Will Harrison, Gent., like the three silly ewes in the folk-rhyme,
'came hirpling hame.' Where had the old man been? He explained in a
letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, but his tale is as hard to believe as
that of John Perry.

He states that he left his house in the afternoon (not the morning) of
Thursday, August 16, 1660. He went to Charringworth to collect rents,
but Lady Campden's tenants were all out harvesting. August seems an
odd month for rent-collecting when one thinks of it. They came home
late, which delayed Harrison 'till the close of the evening.' He only
received 23 _l._, which John Perry said, at his first examination in
1660, had been paid by one Edward Plaisterer, and Plaisterer
corroborated. Harrison then walked homeward, in the dusk probably,
and, near Ebrington, where the road was narrow, and bordered by whins,
'there met me one horseman who said "_Art thou there?_"' Afraid of
being ridden over, Harrison struck the horse on the nose, and the
rider, with a sword, struck at him and stabbed him in the side. (It
was at this point of the road, where the whins grew, that the cut hat
and bloody band were found, but a thrust in the side would not make a
neck-band bloody.) Two other horsemen here came up, one of them
wounded Harrison in the thigh. They did not now take his 23_l._, but
placed him behind one of them on horseback, handcuffed him, and threw
a great cloak over him.

Now, is it likely that highwaymen would carry handcuffs which closed,
says Harrison, with a spring and a snap? The story is pure fiction,
and bad at that. Suppose that kidnapping, not robbery, was the motive
(which would account for the handcuffs), what had any mortal to gain
by kidnapping, for the purpose of selling him into slavery, a 'gent.'
of seventy years of age?