Tom Cox (highwayman) Tom Cox (highwayman) Thomas Cox (c. 1665 – 12 September 1690), known as "The Handsome Highwayman", was an English highwayman, sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn. He had a reputation for a spirited nature and it is reported that when asked if he wished to say a prayer before being hanged, he kicked the ordinary and the hangman out of the cart taking him there. Cox lived during the Restoration period. According to Alexander Smith's "A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts and Cheats of Both Sexes" (1719), Tom Cox was
The Highwayman (poem) sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death, he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights. The poem was written on the edge of a desolate stretch of land known as Bagshot Heath, where Noyes, then aged 24, had taken rooms in a cottage. In his autobiography, he recalled: "Bagshot Heath in those days was a wild bit of country, all [Calluna|heather] and [pine]woods. "The Highwayman" suggested itself to me one blustery night when the sound of the wind