Before taking to the highways, John Levee had known the sea and lamented never having fought upon it. He had been directed toward a life of apprenticeship and accounts; yet his disposition, as the chronicle portrays it, drew him ever back toward motion and danger. He took to the road with companions, adopting at first an outward show of politeness that diminished none of the robbery’s underlying violence: a hat thrust into a carriage, a demand for contribution, and the road already belonged to the highwaymen.
John’s father was a French gentleman who had come to England with Charles II at the time of the Restoration. He taught French to persons of distinction—among them several of the King’s natural children—and kept a large boarding establishment in Pall Mall where his scholars resided. Turning subsequently to the wine trade, he dealt with France for considerable sums; his children received, according to the account, the finest education their family could bestow, and never went abroad without a domestic. Later, several of his correspondents failed. The father withdrew to Holland. John, entrusted to the French Society to be placed in an apprenticeship and provided with a livelihood, remained in England.
His guardians perceived in him a liveliness and ardour which they mistook for qualities likely to ensure his advancement. Rather than placing him at once with a merchant, they committed him to the charge of a naval captain. He served aboard the Essex when Sir George Byng engaged the Spaniards off Messina, and subsequently in Sir John Norris’s squadron in the Baltic. Upon his return, public affairs being more settled, his friends resolved to have him instructed in merchants’ accounts, it appearing that there was little advantage to be had from returning to sea.
The keeping of ledgers seemed to him far too quiet an occupation. The chronicle affirms that he did not complain of the hardships of navigation, but rather of never having taken part in an engagement. To divert this martial humour, the account states, he took to the roads with a few companions. Their method was intended to be "genteel": they placed a hat inside the coach and begged the travellers to contribute to it at their pleasure, contenting themselves on occasion with a few farthings. The courtesy resided wholly in their deportment, not in the freedom of the traveller, whose conveyance had just been stopped.
Thus, when Levee and Blueskin intercepted the coach of a solitary woman, her hamper yielded only brioches and cakes. Levee took a few of them; Blueskin searched the passenger and her belongings in quest of money, but found none. She scratched him, loaded him with abuse, and dealt him two or three resounding slaps. The two men laughed and rode away without offering her further ill-usage. The chronicler styles this a civility she would not have enjoyed at the hands of other robbers; the fact remains that this woman resisted them, and they departed almost empty-handed.
In October, upon the road leading from the Gravel Pits at Kensington, Levee and Blueskin encountered a coach in which two ladies were travelling with a young girl seated between them. John stopped the vehicle and commanded the coachmen and the footman to leap into the ditch on pain of being shot. The two highwaymen took the ladies’ necklaces and cut a gold buckle from the child’s girdle. They carried off besides about ten shillings and a small figure of a man in white metal, which they had taken for solid silver. This trinket, lacking any real value, was mingled with jewels of far greater worth, taken by mistake for what it was not.
A consultation was subsequently held among the members of the gang, who had been informed of rich prizes to be taken upon Blackheath. Six horsemen, armed and mounted, spent nearly six hours there without meeting a living soul. They repeated the same fruitless attempt three or four times before abandoning that road. In December, Levee and another man stopped a butcher on horseback returning from Hampstead. To their enquiry as to what he had sold, he answered two lambs; Levee’s companion calculated at once that at fourteen shillings apiece, the butcher must be carrying eight-and-twenty shillings. Following his protests, they seized the money and took his greatcoat as well, styling it the punishment for his insolence.
A coach passed along the road. The chronicler states that its occupants were Jews, and that Levee knew they were acquainted with his person; he persuaded his associates to ride off without attacking them. The gang retained the proceeds of the butcher’s robbery and left this new coach unmolested. Such is the singular measure the narrative provides of Levee’s influence: a man who despoiled travellers could, in an instant, hold back his companions before witnesses he feared he might encounter again.
Yet the portrait traced by the author is by no means that of a man who never resorted to violence. Betts had struck him three or four times about the head; Levee thereupon dealt him a single blow with a pistol that knocked out one of his eyes. The chronicle presents this injury as the sole instance in which he acted with cruelty throughout his adventures.
The same gang stopped Mr. Young’s coach one night when Blake and Matthew Flood accompanied Levee. Blake called out to seize the travellers, Flood held the horses, and Levee stepped into the carriage unarmed; his companions remained on the other side of the hedge. Richard Oakey also took part in the robbery. From Mr. Young, they took a watch and a gold chain. Colonel Cope, who was travelling with him, lost in turn a watch, a chain, a ring, and two-and-twenty shillings.
Levee related that the two gentlemen might easily have seized him: he was alone in the coach, without weapons, whilst the others were separated from them by the hedge. Yet according to his account, the travellers surrendered their belongings without resistance; he found it difficult to say which had shown the greater civility, the gentlemen or himself. One of them begged to have his cornelian ring returned. Levee claimed he wished to give it back, but his associates prevented him. The ring consequently remained among the stolen property, and the fine civility claimed by the highwayman did not extend so far as to undo the theft.
On their way back, they came upon a poor horseman and led him behind two hayricks. This man possessed only two shillings and pleaded not to be abused, saying he was very ill. Levee’s companions wished to bind and beat him; Levee prevailed upon them to return his money, set him back upon his horse, and escort him to the road. The traveller escaped ill-treatment, while the robberies committed against other passengers remained unredressed.
Levee was soon apprehended alongside Flood and Oakey. Blake gave evidence against them; at the following sessions of the Old Bailey, all three men were found guilty and sentenced to death. While under sentence, John appeared grave and modest, according to the chronicle, having previously affected the bravado out of a mistaken notion of what constituted courage and resolution. As death drew near, he applied himself to prayers and religious duties.
At the place of execution, he flew into a rage when they went to pin his hands and pull a cap down over his face. This anger altered nothing: he was obliged to submit like the others. He was about seven-and-twenty years of age. He died at Tyburn in February 1723, on the same day as Flood and Oakey. The youth for whom his protectors had sought to secure a useful future had ended amidst despoiled travellers, a verdict, and the measured motions of execution; Levee’s final struggle could delay none of them.