6. Philip Twysden: The Bishop turned Highwayman.
Philip Twysden was a member of a respectable Kent dynasty and the Bishop of Raphoe in Ireland. In 1752, he died mysteriously after being taken ill on Hounslow Heath. His family gave out the story that Bishop Twysden had died of an inflammation of the bowels. However, a rumor began to spread that the bishop had died of a pistol shot, acquired when he was out robbing passers-by on Hounslow Heath. According to nineteenth-century English writer and politician, Grantley Berkeley, Bishop Twysden was “found suspiciously out at night on Hounslow Heath and was most unquestionably shot through the body,” by none other than one of his own brother’s dinner guests, returning home!
Understandably, the Twysden family wanted to hush up such a shameful death. But why would a bishop be driven to highway robbery in the first place? Money troubles are the explanation given by Ronald and Christopher Hatton. The Twysden family fortunes were already on the wane because of the spendthrift habits of the bishop’s grandfather. The bishop’s father had attempted to mend the family fortunes. However, it was not enough to help Philip Twysden who, not long before his ignominious death, had been declared bankrupt after spending the family’s savings in London. Perhaps, like so many others, Bishop Philip Twysden saw highway robbery as a solution to his money troubles.