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) in the pines gave me the first line." The poem was completed in about two days. The poem makes effective use of vivid imagery to describe surroundings; plus repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers' tryst and soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him. "The Highwayman" is reputed to be "the best narrative poem in existence for oral delivery". Almost half a century later, Noyes wrote, "I think the success of the poem... was because it was not an artificial composition, but was written at an