It is difficult to understand the cool audacity of some of the attacks on this road. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_, April, 1740, records that “the Bristol mail from London was robbed a little beyond Knightsbridge by a _man on foot_, who took the Bath and Bristol bags, and, _mounting the post-boy’s horse_, rode off toward London.” On the 1st of July, 1774, William Hawke was executed for a highway robbery here, and two men were executed on the 30th of the ensuing November for a similar offence. {27a} Even so late as 1799, it was necessary to order a party of light horse to patrol every night from Hyde Park Corner to Kensington; {27b} and it is within the memory of many when pedestrians walked to and from Kensington in bands sufficient to ensure mutual protection, starting at known intervals, of which a bell gave due warning. Respecting the innkeepers, the well-known Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, in his Memoirs, tells the following curious story:—“I was informed that the Earl of Rochester, the wit, had said something of me which, according to his custom, was very malicious; I therefore sent Colonel Aston, a very mettled friend of mine, to call him to account for it. He denied the words, and, indeed, I was soon convinced he had never said them; but the mere report, though I found it to be false, obliged me (as I then foolishly thought) to go on with the quarrel; and the next day was appointed for us to fight on horseback, a way in England a little unusual, but it was his part to choose. Accordingly I and my second lay the night before at Knightsbridge privately, to avoid the being secured at London upon any suspicion; which yet we found ourselves more in danger of there, because we had all the appearance of highwaymen, that had a mind to be skulking in an old inn for one night; but this, I suppose, the people of the house _were used to_, and so _took no notice of us_, _but liked us the better_.” And in the “Rehearsal,” written in ridicule of Dryden, we also have an allusion to the innkeepers’ habits and characters:—“_Smith_: But pray, Mr. Bayes, is not this a little difficult, that you were saying e’en now, to keep an army thus conceal’d in _Knights-Bridge_?—_Bayes_: In _Knights-Bridge_? Stay.—_Johnson_: No, not if the _inn-keepers be his friends_.”