were the only people,' said Horace Walpole, 'except the English who seem
to have put robbery on a right foot.' And the English of the seventeenth
century need fear the rivalry of no Lacedæmonian. They were, indeed,
the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known.
The Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them had
fought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened their wits.
They were scholars as well as gentlemen; they tempered their sport with
a merry wit; their avarice alone surpassed their courtesy; and they
robbed with so perfect a regard for the proprieties that it was only the
pedant and the parliamentarian who resented their interference.

Nor did their princely manner fail of its effect upon their victims. The
middle of the seventeenth century was the golden age, not only of the
robber, but of the robbed. The game was played upon either side with a
scrupulous respect for a potent, if unwritten, law. Neither might nor
right was permitted to control the issue. A gaily attired, superbly
mounted highwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take
a purse from each, though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried him
to Tyburn. But the traveller knew his place: he did what was expected of
him in the best of tempers. Who was he that he should yield in courtesy
to the man in the vizard? As it was monstrous for the one to discharge
his pistol, so the other could not resist without committing an outrage
upon tradition. One wonders what had been the result if some mannerless
reformer had declined his assailant's invitation and drawn his sword.
Maybe the sensitive art might have died under this sharp rebuff. But
none save regicides were known to resist, and their resistance was never
more forcible than a volley of texts. Thus the High-toby-crack swaggered
it with insolent gaiety, knowing no worse misery than the fear of the
Tree, so long as he followed the rules of his craft. But let a touch of
brutality disgrace his method, and he appealed in vain for sympathy or