obbing
upon the highway. Under auspices so brilliant, thievery could not but
flourish, and when the Stuarts sat upon the throne it was already lifted
above the level of questioning experiment.

Every art is shaped by its material, and with the variations of its
material it must perforce vary. If the skill of the cutpurse compelled
the invention of the pocket, it is certain that the rare difficulties
of the pocket created the miraculous skill of those crafty fingers which
were destined to empty it. And as increased obstacles are perfection's
best incentive, a finer cunning grew out of the fresh precaution.
History does not tell us who it was that discovered this new continent
of roguery. Those there are who give the credit to the valiant Moll
Cutpurse; but though the Roaring Girl had wit to conceive a thousand
strange enterprises, she had not the hand to carry them out, and the
first pickpocket must needs have been a man of action. Moreover, her
nickname suggests the more ancient practice, and it is wiser to yield
the credit to Simon Fletcher, whose praises are chanted by the early
historians.

Now, Simon, says his biographer, was 'looked upon to be the greatest
artist of his age by all his contemporaries.' The son of a baker
in Rosemary Lane, he early deserted his father's oven for a life of
adventure; and he claims to have been the first collector who, stealing
the money, yet left the case. The new method was incomparably more
subtle than the old: it afforded an opportunity of a hitherto unimagined
delicacy; the wielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which put
their own clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation would
have seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that even
when the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the superfluous
scissors still survived, and many a rogue has hanged upon the Tree
because he attempted with a vulgar implement such feats as his unaided
forks had far more easily accomplished.

But, despite the innovation of Simon Fletcher, the highway was the glory
of Elizabeth, the still greater glory of the Stuarts. 'The Lacedaemonians
were the only people,' said Horace Walpole, 'except the English who seem
to have put robbery on a right foot.' And the English of the seventeenth
century need fear the rivalry of no Lacedaemonian. They were, indeed,
the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known.
The Civil War encouraged their profession,