and, as he returned from the tavern where he
supped to his own house, felled him, and nearly
cut off the end of his nose, when the arrival of
some other passengers struck them with terror,
and they fled, or, as Marvell expresses it,
"marched off." The writer adds, that "Sir
Thomas Sands, lieutenant of the troop,
commanded the party, and O'Brien, the Earl of
Inchequin's son, was a principal actor." The
circumstance created as great an outbreak of
popular indignation as the murder committed
by Lord Sanquhar had done in the reign of
James. The court for a time tried to carry
matters with a high hand, and the king
actually ordered the release of two of the
accomplices who had been taken; but, the night
before the reassembling of parliament after the
Christmas vacation, he permitted their fresh
arrest. In this juncture, the House of Commons
acted with great spirit and dignity. They at
once voted that they would proceed to no
business whatever (though Charles, as usual, was
in dire want of money) until they had passed
a bill for the surrender of the malefactors, and
for augmenting the penalties for all such crimes
committed on " parliament men" in the future.
In another letter, Marvell calls this act " Sir
John Coventry's bill against cutting noses." Sir
Thomas Sands and O'Brien neglected to appear
at the Old Bailey within the time limited by the
act of parliament, and were accordingly attainted
and outlawed, "without possibility of pardon."

The same admirable poet and patriot relates
another piece of street ruffianism by royal and
noble blacklegs, which occurred about the same
period. " Doubtless you have heard before this
time," he writes, " how Monmouth, Albemarle,
Dunbane, and seven or eight gentlemen, fought
with the watch, and killed a poor beadle. They
have all got their pardons, for Monmouth's sake;
but it is an act of great scandal." To "kill
a poor beadle" was evidently a mere matter
of sport and good-fellowship to the jovial
monarch and his courtiers; and, as the beadle
in question was not so fortunate as to be a
member of the House of Commons, no bill was
passed for attainting his murderers, and his blood
remained unavenged. Lordly encounters with
the watch lasted even to our own times; for
the achievements of the Marquis Springheeled
Jack are yet fresh in the recollection of
many of us, though somewhat more than a
quarter of a century has elapsed since those
edifying days. But, had a policeman been
murdered in 1837 by any titled reveller, we
should infallibly have seen the illustrious culprit,
first at the Old Bailey, and afterwards on a
certain platform below the tower of
St. Sepulchre's.

It was not until near the close of the
seventeenth century that highway robberies in the
neighbourhood of London became one of the
institutions of the criminal class. Du Val seems
to have been the originator of this most elegant
of rascalities. He taught us clumsy islanders,
according to Hudibras Butler, how to rob "more
obligingly" than had been our wont, and how
to hang in a more graceful fashion than e'er
was known before to the dull English
nation.

After him came a host of Turpins and Tom
Kings, whose deeds are not to the present
purpose, inasmuch as they were not
commonly performed in London streets, but on
the dark roads, heaths, and commons, in the
vicinity of town. The metropolitan ruffians,
however, kept pace with their brethren of the
country highways. To such a pitch of audacity
had the former attained in the time of Queen
Anne, that they positively conceived a design to
stop her Majesty's coach as she returned from
supping in the city. Those, too, were the days
of the Mohocks —  a set of desperate young
bloods and men of fashion, who seem to have
been desirous of emulating the drunken atrocities
of Nero and his parasites, and of whom the
Spectator has given us a fearful account, in his
three hundred and twenty- fourth number, bearing
date March 12, 1712. If what is there
stated is to be accepted literally, the rakes of
that time had formed themselves into " a
nocturnal fraternity under the title of ' the Mohock
Club,' a name borrowed, it seems, from a sort
of cannibals in India, who subsist by plundering
and devouring all the nations about them. An
outrageous ambition of doing all possible hurt
to their fellow creatures is the great cement of
their assembly, and the only qualification required
in the members. In order to exert this
principle in its full strength and perfection, they
take care to drink themselves to a pitch that is
beyond the possibility of attending to any notions
of reason or humanity; then make a general
sally, and attack all that are so unfortunate as
to walk the streets through which they patrol.
Some are knocked down, others stabbed, others
cut and carbonadoed. The particular talents by
which these misanthropes are distinguished from
one another consist in the various kinds of
barbarities which they execute upon their prisoners.
Some are celebrated for a happy dexterity in
tipping the lion upon them; which is performed
by squeezing the nose flat to the face, and boring
out the eyes with their fingers. Others are
called the dancing-masters, and teach their scholars
to cut capers by running swords through
their legs; a new invention, whether originally
French I cannot tell." In number three hundred
and thirty-two of the Spectator, a Mohock
hunt is described. The victim was run down
with a view-hallo! when the savage pack formed
a circle round him with the points of their
swords. One punctured him in the rear, which
naturally made him wheel about; then came a
prick from a second, a third, and so on. Thus they
kept him spinning like a top, until, in their mercy,
they let him go free. Another savage diversion
was thrusting women into barrels, and rolling
them down Snow or Ludgate hill. Swift, who was
horribly afraid of the Mohocks, mentions several
of their villanies. He writes to Stella on the
16th March, 1712: " Two of the Mohocks
caught a maid of old Lady Winchelsea's at the
door of her house in the Park with a candle,