1670: Claude Duval, gentleman highwayman
January 21st, 2010 Headsman
It’s been 340 years since the immortal highwayman Claude Duval (or Du Val, or Du Vall) went to the Tyburn gallows and was turned off into legend as the ne plus ultra of English gentleman thieves.
Duval, actually, was French, an import to Isles in the train of some forgotten noble migrating with the restoration of royal prerogatives.
On the English highway, this formerly impecunious retainer coruscated as a knight of the road, the very model of the chivalrous outlaw against whom the likes of Dick Turpin would be compared to disadvantage. Macaulay recorded
how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady’s coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds; how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath;
how his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men; how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his life; how the king would have granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel judge, who had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies. In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact, that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our ancestors with eagerness and faith.
Gillian Spraggs justifiably observes that no matter how genuinely gallant the brigand, his profession entailed relieving others of their rightful produce by main force. But then, the same could be said of the lords of the realm.
No, although Duval’s legend invites debunking, this must be for another blog.
We take Duval here at his mythological acme: he is the patron saint of the early modern bandit, the Superman of English outlawry, succoring with the fantasy of freedom upon the road the thousands of porters and scullery maids and apprentices chained to their oars below-decks upon Britannia’s ship of state.
What matter the rest?
This day, we toast Claude Duval, the Knight of the Road, in the manner of the fetching inscription (since destroyed by fire) under which he was reportedly buried:
Here lies DuVall: Reder, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.
Much havoc has he made of both; for all
Men he made to stand, and women he made to fall
The second Conqueror of the Norman race,
Knights to his arm did yield, and ladies to his face.
Old Tyburn’s glory; England’s illustrious Thief,
Du Vall, the ladies’ joy; Du Vall, the ladies’ grief.
Part of the Themed Set: Resistance and Rebellion in the Restoration.
Also on this date
- 1535: Six Protestants for the Affair of the Placards
- 1880: Daniel Searles, the first hanging in Tioga County
- 1943: Hemu Kalani, Sindh revolutionary
- 2001: Larry Keith Robison
- 1793: Louis XVI
Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Famous,Hanged,History,Outlaws,Pelf,Popular Culture,Public Executions,Theft
Tags: 1670, 1670s, claude du val, claude du vall, claude duval, claude duvall, courante, highwayman, january 21, thomas macaulay, Tyburn
January 21st, 2010 at 9:41 am
[...] spirit of devotion to the fair sex, which was first breathed upon the highway by the gay, gallant Claude Du-Val, the Bayard of the road — le filou sans peur et sans reproche — but which was [...]
January 24th, 2010 at 4:03 am
[...] Jan. 21: Claude Duval [...]
February 4th, 2010 at 1:40 am
When we discuss this poem,it was really an unbelievable doings because as I listen to our teacher it makes you really inspired because they really fought for their love who are Bess and the highwayman ,but their was a time when their is no more other way how to fight for their love(it;s because there are many hindrance like the father of the girl don’t want the guy to be the wife of his daugter…..),so the girl just decided to kill herself first,because she knows that the man she loved will be killed and she did this because if they are both died, she think that bought of them will be together in the 2nd life…..
February 4th, 2010 at 1:50 am
After we tackled up the poem entitled “THE HIGHWAYMAN” i realize that you can do everything in the name of love…In the poem the two lovers both died…Bess thought that she can’t live w/out the highwayman so,she decided to commit suicide..And she loved the highwayman very much…So she did this..it is just because of the “FORBIDDEN LOVE”.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:59 am
As I understand about the poem The highwayman, it is about 2 people who loved each other, the highwayman and Bess. When Tim the ostler knew about Bess and the highwayman, he told the king George about it because of deep jealousy because Tim love Bess. Since highwaymen is against the authority, the king’s men went to the landlord’s house to capture the highwayman but the truth was in their dirty minds they want to rape Bess because Bess is so beautifuland every man would be honored tohave her. When Bess knew that the highwayman is coming, she killed herself to save him but the highwayman love Bess so much that when he heard the noise of the gun he was so angry but unfortunately the king’smen shot him.In the end they both died……
February 4th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Ah, the Noyes poem. The wrong generation for Duval himself, but he’s Duvalesque in his elan, right down to the Gallic modishness …
He’d a French cocked hat on his forehead, and a bunch of lace at his chin;
He’d a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to his thigh!
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle–
His rapier hilt a-twinkle–
His pistol butts a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred,
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter–
Bess, the landlord’s daughter–
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
February 17th, 2010 at 11:44 am
[...] that good-humoured popularity which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fell to the lot of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin and Jack [...]
October 15th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
[...] * This legend is lifted wholesale from the c.v. of English highwayman Claude Duval. [...]
October 20th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
[...] debunking that legend might invite, its existence speaks to that timeless romance of the road. And then there’s that kernel of truth, or so one hopes: after Stortebeker’s death, the [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Was Told I am a distant relation of Claude Duval. So Had to find out about him. There is a memorial at the Downes in Bristol which I am going to check out.
November 28th, 2011 at 4:44 am
[...] basic superstar robber during that archetype’s golden age, Louis Dominique Garthausen, aka Bourguignon, aka Cartouche was the son of a German [...]
December 18th, 2012 at 4:59 am
[...] lay in the classic crimes of violence dating back to before William and Mary — murder, rape, highway robbery, crimes of state including coining — to which the new varieties of theft were gradually to be [...]