four gentlemen armed with blunderbusses, two ladies, and a valet. Barton instructed him to ride around a hill and discharge a piece over the carriage once he was in its rear. Meanwhile, Barton would advance at a slow pace and stop the vehicle. The two men executed their design. The travelers, thrown into confusion by the gunfire, surrendered what they possessed; the booty amounted to approximately one hundred pounds. Barton also carried off two silver-inlaid pistols and two brass blunderbusses, whereupon the two robbers rode away.
Barton’s fortune deserted him during an attempted robbery in Covent Garden, where his face was too well known. He was apprehended, committed to Newgate, convicted, and ordered for transportation for seven years to His Majesty’s plantations. Upon his arrival, he was purchased by a planter for the sum of eighteen pounds. The chronicle remarks that his master did not put him to the severe labor commonly described in such narratives, but charged him with overseeing the enslaved laborers and caring for them in the master’s absence. Barton acknowledged that he enjoyed an easy condition and might well have rested satisfied with it. He remained for a time in this man’s service, until the memory of London, of his companions, and above all of his wife rendered his exile intolerable.
He spent long months preparing his return, notwithstanding the peril of discovery and execution for returning from transportation before his time. Finding means to slip away from his master, he took passage aboard a vessel and reached London. His first care was to seek out his wife, with whom he lived, resuming his former practices to provide for their maintenance. Barton steadfastly denied that she had taken any part in his crimes or even possessed knowledge of them. The record affords no independent testimony against her.
His return was in itself sufficient to render him an outlaw; a fresh assault brought him a second time to the bar of the Old Bailey. He had robbed the Lord Viscount Lisbourn, a peer of the realm of Ireland, together with a lady traveling in his company. The plunder comprised a silver-hilted sword, a snuff-box, and about twelve shillings in coin. Barton was taken, tried, and found guilty. Upon receiving his sentence, he surrendered all hope of life and sought, by means of his books and his devotions, that tranquility of mind he declared he had forfeited through his own vices. Having received assurances that his relations would care for his daughter and that his wife should not want for bread, he laid aside his worldly anxieties and displayed, according to the chronicler, great resignation in the face of death.
On May 12, 1721, being about thirty-one years of age, Barton was executed. The chronicler attributes his steadfastness to his natural fortitude and to a late awakening of piety. Neither his wanderings, his prisons, nor his escapes had extinguished his attachment to his wife or his solicitude for his child; yet they had brought Barton back to London, where his robberies at last overtook him. His tales of Brussels and the French garrison reach us only as his own rehearsal of his exploits. The final judgment, however, was pronounced for the robbery committed upon Viscount Lisbourn and his traveling companion.