The History and
Romance of
Crime

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

LONDON

Elizabeth Fry Reading to the Women Prisoners in Newgate

The sympathies of the Quaker lady, Elizabeth Fry, were aroused by the sadly neglected condition of the women's quarters in Newgate in 1813. She formed the Ladies' Committee which secured many important reforms from Parliament. She was a constant visitor to the old prison, where she brought hope and comfort, and wrought great changes.

Chronicles of Newgate
FROM THE TWELFTH TO
THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

by
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain

Author of
"The Mysteries of Police and Crime"
"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc.

In Two Volumes
Volume 1

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

EDITION NATIONALE

Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

NUMBER 307.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The combat with crime is as old as civilization. Unceasing warfare is and ever has been waged between the law-maker and the law-breaker. The punishments inflicted upon criminals have been as various as the nations devising them, and have reflected with singular fidelity their temperaments or development. This is true of the death penalty which in many ages was the only recognized punishment for crimes either great or small. Each nation has had its own special method of inflicting it. One was satisfied simply to destroy life; another sought to intensify the natural fear of death by the added horrors of starvation or the withholding of fluid, by drowning, stoning, impaling or by exposing the wretched victims to the stings of insects or snakes. Burning at the stake was the favourite method of religious fanaticism. This flourished under the Inquisition everywhere, but notably in Spain where hecatombs perished by the autos-da-fé or "trials of faith" conducted with great ceremony often in the presence of the sovereign himself. Indeed, so

terrible are the records of the ages that one turns with relief to the more humane methods of slowly advancing civilization,—the electric chair, the rope, the garotte, and even to that sanguinary "daughter of the Revolution," "la guillotine," the timely and merciful invention of Dr. Guillotin which substituted its swift and certain action for the barbarous hacking of blunt swords in the hands of brutal or unskilful executioners.

Savage instinct, however, could not find full satisfaction even in cruel and violent death, but perforce must glut itself in preliminary tortures. Mankind has exhausted its fiendish ingenuity in the invention of hideous instruments for prolonging the sufferings of its victims. When we read to-day of the cold-blooded Chinese who condemns his criminal to be buried to the chin and left to be teased to death by flies; of the lust for blood of the Russian soldier who in brutal glee impales on his bayonet the writhing forms of captive children; of the recently revealed torture-chambers of the Yildiz Kiosk where Abdul Hamid wreaked his vengeance or squeezed millions of treasure from luckless foes; or of the Congo slave wounded and maimed to satisfy the greed for gold of an unscrupulous monarch;—we are inclined to think of them as savage survivals in "Darkest Africa" or in countries yet beyond the pale of western civilization. Yet it was only a few centuries ago that Spain "did to death" by unspeakable cruelties the gentle races of Mexico

and Peru, and sapped her own splendid vitality in the woeful chambers of the Inquisition. Even as late as the end of the eighteenth century enlightened France was filling with the noblest and best of her land those oubliettes of which the very names are epitomes of woe: La Fin d'Aise, "The End of Ease;" La Boucherie, "The Shambles;" and La Fosse, "The Pit" or "Grave;" in the foul depths of which the victim stood waist deep in water unable to rest or sleep without drowning. Buoyed up by hope of release, some endured this torture of "La Fosse" for fifteen days; but that was nature's limit. None ever survived it longer.

The oubliettes of the Conciergerie, recently revealed by excavations below the level of the Seine, vividly confirm the story of Masers de Latude, long confined in a similar one in Bicêtre. He says: "I had neither fire nor artificial light and prison rags were my only clothing. To quench my thirst, I sucked morsels of ice broken off from the open window; I was nearly choked by the effluvium from the cellars. Insects stung me in the eyes. I had nearly always a bad taste in my mouth, and my lungs were horribly oppressed. I endured unceasing pangs of hunger, cold and damp; I was attacked by scurvy; in ten days my legs and thighs were swollen to twice their ordinary size; my body turned black; my teeth loosened in their sockets so that I could not masticate; I could not speak and was thought to be dead."

Perhaps the refinement of torture, however, had been reached under the cowardly and superstitious Louis XI, whose iron cages were of such shape and size that the prisoners could languish in them for years unable either to stand upright or to stretch full length upon the floor. One feels the grim humour of fate that condemned the Bishop of Verdun, their inventor, to be the first to suffer in them.

Life-long confinement under such conditions was the so-called "clemency" of rulers desiring to be thought merciful. Supported first by hope, then deadened by despair, men endured life in these prisons for years only to leave them bereft of health or reason. The famous names of those who languished in them is legion. Fouquet, the defaulting minister of Louis XIV, whose magnificence had rivalled that of the king himself, was punished by such captivity for twenty years. The "Man with the Iron Mask," whose identity, lost for three centuries, has been proved beyond a doubt after careful comparison of all theories,—pined his life away in one of them, accused, like Dreyfus, of having sold a secret of state.

Records of like cruelty and indifference to human suffering blackened the pages of English history until the merciful ministrations of John Howard and of Elizabeth Frye aroused the slumbering pity of Great Britain, and alleviated the conditions of prisoners all over the world.

In all lands, in all ages, in all stages of civilization, man has left grim records of vengeful passion. No race has escaped the stigma, perhaps no creed. It would almost seem that nations had vied with each other in the subtlety of their ingenuity for producing suffering. The stoical Indian, the inscrutable Chinese, the cruel Turk, the brutal Slav, the philosophic Greek, the suave and artistic Italian, the stolid German, the logical and pleasure-loving French, the aggressive English,—all have left their individual seal on these records of "man's inhumanity to man."

From the gloom of these old prisons have sprung many of the most fascinating stories of the world,—stories so dramatic, so thrilling, so pathetic that even the magic fiction of Dickens or Dumas pales beside the dread realities of the Tower, the Bastile, the Spielberg, the "leads" of the Palace of the Doges, the mines of Siberia, or the Black Hole of Calcutta.

What heroic visions history conjures for us! Columbus languishing in chains in Spain; Savonarola and Jean d'Arc passing from torture to the stake; Sir William Wallace, Sidney, Raleigh, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, irradiating the dim cells of London's Tower; Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Marie Antoinette, beautifying the foul recesses of the Conciergerie; gentle Madame Elizabeth soothing the sorrows of the Temple; Silvio Pellico in the Spielberg; Settembrini and the

Patriots of the Risorgimento in the prisons of Italy; the myriad martyrs of Russia in the dungeons of the Czar or the wilds of Siberia—all pass before us in those magic pages, uttering in many tongues but in one accord their righteous and eternal protest against the blind vengeance of man.

INTRODUCTION

In antiquity and varied interest old Newgate prison, now passed away before the ceaseless movement of London change, yields to no place of durance in the world. A gaol stood on this same site for almost a thousand years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London, and much older than the Bastile. Hundreds of thousands of "felons and trespassers" have from first to last been incarcerated within. To many it must have been an abode of sorrow, suffering, and unspeakable woe, a kind of terrestrial inferno, to enter which was to abandon every hope. Imprisonment was often lightly and capriciously inflicted in days before British liberties were fully won, and innumerable victims of tyranny and oppression have been lodged in Newgate. Political troubles also sent their quota. The gaol was the half-way house to the scaffold or the gallows for turbulent or short-sighted persons who espoused the losing side; it was the starting-place for that painful pilgrimage to the pillory or whipping post which was too frequently the punishment for rashly uttered libels and philippics against constituted power. Newgate,

again, was on the highroad to Smithfield; in times of intolerance and fierce religious dissensions numbers of devoted martyrs went thence to suffer for conscience' sake at the stake. For centuries a large section of the permanent population of Newgate, as of all gaols, consisted of offenders against commercial laws. While fraudulent bankrupts were hanged, others more unfortunate than criminal were clapped into gaol to linger out their lives without the chance of earning the funds by which alone freedom could be recovered. Debtors of all degrees were condemned to languish for years in prison, often for the most paltry sums. The perfectly innocent were also detained. Gaol deliveries were rare, and the boon of arraignment and fair trial was strangely and unjustly withheld, while even those acquitted in open court were often haled back to prison because they were unable to discharge the gaoler's illegal fees. The condition of the prisoners in Newgate was long most deplorable. They were but scantily supplied with the commonest necessaries of life. Light scarcely penetrated their dark and loathsome dungeons; no breath of fresh air sweetened the fetid atmosphere they breathed; that they enjoyed the luxury of water was due to the munificence of a lord mayor of London. Their daily subsistence was most precarious. Food, clothing, fuel were doled out in limited quantities as charitable gifts; occasionally prosperous citizens bequeathed small legacies to be expended in the

same articles of supply. These bare prison allowances were further eked out by the chance seizures in the markets; by bread forfeited as inferior or of light weight, and meat declared unfit to be publicly sold. All classes and categories of prisoners were herded indiscriminately together: men and women, tried and untried, upright but misguided zealots with hardened habitual offenders. The only principle of classification was a prisoner's ability or failure to pay certain fees; money could purchase the squalid comfort of the master's side, but no immunity from the baleful companionship of felons equally well furnished with funds and no less anxious to escape the awful horrors of the common side of the gaol. The weight of the chains, again, which innocent and guilty alike wore, depended upon the price a prisoner could pay for "easement of irons," and it was a common practice to overload a newcomer with enormous fetters and so terrify him into lavish disbursement. The gaol at all times was so hideously overcrowded that plague and pestilence perpetually ravaged it, and the deadly infection often spread into the neighbouring courts of law.

The foregoing is an imperfect but by no means highly coloured picture of Newgate as it existed for hundreds of years, from the twelfth century to the nineteenth. The description is supported by historical records, somewhat meagre at first, but becoming more and more ample and better

substantiated as the period grows less remote. It is this actual Newgate, with all its terrors for the sad population which yearly passed its forbidding portals, which I have endeavoured to portray.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

CHRONICLES OF
NEWGATE

CHAPTER I
MEDIAEVAL NEWGATE

Earliest accounts of Newgate prison—The New Gate, when built and why—Classes of prisoners incarcerated—Brawlers, vagabonds, and "roarers" committed to Newgate—Exposure in pillory and sometimes mutilation preceded imprisonment—The gradual concession of privileges to the Corporation—Corporation obtains complete jurisdiction over Newgate—The sheriffs responsible for the good government of prisons on appointment—Forbidden to farm the prison or sell the post of keeper—The rule in course of time contravened, and keepership became purchasable—Condition of the prisoners in mediæval times—Dependent on charity for commonest necessaries—A breviary bequeathed—Gaol fell into ruin and was rebuilt by Whittington's executors in 1422—This edifice two centuries later restored, but destroyed in the great fire of 1666.

The earliest authentic mention of Newgate as a gaol or prison for felons and trespassers occurs in the records of the reign of King John. In the following reign, A. D. 1218, Henry III expressly commands the sheriffs of London to repair it, and promises to reimburse them for their outlay from

his own exchequer. This shows that at that time the place was under the direct control of the king, and maintained at his charges. The prison was above the gate, or in the gate-house, as was the general practice in ancient times. Thus Ludgate was long used for the incarceration of city debtors.

To the gate-house of Westminster were committed all offenders taken within that city; and the same rule obtained in the great provincial towns, as at Newcastle, Chester, Carlisle, York, and elsewhere. Concerning the gate itself, the New Gate and its antiquity, opinions somewhat differ. Maitland declares it to be "demonstrable" that Newgate was one of the four original gates of the city; "for after the fire of London in 1666," he goes on to say, "in digging a foundation for the present Holborn bridge, the vestigia of the Roman military way called Watling Street were discovered pointing directly to this gate; and this I take to be an incontestable proof of an original gate built over the said way in this place."

Of that ancient Newgate, city portal and general prison-house combined, but scant records remain. A word or two in the old chroniclers, a passing reference in the history of those troublous times, a few brief and formal entries in the city archives—these are all that have been handed down to us.

But we may read between the lines and get some notion of mediæval Newgate. Foul, noisome, terrible, are the epithets applied to this densely

crowded place of durance.[15:1] It was a dark, pestiferous den, then, and for centuries later, perpetually ravaged by deadly diseases.

Its inmates were of all categories. Prisoners of state and the most abandoned criminals were alike committed to it. Howel, quoted by Pennant, states that Newgate was used for the imprisonment of persons of rank long before the Tower was applied to that purpose. Thus Robert de Baldock, chancellor of the realm in the reign of Edward II, to whom most of the miseries of the kingdom were imputed, was dragged to Newgate by the mob. He had been first committed to the Bishop's Prison, but was taken thence to Newgate as a place of more security; "but the unmerciful treatment he met with on the way occasioned him to die there within a few days in great torment from the blows which had been inflicted on him." Again, Sir Thomas Percie, Lord Egremond, and other people of distinction, are recorded as inmates in 1457. But the bulk of the prisoners were of meaner condition, relegated for all manner of crimes. Some were parlous offenders. There was but little security for life or property in that old London, yet the law made constant war against the turbulent and reckless roughs. Stowe draws a lively picture of the state of the city at the close of the twelfth

century. One night a brother of Earl Ferrers was slain privately in London. The king (Edward I) on hearing this "swore that he would be avenged on the citizens." It was then a common practice in the city for "an hundred or more in company of young and old to make nightly invasions upon the houses of the wealthy, to the intent to rob them, and if they found any man stirring in the city they would presently murder him, insomuch that when night was come no man durst adventure to walk in the streets." Matters at length came to a crisis. A party of citizens, young and wealthy, not mere rogues, attacked the "storehouse of a certain rich man," and broke through the wall. The "good man of the house" was prepared and lay in wait for them "in a corner," and saw that they were led by one Andrew Bucquinte, who carried a burning brand in one hand and a pot of coals in the other, which he essayed to kindle with the brand. Upon this the master, crying "Thieves!" rushed at Bucquinte and smote off his right hand. All took to flight "saving he that had lost his hand," whom the good man in the next morning delivered to Richard de Lucy, the king's justice. The thief turned informer, and "appeached his confederates, of whom many were taken and many were fled." One, however, was apprehended, a citizen "of great countenance, credit, and wealth, named John Senex, or John the Old, who, when he could not acquit himself by the water dome, offered the king five

hundred marks for his acquittal; but the king commanded that he should be hanged, which was done, and the city became more quiet."

Long before this, however, Edward I had dealt very sharply with evil-doers. By the suspension of corporation government following that king's conflict with the city authority, "all kinds of licentiousness had got leave to go forward without control."

At length the frequency of robberies and murders produced the great penal statute of the 13 Edward I (1287). By this act it was decreed that no stranger should wear any weapon, or be seen in the streets after the ringing of the couvre-feu bell at St. Martin's-le-Grand; that no vintners and victuallers should keep open house after the ringing of the said bell under heavy fines and penalties; that "whereas it was customary for profligates to learn the art of fencing, who were thereby emboldened to commit the most unheard-of villainies, no such school should be kept in the city for the future upon the penalty of forty marks for every offence." Most of the aforesaid villainies were said to be committed by foreigners who incessantly crowded into London from all parts; it was therefore ordered that no person not free of the city should be suffered to reside therein; and even many persons thus avouched were obliged to give security for their good behaviour.

