John Nevison Hill, near Rochester, Kent. Nevison escaped, using a ferry to cross the Thames and galloped via Chelmsford, Cambridge and Huntingdon to York some from the scene of the crime. He arrived at sunset and ensured he met the city's Lord Mayor, entering into a wager on a bowls match. When he was arrested and tried for the Gad's Hill robbery, he produced the Lord Mayor to support his alibi and was found not guilty. Nevison was tried and convicted for the theft of a horse and highway robbery at York assizes in 1677. He was imprisoned in York Castle but,
Dick Turpin a robbery in Kent in 1676, William Nevison apparently rode to York to establish an alibi, and Defoe's account of that journey became part of folk legend. A similar ride was attributed to Turpin as early as 1808, and was being performed on stage by 1819, but the feat as imagined by Ainsworth (about 200 miles in less than a day) is impossible. Nevertheless, Ainsworth's legend of Black Bess was repeated in works such as "Black Bess or the Knight of the Road", a 254-part penny dreadful published in 1867–68. In these tales, Turpin was the hero, accompanied by his