James MacLaine

"Captain" James MacLaine (occasionally "Maclean", "MacLean", or "Maclane") (1724 – 3 October 1750) was a notorious highwayman with his accomplice William Plunkett. He was known as the "Gentleman Highwayman" as a result of his courteous behaviour during his robberies. He famously robbed Horace Walpole, and was eventually hanged at Tyburn. The film Plunkett & Macleane was based loosely on his exploits.

MacLaine was the second of two sons of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who moved to Monaghan in the north of Ireland. The elder son also became a minister. Educated to become a merchant, MacLaine frittered away his inheritance in Dublin on fine clothes, gambling and prostitutes. He moved to London and married the daughter of an innkeeper or horse dealer. With the dowry of five hundred pounds, he set himself up as a grocer in Welbeck Street. His wife died within 3 years, and he ruined his business in adopting the airs of a gentleman to attract a new wealthy wife. He joined bankrupt apothecary William Plunkett as a highwayman.

Plunkett and Maclaine were responsible for around 20 highway robberies in six months, often in the then-relatively untamed Hyde Park. Amongst their victims were Horace Walpole and Lord Elgington. The thieves were always restrained and courteous, earning Maclaine the soubriquet "gentleman highwayman". The proceeds enabled him to live the high life, as he had always wanted.

Their first robbery, on Hounslow Heath, netted them £60, but MacLaine had some fears about stopping a carriage, and although their second robbery was successful, Plunkett berated him as a coward for the hesitant way in which he conducted himself. Determined to prove his character, MacLaine robbed a man alone and split the profits with Plunkett.

In 1749, the two men stopped Walpole as he was returning home. Walpole recorded:

"One night, in the beginning of November, 1749, as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten o'clock, I was attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol of one of them going off accidentally, raised the skin under my eye, left some marks of shot in my face, and stunned me. The ball went through the top of the chariot, and if I had sat an inch nearer to the left side, must have gone through my head."

After one robbery, the information on the stolen items was circulated and led to MacLaine's arrest — he stripped the lace from a waistcoat taken in the robbery and attempted to sell it to a pawnbroker in Monmouth Street, who by chance took it to the same man who had just sold the lace and recognised it. Rather than returning home to fetch the money to pay for the lace, the man alerted a constable and MacLaine was arrested. When his premises were searched, many of the other things the men had stolen, including Lord Eglington's blunderbuss and coat, were uncovered. Walpole writes:

"…there were a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept mistress."

MacLaine's trial at the Old Bailey became a fashionable society occasion, and he reputedly received nearly 3,000 guests while imprisoned at Newgate. He was convicted and hanged at Tyburn on 3 October 1750. Plunkett escaped with his money and his life.

After Maclaine was hanged, he earned a mention in the poem The Modern Fine Lady by Soame Jenyns: as an aside after the line "She weeps if but a handsome thief is hung" the following note was added: "Some of the brightest eyes were at this time in tears for one McLean, condemned for robbery on the highway."

MacLaine is thought to be the original model for Macheath the Knife, antihero of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. (However as that was written in 1728, when MacLaine was only 4, this cannot be sustained: the preferred claimant for this distinction is Jack Sheppard.) A modern, although fictionalised, portrayal of his life appears in the 1999 film Plunkett & Macleane. His skeleton appears in the final plate of William Hogarth's The Four Stages of Cruelty.

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