The "Liber Albus," as translated by Riley, gives the penalties for brawling and breaking the peace

about this date. It was ordained that any person who should draw a sword, misericorde (a dagger with a thin blade used for mercifully despatching a wounded enemy), or knife, or any arm, even though he did not strike, should pay a fine to the city of half a mark, or be imprisoned in Newgate for fifteen days. If he drew blood the fine was twenty shillings, or forty days in Newgate; in striking with the fist two shillings, or eight days' imprisonment, and if blood was drawn forty pence, or twelve days. Moreover, the offenders were to find good sureties before release, and those on whom the offence was committed had still recovery by process of law.

Nor were these empty threats. The laws and ordinances against prowlers and vagabonds, or night-walkers, as they were officially styled, were continually enforced by the attachment of offenders. Many cases are given in the memorials of London.

Thus Elmer de Multone was attached on indictment as a common night-walker in the ward of Chepe; in the day, it was charged, he was wont to entice persons and strangers unknown to a tavern and there deceive them by using false dice. He was furthermore indicted "in Tower ward for being a cruiser and night-walker against the peace, as also for being a common 'roarer.'[18:1] Multone was

committed to prison. Others met with similar treatment. John de Rokeslee was attached as being held suspected of evil and of beating men coming into the city;" "Peter le Taverner, called Holer," the same, and for going with sword and buckler and other arms; John Blome was indicted "as a common vagabond for committing batteries and other mischiefs in the ward of Aldresgate and divers other wards." "A chaplain," our modern curate, Richard Heryng, was attached on similar charges, but was acquitted. Not only were the "roarers" themselves indicted when taken in this act, but also those who harboured them, like John Baronu, mentioned in the same document as attached for keeping open house at night, and receiving night-walkers and players at dice. The prohibition against fencing-masters was also rigorously enforced, as appears by the indictment of "Master Roger le Skirmisour, for keeping a fencing school for divers men, and for enticing thither the sons of respectable persons so as to waste and spend the property of their fathers and mothers upon bad practices, the result being that they themselves become bad men. Master Roger, upon proof to a jury that he was guilty of the trespasses aforesaid, was committed to Newgate."

Incarceration in Newgate, however, was meted out promptly for other offences than those against which the last-mentioned legislation was directed.

Priests guilty of loose living, Jews accused rightly or wrongly, now of infanticide, of crucifying children, now of coining and clipping, found themselves in the gaol for indefinite periods. People, again, who adulterated or sold bad food were incontinently clapped into gaol. Thus William Cokke of Hesse (or Hayes) was charged with carrying a sample of wheat in his hand in the market within Newgate, and following one William, the servant of Robert de la Launde, goldsmith, about from sack to sack, as the latter was seeking to buy wheat, telling him that such wheat as the sample could not be got for less than twenty-one pence per bushel, whereas on the same day and at the same hour the same servant could have bought the same wheat for eighteen pence. Cokke, when questioned before the mayor, recorder, and certain of the aldermen, acknowledged that he had done this to enhance the price of wheat to the prejudice of all the people. He was in consequence committed to gaol, and sentenced also to have the punishment of the pillory. The same fate overtook Alan de Lyndeseye and Thomas de Patemere, bankers, who were brought before the bench at Guildhall, and with them "bread they had made of false, putrid, and rotten materials, through which persons who bought such bread were deceived and might be killed." The fear of imprisonment, again, was before the eyes of all who sought to interfere with the freedom of the

markets. Thus it is recorded in the ordinances of the cheesemongers, that "whereas the hokesters (hucksters) and others who sell such wares by retail do come and regrate such cheese and butter before prime rung, and before that the commonalty has been served, may it be ordained that no such hokesters shall buy of any foreigner before the hour of prime on pain of imprisonment at the will of the mayor." Similar penalties were decreed against "regrating" fish and other comestibles for the London markets.

In 1316 Gilbert Peny was bound in the third time in default for selling bread deficient in weight. He had been twice drawn on the hurdle, and it was therefore now adjudged that he should be drawn once more, and should then forswear the trade of a baker in the city for ever. One of many similar cases is that of William Spalyng, who, for selling putrid beef at "les Stokkes," the stocks market near Walbrook, was put upon the pillory, and the carcasses were burnt beneath. Another who made shoes of unlawful material had them forfeited. Bakers who stole dough from the moulding-boards of other bakers were exposed on the pillory with the dough hung about their necks. Richard le Forester, for attempting to defraud with a false garland or metal chaplet for the head, was sentenced to stand in the pillory, and afterwards to forswear the city for a year and a day. Traders convicted of having blankets vamped in foreign

parts with the hair of oxen and of cows were punished, and the blankets were burnt under the pillory on Cornhill. Similarly, false gloves, braces, and pouches were burnt in the High Street of Chepe near the stone cross there. John Penrose, a taverner, convicted of selling unsound wine, was adjudged to drink a draught of the said wine, and the remainder was then poured out on his head. Alice, wife of Robert de Cranstom, was put in the "thew," or pillory for women, for selling ale by short measure; and so was Margery Hore for selling putrid soles, the fish being burnt, and the cause of her punishment proclaimed. Two servants of John Naylere were placed in the stocks upon Cornhill for one hour, and their sacks burnt beside them, for selling a deficient measure of charcoal, while their master's three horses were seized and detained by the mayor's sergeant until he (Naylere) came and answered for the aforesaid falsity and deceit. William Avecroft having unsound wine, the sheriffs were ordered to pour all the wine in the street and wholly make away with it, according to the custom of the city.

Interesting reference may also be made to the "Liber Albus" which contains other ordinances against brawlers and loose livers. The former, whether male or female, were taken to the pillory, carrying a distaff dressed with flax and preceded by minstrels. The latter, whether male, female, or clerics, were marched behind music to Newgate

and into the Tun in Cornhill.[23:1] Repeated offences were visited with expulsion, and the culprits were compelled to forswear the city for ever. The men on exposure had their heads and beards shaved, except a fringe on their heads two inches in breadth; women who made the penance in a hood of "rag" or striped cloth had their hair cut round about their heads. Worse cases of both sexes were shaved, like "an appealer," or false informer. The crime of riotous assembling was very sharply dealt with, as appears from the proclamation made on the king's (Edward III) departure for France. It was then ordained that "no one of the city, of whatsoever condition he shall be, shall go out of the city to maintain parties, such as taking leisure, or holding 'days of love' (days of reconciliation between persons at variance), or making other congregations within the city or without in disturbance of the peace of our lord the king, or in affray of the people, and to the scandal of the city." Any found guilty thereof were to be taken and put into the prison of Newgate, and there retained for a year and a day; and if he was a freeman of the city, he lost his freedom for ever.

The city authorities appear to have been very anxious to uphold their prerogatives,

jealous of their good name, and to have readily availed themselves of Newgate as a place of punishment for any who impugned it. A certain John de Hakford, about the middle of the fourteenth century, was charged with perjury in falsely accusing the chief men in the city of conspiracy. For this he was remanded by the mayor and aldermen to Newgate, there to remain until they shall be better advised as to their judgment. A little later, on Saturday the morrow of St. Nicholas (6 Dec., 1364), this judgment was delivered, to the effect that the said John shall remain in prison for one whole year and a day, and the said John within such year shall four times have the punishment of the pillory, that is to say, one day in each quarter of the year, beginning on the Saturday aforesaid, and in this manner: "The said John shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words 'a false liar,' and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him on his way to the pillory, and there the cause of this punishment shall be solemnly proclaimed, and the said John shall remain in the pillory for three hours of the day, and from thence shall be taken back to Newgate in the same manner, there to remain until his punishment be completed in manner aforesaid." This investiture of the whetstone was commonly used as a punishment for

misstatement;[25:1] for it is recorded in 1371 that one Nicholas Mollere, servant of John Toppesfield, smith, had the punishment of the pillory and whetstone for "circulating lies," amongst others that the prisoners at Newgate were to be taken to the Tower of London, and that there was to be no longer a prison at Newgate.

A sharper sentence was meted out about the same date to William Hughlot, who for a murderous assault upon an alderman was sentenced to lose his hand, and precept was given to the sheriffs of London to do execution of the judgment aforesaid.

Upon this an axe was brought into court by an officer of the sheriffs, and the hand of the said William was laid upon the block, there to be cut off. Whereupon John Rove—the alderman aggrieved—in reverence of our lord the king, and at the request of divers lords, who entreated for the said William, begged of the mayor and aldermen that the judgment might be remitted, which was granted accordingly. The culprit was, however, punished by imprisonment, with exposure on the pillory, wearing a whetstone, and he was also

ordered to carry a lighted wax candle weighing three pounds through Chepe and Fleet Streets to St. Dunstan's Church, where he was to make offering of the same.

However sensitive of their good name, the mayor and aldermen of those times seem to have been fairly upright in their administration of the law. The following case shows this:

A man named Hugh de Beone, arraigned before the city coroner and sheriff for the death of his wife, stood mute, and refused to plead, so as to save his goods after sentence. For thus "refusing the law of England," the justiciary of our lord the king for the delivery of the gaol of Newgate, committed him back to prison, "there in penance to remain until he should be dead."

Long years elapsed between the building of Newgate and the date when the city gained complete jurisdiction over the prison. King Henry III's orders to repair the gaol at his own charge has been mentioned already. Forty years later the same monarch pretended to be keenly concerned in the good government of Newgate. Returning from Bordeaux when his son Edward had married the sister of the King of Spain, Henry passed through Dover and reached London on St. John's Day. The city sent to congratulate him on his safe arrival, the messengers taking with them a humble offering of one hundred pounds. The avaricious king was dissatisfied, and, instead

of thanking them, intimated that if they would win his thanks they must enlarge their present; whereupon they gave him a "valuable piece of plate of exquisite workmanship, which pacified him for the present." But Henry was resolved to squeeze more out of the wealthy burgesses of London. An opportunity soon offered when a clerk convict, one John Frome, or Offrem,[27:1] charged with murdering a prior, and committed for safe custody to Newgate, escaped therefrom. The murdered man was a cousin of Henry's queen, and the king, affecting to be gravely displeased at this gross failure in prison administration, summoned the mayor and sheriffs to appear before him and answer the matter. The mayor laid the fault from him to the sheriffs, forasmuch as to them belonged the keeping of all prisoners within the city. The mayor was therefore allowed to return home, but the sheriffs remained prisoners in the Tower "by the space of a month or more;" and yet they excused themselves in that the fault rested chiefly with the bishop's officers, the latter having, at their lord's request, sent the prisoner to Newgate, but being still themselves responsible with the bishop for his safe-keeping. These excuses did not satisfy the king, who, "according to his usual justice," says Noorthouck, "demanded of the city, as an atonement of the pretended

crime, no less than the sum of three thousand marks." The fine was not immediately forthcoming, whereupon he degraded both the sheriffs, and until the citizens paid up the enormous sum demanded, he caused the chief of them to be seized and clapped into prison.

The city was ready enough, however, to purchase substantial privileges in hard cash. Many of its early charters were thus obtained from necessitous kings. In this way the Corporation ransomed, so to speak, its ancient freedom and the right of independent government.

In 1327 a further point was gained. The support of the citizens had been freely given to Queen Isabella and her young son in the struggle against Edward II. On the accession of Edward III a new charter, dated in the first year of his reign, was granted to the city of London. After confirming the ancient liberties, it granted many new privileges; chief among them was the concession that the mayor of London should be one of the justices for gaol delivery of Newgate, and named in every commission for that purpose. The king's marshal might in future hold no court within the boundary of the city, nor were citizens to be called upon to plead, beyond them, for anything done within the liberties. No market might be kept within seven miles of London, while the citizens were permitted to hold fairs and a court of "pye powder" therein; in other words, a court

for the summary disposal of all offences committed by hawkers or peddlers, or perambulating merchants, who have les pieds poudres, or are "dusty-footed."[29:1] Other privileges were obtained from the king during his reign. A second charter granted them the bailiwick of Southwark, a village which openly harboured "felons, thieves, and other malefactors," who committed crimes in the city and fled to Southwark for sanctuary. Again, the election of the mayor was established on a more settled plan, and vested in the mayor and aldermen for the time being. Another charter conceded to the Corporation the honour of having gold and silver maces borne before the chief functionary, who about this period became first entitled to take rank as lord mayor. The vast wealth and importance of this great civic dignitary was to be seen in the state he maintained. The lord mayor even then dispensed a princely hospitality, and one eminent citizen in his reign, Henry Picard by name, had the honour of entertaining four sovereigns at his table, viz., the Kings of England, France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with the Prince of Wales and many more notables. This Picard was one of the Guild of Merchant Vintners of Gascony, a Bordeaux wine-merchant, in fact, and a Gascon by birth, although a naturalized subject of the

English king. The vintners gave the city several lord mayors.

Richard II was not so well disposed towards the city. Recklessly extravagant, wasteful and profuse in his way of living, he was always in straits for cash. The money needed for his frivolous amusements and ostentatious display he wrung from the Corporation by forfeiting its charters, which were only redeemed by the payment of heavy fines. The sympathies of the city were therefore with Henry Bolingbroke in the struggle which followed. It was able to do him good service by warning him of a plot against his life, and Henry, now upon the throne, to show his gratitude, and "cultivate the good understanding thus commenced with the city, granted it a new charter." The most important clause of Henry's charter was that which entrusted the citizens, their heirs and successors, with the custody "as well of the gates of Newgate and Ludgate, as all other gates and posterns in the same city."

By this time the gate and prison had passed under the control of the civic authorities, and they enjoyed the privilege of contributing to its charges. This appears from an entry as far back as September, 1339, in the account of expenditure of Thomas de Maryus, chamberlain. The item is for "moneys delivered to William Simond, sergeant of the chamber, by precept of the mayor and aldermen, for making the pavement within Newgate,

£7 6s. 8d." How complete became the power and responsibility of the Corporation and its officers is to be seen in the account given in the "Liber Albus" of the procedure when new sheriffs were appointed. They were sworn on appointment, and with them their officers, among whom were the governor of Newgate and his clerk. After dinner on the same day of appointment the old and new sheriffs repaired to Newgate, where the new officials took over all the prisoners "by indenture" made between them and the old.[31:1] They were also bound to "place one safeguard there at their own peril," and were forbidden to "let the gaol to fenn or farm."

Other restrictions were placed upon them. It

was the sheriffs' duty also, upon the vigil of St. Michael, on vacating their office, to resign into the hands of the mayor for the time being the keys of Newgate, the cocket or seal of Newgate, and all other things pertaining unto the said sheriffwick. All the civic authorities, mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and their servants, including the gaoler of Newgate, were forbidden to brew for sale, keep an oven, or let carts for hire; "nor shall they be regrators of provisions, or hucksters of ale, or in partnership with such." Penalties were attached to the breach of these regulations. It was laid down that any who took the oath and afterwards contravened it, or any who would not agree to abide by the ordinance, should be forthwith "ousted from his office for ever." It was also incumbent upon the sheriffs to put "a man sufficient, and of good repute, to keep the gaol of Newgate in due manner, without taking anything of him for such keeping thereof, by covenant made in private or openly." Moreover, the gaoler so appointed swore before the lord mayor and aldermen that "neither he nor any of them shall take fine or extortionate charge from any prisoner by putting on or taking off his irons, or shall receive moneys extorted from such prisoners." He was permitted to levy fourpence from each upon release, "as from ancient time has been the usage, but he shall take fees from no person at his entrance there;" indeed, he was warned that if he practised

extortion he would be "ousted from his office," and punished at the discretion of the mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city.

