The life of James Hind, published by George Borrow in 1825, presents him under two distinct guises: the highwayman who plundered travellers, and the Royalist who claimed to select his victims exclusively from among the King’s enemies. The adventures and encounters that follow are those preserved by that retrospective compilation.
Hind was the son of a saddler from Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire. His father put him to school; by the age of fifteen, he could read, write, and cast accounts. He was subsequently apprenticed to a butcher. Two years later, he abandoned the shop and begged his mother for money, declaring he could no longer endure his master’s brawling. She gave him three pounds and watched him set out for London, her eyes filled with tears.
He did not long remain alone there. One night, having been arrested in company with a woman suspected of stealing five guineas, he was conveyed to the Poultry Compter. For want of evidence, he was discharged the following morning. Thomas Allen, who had been detained upon another matter, chanced to be released at that very hour. The two men went to drink together; Allen was already seasoned in the ways of the road and highway robbery. At Shooter’s Hill, he bade his new companion halt a gentleman and his servant. Hind took fifteen pounds, then returned a coin to the traveller to defray the charges of his journey. It was his maiden robbery, but likewise the first display of his particular manner: taking the gold, yet retaining absolute mastery over whatever pittance he chose to leave his victim.
Hind professed steadfast allegiance to Charles II and fierce enmity toward the men who had condemned Charles I. Bound with Allen, he reportedly swore never to spare the regicides. Together, the two men attempted to stop the coach of Oliver Cromwell; the escort, however, overpowered them. Allen was seized upon the spot and subsequently executed, whilst Hind made good his escape. He had ridden his horse so hard in his flight that the beast fell dead beneath him; left without coin to purchase another, he took to the road on foot. Before long, he perceived a mount tethered to a hedge, with a brace of pistols at the saddle-bow. He seized the horse despite its owner’s vehement outcries and rode off along the highway.
The preacher Hugh Peters was another of his quarries. Hind charged him with having served the cause that brought about the King’s downfall, and stripped him of thirty pieces of gold. He presently returned to demand his cloak, drawing scriptural authority from the Gospel to the effect that he who is sued for his cloak should let his coat go also. Peters was obliged to surrender the garment. On the following Sunday, the divine delivered a sermon directed against theft; a member of the congregation publicly reminded him of his lost cloak, and the assembly dissolved into laughter. Later, Hind crossed the path of Judge John Bradshaw, who had presided over the trial of Charles I. Bradshaw at first offered him some forty shillings in silver. Hind insisted upon gold, and ultimately received a purse of Jacobuses—broad pieces coined under James I. Then, having pocketed his due, he shot the six horses of the coach before riding away. His hostility to the regicides was therefore no mere hollow bluster uttered from afar: the highway afforded Hind occasion to settle political scores and line his pockets in a single stroke.
The accounts of his ordinary victims portray him as no less uncompromising. He stopped a carriage bearing ladies who were transporting a dowry of three thousand pounds. He demanded a thousand of it, declaring that this portion should serve to succour unfortunate lovers. The treasure was apportioned in bags; they delivered to him one containing a thousand pounds. He gave his word that the coin would be spent in relief of distressed lovers, then suffered them to go their way with the remainder of the portion. On another occasion, Hind, being destitute of funds and having sold his horse, established himself in a house hard by a thoroughfare and waited for a physician known to have received a considerable sum. He feigned that his wife lay dangerously ill and conducted the doctor upstairs. There, he showed him a cocked pistol and an empty purse. The physician enquired after the sick woman; Hind replied that the sickness had emptied the house entirely, and commanded him to fill the purse. The practitioner paid out forty guineas. Hind locked him within the chamber and took his leave.
At other times, he did not disdain to plunder an old man journeying to Wantage market upon an ass. The poor wretch had scraped together forty shillings over two years to buy a cow, that his ten children might have milk. Hind took the money, bade him return to the very same spot a week later, and promised to restore him twofold. The man kept the tryst; Hind, according to the narrative, bestowed upon him sixty shillings, that he might purchase two cows rather than one. This restitution of a fragment of his booty stands in singular contrast to the sums extorted from other travellers, yet it did not alter the law of the road: Hind alone determined who was to be stripped, who spared, and what injuries he deemed fit to redress.
Yet the very terror that had long shielded Hind at last brought him to slay a man utterly unconcerned with his feuds. One morning, he stopped Colonel Harrison and took from him upwards of seventy pounds. Harrison raised the hue and cry. Hind pressed forward upon a jaded horse, casting fearful glances at every rider appearing in his rear. At Knole Hill, a servant was galloping in haste to rejoin his master, who had forgotten some possession. Hind mistook him for a pursuer, wheeled about, and fired. The man’s name was George Sympson; he fell dead upon the road. Hind escaped the fray, but was later condemned for that murder.
Following the Royalist defeat at Worcester, where he had joined the army of Charles II, Hind returned to London under the assumed name of Brown. He lodged with a barber in Fleet Street. A former associate recognised him and turned informer. He was brought before the Speaker of the House of Commons; after a searching examination, he was committed to Newgate, heavily ironed, and kept under strict guard. The warrant directed that he be held in close custody, without permission for any person to visit him save by special leave. On 12 December 1651, he was arraigned at the Old Bailey upon several indictments. None of the charges preferred against him at that bar carried the sentence of death. He was thereupon transferred to Reading to answer for the slaying of Sympson at Knole. The jury found him guilty of manslaughter; yet an Act of Oblivion briefly buoyed his hopes that his life might be spared. An order of the Council of State then directed that he be removed to Worcester.
Hind was condemned for high treason and executed at Worcester in 1652. Upon the scaffold, he declared that the greater part of his robberies had been aimed at the Republicans, and lamented that he must die before the restoration of his ‘royal master.’ He affirmed that the men who had driven the King from his throne were far more deserving of the halter than he. When the executioner had performed his office, the authorities set his head upon the bridge spanning the Severn and fixed his quarters upon the city gates. His head was subsequently stolen away and buried in secret; his quarters remained exposed to the weather until the elements dissolved them. A handful of returned gold coins, a cow purchased for a destitute household, and sharp retorts flung at the regicides formed the legend he left behind. George Sympson, for his part, had espoused no cause: he was merely the traveller whom Hind’s terror had transformed into an enemy.