Fickle leaders, barbarous soldiers, and noble highwaymen

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Seven


As the military tide turns against him, Monmouth's failings become manifest: "Swinging from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair, choosing his future council of state one day and proposing to fly from his army the next, he appeared from the start to be possessed by the very spirit of fickleness."

The vain but generous and brave dandy Sir Gervas is inspired by his sojurn among the "clodhoppers" and rural tradesmen: "Truth to tell, I have lived more and learned more during these few weeks that we have been sliding about in the rain with our ragged lads than ever I did [at court]. It is a sorry thing for a man's mind to have nothing higher to dwell upon than the turning of a compliment or the dancing of a corranto."

Royal troops portrayed as given to plunder and torture, the latter a set of skills learned in service in North Africa and Russia -- a byproduct of Imperial activity and, so, not native to England. Smugglers and highwaymen, such as Captain Murgatroyd and Hector Marrot, are possessed with a sense of English due process and fair play.

The highwayman Hector Marrot on his trade: "there is no road that is not familiar to me, nor as much as a break of the hedge I could not find in blackest midnight. It is my calling. But the trade is not what it was [with the introduction of paper bills of exchange]. If I had a son, I would not bring him up in it."

Marrot's story of retired highwayman who becomes a great landlord and sits in judgement of others -- "condemning some poor devil for stealing a dozen eggs" -- reminiscent of Defoe.

Marrot characterizes thieving as "hunting, save that your quarry may at any time turn round upon you, and become in turn the hunter. It is, as you say, a dangerous game, but two can play at it, and each has an equal chance."


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