It will be made pretty plain in subsequent pages, that these wise and righteous regulations were both flagrantly ignored and systematically contravened. The rule against farming out the prison may have been observed, and it cannot be clearly proved that the sheriffs ever took toll from the gaoler. But the spirit of the law, if not its letter, was broken by the custom which presently grew general of making the gaolership a purchasable appointment. Thus the buying and selling of offices, of army commissions, for instance, as we have seen practised till recent years in England, at one time extended also to the keeperships of gaols. It is recorded in the Calendar of State Papers that one Captain Richardson agreed for his place as keeper of Newgate for £3,000. A larger sum, viz., £5,000, was paid by John Huggins to Lord Clarendon, who "did by his interest" obtain a grant of the office of keeper of the Fleet Prison for the life of Huggins and his son. One James Whiston, in a book entitled "England's Calamities Discovered, or Serious Advice to the Common Council of London," denounces this practice, which he stigmatizes as "bartering justice for gold." "Purchased cruelty," the right to oppress the prisoners, that is to say, in order to recover the sums spent in buying the place, "is now grown so bold that if a poor man pay not

extortionary fees and ruinous chamber-rent, he shall be thrown into holes and common sides to be devoured by famine, lice, and disease. I would fain know," he asks, "by what surmise of common sense a keeper of a prison can demand a recompense or fee from a prisoner for keeping him in prison? . . . Can he believe that any person can deserve a recompense for opening the door of misery and destruction? . . . But now such is the confidence of a purchaser, that to regain his sum expended he sells his tap-house at prodigious rates, . . . he farms his sheets to mere harpies, and his great key to such a piece of imperious cruelty (presumably his chief turnkey) as is the worst of mankind." Following the same line of argument, he says: "It will perhaps be thought impertinent to dispute a gaoler's demands for admitting us into his loathsome den, when even the common hangman, no doubt encouraged by such examples, will scarce give a malefactor a cast of his office without a bribe, demands very formally his fees, forsooth, of the person to be executed, and higgles with him as nicely as if he were going to do him some mighty kindness." Eventually an act was passed specifically forbidding the sale of such places. This statute affirms that "none shall buy, sell, let, or take to farm, the office of undersheriff, gaoler, bailiff, under pain of £500, half to the king and half to him that shall sue."

Let us return to mediæval Newgate. Whatever

the authority, whether royal or civic, the condition of the inmates must have been wretched in the extreme, as the few brief references to them in the various records will sufficiently prove. The place was full of horrors; the gaolers rapacious and cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the gaol, and some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. It was found that prisoners detained on minor charges were cast into deep dungeons, and there associated with the worst criminals. All were alike threatened, nay tortured, till they yielded to the keepers' extortions, or consented to turn approvers and swear away the lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the charity and good-will of the benevolent for food and raiment. As far back as 1237 it is stated that Sir John Pulteney gave four marks by the year to the relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385 William Walworth, the stalwart mayor whose name is well remembered in connection with Wat Tyler's rebellion, gave "somewhat" with the same good object. "So have many others since," says the record. The water-supply of the prison, Stowe tells, was also a charitable gift. "Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime mayor of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield, and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near unto the common

fountain and Chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital) to the gaols of Ludgate and Newgate, for the relief of the prisoners."

In 1451, by the will of Phillip Malpas, who had been a sheriff some twelve years previous, the sum of £125 was bequeathed to "the relief of poor prisoners." This Malpas, it may be mentioned here, was a courageous official, ready to act promptly in defence of city rights. In 1439 a prisoner under escort from Newgate to Guildhall was rescued from the officers' hands by five companions, after which all took sanctuary at the college of St. Martin's-le-Grand. "But Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshal, the sheriffs of London, were no sooner acquainted with the violence offered to their officer and the rescue of their prisoner, than they, at the head of a great number of citizens, repaired to the said college, and forcibly took from thence the criminal and his rescuers, whom they carried in fetters to the Compter, and thence, chained by the necks, to Newgate."

For food the prisoners were dependent upon alms or upon articles declared forfeit by the law. All food sold contrary to the statutes of the various guilds was similarly forfeited to the prisoners. The practice of giving food was continued through succeeding years, and to a very recent date. A long list of charitable donations and bequests might be made out, bestowed either in money or in kind. A customary present was a number of stones of

beef. Some gave penny loaves, some oatmeal, some coals. Without this benevolence it would have gone hard with the poor population of the Gate-house gaol. It was not strange that the prison should be wasted by epidemics, as when in 1414 "the gaoler died and prisoners to the number of sixty-four;" or that the inmates should at times exhibit a desperate turbulence, taking up arms and giving constituted authority much trouble to subdue them, as in 1457 when they broke out of their several wards in Newgate, and got upon the leads, where they defended themselves with great obstinacy against the sheriffs and their officers, insomuch that they, the sheriffs, were obliged to call the citizens to their assistance, whereby the prisoners were soon reduced to their former state.

One other charitable bequest must be referred to here, as proving that the moral no less than the physical well-being of the prisoners was occasionally an object of solicitude. In the reign of Richard II a prayer-book was specially bequeathed to Newgate in the following terms:

"Be it remembered that on the 10th day of June, in the 5th year (1382), Henry Bever, parson of the church of St. Peter in Brad Street (St. Peter the Poor, Broad Street), executor of Hugh Tracy, chaplain, came here before the mayor and aldermen and produced a certain book called a 'Porte hors,' which the same Hugh had left to the gaol of Newgate, in order that priests and

clerks there imprisoned might say their service from the same, there to remain so long as it might last. And so in form aforesaid the book was delivered unto David Bertelike, keeper of the gate aforesaid, to keep it in such manner so long as he should hold that office; who was also then charged to be answerable for it. And it was to be fully allowable for the said Henry to enter the gaol aforesaid twice in the year at such times as he should please, these times being suitable times, for the purpose of seeing how the book was kept."

We are without any very precise information as to the state of the prison building throughout these dark ages. But it was before everything a gate-house, part and parcel of the city fortifications, and therefore more care and attention would be paid to its external than its internal condition. It was subject, moreover, to the violence of such disturbers of the peace as the followers of Wat Tyler, of whom it is written that, having spoiled strangers "in most outrageous manner, entered churches, abbeys, and houses of men of law, which in semblable sort they ransacked, they also brake up the prisons of Newgate and of both the Compters, destroyed the books, and set the prisoners at liberty." This was in 1381. Whether the gaol was immediately repaired after the rebellion was crushed does not appear; but if so, the work was only partially performed, and the process of dilapidation and decay must soon have recommenced, for

in Whittington's time it was almost in ruins. That eminent citizen and mercer, who was three times mayor, and whose charitable bequests were numerous and liberal, left moneys in his will for the purpose of rebuilding the place, and accordingly license was granted in 1422, the first year of Henry VI's reign, to his executors, John Coventre, Jenken Carpenter, and William Grove, "to reëdify the gaol of Newgate, which they did with his goods." This building, such as it was, continued to serve until the commencement of the seventeenth century.

I have been unable to ascertain any exact figure of this old Newgate, either in its ancient or improved aspect. The structure, such as it was, suffered so severely in the great fire of 1666 that it became necessary to rebuild it upon new and more imposing lines. This may be described as the third edifice: that of the twelfth century being the first, and Richard Whittington's the second. Of this third prison details are still extant, of which description will be given hereafter.

FOOTNOTES:

[15:1] An entry in a letter book at Guildhall speaks of the "heynouse gaol of Newgate," and its fetid and corrupt atmosphere. Loftie, "Hist. of London," vol. i. 437.

[18:1] The term "roarer," and "roaring boy," signifying a riotous person, was in use in Shakespeare's day, and still survives in slang (Riley).

[23:1] A prison for night-walkers and other suspicious persons, and called the Tun because the same was built somewhat in fashion of a Tun standing on the one end. It was built in 1282 by Henry Walers, mayor.

[25:1] Our ancestors, with a strong love for practical jokes and an equally strong aversion to falsehood and boasting, checked an indulgence in such vices when they became offensive by very plain satire. A confirmed liar was presented with a whetstone to jocularly infer that his invention, if he continued to use it so freely, would require sharpening.—Chambers's "Book of Days," ii. 45.

[27:1] Noorthouck calls him John Gate. See "Hist. of London," p. 49.

[29:1] Sir Edward Coke derives the title of the court from the fact that justice was done in them as speedily as dust can fall from the foot.

[31:1] Sheriff Hoare (1740-1) tells us how the names of the prisoners in each gaol were read over to him and his colleagues; the keepers acknowledged them one by one to be in their custody, and then tendered the keys, which were delivered back to them again, and after executing the indentures, the sheriffs partook of sack and walnuts, provided by the keepers of the prison, at a tavern adjoining Guildhall. Formerly the sheriffs attended the lord mayor on Easter Eve through the streets to collect charity for the prisoners in the city prison. Sheriffs were permitted to keep prisoners in their own houses, hence the Sponging Houses. The "Sheriffs' Fund" was started in 1807 by Sir Richard Phillips, who, in his letter to the Livery of London, states that he found, on visiting Newgate, so many claims on his charity that he could not meet a tenth part of them. A suggestion to establish a sheriffs' fund was thereupon made public and found general support. In 1867 the fund amounted to £13,000.

CHAPTER II
NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Prison records meagre—Administration of justice and state of crime—Leniency alternates with great severity—Criminal inmates of Newgate—Masterless men—Robbery with violence—Debtors—Conscience prisoners—Martyrs in reign of Henry VIII—Religious dissidents: Porter, Anne Askew—Maryan persecutions—Rogers—Bishop Hooper—Alexander, the cruel gaoler of Newgate—Philpot—Underhill the Hot Gospeller in Newgate—Crime in Elizabeth's reign—The training of young thieves—Elizabethan persecutions: both Puritans and papists suffered—The seminary priests—Political prisoners—Babington's conspiracy—Conspiracies against the life of Elizabeth—Gaolers of the period generally tyrants—Crowder, keeper of Newgate, called to account.

The prison records of the sixteenth century are very meagre. No elaborate system of incarceration as we understand it existed. The only idea of punishment was the infliction of physical pain. The penalties inflicted were purely personal, and so to speak final; such as chastisement, degradation, or death. England had no galleys, no scheme of enforced labour at the oar, such as was known to the nations of the Mediterranean seaboard, no method of compelling perpetual toil in quarry or mine. The germ of transportation no doubt was

to be found in the practice which suffered offenders who had taken sanctuary to escape punishment by voluntary exile,[41:1] but it was long before the plan of deporting criminals beyond seas became the rule. "In Henry VIII's time," says Froude, "there was but one step to the gallows from the lash and the branding-iron." Criminals did not always get their deserts, however. Although historians have gravely asserted that seventy-two thousand executions took place in this single reign, the statement will not bear examination, and has been utterly demolished by Froude. As a matter of fact offenders far too often escaped scot-free through the multiplication of sanctuaries—which refuges, like that of St. Martin's-le-Grand, existed under the very walls of Newgate—the negligence of pursuers, and not seldom the stout opposition of the inculpated. Benefit of clergy claimed and conceded on the most shadowy grounds was another easy and frequent means of evading the law. Some judges certainly had held that the tonsure was an indispensable proof; but all were not so strict, and "putting on the book," in other words, the simple act of reading aloud,

was deemed sufficient. So flagrant was the evasion of the law, that gaolers for a certain fee would assist accused persons to obtain a smattering of letters, whereby they might plead their "clergy" in court. It may be added that although the abuse of the privilege was presently greatly checked, it was not until the reign of William and Mary that benefit of clergy was absolutely denied to burglars, pickpockets, and other criminal offenders.

Yet there were spasmodic intervals of the most extraordinary severity. Twenty thieves, says Sir Thomas More in his "Utopia," might then be seen hanging on a single gibbet. Special legislation was introduced to deal with special crimes. Although there was an appropriateness in the retribution which overtook him, the sentence inflicted upon the Bishop of Rochester's cook in 1531, under a new act passed for the purpose, was ferociously cruel. This man, one Richard Rose or Rouse, was convicted of having poisoned sixteen persons with porridge specially prepared to put an end to his master. The crime had been previously almost unknown in England, and special statutory powers were taken to cope with it. An act was at once passed defining the offence to be high treason, and prescribing boiling to death as the penalty. Rose was accordingly, after conviction, boiled alive in Smithfield. It may be added that this cruel statute, which may be read in extenso in Froude, was soon afterwards repealed, but not before another culprit,

Margaret Davy by name, had suffered under its provisions for a similar offence.

It is only a passing glimpse that we get of the meaner sort of criminal committed to Newgate in these times. The gaol, as I have said, was but the antechamber to something worse. It was the starting-point for the painful promenade to the pillory. The jurors who were forsworn "for rewards or favour of parties were judged to ride from Newgate to the pillory in Cornhill with paper mitres on their heads, there to stand, and from thence again to Newgate." Again, the ringleaders of false inquests, Darby, Smith, and Simson by name, were, in the first year of Henry VII's reign (1509), condemned to ride about the city with their faces to their horses' tails, and paper on their heads, and were set on the pillory at Cornhill. After that they were brought back to Newgate, where they died for very shame.

A few extracts will serve further to describe the criminal inmates of Newgate in those times. The quotations are from the "Remembrancia," 1579-1664. Searches appear to have been regularly made for suspected persons, who when caught were committed to ward. Thus, 1519, a search was made in the house of William Solcocke in Holborne, and it was found that one Christopher Tyllesley had lain there two nights. "He has no master, and is committed to Newgate." Again, "in the house of Christopher Arundell one Robert Bayley: has no

master, and is committed to Newgate." To Newgate were also committed any who were bold enough to malign the great Cardinal Wolsey, in the plenitude of his power, as was Adam Greene in June, 1523, a prisoner in Ludgate, who repeated to the keeper what he had heard from a "bocher" (butcher), to the effect that Wolsey had told the king that all London were traitors to his Grace. Greene was warned to keep silent, but he said "he would abide by it, for he had it from a substantial man who would also abide by it."

Instances of more serious crimes are recorded. In March, 1528, Stephen reports to Thomas Cromwell that between the hours of six and seven, "five thieves knocked at the door of Roderigo the Spaniard, which dwelleth next the goldsmith against your door.[44:1] Being asked who was there, they answered, 'one from the court, to speak with Roderigo.' When the door was opened three of them rushed in and found the said Roderigo sitting by the fire with a poor woman dwelling next to Mrs. Wynsor. Two tarried and kept the door, and strangled the poor woman that she should not cry. They then took Roderigo's purse, and killed him by stabbing him in the belly, but had not fled far before two of them were taken and brought to Newgate."

