Tom Cox (highwayman) hangman out of the cart carrying him to the gallows. Samuel Smith recorded that: He was listed in James Caulfield's "Blackguardiana: or, a dictionary of rogues, bawds, pimps, whores, pickpockets, shoplifters, &c." (1793) and features in a song sung by a character in the novel "Rookwood" (1834) by W. Harrison Ainsworth as follows: 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
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