Episode 003: William Barton: The Highwayman Who Could Not Stay Still

William Barton is born with restlessness in his blood. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, his father abandons him as a child, fleeing to Jamaica with a concubine and a hold full of goods; the boy grows up in his grandfather's eating-house, surrounded by comfort he cannot bring himself to accept.

This is true crime at its most unsettled: a young man who cannot sit still, who trades a safe apprenticeship for the open sea and trades the sea for soldiering and trades soldiering for the road. Every turn of fortune that might have saved him only sharpens his appetite for the next dangerous thing.

Somewhere on the highways of early Georgian England, the machinery of justice waits for a man who keeps running toward it.

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Convened with: today 'convene' means to gather for a meeting; in early eighteenth century usage it could mean to cohabit or consort with someone, often with a hint of scandal. When the text says Barton's father 'had long convened with' his concubine, it means they had been living together as lovers, not that they held committee meetings.

Temporal laws: these are the laws of the earthly state, as opposed to divine or ecclesiastical law. When the source says Barton's father was 'addicted to every species of wickedness, except such as are punished by temporal laws,' it suggests the man was a sinner but not quite a criminal; wicked enough for God's judgment, but careful enough to dodge the hangman's.

Bound him to himself: not a reference to ropes or chains. To 'bind' a young person in this period means to apprentice them; the grandfather formally took Will on as his apprentice, training him in the eating-house trade. It was both a legal contract and a family rescue.

Rubbed on: to rub on means to get by, to muddle through with difficulty. It carries a sense of grinding friction; life is not smooth, you are scraping along it. The phrase is all but extinct today.

Reconnoitre: borrowed from the French, this military term means to survey or scout out an enemy position. Barton, the old soldier, sends his companion ahead to assess the strength of a stagecoach the way an officer would assess a fortification. It tells you everything about how he thinks: robbery is just war continued by other means.

Blunderbusses: a blunderbuss is a short, wide-muzzled firearm designed to spray shot at close range. The name likely comes from the Dutch 'donderbus,' meaning thunder gun. Coaches carried them as defensive weapons; their spread of shot made accurate aim unnecessary, which was the point.

Uxorious: excessively devoted to one's wife. It sounds like a compliment, but in this context it is almost a diagnosis. Barton's devotion to his wife is presented as the very engine that drives him onto the road; he robs because he cannot bear to see her want. The word carries a faint note of contempt, as if love itself is a weakness when it leads a man to the gallows.

Quoth: simply 'said.' Already old-fashioned by 1735, it survived mainly in literary and legal writing. When 'quoth Will' appears, the narrator is giving Barton's words a slightly theatrical air, as if recounting a scene from a stage play rather than a crime report.

About This Series

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.

The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.

True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.

The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.