Debtors were too small fry to be often referred

to in the chronicles of the times. Now and again they are mentioned as fitting objects for charity, royal and private. In the king's book of payments is the following entry, under date May, 1515: "Master Almoner redeeming prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the Compter, £20." The State Papers, 1581, contain a commission to the lord mayor, recorder, and sheriffs of London, and many others, all charitable folk, and some sixty in numbers, to compound with the creditors of poor debtors, at that time prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the two Compters of the city. Although debtors in gaol who volunteered for service on shipboard were discharged by proclamation from the demands of their creditors, as a general rule committal to Newgate on account of monetary mismanagement appears to have been more easily compassed than subsequent release. The same volume of State Papers contains a petition from Richard Case to Lord Burghley, to the effect that he had been committed to Newgate "upon the unjust complaint of Mr. Benedict Spinola, relative to the lease of certain lands and tenements in London." The petitioner further "desires to be discharged from prison, and to have the queen's pardon," but there is no allusion to his enlargement.[45:1] The impolicy of

confining debtors was not to be fully realized till three more centuries had passed away. But as early as 1700 a pamphlet preserved in the "Harleian Miscellany," and entitled "Labour in Vain," anticipates modern feeling and modern legislation. The writer protests against the imprisonment of debtors, which he compares to shutting up a cow from herbage when she gives no milk. "In England we confine people to starve, contrary to humanity, mercy, or policy. One may as reasonably expect his dog," he says, "when chained to a post should catch a hare, as that poor debtors when in gaol should get wherewithal to pay their debts."

Details of the incarceration and sufferings of prisoners for conscience's sake, in an age when polemics were backed up by the strong arm of the law, are naturally to be met with more frequently in the partisan writings of the time. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary, and even in that of Elizabeth, intolerance stalked rampant through the land, filling the prisons and keeping Smithfield in a blaze. Henry was by turns severe on all creeds. Now Protestants, now Catholics suffered. He began as an ardent champion of Romish doctrines, and ended by denying the supremacy of the Pope. In the first stage he persecuted so-called heretics, in the second he despoiled Church property,

and sent monks and priors to gaol and to the gallows. Foxe gives a long and detailed list of the Protestant martyrs from first to last.

One of the most prominent was Richard Bayfield, a monk of Bury, who became an inmate of Newgate. Foxe relates that a letter of inquiry was issued by the Bishop of London to the lord mayor and sheriffs to be present at St. Paul's on the 20th November, 1531, to receive the said Richard Bayfield, alias Soundesam, "a relapsed heretic after sentence." The sheriffs carried him to Newgate, whence they were commanded again to bring him into Paul's upper choir, there to give attendance upon the bishop. Later on they are ordered to have him into the vestry, and then to bring him forth again in Antichrist's apparel to be degraded before them. "When the bishop had degraded him," says old Foxe, "kneeling upon the highest step of the altar, he took his crosier staff and smote him on the breast, then he threw him down backwards and brake his head, so that he swooned; and when he came to himself again he was led forth through the choir to Newgate, and there rested about an hour in prayer, and so went to the fire in his apparel manfully and joyfully, and there for lack of a speedy fire was two quarters of an hour alive."

Henry, was, however, impartial in his severity. In 1533 he suffered John Frith, Andrew Hewett, and other Protestants, to the number of twenty-seven,

to be burned for heresy. The years immediately following he hunted to death all who refused to acknowledge him as the head of the Church. Besides such imposing victims as Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, many priests suffered. In 1534 the prior of the London Carthusians, the prior of Hexham, Benase, a monk of Sion College, and John Haite, vicar of Isleworth, together with others, were sentenced to be hanged and quartered at Tyburn. In 1538 a friar, by name Forrest, was hanged in Smithfield upon a gallows, quick, by the middle and the arm-holes, and burned to death for denying the king's supremacy and teaching the same in confession to many of the king's subjects. Upon the pile by which Forrest was consumed was also a wooden image, brought out of Wales, called "Darvell Gatheren," which the Welshmen "much worshipped, and had a prophecy amongst them that this image would set a whole forest on fire, which prophecy took effect."

The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared to differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his polemical powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by policy rather than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the Church he had disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the notorious Six Articles, otherwise "the whip with six tails," or the Bloody Statute, so called

from its sanguinary results. The doctrines enunciated were such that many could not possibly subscribe to them; the penalties were "strait and bloody," and very soon they were widely inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more pages, recounts the various presentments against individuals, lay and clerical, for transgressing one or more of the principles of the Six Articles; and adds to the aforesaid, "Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter's, in Cornhill; South, parish priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles, the king's beer-brewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine's; Thomas Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six Articles." "To be short," he adds, "such a number out of all parishes in London, and out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then apprehended through the said inquisition, that all prisons in London, including Newgate, were too little to hold them, insomuch that they were fain to lay them in the halls. At last, by the means of good Lord Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the king that the said Lord Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were called; but neither was there any person called, neither did any appear."

Bonner, then Bishop of London, and afterwards one of the queen's principal advisers, had power to persecute even under Henry. The Bible had

been set up by the king's command in St. Paul's, that the public might read the sacred word. "Much people used to resort thither," says Foxe, to hear the reading of the Bible, and especially by one John Porter, "a fresh young man, and of a big stature," who was very expert. It displeased Bonner that this Porter should draw such congregations, and sending for him, the Bishop rebuked him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended himself, but Bonner charged him with adding expositions of the text, and gathering "great multitudes about him to make tumults." Nothing was proved against Porter, but "in fine Bonner sent him to Newgate, where he was miserably fettered in irons, both legs and arms, with a collar of iron about his neck, fastened to the wall in the dungeon; being there so cruelly handled that he was compelled to send for a kinsman of his, whose name is also Porter, a man yet alive, and can testify that it is true, and dwelleth yet without Newgate. He, seeing his kinsman in this miserable case, entreated Jewet, the keeper of Newgate, that he might be released out of those cruel irons, and so, through friendship and money, had him up among other prisoners, who lay there for felony and murder." Porter made the most of the occasion, and after hearing and seeing their wickedness and blasphemy, exhorted them to amendment of life, and "gave unto them such instructions as he had learned of in the Scriptures; for which his so doing he was

complained, and so carried down and laid in the lower dungeon of all, oppressed with bolts and irons, where, within six or eight days, he was found dead."

But the most prominent victim to the Six Articles was Anne Askew, the daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Lincolnshire. She was married to one Kyme, but is best known under her maiden name. She was persecuted for denying the Real Presence, but the proceedings against her were pushed to extremity, it was said, because she was befriended in high quarters. Her story is a melancholly one. First, one Christopher Dene examined her as to her faith and belief in a very subtle manner, and upon her answers had her before the lord mayor, who committed her to the Compter. There, for eleven days, none but a priest was allowed to visit her, his object being to ensnare her further. Presently she was released upon finding sureties to surrender if required, but was again brought before the king's council at Greenwich. Her opinions in matters of belief proving unsatisfactory, she was remanded to Newgate. Thence she petitioned the king, also the Lord Chancellor Wriottesley, "to aid her in obtaining just consideration." Nevertheless, she was taken to the Tower, and there tortured. Foxe puts the following words into her mouth: "On Tuesday I was sent from Newgate to the Sign of the Crown, where Master Rich and the Bishop of London, with all their power and flattering words, went about to

persuade me from God, but I did not esteem their glosing pretences. . . . Then Master Rich sent me to the Tower, where I remained till three o'clock." At the Tower strenuous efforts were made to get her to accuse others. They pressed her to say how she was maintained in prison; whether divers gentlewomen had not sent her money. But she replied that her maid had gone abroad in the streets and made moan to the 'prentices, who had sent her alms. When further urged, she admitted that a man in a blue coat had delivered her ten shillings, saying it came from my Lady Hertford, and that another in a violet coat had given her eight shillings from my Lady Denny—"whether it is true or not I cannot tell." "Then they said three men of the council did maintain me, and I said no. Then they did put me on the rack because I confessed no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time; and because I lay still, and did not cry, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead. Then the lieutenant (Sir Anthony Knevet) caused me to be loosed from the rack. Incontinently I swooned, and then they recovered me again. After that I sat two long hours, reasoning with my Lord Chancellor, on the bare floor." At last she was "brought to a house and laid in a bed with as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job; I thank my Lord God therefor. Then my Lord Chancellor sent me

word, if I would leave my opinion, I should want nothing; if I did not, I should forthwith to Newgate, and so be burned. . . ."

Foxe gives full details of her torture in the Tower. At first she was let down into a dungeon, and the gaoler, by command of Sir Anthony Knevet, pinched her with the rack. After this, deeming he had done enough, he was about to take her down, but Wriottesley, the Lord Chancellor, "commanded the lieutenant to strain her on the rack again; which, because he denied to do, tendering the weakness of the woman, he was threatened therefore grievously of the said Wriottesley, saying he would signify his disobedience to the king. And so consequently upon the same, he (Wriottesley) and Master Rich, throwing off their gowns, would needs play the tormentors themselves. . . . And so, quietly and patiently praying unto the Lord, she abode their tyranny till her bones and joints were almost plucked asunder, in such sort as she was carried away in a chair." Then the chancellor galloped off to report the lieutenant to the king; but Sir Anthony Knevet forestalled by going by water, and obtained the king's pardon before the complaint was made. "King Henry," says Foxe, "seemed not very well to like of their so extreme handling of the woman."

Soon after this Mistress Askew was again committed to Newgate, whence she was carried in a chair to Smithfield, "because she could not walk

on her feet by means of her great torments. When called upon to recant she refused, as did the martyrs with her." Whereupon the lord mayor, commanding fire to be put under them, cried, "Fiat Justitia," and they were burned.

The Maryan persecutions naturally filled Newgate. It would weary the reader to give lengthened descriptions of the many martyrs who passed through that prison to Smithfield. But a few of the victims stand prominently forward. Two of the earliest were John Rogers, vicar of St. Sepulchre and prebendary of St. Paul's, and Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester. Rogers was the protomartyr—the first sacrificed to the religious intolerance of Mary and her advisers. Foxe says that after being a prisoner in his own house for a long time, Rogers was "removed to the prison called Newgate, where he was lodged among thieves and murderers for a great space." He was kept in Newgate "a full year," Rogers tells us himself, "at great costs and charges, having a wife and ten children to find for; and I had never a penny of my livings, which was against the law." He made "many supplications" out of Newgate, and sent his wife to implore fairer treatment; but in Newgate he lay, till at length he was brought to the Compter in Southwark, with Master Hooper, for examination. Finally, after having been "very uncharitably entreated," he was "unjustly, and most cruelly, by wicked Winchester condemned." The

4th February, 1555, he was warned suddenly by the keeper's wife of Newgate to prepare himself for the fire, "who being then found asleep, scarce with much shogging could be awakened." Being bidden to make haste, he remarked: "If it be so, I need not tie my points." "So was he had down first to Bonner to be degraded, whom he petitioned to be allowed to talk a few words with his wife before his burning"—a reasonable request, which was refused. "Then the sheriffs, Master Chester and Master Woodroove, took him to Smithfield; and his wife and children, eleven in number, ten able to go, and one at the breast, met him as he passed. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience in the defence and quarrel of Christ's gospel."

While detained in Newgate, Master Rogers devoted himself to the service of the ordinary prisoners, to whom he was "beneficial and liberal," having thus devised "that he with his fellows should have but one meal a day, they paying, notwithstanding, the charges of the whole; the other meal should be given to them that lacked on the other (or common) side of the prison. But Alexander their keeper, a strait man and a right Alexander, a coppersmith, indeed . . . would in no case suffer that."

This Alexander Andrew or Alexander, as he is

simply called, figures in contemporary records, more especially in the writings of Foxe, as a perfect type of the brutal gaoler. "Of gaolers," says Foxe, "Alexander, keeper of Newgate, exceeded all others." He is described as "a cruel enemy of those that lay there (Newgate) for religion. The cruel wretch, to hasten the poor lambs to the slaughter, would go to Bonner, Story, Cholmley, and others, crying out, 'Rid my prison! rid my prison! I am too much pestered by these heretics.'" Alexander's reception of an old friend of his, Master Philpot, when committed to Newgate, is graphically told by the old chronicler. "'Ah, thou hast well done to bring thyself hither,' he says to Philpot. 'I must be content,' replied Philpot, 'for it is God's appointment, and I shall desire you to let me have some gentle favour, for you and I have been of old acquaintance.' 'Well,' said Alexander, 'I will show thee great gentleness and favour, so thou wilt be ruled by me.' Then said Master Philpot, 'I pray you show me what you would have me to do.' He said, 'If you will recant I will show you any pleasure I can.' 'Nay,' said Master Philpot, 'I will never recant whilst I have my life, for it is most certain truth, and in witness thereof I will seal it with my blood.' Then Alexander said, 'This is the saying of the whole pack of you heretics.' Whereupon he commanded him to be set upon the block, and as many irons upon his legs as he could bear, for that he would

not follow his wicked mind. . . . 'But, good Master Alexander, be so much my friend that these irons may be taken off.' 'Well,' said Alexander, 'give me my fees, and I will take them off; if not, thou shalt wear them still.' Then Master Philpot said, 'Sir, what is your fee?' He said four pounds was his fee. 'Ah,' said Master Philpot, 'I have not so much; I am but a poor man, and I have been long in prison.' 'What wilt thou give me, then?' said Alexander. 'Sir,' said he, 'I will give you twenty shillings, and that I will send my man for, or else I will lay my gown to gage. For the time is not long, I am sure, that I shall be with you, for the bishop said I should be soon despatched.' Then said Alexander unto him, 'What is that to me?' and with that he departed for a time, and commanded him to be had into limbo. And so his commandment was fulfilled; but before he could be taken from the block the clerk would have a groat. Then one Willerence, steward of the house, took him on his back and carried him down his man knew not whither. Wherefore Master Philpot said to his man, 'Go to Master Sheriff, and show him how I am used, and desire Master Sheriff to be good unto me;' and so his servant went straightway and took an honest man with him.

"And when they came to Master Sheriff, which was Master Ascham, and showed him how Master Philpot was handled in Newgate, the sheriff, hearing

this, took his ring off his finger and delivered it unto that honest man that comes with Master Philpot's man, and bade him go unto Alexander the keeper and command him to take off his irons and handle him more gently, and give his man again that which he had taken from him. And when they came to the said Alexander and told their message from the sheriff, Alexander took the ring, and said, 'Ah, I perceive that Master Sheriff is a bearer with him and all such heretics as he is, therefore to-morrow I will show it to his betters;' yet at ten by the clock he went to Master Philpot where he lay and took off his irons, and gave him such things as he had taken before from his servant."

Alexander's zeal must have been very active. In 1558 it is recorded that twenty-two men and women were committed to Newgate for praying together in the fields about Islington. They were two and twenty weeks in the prison before they were examined, during which Alexander sent them word that if they would hear a mass they should be delivered. According to Foxe a terrible vengeance overtook this hard-hearted man. He died very miserably, being so swollen that he was more like a monster than a man. The same authority relates that other persecutors came to a bad end.

