Mull Sack, _alias_ John Cottington, the noted highwayman of the time of the Commonwealth, is stated to have been a constant visitor at the Devil Tavern. In the garb and character of a man of fashion, he appears to have levied contributions on the public as a pick-pocket and highwayman, to a greater extent than perhaps any other individual of his fraternity on record. He not only had the honour of picking the pocket of Oliver Cromwell, when Lord Protector, but he afterwards robbed King Charles II., then living in exile at Cologne, of plate valued at £1500. Another of his feats was his robbing the wife of the Lord General Fairfax. "This lady," we are told, "used to go to a lecture on a weekday, to Ludgate Church, where one Mr. Jacomb preached, being much followed by the precisians. Mull Sack, observing this,--and that she constantly wore her watch hanging by a chain from her waist,--against the next time she came there, dressed himself like an officer in the army; and having his comrades attending him like troopers, one of them takes out the pin of a coach-wheel that was going upwards through the gate, by which means, it falling off, the passage was obstructed; so that the lady could not alight at the church-door, but was forced to leave her coach without. Mull Sack, taking advantage of this, readily presented himself to her ladyship; and having the impudence to take her from her gentleman usher, who attended her alighting, led her by the arm into the church; and by the way, with a pair of keen or sharp scissors for the purpose, cut the chain in two, and got the watch clear away: she not missing it till sermon was done, when she was going to see the time of the day." At the Devil Tavern Mull Sack could mix with the best society, whom he probably occasionally relieved of their watches and purses. There is extant a very rare print of him, in which he is represented partly in the garb of a chimney-sweep, his original avocation, and partly in the fashionable costume of the period.[33] In the Apollo chamber, at the Devil Tavern, were rehearsed, with music, the Court-day Odes of the Poets Laureate: hence Pope, in the _Dunciad_: "Back to the Devil the loud echoes roll, And 'Coll!' each butcher roars at Hockley Hole." The following epigram on the Odes rehearsals is by a wit of those times: "When Laureates make Odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good, or are evil? You may judge--From the Devil they come to the Court, And go from the Court to the Devil." St. Dunstan's, or the Devil Tavern, is mentioned as a house of old repute, in the interlude, _Jacke Jugeler_, 1563, where Jack, having persuaded his cousin Jenkin, "As foolish a knave withall, As any is now, within London wall," that he was not himself, thrusts him from his master's door, and in answer to Jenkin's sorrowful question--where his master and he were to dwell, replies,