with a great bayonet-wound in my side to boot, that had been but
clumsily dressed by a village Leech, who was, I suspect, a Farrier and
Cow Doctor as well. But I have always found, in this life's whirligig,
that when your Case is at the worst (unless a Man indeed Dies, when
there is nothing more to be done), it is pretty sure to mend, if you lie
quiet and let things take their chance. I could not be much worse off
than I was, wounded and friendless, and a captive; and so I held my
tongue, and let them use me as they would. Some scant comfort was it,
however, to find, when the battle-field was gone over, that, besides the
Grenadier whose crown I had cracked, another had been pistolled by
Jowler, and and lay mortally wounded, and Groaning Dismally. Poor Jowler
himself would never pistol Foe more. He was dead; for the Men of War,
furious at our desperate Resistance, at the worsting of their
fine-feathered officer (who was mumbling of his bruised hand as a
down-trodden Hound would its paw, and cursing meanwhile, which Dogs use
not to do), and driven to Mad Rage by the escape of Captain Night, had
fired pell-mell into a Group of which Jowler made one, and so killed
him. A bullet through his brain set him clean quit of all indictments
under the Black Act, before our Sovereign Lord the King. Likewise was it
a matter of rejoicing for our party that, after long seeking the Traitor
Coaley, the wretched "Beau" was found duly strangled, and completely a
corpse on the staircase. There was something curious about the manner of
justice coming to this villain. The Deed had been done with no weapon
more Lethal than an old Stocking; yet so tightly was it tied round his
false neck, that it had to be cut off piecemeal, and even then the ribs
of the worsted were found to be Imbedded, and to have made Furrows in
his flesh. Now it is certain that we Blacks had not laid about us with
old Wives' hose, any more than we had lunged at our enemies with
knitting-needles. There, however, was Monsieur Judas, as dead as a
Dolphin two hours on deck. Lord, what an ugly countenance had the losel
when they came to wash the charcoal off him! As to who had forestalled
the Hangman in his office, no certain testimony could be given. I have
always found at Sea, when any doubts arise as to the why and the
wherefore of a gentleman's death, that the best way to settle accounts
is to fling him overboard; but on dry land your plaguy Dead Body is a
sore Stumbling Block, and Impediment, always turning up when it is not
Wanted, and bringing other Gentlemen into all kinds of trouble.
Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did
not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without
making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl
of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful
Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this
day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married
the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that it was the
girl Grip and her Mistress that worked off the Spy and Traitor between
them. Not that Mother Drum would have needed any assistance in the mere
doing of the thing. She was a Mutton-fisted woman, and as strong in the
forearm as a Bridewell correctioner.
Oh, the dreary journey we made that morning to Aylesbury! The Men Blacks
were tied back to back, and thrown into such carts as could be pressed
into the service from the farmsteads on the skirts of the Chase. One of
the constables must needs offer, the Scoundrel, to take horse and go
borrow a cartload of fetters from the gaoler at Reading; but he was
overruled, and Ropes were thought strong enough to confine us. There was
no chance, alas! of any rescue; for those of our comrades who had been
fortunate enough through absence to avoid capture, had doubtless by this
time scent of the Soldiers, and there was no kicking against those
bright Firelocks and Bayonets. Yet had there been another escape. Cicely
Grip and Mother Drum were taken, but the pretty maid I loved so for her
kindness to me when I was Forlorn had shown a clean pair of heels, and
was nowhere to be found. Good luck to her, I thought. Perchance she has
met with Captain Night, and they are Safe and Sound by this time, and
off to Foreign Parts. For in all this I declare I saw nothing Wrong, and
held, in my baby logic, that we Blacks had all been very harshly
entreated by the Constables and Redcoats, and that it was a shame to use
us so. Mother Drum, the Wench, and my poor wounded Self, were put into
one cart together, and through Humanity, a Sergeant (for the Constables
would not have done it) bade his men litter down some straw for us to
lie upon. There was a ragged Tilt too over the cart; and thinks I, in a
Gruesome manner, "The first time you rode on straw under a Tilt, Jack,
you were going to school, and now, 'ifegs, you are going to be Hanged."
For it was settled on all sides, and even he with the Charitable
Countenance came to be of that mind at last, that my fate was to die by
the Cord.
"Why," says one, "you've half-brained Corporal Foss with the Demijohn;
never did liquor get into a pretty man's head so soon and so deep.
They'll stretch your neck for this, my poult,--they will."
