A stagecoach stops on a dark English road, the door opens, and a man in velvet and lace bows and asks the lady inside for a dance. That was Claude Duval, born around 1643 in Normandy to a miller and a tailor’s daughter. Sent to Paris as a servant at 14, he became a stable boy for exiled English royalists, followed them to England at the Restoration, and worked as a footman for the Duke of Richmond. Years of standing unnoticed in wealthy rooms taught him how the rich travelled and what they carried.

On the Holloway road between Highgate and Islington, he robbed with manners where others used violence. This episode treats that courtesy as a tactic as much as a charm: a bow and a smile confused victims who might otherwise have reached for a pistol. It follows his flight to France, his fatal return, his trial on January 17, 1670, and the centuries of plays, paintings, comics, and television that turned a convicted armed robber into a romantic hero.

• Duval took 50 guineas from Squire Roper, master of the royal buckhounds, and left him tied to a tree.
• In his most famous robbery he let a gentleman keep much of his money after the man’s wife stepped out and danced a courante with him on the road.
• He was arrested at the Hole-in-the-Wall tavern in Covent Garden and convicted of six robberies by Judge Sir William Morton.
• Crowds, including wealthy women, petitioned King Charles II for a pardon. The king refused, and Duval was hanged at Tyburn at 26 or 27.
• His body was put on show at the Tangier Tavern, and his epitaph warned men to guard their purses and women their hearts.