Claude Duval Samuel Butler ("A Pindarick Ode"), John Gay ("The Beggar's Opera") and William Harrison Ainsworth ("Rookwood" and "Talbot Harland") to create the iconic image of the gentleman highwayman still beloved today. Mackie, Erin. "Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates. The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century" Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. Sharpe, James. "Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English highwayman". London: Profile, 2005. . Sugden, John. 'The Merry Dance of the Highwayman', "History Today", March 2017, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 48–52. Sugden, John and Philip. "The Thief of Hearts: Claude Duval and the Gentleman Highwayman in Fact and Fiction".
Dick Turpin (or Parmen). Travelling across the River Humber between the historic counties of the East Riding of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, he posed as a horse trader, and often hunted alongside local gentlemen. On 2 October 1738 Turpin shot another man's game cock in the street. While being rebuked by John Robinson, he then threatened to shoot him also. Three East Riding justices (JPs), George Crowle (Member of Parliament for Hull), Hugh Bethell, and Marmaduke Constable, travelled to Brough and took written depositions about the incident. They threatened to bind him over, but Turpin refused to pay the required surety, and was