Transcript

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This is a Dark Stories presentation of the lives of the most remarkable criminals who have been condemned and executed for murder, highway robbery, housebreaking, street mugging, forgery, or other offences collected from original papers and authentic memoirs and published in 1735 Edited by Arthur Elmley S. Haywood. Episode three William Barton, the highwayman who could not stay still. This William Barton was born in Thames Street, London, and seemed to have inherited a sort of hereditary wildness and inconstancy, his father having been always of a restless temper and addicted to every species of wickedness, except such as are punished by temporal laws. While this son William was a child, he left him without any provision, to the care of his mother, and accompanied by a concubine whom he had long convened with, shipped himself for the island of Jamaica, carrying with him a good quantity of goods proper for that climate, intending to live there as pleasantly as the place would give him leave. Now no sooner was his father gone on this unaccountable voyage, but William was taken home and into favour by his grandfather, who kept a great eating house in Covent Garden. Here Will, if he would, might certainly have done well. His grandfather bound him to himself, treated him with the utmost tenderness and indulgence, and the gentlemen who frequented the house were continually making him little presents, which by their number were considerable, and might have contented a youth like him. But William, whose imagination was full of roving as his father's, far from sitting down pleased and satisfied with that easy condition into which fortune had thrown him, began to dream of nothing but travels and adventures. In short, in spite of all the poor old man, his grandfather, could say to prevent it, to sea he went, and to Jamaica in quest of his father, who he fancied must have grown extravagantly rich by this time. On Barton's arrival at Jamaica he found all things in a very different condition from what he had flattered himself with. His father was dead, and the woman who went over with him settled in a good plantation, but so settled that Will was unable to remove her. So he betook himself to sea again, and rubbed on the best way he was able. But as if the vengeance of heaven had pursued him, Barton had no sooner scraped a little money together, but the vessel in which he sailed was seized by the Spaniards, who sent the men they made prisoners into Spain. Poor Barton found it so, and with the rest of his unfortunate companions, suffered all the inconveniences of hard usage and low diet. When they were safely landed, they were hurried to a prison where it was difficult to determine which was worst, their treatment or their food. Above all the rest, Barton was uneasy, and his head ever turned towards contriving an escape. When he and some other intriguing heads had meditated long in vain, an accident put it in their power to effect their escape. Finding an old wall in the outer court of the prison weak and ready to fall down, the keeper caused the English prisoners to be sent to repair it. Barton and one of his companions soon thought of a way to ease it. They stole the Spanish soldiers' pouches, crowded the powder into a small bag, placing it underneath as far as they could reach, and then gave it fire. This threw up two yards of the wall, and while the Spaniards stood amazed at the report, Barton and his associates marched off through the breach without finding the slightest resistance. Providence directed them to a monastery where the religious treated them with much humanity, succored them with all necessary provision, and protected them when reclaimed by the jailer. Yet honest labour was grating to these restless people, and so they contrived to free themselves, wrenching open the outer doors in the night and getting to an English vessel that lay in the harbour ready to sail. When they were got safe into their native country again, each took such a course for a livelihood as he liked best. Barton went into the army and served several campaigns in Flanders during the last war, being a very gallant fellow, but the war ended just as he was on the point of becoming paymaster sergeant, and his regiment being disbanded, poor Will became broke in every acceptation of the word. Amongst other stories he told was one of a Spanish baroness, who, unable to prevent her husband from gambling away the family fortune, devised a cunning highway robbery on his own coach to secure money for their son's future. Barton and an English companion were hired to assist in this curious scheme, disguised as highwayman to rob the baron at the Baroness's direction. From this exploit, Barton fell in love with robbing ever after. After many more adventures, captured by the French, escaping with a Gascon officer's help through false identities and raids on illegal gambling dens, Barton eventually returned to England. Finding himself unable to maintain his wife honestly, he turned to robbery. His greatest unhappiness was his marriage. Too auxorious and too solicitous for what concerned his wife, he would need support her in an easy state of life, though at the hazard of the gallows. Being one day on the road with a comrade of his, and observing a stagecoach at a distance, Barton commanded the other to ride forward to reconnoitery. The young fellow obeyed and brought word that the force of the enemy consisted of four men laden with blunderbuses, two ladies and a footman. Then, quoth Will, we may venture to attack them. Things thus adjusted, each advanced on his attack. Barton no sooner stopped the coach and presented his pistol at one window than his companion, after firing a brace of balls over the coachman's head, did the like at the other, which so surprised the fine gentleman within, that without the least resistance they surrendered all they had about them, which amounted to about one hundred pounds. Alas, Will's luck would not last. Attempting a robbery in Covent Garden, where he was too well known, he was surprised, committed to Newgate and convicted, and ordered to be transported for seven years to his Majesty's plantations. When he was landed, a planter bought him and paid eighteen pounds for him. Barton's understanding and address soon made him the darling of his master, who put upon him nothing more than merely supervising his slaves. One would have thought that so easy a state of life would have been pleasing, and that it might have become a means of reclaiming him. But content when its basis rests not upon virtue, is incapable of continuing long. No sooner had Barton leisure to recollect home, his friends, and above all his wife, but it pushed him at last on the unhappy resolution of returning to England before the expiration of his banishment. Finding a method to free himself from his master and to get aboard a ship, he came back to his dearly beloved London, and to those measures which had already occasioned so great a misfortune, and at last brought him to an ignominious death. His return from transportation was sufficient to have brought him to death had he committed nothing besides, but venturing upon his old trade and robbing amongst others the Lord Viscount Lisborne, of the Kingdom of Ireland, and a lady who was with him in the coach of a silver hilted sword, a snuff box and about twelve shillings in money, he was for this fact taken, tried and convicted at the old Bailey. He immediately laid by all hopes of life as soon as he had received sentence, and with great earnestness set himself to secure that peace in the world to come, which his own vices had hindered him from in this. He got some good books which he read with continual devotion and attention, submitted with the utmost patience to the miseries of his sad condition, and finding his relations would take care of his daughter, and that his wife would be in no danger of want, he laid aside the thoughts of temporal matters altogether, expressing a readiness to die and never showing any weakness or impatience at the nearest approach of death. Much of that firmness with which he behaved in these last moments of his life might probably be owing to natural courage, of which certainly Barton had a very large share. But the remains of virtue and religion, to which the man had always a propensity, notwithstanding that he gave way to passions which brought him to all the sorrows he knew, enabled him to suffer with great calmness on Friday the twelfth of may 1721, aged about thirty one years.