Bishop Hooper soon followed Rogers to the stake. The same Monday night, February 4, 1555, the keeper of Newgate gave him an inkling that he

should be sent to Gloucester to suffer death, "and the next day following, about four o'clock in the morning before day, the keeper with others came to him and searched him and the bed wherein he lay, to see if he had written anything, and then he was led to the sheriffs of London and other their officers forth of Newgate, to a place appointed not far from Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, where six of the Queen's Guards were appointed to receive him and to carry him to Gloucester, . . ." where execution was to be done.

We obtain a curious insight into the gaol at Newgate during Mary's reign from the narrative of the "Hot Gospeller." Edward Underhill, a yeoman of the Guard, was arrested in 1553 for "putting out" a ballad which attacked the queen's title. Underhill was carried before the Council, and there got into dispute with Bourne, a fanatic priest whom he called a papist. "Sir John Mason asked what he meant by that, and he replied, 'If you look among the priests of Paul's you will find some mumpsimusses there.' This caused much heat, and he was committed to Newgate." At the door of the prison he wrote to his wife, asking her to send his nightgown, Bible, and lute, and then he goes on to describe Newgate as follows:

"In the centre of Newgate was a great open hall; as soon as it was supper-time the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was Alexander, with his wife came and sat down,

and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony, Underhill being the first that for religion was sent into that prison. One of the felons had served with him in France. After supper this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured one to have a bed in his (Underhill's) chamber who could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary's guard, yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, or else he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper's hands and his wife's, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. 'Well,' said Underhill, 'I have sent for my Bible, and, by God's grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not hide it from them.' 'Sir,' said he, 'I am poor; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well; and I will show you the nature and manner of them, for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well; wherefore, you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry and to drink wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can show you.'"

The honour of being "white son" to the governor and governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after, as it meant many privileges and much favour. Underhill duly provided the desired entertainment. The governor gave him the best

room in the prison, with all other admissible indulgences.

"At last, however, the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many draughts of air, threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted his lodgings, but to no purpose; the evil savours followed him. The keeper offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable. Finally the wife put him away in her store closet, amidst her best plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the Earl of Bedford."

There was a truce to religious persecution for some years after Mary's death. Throughout Edward's reign and the better part of Elizabeth's it was only the ordinary sort of criminal who was committed to the gaol of Newgate. The offences were mostly coining, horse-stealing, and other kinds of thefts.

"One named Ditche was apprehended at the session holden at Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th December, being Friday and

horse-market there."[62:1] The "Remembrancia" gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of Requests, to the lord mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had petitioned the queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to her Majesty. The lord mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate, who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T (thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as—"On the 27th of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver, and the other cast testers of tin." "The 30th of May Thomas Green, goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, beheaded, and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver."

Towards the end of the reign, in spite of the

stringent acts against vagrancy, the country swarmed with rogues and beggars—vagabonds who laid the farmers under contribution, and terrified all honest folk out of their lives. In London crime was rampant. Even then it had its organization; there were houses which harboured thieves, in which schools were maintained for the education of young pickpockets. Maitland tells us that in the spring of 1585, Fleetwood, the recorder, with several other magistrates searched the town and discovered seven houses of entertainment of felons. They found also that one Walton, a gentleman born, once a prosperous merchant, "but fallen into decay," who had kept an alehouse which had been put down, had begun a "new business." He opened his house for the reception of all the cutpurses in and about the city. In this house was a room to teach young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up; one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung round with hawk's bells, and over them hung a little sacring[63:1] bell. The purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a clever nypper. These places gave great encouragement to

evil-doers in these times, but were soon after suppressed.

In 1581 a fresh religious persecution began, happily without the sanguinary accessories of that of Mary's reign. Elizabeth had no love for the Puritans; she also began now to hate and fear the papists. Orthodoxy was insisted upon. People who would not go to church were sent first to prison, then haled before Sessions and fined a matter of twenty pounds each. Still worse fared the adherents or emissaries of Rome. In 1569 a man named John Felton had been drawn from Newgate into Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered as a traitor for affixing a bull of Pope Pius V on the gate of the Bishop of London's palace. In 1578 it is recorded that "the papists are stubborn." So also must have been the Puritans. "One Sherwood brought before the Bishop of London behaved so stubbornly that the bishop will show no more favour to those miscalled Puritans." Next began a fierce crusade against the "seminary" priests, who swarmed into England like missionaries, despatched in partibus infidelium to minister to the faithful few and bring back all whom they could to the fold. Newgate was now for ever full of these priests. They adopted all manner of disguises, and went now as soldiers, now as private gentlemen, now openly as divines. They were harboured and hidden by faithful Roman Catholics, and managed thus to glide unperceived from point

to point intent upon their dangerous business. But they did not always escape observation, and when caught they were invariably laid by the heels and hardly dealt with. Gerard Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned in 1581 at the Old Bailey before the queen's justices, and affirmed that although he was in England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that the Pope had now the same authority in England as he had a hundred years ago, and which he exercised at Rome, "with other traitorous speeches, for which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered." The same year William Dios (a Spaniard), keeper of Newgate, sent a certificate of the names of the recusants now in Newgate, "viz., Lawrence Wakeman and others, . . . the two last being of the precise sort." April 20, 1586, Robert Rowley, taken upon seas by Captain Burrows going to Scotland, is committed first to the Marshalsea, and from thence to Newgate. Next year, August 26th, Richard Young reports to Secretary Walsyngham that he has talked with sundry priests remaining in the prisons about London. "Some," he says, "are very evil affected, and unworthy to live in England. Simpson, alias Heygate, and Flower, priests, have justly deserved death, and in no wise merit her Majesty's mercy. William Wigges, Leonard Hide, and George Collinson, priests in Newgate, are dangerous fellows, as are also Morris Williams and Thomas Pounde, the

latter committed as a layman, but in reality a professed Jesuit. Francis Tirrell is an obstinate papist, and is doubted to be a spy."

We read as follows in an intercepted letter from Cardinal John Allen, Rector of the English College at Rheims, to Mr. White, seminary priest in the Clink Prison, and the rest of the priests in Newgate, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea. "Pope Sextus sends them his blessing, and will send them over for their comfort Dr. Reynolds, chief Jesuit of the college at Rheims, who must be carefully concealed," . . . with others, . . . "whose discourses would be a great joy to all heretics. They will bring some consecrated crucifixes, late consecrated by his Holiness, and some books to be given to the chiefest Catholics, their greatest benefactors." This letter was taken upon a young man, Robert Weston, travelling to seek service, "who seems to have had considerable dealings with recusants, and to have made very full confessions."

It was easier for all such to get into Newgate, at that time, than to obtain release. Henry Ash and Michael Genison, being prisoners in Newgate, petition Lord Keeper Pickering for a warrant for their enlargement upon putting in good security for their appearance; "they were long since committed by Justice Young and the now Bishop of London for recusancy, where they remain, to their great shame and utter undoing, and are likely to continue, unless he extend his mercy." In 1598

George Barkworth petitions Secretary Cecil "that he was committed to Newgate six months ago on suspicion of being a seminary priest, which he is not; has been examined nine times, and brought up at Sessions four times; begs the same liberty of the house at Bridewell which was granted him at Newgate."

Political prisoners were not wanting in Newgate in the Elizabethan period. In 1585 instructions are given to the recorder to examine one Hall, a prisoner in Newgate, charged with a design for conveying away the Queen of Scots. This was a part of Babington's conspiracy, for which Throgmorton also suffered. Other victims, besides the unfortunate queen herself, were Babington, Tichbourne, and many more, who after trial at the Old Bailey, and incarceration in Newgate, were hanged in St. Giles's Fields. The execution was carried out with great barbarity; seven of the conspirators were cut down before they were dead and disembowelled. Another plot against Elizabeth's life was discovered in 1587, the actors in which were "one Moody, an idle, profligate fellow, then prisoner in Newgate, and one Stafford, brother to Sir Edward Stafford." The great Queen Bess in these last days of her reign went in constant terror of her life; and a third conspiracy to poison her, originating with her own physician and Lopez, a Jew, led to their execution as traitors. Again, Squires, a disbanded soldier, was charged with putting poison on the

pommel of her saddle, and although he admitted his guilt upon the rack, he declared when dying that he was really innocent.

All this time within Newgate there was turbulence, rioting, disorders, accompanied seemingly by constant oppression. The prisoners were ready to brave anything to get out. General gaol deliveries were made otherwise than in due course of law. Those that were fit to serve in the sea or land forces were frequently pardoned and set free. A petition to the Lord Admiral (1589) is preserved in which certain prisoners, shut out from pardon because they are not "by law bailable," beg that the words may be struck out of the order for release, and state that they will gladly enter her Majesty's service. Many made determined efforts to escape. "The 16th December, 1556," says Holinshed, "Gregory, carpenter and smith, and a Frenchman born were arraigned for making counterfeit keys wherewith to have opened the locks of Newgate, to have slain the keeper and let forth the prisoners; at which time of his arraignment, having conveyed a knife into his sleeve, he thrust it into the side of William Whiteguts, his fellow prisoner, who had given evidence against him, so that he was in great peril of death thereby; for the which fact he was immediately taken from the bar into the street before the justice hall, when, his hand being first stricken off, he was hanged on a gibbet set up for the purpose.

"The keeper of Newgate was arraigned and indicted for that the said prisoner had a weapon about him and his hands loose, which should have been bound."

Yet the keeper of Newgate and other gaolers were sometimes kept within bounds. Two cases may be quoted in which these officials were promptly brought to book. In 1555 the keeper of the Bread Street Compter, by name Richard Husband, pasteler, "being a willful and headstrong man," who, with servants like himself, had dealt hardly with the prisoners in his charge, was sent to the gaol of Newgate by Sir Rowland Hill, mayor, with the assent of a court of aldermen. "It was commanded to the keeper to set those irons on his legs which were called widows' alms; these he wore from Thursday till Sunday in the afternoon." On the Tuesday he was released, but not before he was bound over in an hundred marks to act in conformity with the rules for the managing of the Compters. "All which notwithstanding, he continued as before: . . . the prisoners were ill-treated, the prison was made a common lodging-house at fourpence the night for thieves and night-walkers, whereby they might be safe from searches that were made abroad." He was indicted for these and other enormities, "but did rub it out, and could not be reformed, till the prisoners were removed; for the house in Bread Street was his own by lease or otherwise, and he could not be put from it." A

searching inquiry was also made into the conduct of Crowder, the keeper of Newgate in 1580, or thereabouts. The State Papers contain an information of the disorders practised by the officers of Newgate prison, levying fines and taking bribes, by old and young Crowders, the gaolers. "Crowder and his wife," says the report, "be most horrible blasphemers and swearers." The matter is taken up by the lords of the Council, who write to the lord mayor, desiring to be fully informed of all disorders committed, and by whom. "They are sending gentlemen to repair to the prison to inquire into the case, and requesting the lord mayor to appoint two persons to assist them." Sir Christopher Hatton also writes to the lord mayor, drawing attention to the charges against Crowder. The lord mayor replies that certain persons had been appointed to inquire, but had not yet made their report. The Court of Enquiry are willing to receive Crowder, but he persists in refusing to explain. "He would not come to their meeting, but stood upon his reputation." The result, so far as can be guessed, was that Crowder was pensioned off. But he found powerful friends in his adversity. His cause was espoused by Sir Thomas Bromley, Lord Chancellor, who informs the lord mayor that he thinks Crowder has been dealt with very hardly, and that his accusers were persons unworthy of credit.

FOOTNOTES:

[41:1] This abjuring the king's land was an act of self-banishment, akin in its effects to the old Roman penalty of aquæ et ignis interdictio. Any criminal who took sanctuary might escape the law, provided that within forty days he clothed himself in sackcloth, confessed his crime before the coroner, and after solemnly abjuring the land, proceeded, cross in hand, to some appointed port, where he embarked and left the country. If apprehended within forty days he was again suffered to depart.—Note in Thom's "Stow," p. 157.

[44:1] Cromwell's house was in the city in Throgmorton Street, close to the site of the monastic house of the Austin Friars.

[45:1] This Benedict Spinola must have been an Italian with some influence. His personal relations with Burghley are manifest from a letter of congratulation sent by him to Burghley on the safe arrival of the Earl of Oxford at Milan. Other more or less confidential matters are mentioned in connection with Pasqual and Jacob Spinola, Benedict's brothers.

[62:1] Friday continued the day of horse-market until the closing of Smithfield as a market for live cattle.

[63:1] The bell which was rung at mass on the elevation of the host.

CHAPTER III
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Jesuit emissaries in Newgate—Richardson and others—Speaking ill of king's sister entails imprisonment for life—Criminal offenders—Condition of prisoners—Fanatical conduct of keeper—Nefarious practices of turnkeys—They levy blackmail—"Coney catching"—Arbitrary imprisonment imposed by House of Lords on Richard Overton—Case of Colonel Lilburne, "Freeborn John"—Royalists in gaol—Also prisoners of mark—Brother of the Portuguese ambassador charged with murder, and executed.

The disturbing elements of society continued much the same in the early part of the seventeenth century as in the years immediately preceding. There were the same offences against law and order, dealt with in the same summary fashion. Newgate was perpetually crowded with prisoners charged with the same sort of crimes. Bigotry and intolerance continued to breed persecution. All sects which differed from the faith professed by those in power were in turn under the ban of the law. The Romish priest still ventured into the hostile heretic land where his life was not worth a minute's purchase; Puritans and Non-conformists were committed to gaol for refusing to surrender their heterodox opinions: these last coming into power

were ruthlessly strict towards the openly irreligious backslider. Side by side with these sufferers in the cause of independent thought swarmed the depredators, the wrong-doers, whose criminal instincts and the actions they produced were much the same as they had been before and as they are now.

The devoted courage of the Jesuit emissaries in those days of extreme peril for all priests who dared to cross the channel claims for them a full measure of respect. They were for ever in trouble. When caught they met hard words, scant mercy, often only a short shrift. Repeated references are made to them. In the State Papers, July, 1602, is a list of priests and recusants in prison, viz., "Newgate—Pound (already mentioned), desperate and obstinate; . . . in the Clink, Marshalsea, King's Bench, are others; among them Douce, a forward intelligence, Tichborne, Webster, perverter of youth," etc. They were ever the victims of treachery and espionage. "William Richardson, a priest of Seville College (the date is 1603), was discovered to the Chief Justice by one whom he trusted, and arraigned and condemned at Newgate for being a priest and coming to England. When examined he answered stoutly, yet with great modesty and discretion, moving many to compassionate him and speak against the Chief Justice, on whom he laid the guilt of his blood." He was executed at Tyburn, hanged and quartered, but his head and quarters

were buried. "Such spectacles," says the writer, Ant. Aivers, to Giacomo Creleto, Venice, "do nothing increase the gospel. . . ." A further account says that William Richardson, alias Anderson, was betrayed by a false brother, sent to Newgate, and kept close prisoner over a week, no one being allowed to see him. The Chief Justice, interrupting other trials, called for him and caused him to be indicted of high treason for being a priest and coming to England. All of which he confessed, and there being no evidence against him, the Chief Justice gave his confession in writing to the jury, who found him guilty. "He thanked God and told the Chief Justice he was a bloody man, and sought the blood of the Catholics. He denied that he was a Jesuit or knew Garnet.[73:1] . . ."

