Shortly after Claude Du Vall was hanged in 1670, Walter Pope described how one spirited lady, when her carriage was stopped by the infamous highwayman and his men, had played a defiant tune on a pocket flute. Claude immediately whipped out his own, and played a merry duet before inviting her — with her husband’s permission — to step down and dance.

After the couple had danced on the neighbouring heath, Claude handed his partner back into her carriage, reminding her husband as he did so that the time had come to pay the piper. A hundred pounds was passed over with so little fuss that Claude gallantly renounced the £300 more that — as he knew — still lay concealed under the seat.

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