Claude Duval
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Claude Duval (1643-January 21 1670) was a French-born gentleman highwayman in post-Restoration Britain.
Duval was born in Domfront, Normandy, France in 1643 to a poor family. His origin and parentage is in dispute.
At the age of 14 he was sent to Paris where he worked as a domestic servant. He later became a stable boy for a group of English royalists and moved to England in the time of English Restoration as a footman of the Duke of Richmond and rented a house in Wokingham.
Before long Duval became a successful highwayman who robbed the passing stagecoaches in the roads to London, especially Holloway between Highgate and Islington. However, unlike most other brigands, he distinguished himself with rather gentlemanly behaviour and fashionable clothes. He reputedly never used violence. One of his victims was squire Roper, Master of the Royal Buckhounds, who he relieved of 50 guineas and tied to a tree.
There are many tales about Duval. One particularly famous one - placed in more than one location and later published by William Pope - claims that he took only a part of his potential loot from a gentleman when his wife agreed to dance with him in the wayside, a scene immortalised by William Powell Frith in his 1860 painting Claude Duval.
If his intention was to deter pursuit by his non-threatening behavior, he did not totally succeed. After the authorities promised a large reward, he fled to France for some time but returned a few months later. Shortly afterwards he was arrested in Hole-in-the-Wall tavern in London's Chandos Street, Covent Garden.
On January 17 1670 judge Sir William Morton found him guilty of six robberies (others remained unproven) and sentenced him to death. Despite many attempts to intercede, the king did not pardon him and he was executed on January 21 1670 at Tyburn. When his body was cut down and exhibited in Tangier Tavern, it drew a large crowd and was later removed to St Paul's church, Covent Garden where it was buried under the centre aisle. His memorial inscription reads:
- Here lies DuVall: Reder, if male thou art,
- Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.
The apparently gallant highwayman inspired a number of biographers and playwrights that have added to his legend, including claims of skills of alchemy and gambling and lots of womanizing.