Priests were subject to espionage even beyond the realm. A deposition is given in the State Papers made by one Arthur Saul, to the effect that he had been employed by Secretary Winwood and the Archbishop of Canterbury to report what English were at Douay College, particulars of priests who have returned to England, of their meeting-places and conveyance of letters.

These were days of widespread oppression, when Strafford, Laud, the Star Chamber, and ecclesiastical courts gave effect to the king's eager longings for arbitrary power. The following is from a half-mad

fanatic who has offended the relentless archbishop. "The petition of Richard Farnham, a prophet of the most high God, a true subject to my king, and a prisoner of my saviour Christ, in Newgate, to Archbishop Laud and the rest of the high commissioners, whom he prays to excuse his plainness, being no scholar. . . . Desires to know the cause of his being detained so long in prison, where he has been kept a year next April without coming to his answer. Thinks they have forgotten him. If he be a false prophet and a blasphemer and a seducer, as most people report that he is, the high commissioners would do well to bring him to trial. What he wrote before he came into prison and what he has written since he will stand to. . . . If he does not get his answer this summer he intends to complain to the king, believing that it is not his pleasure his subjects should suffer false imprisonment to satisfy the archbishop's mind." Of the same year and the same character is this other petition from William King, a prisoner in Newgate, "for a little treatise delivered to Lord Leppington." Has remained in thraldom twenty-seven months; expresses contrition and prays enlargement on bail, or that he may be called to answer.

Forty years more were to elapse before the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act; but the foregoing will show how grievously this so-called palladium of an Englishman's liberties was required.

Pardons free or more or less conditional were,

however, vouchsafed at times. Release from prison was still, as before, and for long after, frequently accompanied by the penalty of military service. This had long been the custom. On declaration of war in the earlier reigns, it was usual to issue a proclamation offering a general pardon to those guilty of homicides and felonies on condition of service for a year and a day. Even without this obligation prisoners in durance might sue out a pardon by intercession of some nobleman serving abroad with the king. But later on the release was distinctly conditional on personal service. The lord mayor certifies to the king (1619) that certain prisoners in Newgate, whose names and offences are given, are not committed for murder; so they are reprieved, as being able-bodied and fit to do service in foreign parts. Another certificate states that William Dominic, condemned to death for stealing a purse, value £4, is reprieved, "this being his first offence, and he an excellent drummer, fit to do the king service." Again, the king requires the keeper of Newgate to deliver certain reprieved prisoners to Sir Edward Conway, Junior, to be employed in his Majesty's service in the Low Countries. Recorder Finch reports that he has furnished "Conway's son with seven prisoners fit for service; sends a list of prisoners now in Newgate, but reprieved. Some have been long in gaol, and were saved from execution by the prince's return [with Buckingham from Spain?] on that day. They pester the gaol,

which is already reported crowded, this hot weather, and would do better service as soldiers if pardoned, 'for they would not dare to run away.'" A warrant is made out June 5, 1629, to the sheriffs of London to deliver to such persons as the Swedish ambassador shall appoint, forty-seven persons, of whom one was Elizabeth Leech (was she to be employed as a sutler or vivandière?), being prisoners condemned of felonies, and remaining in the gaols of Newgate and Bridewell, who are released "to the end that they may be employed in the service of the King of Sweden"—Gustavus Adolphus, at that time our ally. There are numerous entries of this kind in the State Papers.

Sometimes the prisoners volunteer for service. "John Tapps, by the displeasure of the late Lord Chief Justice and the persecution of James the clerk and one of the keepers, has been kept from the benefit of the pardon which has been stayed at the Great Seal. Begs Lord Conway to perfect his work by moving the lord keeper in his behalf, and in the mean time sending some powerful warrant for his employment as a soldier." Certain other convicted prisoners in Newgate, who had been pardoned in respect of the birth of Prince Charles II, petitioned that they are altogether impoverished, and unable to sue out their pardons. They pray that by warrant they may be transported into the State of Venice under the command of Captain Ludovic Hamilton.

This document is endorsed with a reference to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas to certify concerning these delinquents and their crimes.

George Gardener, a prisoner in Newgate, also petitions the king in March, 1630, stating that he was committed by the council on the information of James Ingram, deputy warden of the Fleet, to prevent petitioner prosecuting the said Ingram for his notorious extortions. He has remained in Newgate since April previous, and by Ingram's procurement was shut up amongst felons in the common gaol, whereby he might have been murdered, and prays that he may be allowed to go abroad on security. Here is another petition; that of Bridget Gray to the council. She states (July 19, 1618) that her grandson, John Throckmorton, is a prisoner in Newgate for felony, and prays that he may be discharged, this being his first offence, and Sir Thomas Smythe being ready to convey him beyond seas. Upon this is endorsed an order that if the mayor or recorder will certify that Throckmorton was not convicted of murder, burglary, highway robbery, rape, or witchcraft, a warrant may be made for his banishment. The certificate is forthcoming, and is to the effect that Throckmorton's crime was aiding in stealing a hat, value 6s., for which the principal, Robert Whisson, an old thief, was hanged.

The gaol calendar reflects the vicissitudes of these

changing, troublous times. There were many London citizens who, sharing the patriotic spirit of Hampden and Pym, found themselves imprisoned for refusing to submit to the illegal taxations of Charles I. In 1639, "three citizens stand committed to Newgate, not because they refuse to pay ship-money, but because they refuse to enter into bond to attend the Board to answer their not paying the same. Divers others refused, and were sent to Newgate; but upon better consideration they paid their money, and were released again." The temper of the Government as regards ship-money is further shown by the arrest and trial of the keeper of Newgate for permitting a prisoner committed for non-payment of this unlawful tax to go at large. It appears that the offender, Richard Chambers, had been several times remanded to the same custody, and had been allowed to escape.

It was highly dangerous to speak lightly of dignities in these ticklish times. The State trials give an account of the hard measure meted out to one Edward Floyde for scandalizing the princess palatine, Elizabeth, daughter of James I, and titular Queen of Bohemia. Floyde was charged with having said, while he was a prisoner in the Fleet, "I have heard that Prague is taken, and goodman Palsgrave and goodwife Palsgrave have taken to their heels and run away." This puerile gossip seriously occupied both houses of Parliament,

and eventually the Lords awarded and adjudged that Edward Floyde be deemed an infamous person, incapable of bearing arms as a gentleman, whose testimony was not to be taken in any court or cause. He was also sentenced to ride with his head to his horse's tail from Westminster to the pillory in Cheapside; after this to be whipped from the Fleet to Westminster, there again to stand on the pillory. He was to pay a fine of £5,000 to the king, and be imprisoned in Newgate during his life.

There is nothing especially remarkable in the purely criminal cases of this period; offences have a strong family likeness to those of our own day. Culprits are "cast" for life for taking a chest of plate out of a house; or for taking £100 from a gentleman and so forth. Now and again appears a case of abduction, a common crime in those and later days. Sarah Cox prays the king's pardon for Roger Fulwood, who was convicted of felony for forcibly marrying her against her will. But she begs at the same time for protection for person and estate from any claims in regard to the pretended marriage. Knights of the road have already begun to operate; they have already the brevet rank of captain, and even lads of tender years are beguiled into adopting the profession of highway robbery. Counterfeiting the king's or other great seals was an offence not unknown. A Captain Farrar is lodged in Newgate (1639), accused of counterfeiting his Majesty's signature

and privy signet. His method of procedure was simple. Having received a document bearing his Majesty's privy seal for the payment of a sum of £190, he removed the seal and affixed it to a paper purporting to be a license from the king to levy and transport two hundred men beyond seas. This he published as a royal license. When arraigned he admitted that the charge was true, but pleaded that he had done the same according to the king's commands. He was reprieved until further orders.

The condition of the prisoners within Newgate continued very deplorable. This is apparent from the occasional references to their treatment. They were heavily ironed, lodged in loathsome dungeons, and all but starved to death. Poor Stephen Smith, the fishmonger, who had contravened the precautionary rules against the plague, petitions the council that he has been very heavily laden with such intolerable bolts and shackles that he is lamed, and being a weak and aged man, is like to perish in the gaol. "Having always lived in good reputation and been a liberal benefactor where he has long dwelt, he prays enlargement on security." The prison is so constantly overcrowded that the prisoners have "an infectious malignant fever which sends many to their long home. The magistrates who think them unfit to breathe their native air when living bury them as brethren when dead." All kinds of robbery and oppression were practised within the precincts of the gaol. Inside, apart from

personal discomfort, the inmates do much as they please. "There are seditious preachings by Fifth Monarchy men at Newgate," say the records, "and prayers for all righteous blood." Some time previous, when the Puritans were nominally the weakest, they also held their services in the prison. Samuel Eaton, a prisoner committed to Newgate as a dangerous schismatic, is charged with having conventicles in the gaol, some to the number of seventy persons. He was, moreover, permitted by the keeper to preach openly. The keeper was petitioned by one of the inmates to remove Eaton and send him to some other part of the prison, but he replied disdainfully, threatening to remove the petitioner to a worse place.

An instruction to the lord mayor and sheriffs in the State Papers (Dec., 1649) directs them to examine the miscarriages of the under officers of Newgate who were favourers of the felons and robbers there committed, and to remove such as appear faulty. The nefarious practices of the Newgate officers were nothing new. They are set forth with much quaintness of diction and many curious details in a pamphlet of the period, entitled the "Black Dogge of Newgate." There was a tavern entitled the "Dogge Tavern in Newgate," as appears by the State Papers, where the place is indicated by an informer for improper practices. The pamphlet sheds a strong light upon the evil-doings of the turnkeys, who appear to have been guilty of

the grossest extortion, taking advantage of their position as officers of the law to levy blackmail alike on criminals and their victims. Of these swindling turnkeys or bailiffs, whom the writer designates "coney-catchers," he tells many discreditable tales.

The term coney-catching had long been in use to define a species of fraud akin to our modern "confidence trick," or, as the French call it, the vol à l'Americain. Shakespeare, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," makes Falstaff call Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol "coney-catching rascals." The fraud was then of but recent introduction. It is detailed at length by Robert Greene in his "Notable Discovery of Cozenage," published in 1591. He characterizes it as a new art. Three parties were needed to practise it, called respectively the "setter," the "verser," and the "barnacle;" their game, or victim, was the "coney." The first was the decoy, the second was a confederate who plied the coney with drink, the third came in by accident should the efforts of the others to beguile the coney into "a deceit at cards" have failed. In the end the countryman was completely despoiled. Later on there was a new nomenclature: the setter became the "beater," the tavern to which the rogues adjourned was the "bush," and the quarry was the "bird." The verser was the "retriever," the barnacle was the "pot-hunter," and the game was called "bat-fowling." Greene's exposure was

supposed to have deprived the coney-catchers of a "collop of their living." But they still prospered at their nefarious practices, according to the author of the "Black Dogge."

Plain symptoms of the approaching struggle between the king and the commons are to be met with in the prison records. Immediately after the meeting of the Long Parliament, orders were issued for the enlargement of many victims of Star Chamber oppression. Among them was the celebrated Prynne, author of the "Histriomatrix,"[83:1] who had lost his ears in the pillory; Burton, a clergyman, and Bastwick, a physician, who had suffered the same penalties—all came out of prison triumphant, wearing ivy and rosemary in their hats. Now Strafford was impeached and presently beheaded; Laud also was condemned. The active interference of Parliament in all affairs of State extended to the arrest of persons suspected of treasonable practices. There are many cases of imprisonment more or less arbitrary in these troubled times. Another petition may be quoted, that of Richard Overton, "a prisoner in the most contemptible gaol of Newgate," under an order of the House of Lords. Overton tells us how he was brought before that House "in a warlike manner, under pretence of a criminal fact, and called upon to answer interrogations concerning himself which he conceived to be illegal and contrary to the national rights,

freedoms, and properties of the free commoners of England, confirmed to them by Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Act for the Abolishment of the Star Chamber." Overton was therefore emboldened to refuse subjection to the said House. He was adjudged guilty of contempt, and committed to Newgate, where he was seemingly doomed to lie until their lordships' pleasure should be further signified, which "may be perpetual if they please, and may have their wills, for your petitioner humbly conceiveth that he is made a prisoner to their wills, not to the law, except their wills may be a law." On this account he appealed to the Commons "as the most sovereign Court of Judicature in the land," claiming from them, "repossession of his just liberty and freedom, or else that he may undergo the penalty prescribed by the law if he be found a transgressor." Whether Overton was supported by the Commons against the Lords does not appear, but within three years the Lower House abolished the House of Peers.

Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green, London

Here is yet another petition from a better known inmate of Newgate, the obstinately independent Colonel Lilburne, commonly called "Freeborn John." Lilburne was always at loggerheads with the government of the city. In 1637, when following the trade of a bookseller, he was convicted by the Star Chamber for publishing seditious libels, and sentenced to the pillory, imprisonment, and a fine of £5,000. In 1645 he fell foul of the Parliament,

and wrote a new treatise, calling in question their power. Lilburne was eventually banished by the Rump Parliament; but in 1653 he returned to England and threw himself upon the tender mercies of the Protector. Cromwell would do nothing, and left him to the law. Lilburne was then arrested, and committed to Newgate. At the next sessions he was arraigned, but refused to plead unless furnished with a copy of his indictment. He managed to put off his trial by various expedients till the next sessions, when he was acquitted by the jury. In Thurloe's State Papers it is stated that "John Lilburne was five times at his trial at the Sessions House, where he most courageously defended himself from the recorder's violent assaults with his old buckler, the Magna Charta, so that they have let him alone." "Freeborn John" was so popular with malcontents of all shades of opinion, that the authorities, from Oliver Cromwell downward, were really afraid of him. Oliver professed to be enraged against him, and anxious for his punishment, yet he privately paid him a pension equal to the pay of a lieutenant-colonel, and, as Thurloe says, "thought the fellow so considerable, that during the time of his trial he kept three regiments continually under arms at St. James'." The jury which acquitted Lilburne were summoned to answer for their conduct before the Council of State. Yet there is little doubt that the court was overawed by the mob. For Thurloe says there were six or

seven hundred men at the trial, with swords, pistols, bills, daggers, and other instruments, that, in case they had not cleared him, they would have employed in his defence. The joy and acclamation were so great after he was acquitted that the shout was heard an English mile.

