Dick Turpin 7 May, he committed two highway robberies near Epping. Turpin may also have lost his mount; on 7 May Elizabeth King, the wife of Turpin's accomplice, attempted to secure two horses left by Matthew King, at an inn called the Red Lion. The horses were suspected as belonging to "highwaymen" and Elizabeth King was arrested for questioning, but she was later released without charge. Morris's killing unleashed a flood of Turpin reports, and a reward of £200 was offered for his capture. Sometime around June 1737 Turpin boarded at the Ferry Inn at Brough, under the alias of John Palmer
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