Page 317 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade7_Flipbook

ACTIvITy 4.7
continued
Using language to develop Theme
antiquarian: person who collects old books
my Notes
5 Toberobbedbyafamoushighwaymanwasregardedassomethingofanhonor. When James Maclaine accidentally wounded Horace Walpole while attempting
to rob him, the antiquarian bore no grudge and wrote to tell him so. In June
1750, Maclaine also held up Lord Eglington, taking 50 guineas and his lordship’s blunderbuss1. Dick Turpin is credited with having stayed in most old pubs in the Hounslow area, but in fact he mostly confined his activities to Essex, North London, and Yorkshire. The most gallant of the Heath’s highwaymen was probably the French-born Claude Duval, who danced with a beautiful victim on the Heath and let her wealthy husband go for £100.
6 Despite the inefficiency of the authorities, few highwaymen survived beyond their early twenties. Betrayed for blood-money or by their own carelessness, most of them ended their short lives on Tyburn Tree, where felons were hanged. Most died well, and when they were dead, their bodies were returned to the scene of their crimes, there to hang rotting as a lesson to others. So plentiful were the gibbets2 on Hounslow Heath that they came to be regarded as landmarks and even figured on 18th century maps.
Second Read
• Reread the informational text to answer these text-dependent questions.
• Write any additional questions you have about the text in your Reader/Writer Notebook.
1. Key Ideas and Details: Read the first paragraph of the text. Briefly summarize the main ideas.
2. Craft and Structure: Notice the author’s word choices in the last sentence of paragraph 1. Would it convey the same sense if the author used hiding instead of lurking?
3. Craft and Structure: What context clues help you understand what guinea means in paragraph 3? Use a dictionary to confirm the meaning.
290 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 7
1 blunderbuss: an old-fashioned gun with a short barrel and a wide muzzle 2 gibbet: wooden scaffold where people were executed by hanging
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