The Sergeant interposing, said that perhaps, if interest were made for
me, I might be spared an Indictment, and let to go and serve the King as
a Drummer till I was old enough to carry a firelock. But at this the
soldiers shook their heads; for Captain Poppingjay, their officer, was,
it seems, still in a towering rage at having had his fine-lady's hand so
wofully mauled by Captain Night, and vowed vengeance against the whole
crew of poachers and their whelp, as he must needs be Polite enough to
call me.
This Fine Gentleman had been provided with a Horse by the Sheriff, and,
as he rode by the cart where I and Drum and the Girl were jogging on, he
spies me under the Tilt, and in his cruel manner makes a cut at me with
his riding wand, calling me a young spawn of Thievery and Rebellion.
"You coward," I cried in a passion; "you daren't a' done that if my
hands were loose, and I hadn't this baggonet-wound in me."
"Shame to hit the boy," growled the charitable Constable, who was on
horseback too.
The Soldier-officer turned round quickly to see who had spoken; but the
Sergeant, who watched him, pointed with his halbert to the Constable,
and he returned the Captain's glance with a sturdy mien. So my Fine
Gentleman reins in his beast and lets us pass, eyeing his hand, which
was all wrapped up in Bandages, and muttering that it was well none of
his own fellows had given him this sauciness.
The day was a dreadful one. How many times our train halted to bait I
know not; but this I know, that I fainted often from Agony of my wound
and the uneasy motion of my carriage. It is a wonder that I ever came to
my journey's end alive, and in all likelihood never should, but for the
unceasing care and solicitude of the two poor women who were with me,
Prisoners like myself, but full of merciful kindness for one who was in
a sorer strait than they. By earnest pleading did Mother Drum persuade
the Head Constable--who, the nearer we got to gaol the more authority he
took, and the less he seemed to think of our soldier escort--to allow
her hands to be unbound that she might minister unto me; and also did
she obtain so much grace as for some of the Money belonging unto her,
and which had been seized at the Stag o' Tyne, to be spent in buying of
a bottle of brandy at one of our halting-places, with which she not only
comforted herself and her afflicted Maid, but, mingling it with water,
cooled my parched tongue and bathed my forehead.
Brandy was the only medicament this good soul knew; and more lives she
averred, had been saved by Right Nantz than lost by bad B. W.; but still
brandy was not precisely the kind of physic to give a Patient who before
Sundown was in a Raging Fever. But 'twas all one to the Law; and coming
at last to my journey's end, we were all, the wounded and the whole,
flung into Gaol to answer for it at the 'Sizes.
FOOTNOTE:
[M] See the Statutes at Large. The Black Act was repealed mainly
through the exertions of Sir James Macintosh, early in the present
century. Under its clauses the going about "disguised or blackened in
pursuit of game" was made felony without benefit of clergy; the
punishment thereof death.--ED.
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED.
OUR prison was surely the most loathsome hole that Human beings were
ever immured in. It was a Horrible and Shameful Place, conspicuous for
such even in those days, when every prison was a place of Horror and
Shame. 'Twas one of the King's Prisons,--one of His Majesty's
Gaols,--the county had nothing to do with it; and the Keeper thereof was
a Woman. Say a Tigress rather; but Mrs. Macphilader wore a hoop and
lappets and gold ear-rings, and was dubbed "Madam" by her Underlings.
Here you might at any time have seen poor Wretches chained to the floor
of reeking dungeons, their arms, legs, necks even, laden with irons,
themselves abused, beaten, jeered at, drenched with pailfuls of foul
water, and more than three-quarter starved, merely for not being able to
pay Garnish to the Gaoleress, or comply with other her exorbitant
demands. Fetters, indeed, were common and Fashionable Wear in the Gaol.
'Twas pleaded that the walls of the prison were so rotten through age,
and the means of guarding the prisoners--for they could not be always
calling in the Grenadiers--so limited, that they must needs put the poor
creatures in the bilboes, or run the chance of their escaping every day
in the week. Thus it came to pass, even, that they were tried in
Fetters, and sometimes could not hold up their hands (weakened besides
by the Gaol Distemper), at the bidding of the Clerk of the Arraigns, for
the weight of the Manacles that were upon them. And it is to the famous
and admirable Mr. John Howard that we owe the putting down of this last
Abomination.
