Near St Albans, a coachman who tarried in drawing up his horses was hurled headlong from the box; to prevent him from laying on the whip and escaping, a highwayman had discharged a pistol into the beast. Humphry Angier and his associate Milksop then plundered the young gentleman and the two gentlewomen inside the carriage, showing a savagery that the culprit later imputed to strong drink. Yet this felon was no mere ruffian of the common stamp: having once heard the recital of a defenceless traveller’s murder, he had declared that true courage bore no fellowship with cruelty.
Angier was born in Ireland, in a small town some few miles distant from Dublin. His father, a man of humble means, sent him to Cork as soon as the lad was of an age to labour, binding him apprentice to a cooper. The youth’s loose conduct so thoroughly disheartened his master that the craftsman was by no means grieved to see him run away. Humphry soon joined himself to a gang of turbulent lads; the aged cooper, terrified by such consort, spent considerable sums in having his house watched during the four years that Angier hung about the town.
His father at length fetched him away from Cork and conveyed him to England. He then left him to his own courses, being resolved, as the chronicler records, that his son’s wickedness should cast no stain upon his own name nor upon the kin left behind in Ireland. Angier was then nearing eighteen years of age. Fearing that persons whom he had wronged might pursue him, he enlisted into the King’s service and marched to Scotland with a newly raised regiment at the time of the Rebellion. He had hoped to reap some plunder from the inhabitants, but in this speculation he was disappointed.
Upon his return, he fell in with William Duce, whose company drew him into the like illicit courses. To bind their fellowship the closer, he wedded Duce’s sister and threw in his lot with their gang of highwaymen. The chronicler contrasts his disposition with that of Mead, Butler, and others, to whom he imputes a habit of beating travellers without mercy. One evening Angier related the account Mead had given of his own misdeeds: two ruffians had encountered a smooth-faced shoemaker, who told them he was newly married and returning home to his friends. They had lured him off the high road under the pretext of searching for a bird’s nest in the hedge, bound him, gagged him, and rifled his pockets, whereupon one of them despatched him with a pistol shot.
The chronicle relates that this recital made a deep impression upon Angier. He vowed he would drink no more with Mead; whenever Butler spoke of similar outrages, Humphry would rebuke him, maintaining that cruelty had nothing in common with courage. Butler and several of their comrades laughed such scruples to scorn. This maxim did not, in truth, hinder Angier from joining in robberies; it merely marked the moral boundary he claimed never to cross—a boundary which the assault upon the coachman at St Albans renders singularly difficult to regard as absolute.
In company with his wife, Duce’s sister, he opened an alehouse near Charing Cross. Before long, notwithstanding his protests, yet not without his connivance, according to the narrative, the house became a resort for loose women and a sanctuary for thieves. The house having fallen under the suspicion of the Westminster magistrates, Angier deemed it prudent to quit the quarter. He then set up a brandy-shop; the same company continued to frequent it, though the landlord affected to lament their presence.
Two occurrences at the alehouse brought him for the first time to the bar of the Old Bailey. One day, while Angier was abroad, a Dutch woman brought to his house a gentleman she had picked up. Whilst the gentleman slept, she picked his pocket and decamped. Angier and a servant-maid were apprehended and tried for the theft. At the same sessions, a second charge was laid against him: an Irish woman having come to drink at his house, and having indulged to excess, he had carried her upstairs and laid her upon a bed, feigning great tenderness towards her. His wife burst into the room simulating jealousy, pulled the woman from the bed, and filched four guineas from her pocket. For want of direct proof against Humphry, he was acquitted upon this second indictment also. These trials utterly ruined his trade and his credit; the chronicler thereupon portrays robbery upon the highway as an employment better suited to his inclinations.
Angier now linked his fortunes with Carrick, Carrol, Lock, and Kelly, among others. He professed to hold himself above mere pickpocketing, affirming that in their gang Hugh Kelly alone made a profession of that art, which he practised with singular dexterity. Yet when Angier was later cast into prison, a great number of persons came to solicit his aid in recovering their gold watches, snuff-boxes, and other valuables. He replied to them that he knew nothing of the matter. As for Kelly, he had gone to settle in America, and Angier declared there was no longer any hope of recovering the property.
The affray near St Albans revealed the true worth of this distinction between the thefts he despised and those to which he lent a hand. Angier and Milksop espied a coach wherein sat a young gentleman and two ladies. The coachman refusing to pull up at their command, they fired upon a horse to hinder him from using his whip and driving off; the coachman was thrown from the box and dragged beneath the carriage, the wheels mangling him so severely that his life was despaired of. The robbers rifled the passengers of their valuables, using them roughly and tearing away their belongings with great brutality. Angier pleaded that he was then heavy with drink. The high road bore the marks of the violence; drunkenness was his excuse, not its expiation.
Early in the year 1720, Angier narrowly escaped the gallows for a robbery in which, according to the record, he had borne no part whatever. The coachman of a nobleman had been robbed of a watch and some money. A woman described in the narrative as a woman of the town, whom Angier and one of his fellows had handled very roughly, subsequently attempted to pawn the watch, the owner having advertised its loss. Being taken into custody, she alleged that the trinket had been taken by Angier, Armstrong, and another young man; whereupon they were apprehended and committed to Newgate.
At the following sessions, this woman bore hard against them in her evidence. The coachman, the chronicler notes, was far more reserved in his testimony; several circumstances evincing their innocence having appeared to the jury, they were acquitted. The author accounts the verdict a just one, since they had not committed the robbery. In a life beset by so many indictments, admitted rapines, and confessions of accomplices, this acquittal cannot be dismissed as the ordinary fortune of a highwayman: the court discharged him because the evidence in the case demonstrated that he was not the author of the deed.
The account records that Angier subsequently dwelt at Henley-upon-Thames, enjoying a fair reputation and maintaining a conduct which he deemed blameless. In his dying speech, he declared that he had formed resolutions of amendment prior to his last apprehension, and had adhered to them. During his confinement, the writer observes, he manifested great signs of penitence, praying God to support him under the sufferings his crimes had justly brought upon him.
At the place of execution, he showed no terror of death. He addressed the assembled multitude, expressing the hope that his miserable end might deter the spectators from the wicked courses that had brought him thither. He forgave Dyer, whose testimony, he said, had cost him his life, and prayed that the time purchased by his blood and that of other condemned men might be profitably employed. He begged forgiveness of all whom he had injured, and declared that in every robbery wherein he had been concerned, he had ever kept himself clear of the guilt of murder.
Then, according to the chronicle, Angier adjusted the halter about his neck with his own hands and submitted to his sentence. He was about twenty-nine years of age. He was executed on the 9th of September, 1723, having known the perils of the highway, an acquittal upon a wrongful charge, and at the last, the capital tree. The words he addressed to the crowd were those of a felon seeking to divide his thefts from bloodshed; yet the goods of the travellers he had despoiled, and the mangled body of the coachman, remain an indelible part of the tale.