Claude Duval
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Claude Duval (1643 – January 21, 1670) was a French-born gentleman highwayman in post-Restoration Britain.
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[edit] Early life
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.
[edit] Highwayman
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, whom 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.
[edit] Execution
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 at Tyburn. He is reputed to have stopped for his last drink at the Swan Inn on the Bayswater Road, London, on the way to Tyburn - and this is commemorated at the pub by a plaque.
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.
- Much havoc has he made of both; for all
- Men he made to stand, and women he made to fall
- The second Conqueror of the Norman race,
- Knights to his arm did yield, and ladies to his face.
- Old Tyburn’s glory; England’s illustrious Thief,
- Du Vall, the ladies’ joy; Du Vall, the ladies’ grief.[1]
The apparently gallant highwayman inspired a number of biographers and playwrights to add to his legend, including claims of alchemy, gambling, and much womanizing.
[edit] Popular culture
A 2005 Travel Channel Haunted Hotels documentary on hauntings claims that Claude Duval's ghost presently haunts the tavern wherein he was arrested before being condemned to death. This same documentary also claims several people were murdered by Duval, despite scant evidence.
Also, a comic opera called Claude Duval was written in 1881 by Edward Solomon and Henry Pottinger Stephens and enjoyed success both in Britain and in America.
In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the escaped lunatic, former Chief Inspector Dreyfus, attempts to bomb the flat of Inspector Clouseau. When Clouseau answers the phone, dressed in his new hunchback disguise, Dreyfus identifies himself as Claude Duval, a representative of the Clouseau "presentation society."
