There have been others, of course, who might perhaps be recognised as
Border highwaymen, though not many of them could claim to have achieved
even moderate notoriety. Drummond, who was hanged at Tyburn in 1730,
certainly began his infamous career in the north, but that was quite a
petty beginning, and--at least after his return from transportation to
the Virginian Plantations--his chief haunts were Hounslow or Bagshot
Heaths, or other places in the neighbourhood of London.
But at least there was one Border highwayman--or is "footpad" here the
more correct term?--who, if the story is true, may surely claim to have
been the most picturesque and romantic of criminals. In this instance
the malefactor was a woman, not a man, and her name was Grizel Cochrane,
member of (or at least sprung from) a noble family, which later produced
one of the most famous seamen in the annals of naval history. Her story
is very well known, and it may therefore be sufficient to say here that
her father, having been concerned in one of the many political
conspiracies which in those days were judged to merit death, lay in
prison under sentence, and that, to save his life, the brave lady,
disguised as a man, on two separate occasions, on Tweedmouth moor,
robbed the mail by which her father's death warrant was being conveyed
from London to Edinburgh.
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