Nor in reality was it he who took that great
ride to York. The feat was accomplished in the year 1676 by a man named
Nicks, if Defoe's account is to be relied on. Nicks committed a robbery
at Gadshill, near Chatham, at about four o'clock one summer's morning.
Knowing that, in spite of his crape mask, his victim had recognised him,
Nicks galloped to Gravesend, where, together with his mare, he crossed
the Thames by boat, then swung smartly across country to Chelmsford, and
thence on, with only necessary halts to bait his horse, by way of
Cambridge, through Huntingdon, and so on to the Great North Road.
Without ever changing his mount, he reached York early that evening,
having taken only fifteen hours for a journey of two hundred miles. If
the time is correct, she must have been a great mare, and he a
consummate horse-master. At his subsequent trial, as it was proved
beyond question that in the evening of the day on which the robbery took
place he had played bowls in York with well-known citizens, the jury,
holding it to be impossible that any person could have been on the same
day in two places so far apart as Gadshill and York, on that ground
acquitted the prisoner.
But if Nevison, nor Nicks, nor Turpin, ever crossed into Scotland, there
were others, less known to fame, who occasionally tried their fortune in
that country.
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