Katherine Ferrers income, who were left to make a living as best they could, so any courteous highway robber was perceived to be one of these well-mannered gentlemen. Not all highwaymen were well-born like French aristocrat Claude Duval or James MacLaine, who was the second son of a minister, but this romanticised portrayal extended to such working-class robbers as MacLaine's partner William Plunkett, as well as Richard Ferguson, George Lyons, Tom King, John Nevison, and John Rann. However, while it is possible that Katherine Ferrers could have turned to highway robbery, there seems to be no historical proof that her accomplice "Ralph
Dick Turpin trusty colleagues Claude Duval, Tom King, and Jack Rann. These narratives, which transformed Turpin from a pockmarked thug and murderer into "a gentleman of the road [and] a protector of the weak", followed a popular cultural tradition of romanticising English criminals. This practice is reflected in the ballads written about Turpin, the earliest of which, "Dick Turpin", would appear to have been published in 1737. Later ballads presented Turpin as an 18th-century Robin Hood figure: "Turpin was caught and his trial was passed, and for a game cock he died at last. Five hundred pounds he gave so free, all