The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient TurnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Dover Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
Gad's Hill is not only memorable for the robberies committed on its miry
ways. Its story rises to tragic heights with the murder, on the night of
October 15, 1661, of no less a person than a foreign Prince, Cossuma
Albertus, Prince of Transylvania. This unfortunate Prince, who was on a
visit to England to seek aid from Charles the Second against the Germans,
was approaching Rochester, apparently on his return to the Continent, when
his coach stuck fast in the October mud of Gad's Hill. He had already
experienced the villainous nature of our highways, and so, knowing that it
would be impossible to proceed further that evening, he resigned himself
to sleeping a night on the road. Having wrapped himself up as warmly as
possible, he fell off to sleep, whereupon his coachman, one Isaac Jacob, a
Jew, took his sword and stabbed him to the heart, and, calling upon the
footman, this precious pair completed the tragedy by dragging the body out
of the coach, and, cutting off the head, flinging the mutilated remains in
a neighbouring ditch.
The first tidings of this inhuman murder were brought to a Rochester
physician, who, riding past the spot some days afterwards, was horrified
by his dog bringing him a human arm in his mouth. Meanwhile the murderers
had possessed themselves of the Prince's clothes, together with a large
sum of money he had with him, and, dragging the coach out of the ruts, had
driven back to Greenhithe, where they left coach and horses to be called
for. Not long afterwards, they were arrested in London, and, being brought
before the Lord Mayor, the footman made a full confession. The trial took
place at Maidstone, where Isaac Jacob, coachman, and Casimirus Karsagi,
footman, were sentenced to death, the first being hanged in chains at the
scene of the crime. The body of the ill-fated Prince of Transylvania was
buried in the nave of Rochester Cathedral.
Sixteen years later, we come to the exploits of that ingenious highwayman,
Master Nicks, who, one morning in 1676, so early as four o'clock,
committed a robbery on this essentially "bad eminence," upon the person of
a gentleman, who, from some unexplained reason, was crossing the hill at
that unearthly hour. This, by the way, seems to disprove the wisdom of the
early worm, who, to be caught, must of necessity be up still earlier than
that ornithological Solon, the early bird. 'Tis a nice point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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