Women had romantic dreams of meeting this cavalier on the highway.
Claude Duval, the son of a miller, was born in Damfront Normandy in 1643, and brought up in the Catholic religion. At the age of fourteen he left home and made his way first to Rouen, then to Paris where he gained a job as a footman to an English Royalist gentlemen in exile and there he remained until 1660. In that year Charles II ascended to the throne and Duval accompanied his employer on his return to England.
Once there Duval found better paid employment as a highwayman.
In an England that had gone mad after years of being repressed by the puritans the roads were filled with affluent travellers and Duval decided that he should have a share of that affluence. He was handsome, dressed well in the latest fashions, was courteous to the gentlemen and flirted outrageously with the ladies, even as he robbed them both. As his reputation spread women of all ages had romantic dreams of being held up by this handsome French cavalier of the highways.
Even quite early in his chosen career Duval’s fame as a gentleman of the road spread and he gained notoriety by appearing in the lists of the most wanted that appeared regularly in the ’London Gazette’.
The following accounts come mainly from the pen of William Pope writing in1670 not long after Duval’s hanging.
One day Duval and his crew held up a coach on Houndlow Heath belonging to a wealthy noble and his wife. As they approached the carriage the lady began to play a flageolet (small flute) and to her amazement Duval reached into his pocket took out another flageolet and played a few tunes. After which, another of the crew must have taken over the playing, because Claude asked the lady to honour him with a dance. The lady agreed and they danced a pretty fair coranto at the roadside, despite Duval wearing French riding boots. When the dance ended Duval complimented the lady on her dancing, handed her up into the carriage and took four hundred pounds from her husband as payment for the entertainment.
Another tale told the story of how Duval and his crew stopped and robbed a coach full of ladies on Blackheath and when one of the gang took a silver bottle from a woman who was feeding her baby, Duval told him off and made him give the item back.
On another occasion when Esquire Roper, Master of King Charles II hounds was hunting in Windsor Forest, Duval held him up at gunpoint, took a purse containing fifty guineas from him and left him tied to a tree.
At this stage, having these and many other robberies to his name the reward on his head was large, and having accumulated a reasonable sum, Duval decided that he would retire to the continent. There he travelled to Paris and lived the life of a rake; wining, dining and amorous encounters were the order of the day.
However the high life soon drained his purse and he had to fall back upon his wits to supplement his life style, and became a cardsharp and a con man. At cards he won, and took from his opponents, twenty, thirty, or even a hundred pounds, time and time again, yet so great was his skill at slipping a card that no one ever accused him of cheating.
According to Pope, Duval was no less skilled as a confidence trickster and carried out an elaborate con on a greedy Jesuit priest who was the confessor to the French King. He gained the priest’s confidence by dressing as a scholar and then played on the mans greed by claiming to be able, and proving with an experiment, (a trick of course) that he could turn base metal in to gold. The priest blinded by the thoughts of how rich he would become, opened up to Duval showing him all of his present wealth and ended up bound, gagged, and forced to watch, as the conman made off with most of his wealth.
After some time and for whatever the reason, Duval returned to England, took up his former career as a highwayman and once more became the darling of the ladies whether they travelled or not.
It is not known for definite how long Duval rode the highroads after returning from France, but the authorities caught up with him at an inn called the Hole-In-The-Wall which was in Chandois Street, London and they arrested him while he was drunk.
After being taken to Newgate prison, the twenty seven year old Duval was arraigned, convicted, condemned to death, and hanged on the twenty first of January 1670.
Many ladies visited him in prison and interceded on his behalf for a pardon and when that failed, quite a few of them, their faces hidden by veils, accompanied him to the gallows at Tyburn. After death his body was taken in a mourning coach to the Tangier tavern at St Giles for the lying-in-state and according to The Newgate Calendar, when his friends were undressing him they found a note in his pocket that was obviously meant for his female followers:
‘I should be very ungrateful to you, fair English ladies, should I not acknowledge the obligations you have laid me under. I could not have hoped that a person of my birth, nation, education and condition could have had charms enough to capture you all; though the contrary has appeared, by your firm attachment to my interest, which you have not abandoned even in my last distress. You have visited me in prison, and even accompanied me to an ignominious death.
‘From the experience of your former loves, I am confident that many among you would be glad to receive me to your arms, even from the gallows.
‘How mightily and how generously have you rewarded my former services! Shall I ever forget the universal consternation that appeared upon your faces when I was taken; your chargeable visits to me in Newgate; your shrieks and swooning when I was condemned, and you zealous inter-cession and importunity for my pardon! You could not have erected fairer pillars of honour and respect to me had I been Hercules, able to get fifty of you with child in one night.
‘It has been the misfortune of several English gentlemen to die in this place, in the time of the late usurpation, upon the most honourable occasion that ever presented itself; yet none of these, as I could ever learn, received so many marks of your esteem as myself. How much greater, therefore, is my obligation.
It does not, however, grieve me that your intercession for me proved ineffectual; for now I die with a healthful body, and, I hope, a prepared mind. My confessor has shown me the evil of my ways, and wrought in me true repentance. Whereas, had you prevailed for my life, I must in gratitude have devoted it to your service, which would certainly have made it short; for had you been sound, I should have died of consumption; if otherwise of a pox.
His burial was a flamboyant affair, and he was carried amid a crowd of mourners - most of them ladies - to Covent Garden, where he was buried in St Paul’s churchyard, his headstone bearing the following epitaph:
Here lies Du Vall, reader, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.
Much havoc hath he made of both; for all
Men he made stand, and women he made fall.
The second conqueror of the Norman race,
Knights to his arms did yield, and ladies to his face.
Old Tyburn’s glory, England’s bravest thief,
Du Vall the ladies’ joy! Du Vall the ladies’ grief.
According to Pope, Duval was no less skilled as a confidence trickster and carried out an elaborate con on a greedy Jesuit priest who was the confessor to the French King. He gained the priest’s confidence by dressing as a scholar and then played on the mans greed by claiming to be able, and proving with an experiment, (a trick of course) that he could turn base metal in to gold. The priest blinded by the thoughts of how rich he would become, opened up to Duval showing him all of his present wealth and ended up bound, gagged, and forced to watch, as the conman made off with most of his wealth.