The bucolic tale of the prodigal's repentance has been done almost to death in other threads, but a booklet I picked up today adds a new (to me) twist. The Sheffield East End History Trail guide to the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal (Hallamshire Press 1997) takes us to near the Don Valley stadium, then continues:

To the left is Broughton Lane,surely the only street in Sheffield named after a convicted criminal. He was the highwayman Spence Broughton who, with an accomplice, robbed a postboy on lonely Attercliffe Common in 1795. The next year he was caught, tried and hanged at York. His body was returned to the scene of his crimes and 'hung in chains' from a gibbet, where it reputedly remained for many years. Broughton was apparently the last man in England to be punished in this gruesome fashion. As well as Broughton Lane his name is remembered in the famous folk song 'Spencer the Rover'. His chains are now in Weston Park Museum.

Leaving aside the fact that gibbetting persisted in England until the 1830s (see Dickens' Great Expectations), is there anything other than the similarity of forename and the location (the gibbet was between Sheffield and Rotherham) to connect this unfortunate rake with the much reduced but harmless rambler? Are there darker versions of the ballad which have hitherto passed unnoticed?