All this time prisoners of great mark were at times confined in Newgate. That noted royalist, Judge Jenkins, was among the number. His crime was publishing seditious books, and sentencing to death people who had assisted against the Parliament. He was indeed attainted of high treason under an ordinance passed by the House of Commons. A committee was sent from "the Commons' House to Newgate, which was to interview Judge Jenkins, and make the following offer to him—viz., that if he would own the power of the Parliament to be lawful, they would not only take off the sequestrations from his estates, amounting to £500 per annum, but they would also settle a pension on him of £1,000 a year." His reply was to the following effect: "Far be it from me to own rebellion, although it was lawful and successful." As the judge refused to come to terms with them, he remained in Newgate till the Restoration.

People of still higher rank found themselves in gaol. The brother of the "Portugal" ambassador, Don Pantaleon Sa, is sent, with others, to Newgate for a murder committed by them near the Exchange. It was a bad case. They had

quarrelled with an English officer, Gerard, who, hearing the Portuguese discoursing in French upon English affairs, told them they did not represent certain passages aright. "One of the foreigners gave him the lie, and all three fell upon him, and stabbed him with a dagger; but Colonel Gerard being rescued out of their hands by one Mr. Anthuser, they retired home, and within one hour returned with twenty more, armed with breastplate and head-pieces; but after two or three turns, not finding Mr. Anthuser, they returned home that night." Next day the Portuguese fell upon a Colonel Mayo, mistaking him for Anthuser, wounded him dangerously, and killed another person, Mr. Greenaway. The murderers were arrested in spite of the protection afforded them by the Portuguese ambassador and committed to Newgate. Don Pantaleon made his escape from prison a few days later, but he was retaken. Strenuous efforts were then made to obtain his release. His trial was postponed on the petition of the Portuguese merchants. The Portuguese ambassador himself had an audience of Cromwell, the Lord Protector. But the law took its course. Don Pantaleon pleaded his relationship, and that he had a commission to act as ambassador in his brother's absence; this was disallowed, and after much argument the prisoners pleaded guilty, and desired "to be tried by God and the country." A jury was called, half denizens, half aliens, six of each, who, after a full hearing,

found the ambassador's brother and four others guilty of murder and felony. Lord Chief Justice Rolles then sentenced them to be hanged, and fixed the day of execution; but by the desire of the prisoners it was respited two days. This was the 6th July, 1654. On the 8th, Don Pantaleon Sa had his sentence commuted to beheading. On the 10th he tried to escape, without success, and on the same day he was conveyed from Newgate to Tower Hill in a coach and six horses in mourning, with divers of his brother's retinue with him. There he laid his head on the block, and it was chopped off at two blows. The rest, although condemned, were all reprieved, except one, an English boy concerned in the murder, who was hanged at Tyburn. Their first victim, Colonel Gerard, survived only to be executed on Tower Hill the same year for conspiring to murder the Lord Protector.

Other distinguished inmates, a few years later, were Charles Lord Buckhurst, Edward Sackville, and Sir Henry Bellayse, K. B., who, being prisoners in Newgate, petitioned the Lord Chief Justice, March 10th, to be admitted to bail, one of them being ill of the smallpox. They were charged seemingly with murder. Their petition sets forth that while returning from Waltham to London, on the 8th February, they aided some persons, who complained that they had been robbed and wounded in pursuit of the thieves, and in attacking the robbers wounded one who afterward died. Sir

Thomas Towris, baronet, petitions the king (Charles II) "not to suffer him to lie in that infamous place, where he has not an hour of health, nor the necessaries of life. He states that he has been four months in the Tower, and five weeks in Newgate, charged with counterfeiting his Majesty's hand, by the malice of an infamous person who, when Registrar Accountant at Worcester House, sold false debentures." Sir Thomas wished to lay his case before his Majesty at his first coming from Oxford, but was deceived, and the way to bounty was thus stopped.

FOOTNOTES:

[73:1] Chief of the Jesuits in England, afterwards executed (1608).

[83:1] A homily against play-acting and masquerades.

CHAPTER IV
NEWGATE AFTER THE GREAT FIRE

Newgate refronted in 1638—Destroyed in great fire of 1666—Suicides frequent—The gaoler Fells indicted for permitting escapes—Crimes of the period—Clipping and coining greatly increased—Enormous profits of the fraud—Coining within the gaol itself deemed high treason—Heavy penalties—Highway robbery very prevalent—Instances—Officers and paymasters with the king's gold robbed—Stage-coaches stopped—Whitney—His capture, and attempts to escape—His execution—Efforts to check highway robbery—A few types of notorious highwaymen—"Mulled Sack"—Claude Duval—Nevison—Abduction of heiresses—Mrs. Synderfin—Miss Rawlins—Miss Wharton—Count Konigsmark—The "German Princess"—Other criminal names—Titus Oates—Dangerfield—The Fifth Monarchy men—William Penn—The two bishops, Ellis and Leyburn.

Newgate was refronted and refaced in 1638, but no further change or improvement was made in the building until a total reëdification became inevitable, after the great fire in 1666.

It is difficult to exaggerate the horrors of Newgate, the mismanagement, tyranny, and lax discipline which prevailed at that time. Its unsanitary condition was chronic, which at times, but only for influential inmates, was pleaded as an excuse for

release. Luttrell tells us Lord Montgomery, a prisoner there in 1697, was brought out of Newgate to the King's Bench Court, there to be bailed, upon two affidavits, which showed that there was an infectious fever in Newgate, of which several were sick and some dead. He was accordingly admitted to bail himself in £10,000, and four sureties—the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Yarmouth, Lord Carrington, and Lord Jeffereys—in £5,000 each. An effort to secure release was made less successfully some years later in regard to Jacobite prisoners of note, although the grounds alleged were the same and equally valid. Some effort was made to classify the prisoners: there was the master's side, for debtors and felons respectively; the common side, for the same two classes; and the press-yard, for prisoners of note.

If a prisoner was hopelessly despondent, he could generally compass the means of committing suicide. A Mr. Norton, natural son of Sir George Norton, condemned for killing a dancing-master, because the latter would not suffer him to take his wife away from him in the street, poisoned himself the night before his reprieve expired. The drug was conveyed to him by his aunt without difficulty, "who participated in the same dose, but she is likely to recover." Nor were prisoners driven to this last desperate extremity to escape from durance. Pepys tells us in 1667, August 1, that the gates of the city were shut, "and at Newgate we find them

in trouble, some thieves having this night broken open prison."

Within the gaol all manner of evil communication went forward unchecked among the prisoners. That same year Sir Richard Ford, the recorder, states that it has been made appear to the court of aldermen "that the keeper of Newgate hath at this day made his house the only nursery of rogues, prostitutes, pickpockets, and thieves in the world, where they were held and entertained and the whole society met, and that for the sake of the sheriffs[92:1] they durst not this day commit him for fear of making him let out the prisoners, but are fain to go by artifice to deal with him." The keeper at this time was one Walter Cowday, as appears from a State pardon "for seven prisoners ordered to be transported by their own consent," which he endorses. Sharper measure was dealt out to his successor, Mr. Fells, the keeper in 1696, who was summoned to appear before the Lords Justices for conniving at the escape of Birkenhead, alias Fish, alias South, East, West, etc., one of the conspirators in Sir John Fenwick's business, and who lay in prison "to be speedily tried." On examination of Fells, it was stated that Birkenhead's escape had been effected by a bribe, whereupon the sheriffs were instructed to find out the truth in order to displace Fells. Fells was furthermore charged with

showing favour to Sir John Fenwick by suffering him to have pens, ink, and paper "alone;" a little later he was convicted on two indictments before Lord Chief Justice Holt at Guildhall, viz., for the escape of Birkenhead already mentioned, and of another prisoner imprisoned for non-payment of fine. Fell's sentence was postponed till the next term at the King's Bench Bar; but he moved the court in arrest of judgment, a motion which the King's Bench took time to consider, but which must have been ultimately decided in his favour, as two years later Fells still held the office of gaoler of Newgate.

The crimes of the latter half of the seventeenth century are of the same character as those of previous epochs. Many had, however, developed in degree, and were more widely practised. The offence of clipping and coining had greatly increased. The extent to which it was carried seems almost astounding. The culprits were often of high standing. A clipper, by name White, under sentence of death, was reprieved by the king upon the petition of the House of Commons in order that a committee of the House might examine him in Newgate as to his accomplices and their proceedings. Accordingly, White made "a large discovery" to the committee, both of clippers and coiners, and particularly of Esquire Strode, who had been a witness at the trial of the Earl of Bath (1697). Luttrell says, among twenty persons

convicted of coining was Atkinson, the beau who made such a figure in town about eight years before, and spent an estate of £500 per annum in Yorkshire. In the lodgings of a parson, by name Salisbury, who was arrested for counterfeiting stamped paper, several instruments for clipping and coining were found. University men were beguiled into the crime of clipping; so were seemingly respectable London tradesmen. Goldsmiths and refiners were repeatedly taken up for these malpractices. A goldsmith in Leicester Fields and his servants are committed to Newgate for receiving large quantities of broad money from Exeter to clip it. A refiner's wife and two servants were committed to Newgate for clipping; the husband escaped. Bird, a laceman, in custody for coining, escaped; but surrendered and impeached others. Certain gilders committed to Newgate petitioned therefrom, that if released they would merit the same by a discovery of a hundred persons concerned in the trade.

The numbers engaged in these nefarious practices were very great. In 1692, information was given of three hundred coiners and clippers dispersed in various parts of the city, for several of whom warrants were issued, some by the Treasury, others by the Lord Chief Justice. The profits were enormous. Of three clippers executed at Tyburn in 1696, one, John Moore, "the tripe-man," was said to have got a good estate by clipping, and to have offered £6,000 for his pardon.

Three other clippers arrested in St. James's St., and committed to Newgate, were found to be in possession of £400 in clippings, with a pair of shears and other implements. The information of one Gregory, a butcher, who "discovered" near a hundred persons concerned in the trade, went to prove that they made as much as £6,000 a month in counterfeit money. "All their utensils and moulds were shown in court, the latter being in very fine clay, which performed with great dexterity." The extent of the practice is shown by the ingenuity of the machinery used. "All sorts of material for coining was found in a house in Kentish town, with stamps for all coins from James I." The work was performed "with that exactness no banker could detect the counterfeit." So bold were the coiners, that the manufacture went forward even within the walls of Newgate. Three prisoners were taken in the very act of coining in that prison. One of the medals or tokens struck in Newgate as a monetary medium among the prisoners is still to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection at Guildhall. Upon the obverse of the coin the legend is inscribed: "Belonging to the cellar on the master's side, 1669;" on the reverse side is a view of Newgate and the debtors' prison.

The heaviest penalties did not check this crime. The offence was high treason; men sentenced for it were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and women were burnt. In 1683 Elizabeth Hare was burnt

alive for coining in Bunhill Fields. Special legislation could not cope with this crime, and to hinder it the Lords of the Treasury petitioned Queen Mary (in the absence of William III) to grant no pardon to any sentenced for clipping unless before their conviction they discovered their accomplices.

Highway robbery had greatly increased. The roads were infested with banditti. Innkeepers harboured and assisted the highwaymen, sympathizing with them, and frequently sharing in the plunder. None of the great roads were safe: the mails, high officials, foreigners of distinction, noblemen, merchants, all alike were stopped and laid under contribution. The following are a few of the cases which were of constant occurrence. "His Majesty's mails from Holland robbed near Ilford in Essex, and £5,000 taken, belonging to some Jews in London." "The Worcester wagon, wherein was £4,000 of the king's money, was set upon and robbed at Gerard's Cross, near Uxbridge, by sixteen highwaymen. The convoy, being near their inn, went on ahead, thinking all secure, and leaving only two persons on foot to guard it, who, having laid their blunderbusses in the wagon, were on a sudden surprised by the sixteen highwaymen, who took away £2,500, and left the rest for want of conveniences to carry it." Two French officers (on their way to the coast) were robbed by nine highwaymen of one hundred and ten guineas, and bidden to go home to their own country. Another

batch of French officers was similarly dealt with on the Portsmouth road. Fifteen butchers going to market were robbed by highwaymen, who carried them over a hedge and made them drink King James's health. The Portsmouth mail was robbed, but only of private letters; but the same men robbed a captain going to Portsmouth with £5,000 to pay his regiment with. Three highwaymen robbed the Receiver-General of Bucks of a thousand guineas, which he was sending up by the carrier in a pack; the thieves acted on excellent information, for although there were seventeen pack-horses, they went directly to that which was laden with the gold. Seven on the St. Alban's road near Pinner robbed the Manchester carrier of £15,000 king's money, and killed and wounded eighteen horses to prevent pursuit. The purser of a ship landed at Plymouth and rode to London on horseback, with £6,000 worth of rough diamonds belonging to some London merchants which had been saved out of a shipwreck. Crossing Hounslow Heath, the purser was robbed by highwaymen. "Oath was thereupon made before a justice of the peace," says Luttrell, in "order to sue the Hundred for the same." The Bath coach was stopped in Maidenhead thicket, and a footman who had fired at them was shot through the head. The Dover stage-coach, with foreign passengers, was robbed near Shooter's Hill, but making resistance, one was killed.

The western mail was robbed by the two

Arthurs, who were captured and committed to Newgate. They soon escaped therefrom, but were again arrested at a tavern by Doctors' Commons, being betrayed by a companion. They confessed that they had gone publicly about the streets disguised in Grecian habits, and that one Ellis, a tobacconist, assisted them in their escape, for which he was himself committed to Newgate. John Arthur was soon afterwards condemned and executed. Henry Arthur was acquitted, but soon after quarrelling about a tavern bill in Covent Garden, he was killed in the mêlée.

All manner of men took to the road. Some of the royal guards were apprehended for robbing on the highway. Lifeguardsmen followed the same gentlemanly occupation when off duty. Thompson, a lifeguardsman, committed on suspicion of robbing Welsh drovers, was refused bail, there being fresh evidence against him. Captain Beau, or Bew, formerly of the Guards, was seized at Knightsbridge as a highwayman, and afterwards poisoned himself. Seven of his gang were committed to Newgate. Harris, the lifeguardsman tried at the Old Bailey for robbing "on the black mare" and acquitted, was again tried a month later, and condemned. He was then reprieved, and Sir William Penn obtained the queen's pardon for him, with a commission as lieutenant in the Pennsylvania militia, to which colony he was to transport himself. Persons of good social status engaged in the perilous trade.

One Smith, a parson and a lecturer at Chelsea, when brought up at Westminster for perjury, was found to be a confederate with two highwaymen, with whom they had shared a gold watch, and planned to rob Chelsea Church of its plate. Smith when arraigned appeared in court in his gown, but he was "sent to Newgate, and is like to be hanged." Disguised highwaymen were often detected in reputable citizens and quiet tradesmen, who upon the surface seemed honest folk. A mercer of Lombard Street was taken out of his bed and charged by a cheesemonger as being the man that robbed him two years previously. Another mercer was taken up near Ludgate on suspicion of being a highwayman, and committed. Saunders, a butcher of St. James's market, was charged with robbing the Hampton coach, and discovered three confederates, who were captured on Sunday at Westminster Abbey. "Of two highwaymen taken near Highgate, one was said to be a broken mercer, the other a fishmonger." Two of Whitney's gang were said to be the tradesmen in the Strand—one a goldsmith and one a milliner.

