For other uses, see Claude Duval (disambiguation)
Claude Du Vall (1643 – 21 January 1670) was a French-born gentleman highwayman in post-Restoration Britain.
Contents |
Du Val was born in Domfront, Orne, Normandy in 1643 to a noble family stripped of title and land. His origin and parentage are in dispute. He did however have a brother Daniel Du Val. 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 the English Restoration as a footman of the Duke of Richmond (possibly a relation) and rented a house in Wokingham.
Before long Du Val 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 Du Val. 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 Du Val.
If his intention was to deter pursuit by his non-threatening behaviour, 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 the Hole-in-the-Wall tavern in London's Chandos Street, Covent Garden.
On 17 January 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 21 January 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:
The apparently gallant highwayman inspired a number of biographers and playwrights to add to his legend, including claims of alchemy, gambling, and much womanising.
He is reported to haunt the Holt Hotel along the A4260 (Oxford Road) in Oxfordshire, a hotel where he spent many nights when it was a small coaching inn.[1]