“We are willing to admonish you before we attempt our design; and provide you use us civil, and admit us into your gallery, which is our property according to formalities, and if you think proper to come to a composition this way you’ll hear no further; and if not, our intention is to combine in a body, incognito, and reduce the playhouse to the ground. Valueing no detection, we are “INDEMNIFIED.” The manager carried these letters to the Lord Chamberlain and appealed to him for protection. A detachment of the guards, fifty strong, was ordered to do duty at the theatre nightly, and “thus deterred the saucy knaves from carrying their threats into execution. From this time,” says the ‘Newgate Calendar,’ “the gallery has been purged of such vermin.” The footmen and male servants generally of this age were an idle, dissolute race. From among them the ranks of the highwaymen were commonly recruited, and it was very usual for the gentleman’s gentleman, who had long flaunted in his master’s apparel, and imitated his master’s vices, to turn gentleman on the road to obtain funds for the faro-table and riotous living. A large proportion of the most famous highwaymen of the eighteenth century had been in service at some time or other. Hawkins, James Maclane, John Rann, William Page, had all worn the livery coat. John Hawkins had been butler in a gentleman’s family, but lost his place when the plate chest was robbed, and suspicion fell upon him because he was flush of money. Hawkins, without a character, was unable to get a fresh place, and he took at once to the road. His operations, which were directed chiefly against persons of quality, were conducted in and about London. He stopped and robbed the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bruce, and the Earl of Westmoreland, the latter in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When he got valuable jewels he carried them over to Holland and disposed of them for cash, which he squandered at once in a “hell,” for he was a rash and inveterate gambler. Working with two associates, he made his head-quarters at a public-house in the London Wall, the master of which kept a livery stable, and shared in the booty. From this point they rode out at all hours and stopped the stages as they came into town laden with passengers. One of the gang was, however, captured in the act of robbing the mail and executed at Aylesbury. After this, by way of revenge, they all determined to turn mail-robbers. They first designed to stop the Harwich mail, but changed their mind as its arrival was uncertain, being dependent on the passage of the packet-boat, and determined to rob the Bristol mail instead. They overtook the boy carrying the bags near Slough, and made him go down a lane where they tied him to a tree in a wet ditch, ransacked the Bath and Bristol bags, and hurried off by a circuitous route to London, where they divided the spoil, sharing the bank-notes and throwing the letters into the fire.