Nothing could exceed the cool impudence with which reputed robbers showed themselves in public places. They did not always escape capture, however. "A noted highwayman in a scarlet cloak," says Luttrell, "and coat laced with gold taken in Covent Garden." Another was taken in the Strand and sent to Newgate. Five more were

captured at the Rummer, Charing Cross; three others, notorious highwaymen, taken at the "Cheshire Cheeze." At times they fought hard for liberty. "One Wake, a highwayman, pursued to Red Lion Fields, set his back against the wall and faced the constables and mob. He shot the former, and wounded others, but was at last taken and sent to Newgate." Whitney, the famous highwayman, was taken without Bishopsgate, being "discovered by one Hill, as he (Whitney) walked the street. Hill observed where the robber 'housed,' and calling for assistance, went to the door." Whitney defended himself for about an hour, but the people increasing, and the officers of Newgate being sent for, he surrendered himself, but not before he had stabbed Hill with a bayonet, "not mortal." He was handcuffed and shackled with irons, and committed to Newgate.

Whitney had done business on a large scale. He had been arrested before by a party of horse despatched by William III, which had come up with him lurking between St. Alban's and Barnet. He was attacked, but made a stout defence, killing some and wounding others before he was secured. He must have got free again very soon afterwards. His second arrest, which has just been detailed, was followed by that of many others of his gang. Three were seized near Chelsea College by some soldiers; two more were in company, but escaped. On Sunday two others were taken; one kept a livery

stable at Moorfield's. Soon after his committal there was a strong rumour that he had escaped from Newgate, but he continued closely confined there, and had forty pounds weight of irons on his legs. He had his tailor make him a rich embroidered suit with peruke and hat, worth £100; but the keeper refused to let him wear them, because they would disguise him.

Whitney made many attempts to purchase pardon. He offered to discover his associates, and those that give notice when and where the money is conveyed on the roads in coaches and wagons. He was, however, put upon his trial, and eventually convicted and sentenced to death. He went in the cart to the place of execution, but was reprieved and brought back to Newgate with a rope round his neck, followed by a "vast" crowd. Next night he was carried to Whitehall and examined as to the persons who hired the highwaymen to rob the mails. But he was again ordered for execution, and once more sought to gain a reprieve by writing a letter in which he offered, if he might have his pardon, to betray a conspiracy to kill the king. His last appeal was refused, and he suffered at Porter's Block, near Cow Cross, Smithfield.

Determined efforts were made from time to time to put down these robberies, which were often so disgracefully prevalent that people hardly dared to travel along the roads. Parties of horse were quartered in most of the towns along the great

highways. Handsome rewards were offered for the apprehension of offenders. A proclamation promised £10 for every highwayman taken, and this was ere long increased to £40, to be given to any one who might supply information leading to an arrest. Horses standing at livery in and about London, whose ownership was at all doubtful, were seized on suspicion, and often never claimed. It was customary to parade before Newgate persons in custody who were thought to be highwaymen. They were shown in their riding-dresses with their horses, and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect this singular exhibition. But the robberies flourished in spite of all attempts at repression.

One or two types of the highwaymen of the seventeenth century may here be fitly introduced. One of the earliest and most celebrated was Jack Cottington, alias "Mulled Sack," who had been a depredator throughout the Commonwealth epoch, and who enjoyed the credit of having robbed Oliver Cromwell himself on Hounslow Heath. His confederate in this, Horne, once a captain in Downe's foot regiment, was overtaken, captured, and hanged, but Cottington escaped. Jack Cottington began as a chimney-sweep, first as an apprentice, then on his own account, when he gained his soubriquet from his powers of drinking mulled sack. From this he graduated, and soon gained a high reputation as a pickpocket, his chief hunting-ground

being churches and Puritan meeting-houses, which he frequented demurely dressed in black with a black roquelaire. He succeeded in robbing Lady Fairfax of a gold watch set with diamonds, and a gold chain, as she was on her way to Doctor Jacomb's lecture at Ludgate; and a second time by removing the linchpin from her ladyship's carriage when on her way to the same church, he upset the coach, and giving her his arm, relieved her of another gold watch and seals. After this he became the captain of a gang of thieves and night prowlers, whom he organized and led to so much purpose that they alarmed the whole town. His impudence was so great that he was always ready to show off his skill as a thief in any public-house if he was paid for it, in a performance he styled "moving the bung." He was not content to operate in the city, but visited the Parliament House and Courts of Law at Westminster, and was actually caught in the act of picking the Protector's pocket. He narrowly escaped hanging for this, and on coming out of gaol took permanently to the highway, where he soon achieved a still greater notoriety. With half a dozen comrades he robbed a government wagon conveying money to the army, and dispersed the twenty troopers who escorted it, by attacking them as they were watering their horses. The wagon contained £4,000, intended to pay the troops quartered at Oxford and Gloucester. Another account states that near Wheatley, Cottington put a

pistol to the carrier's head and bade him stand, at which both carter and guard rode off for their lives, fearing an ambuscade. The town of Reading he laid under frequent contribution, breaking into a jeweller's shop in that town and carrying off the contents, which he sported on his person in London. Again at Reading, hearing that the Receiver-General was about to send £6,000 to London in an ammunition wagon, he entered the receiver's house, bound the family, and decamped with the money. Being by this time so notorious a character, he was arrested on suspicion, and committed for trial at Abingdon Assizes. There, however, being flush of cash, he found means to corrupt the jury and secure acquittal, although Judge Jermyn exerted all his skill to hang him. His fame was now at its zenith. He became the burthen of street songs—a criminal hero who laughed the gallows to scorn. But about this time he was compelled to fly the country for the murder of Sir John Bridges, with whose wife he had had an intrigue. He made his way to Cologne, to the court of Charles II, whom he robbed of plate worth £1,500. Then he returned to England, after making overtures to Cromwell, to whom he offered certain secret papers if he might be allowed to go scot-free. But he was brought to the gallows, and fully deserved his fate.

Claude Duval is another hero whose name is familiar to all readers of criminal chronology. A certain halo of romance surrounds this notorious

and most successful highwayman. Gallant and chivalrous in his bearing towards the fair sex, he would spare a victim's pocket for the pleasure of dancing a corranto with the gentleman's wife. The money he levied so recklessly he lavished as freely in intrigue. His success with the sex is said to have been extraordinary, both in London and in Paris. "Maids, widows, and wives," says a contemporary account, "the rich, the poor, the noble, the vulgar, all submitted to the powerful Duval." When justice at length overtook him, and he was cast for death, crowds of ladies visited him in the condemned hold; many more in masks were present at his execution. After hanging he lay in state in the Tangier Tavern at St. Giles, in a room draped with black and covered with escutcheons; eight wax tapers surrounded his bier, and "as many tall gentlemen in long cloaks." Duval was a Frenchman by birth—a native of Domfront in Normandy, once a village of evil reputation. Its curé was greatly surprised, it is said, at finding that he baptized as many as a hundred children and yet buried nobody. At first he congratulated himself in residing in an air producing such longevity; but on closer inquiry he found that all who were born at Domfront were hanged at Rouen.

Duval did not long honour his native country with his presence. On the restoration of Charles II he came to London as footman to a person of quality, but soon took to the road. Numerous

stories are told of his boldness, his address, and fertility of resource. One of the most amusing is that in which he got an accomplice to dress up a mastiff in a cow's hide, put horns on his head, and let him down a chimney, into a room where a bridal merrymaking was in progress. Duval, who was one of the guests, dexterously profited by the general dismay to lighten the pockets of an old farmer whom he had seen secreting a hundred pounds. When the money was missed it was supposed that the devil had flown away with it. On another occasion, having revisited France, he ingratiated himself with a wealthy priest by pretending to possess the secret of the philosopher's stone. This he effected by stirring up a potful of molten inferior metal with a stick, within which were enclosed a number of sprigs of pure gold, as black lead is in a pencil. When the baser metals were consumed by the fire, the pure gold remained at the bottom of the pot. Overjoyed at Duval's skill as an alchemist, the priest made him his confidant and bosom friend, revealing to him his secret hoards, and where they were bestowed. One day, when the priest was asleep after dinner, Duval gagged and bound him, removed his keys, unlocked his strong boxes, and went off with all the valuables he could carry. Duval was also an adroit card-sharper, and won considerable sums at play by "slipping a card;" and he was most astute in laying and winning wagers on matters he had

previously fully mastered. His career was abruptly terminated by his capture when drunk at a tavern in Chandos Street, and he was executed, after ten years of triumph, at the early age of twenty-seven.

William Nevison, a native-born member of the same fraternity, may be called, says Raine, "the Claude Duval of the north. The chroniclers of his deeds have told us of his daring and his charities, for he gave away to the poor much of the money he took from the rich." Nevison was born at Pontefract in 1639, and began as a boy by stealing his father's spoons. When chastised by the schoolmaster for this offence, he bolted with his master's horse, having first robbed his father's strong box. After spending some time in London thieving, he went to Flanders and served, not without distinction, in a regiment of English volunteers commanded by the Duke of York. He returned presently to England, and took to the road. Stories are told of him similar to those which made Duval famous. Nevison was on the king's side, and never robbed Royalists. He was especially hard on usurers. On one occasion he eased a Jew of his ready money, then made him sign a note of hand for five hundred pounds, which by hard riding he cashed before the usurer could stop payment. Again, he robbed a bailiff who had just distrained a poor farmer for rent. The proceeds of the sale, which the bailiff thus lost, Nevison restored to the farmer. In the midst of his career, having made one grand coup,

he retired from business and spent eight years virtuously with his father. At the old man's death he resumed his evil courses, and was presently arrested and thrown into Leicester Gaol. From this he escaped by a clever stratagem. A friendly doctor having declared he had the plague, gave him a sleeping draught, and saw him consigned to a coffin as dead. His friend demanded the body, and Nevison passed the gates in the coffin. Once outside, he was speedily restored to life, and now extended his operations to the capital. It was soon after this that he gained the soubriquet, "Swift Nick," given by Charles II, it is said. There seems to be very little doubt that Nevison was actually the hero of the great ride to York, commonly credited to Turpin. The story goes that he robbed a gentleman at Gadshill, then riding to Gravesend, crossed the Thames, and galloped across Essex to Chelmsford. After baiting he rode on to Cambridge and Godmanchester, thence to Huntingdon, where he baited his mare and slept for an hour; after that, holding to the north road, and not galloping his horse all the way, reached York the same afternoon. Having changed his clothes, he went to the bowling-green, where he made himself noticeable to the lord mayor. By and by, when recognized and charged with the robbery at Gadshill, Nevison called upon the mayor to prove that he had seen him at York; whereupon he was acquitted, "on the bare supposition that it was

impossible for a man to be at two places so remote on one and the same day."

Nevison appears to have been arrested and in custody in 1676. He was tried for his life, but reprieved and drafted into a regiment at Tangier. He soon deserted, and returning to England, again took to the road. He was next captured at Wakefield, tried, and sentenced to death; but escaped from prison, to be finally taken up for a trifling robbery, for which he suffered at York. The depositions preserved by the Surtees' Society show that he was the life and centre of a gang of highway robbers who worked in association. They levied blackmail upon the whole countryside; attended fairs, race meetings, and public gatherings, and had spies and accomplices, innkeepers and ostlers, who kept them informed of the movements of travellers, and put them in the way of likely jobs to be done. Drovers and farmers who paid a tax to them escaped spoliation; but all others were very roughly handled. The gang had its headquarters at the Talbot Inn, Newark, where they kept a room by the year, and met at regular intervals to divide the proceeds of their robberies.

Many instances are recorded of another crime somewhat akin to highway robbery. The forcible abduction of heiresses was nothing new; but it was now prosecuted with more impudence and daring than heretofore. Luttrell tells us, under date 1st June, 1683, that one Mrs. Synderfin, a rich

widow, was taken out of her carriage on Hounslow Heath, by a Captain Clifford and his comrades. They carried her into France to "Calice" against her will, and with much barbarous ill-usage made her marry Clifford. Mrs. Synderfin or Clifford was, however, rescued, and brought back to England. Clifford escaped, but presently returning to London, was seized and committed to custody. He pleaded in defence his great passion for the lady, and his seeing no other way to win her. It was not mere fortune-hunting, he declared, as he possessed a better estate than hers. But the Lord Chief Justice charged the jury that they must find the prisoners guilty, which they did, and all were sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for one year. Captain Clifford was also to pay a fine of £1,000, two of his confederates £500 each, and two more £100. In the same authority is an account how—"Yesterday a gentleman was committed to Newgate for stealing a young lady worth £10,000, by the help of bailiffs, who arrested her and her maid in a false action, and had got them into a coach, but they were rescued." Again, a year or two later, "one Swanson, a Dane, who pretends to be a Deal merchant, is committed to Newgate for stealing one Miss Rawlins, a young lady of Leicestershire, with a fortune of £4,000. Three bailiffs and a woman, Swanson's pretended sister, who assisted, are also committed, they having forced her to marry him. Swanson and Mrs. Bainton were convicted of this

felony at the King's Bench Bar; but the bailiffs who arrested her on a sham action were acquitted, with which the court was not well pleased. Swanson was sentenced to death, and executed. As also the woman; but she being found with child, her execution was respited."

A more flagrant case was the abduction of Miss Mary Wharton in 1690, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Wharton, by Captain James Campbell, brother to the Earl of Argyll, assisted by Sir John Johnson. Miss Wharton, who was only thirteen years of age, had a fortune of £50,000. She was carried away from her relations in Great Queen Street, on the 14th November, 1690, and married against her will. A royal proclamation was forthwith issued for the apprehension of Captain Campbell and his abettors. Sir John Johnson was taken, committed to Newgate, and presently tried and cast for death. "Great application was made to the king and to the relations of the bride to save his life," but to no purpose, "which was thought the harder, as it appeared upon his trial that Miss Wharton had given evident proof that the violence Captain Campbell used was not so much against her will as her lawyers endeavoured to make it." Luttrell says, "Sir John refused pardon unless requested by the friends of Mrs. Wharton. On the 23d December, he went in a mourning coach to Tyburn, and there was hanged." No mention is made of the arrest of

Captain Campbell, whom we may conclude got off the continent. But he benefited little by his violence, for a bill was brought into the House of Commons within three weeks of the abduction to render the marriage void, and this, although the Earl of Argyll on behalf of his brother petitioned against it, speedily passed both Houses.

The affair of Count Konigsmark may be classed with the foregoing, as another notorious instance of an attempt to bring about marriage with an heiress by violent means. The lady in this case was the last of the Percies, the only child and heiress to the vast fortune of Jocelyn, the Earl of Northumberland. Married when still of tender years to the Earl of Ogle, eldest son of the Duke of Newcastle, she was a virgin widow at fifteen, and again married against her consent, it was said, to Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat;[112:1] "Tom of Ten Thousand," as he was called on account of his income. This second marriage was not consummated; Lady Ogle either repented herself of the match and fled into Holland, or her relatives wished to postpone her entry into the matrimonial state, and she was sent to live abroad.