Claude Duval

Claude Du Val

William Powell Frith's 1860 painting, Claude Duvall
Born 1643
Domfront, Orne, Normandy, France
Died January 21, 1670(1670-01-21)
Tyburn Tree Gallows, Middlesex, London, England
Resting place St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, England
Nationality French
Other names Claude Duvall
Occupation servant, highwayman
Known for He was a French-born, gentleman highwayman in post-Restoration Britain

Claude Du Vall (1643 – 21 January 1670) was a French-born, gentleman highwayman in post-Restoration Britain.

Early life

Claude Duvall 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.

Highwayman

The legend goes that before long Du Val became a successful highwayman who robbed the passing stagecoaches in the roads to London, especially Holloway between Highgate and Islington, and that unlike most other highwaymen, he distinguished himself with rather gentlemanly behaviour and fashionable clothes. However, there is no valid historical source for this assertion.

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 the "courante" 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 is said to have been arrested in the Hole-in-the-Wall tavern in London's Chandos Street, Covent Garden. However, there is no record of this in valid historical sources.

Execution

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. It is traditionally thought Du Val was buried under the centre aisle of the church of St Paul's, Covent Garden; the parish register notes the burial of a "Peter Du Val" in January 1670.[1]

A memorial at the church 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.

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.[2]

Recent historians have reappraised the legacy of Duval. James Sharpe in Dick Turpin regarded Duval as the most significant figure in the shaping of the highwayman myth. John and Philip Sugden's The Thief of Hearts reconstructs what is known of the historical Duval, using much fresh evidence, and shows that the traditions about the Frenchman were used by such literary luminaries as Samuel Butler (A Pindarick Ode), John Gay (The Beggar's Opera) and William Harrison Ainsworth (Rookwood and Talbot Harland) to create the iconic image of the gentleman highwayman still beloved today.

References

  1. ↑ Weinreb, Ben (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. Pan Macmillan. p. 762. ISBN 1405049243.
  2. ↑ Haunted Hotel Guide

Bibliography

Mackie, Erin. Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates. The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4214-1385-3

Sharpe, James. Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English highwayman. London: Profile, 2005. ISBN 978-1861974-181.

Sugden, John. 'The Merry Dance of the Highwayman', History Today, March 2017, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 48-52.

Sugden, John and Philip. The Thief of Hearts: Claude Duval and the Gentleman Highwayman in Fact and Fiction. Arnside, Cumbria: Forty Steps, 2015. ISBN 978-0-9934183-0-3.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Duval, Claude.

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