knight of the road

plural knights of the road

1. datedA highwayman.

   Despite his eloquent praise of the gentlemanly qualities of the highwayman, Ainsworth's robber is more coarse-grained than Bulwer's Paul Clifford. In the best traditions of the ideal knight of the road, he is loath to hurt or kill anyone—but he reserves the right to do so in self-defence.

   2001, Gillian Spraggs, Outlaws and Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, →ISBN, page 238

2. datedA hobo.

   1 more example

   [T]he tatterdemalion knight of the road, who sleeps in haystacks and mends broken china in exchange for food, runs afoul of the gendarmerie and probably would have been sent off to the Bastille had not the banking Rothschilds, hearing of their ragged namesake, been so amused that they gave him a check drawn on the family house for 2,000 francs.

   1936 February 8, Frank S. Nugent, “'Mister Hobo', a Minor George Arliss Film, at the Roxy”, in New York Times, retrieved 03 Jan 2019