The coward and the impostor have been set
upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity.
For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the
greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has
been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still
bepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; the death of
Black Bess has drawn floods of tears down the most callous cheeks. And
the truth is that Turpin was never a gentleman of the road at all! Black
Bess is as pure an invention as the famous ride to York. The ruffian,
who is said to have ridden the phantom mare from one end of England to
the other, was a common butcher, who burned an old woman to death at
Epping, and was very properly hanged at York for the stealing of a horse
which he dared not bestride.
Not one incident in his career gives colour to the splendid myth which
has been woven round his memory. Once he was in London, and he died at
York. So much is true; but there is naught to prove that his progress
from the one town to the other did not occupy a year. Nor is there any
reason why the halo should have been set upon his head rather than upon
another's. Strangest truth of all, none knows at what moment Dick Turpin
first shone into glory. At any rate, there is a gap in the tradition,
and the chap-books of the time may not be credited with this vulgar
error. Perhaps it was the popular drama of Skelt which put the ruffian
upon the black mare's back; but whatever the date of the invention,
Turpin was a popular hero long before Ainsworth sent him rattling across
England.
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