We lay so long in this dreadful place before a Gaol Delivery was made,
that my wound, bad as it was, had ample time to heal, leaving only a
great indented cicatrix, as though some Giant had forced his finger into
my flesh, and of which I shall never be rid. Two more of our gang died
of the Gaol Fever before Assize time; one was so fortunate as to break
prison, file the irons off his legs, and get clear away; and another
(who was always of a Melancholy turn) hanged himself one morning, in a
halter made from strips of his blanket knotted together. The rest of us
were knocked about by the Turnkeys, or abused by the Gaoleress, Mrs.
Macphilader, pretty much as they liked. We were, however, not so badly
off as some of the poor prisoners--sheep-stealers, footpads, vagrom men
and women, and the like, or even as some of the poor Debtors--many of
whom lay here incarcerate years after they had discharged the Demands of
their Creditors against them, and only because they could not pay their
Fees. We Blacks were always well supplied with money; and money could
purchase almost any thing in a prison in those days. Roast meats, and
wine and beer and punch, pipes and tobacco, and playing cards and
song-books,--all these were to be had by Gentlemen Prisoners; the
Gaoleress taking a heavy toll, and making a mighty profit from all these
luxurious things. But there was one thing that money could not buy,
namely, cleanly lodging; for the State Room, a hole of a place, very
meanly furnished, where your great Smugglers or ruffling Highwaymen were
sometimes lodged, at a guinea a day for their accommodation, was only so
much better from the common room in so far as the prisoner had bed and
board to himself; but for nastiness and creeping things--which I wonder,
so numerous were they, did not crawl away with the whole prison bodily:
but 'tis hard to find those that are unanimous, even vermin.--For all
that made the Gaol most thoroughly hateful and dreadful, there was not a
pin to choose between the State Room, the Common Side, and the Rat's
Larder, Clink, or Dark Dungeon, where the Poor were confined in
wantonness, and the Stubborn were kept sometimes for punishment; for
Madam Gaoleress had a will of her own, and would brook no incivilities
from her Lodgers; so sure is it, that falling out one day on the
disputed Question of a bottle of Aquavitae on which toll had not been
paid, she calls one of the Turnkeys and bids him clap Mother Drum into
the Stocks (that stood in the Prison Yard) for an hour or two, for the
cooling of her temper. But this had just the contrary effect; for the
whilom Hostess of the Stag o' Tyne, enraged at the Indignity offered to
her, did so bemaul and bewray Madam Macphilader with her tongue, shaking
her fist at her meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a fury clawed at least
two handfuls of M. Drum's hair from her head, not without getting some
smart clapperclawing in the face; whereupon she cries out "Murther" and
"Mutiny" and "Prisonrupt," and sends post-haste for Justice Palmworm,
her gossip indeed, and one of those trading magistrates that so
disgraced our bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the writer stirred up
Authority to put some order therein. The Justice comes; and he and the
Gaoleress, after cracking a bottle of mulled port between them, poor
Mother Drum was brought up before his Worship for mutinous conduct. The
Justice would willingly have compounded the case, for Lucre was his only
love; but 'twas vengeance the Gaoleress hankered after; and the end of
it was that poor Mother Drum was triced up at the post that was by the
Stocks, and had a dozen and a half from a cat with indeed but three
tails, but that, I warrant, hurt pretty nigh as sharply as nine would
have done in weaker hands; for 'twas the Gaoleress that played the
Beadle and laid on the Scourge.
At length, when I was quite tired out, and, knowing nothing of the
course of Law, began to think that we were doomed to perpetual
Imprisonment, His Majesty's Judges of Assize came upon their circuit,
and those whom the Fever and Want and the Duresse of their Keeper had
spared were put upon their trial. By this time I was thought well
enough, though as gaunt as a Hound, to be put in the same Gaol-bird's
trim as my companions; so a pair of Woman's fetters--ay, my friends, the
women wore fetters in those days--were put upon me; and the whole of us,
all shackled as we were, found ourselves, one fine Monday morning, in
the Dock, having been driven thereinto very much after the fashion of a
flock of sheep. The Court was crowded, for the case against the Blacks
had made a prodigious stir; and the King's Attorney, the most furious
Person for talking a Fellow-creature's Life away that ever I remember to
have seen or heard, came down especially from London to prosecute us.
Neither he nor His Lordship the Judge, in his charge to the Grand Jury,
had any but the worst of words to give us; and folks began to say that
this would be another Bloody Assize; that the Shire Hall had need to be
hung with scarlet, as when Jeffreys was on the bench; and that as short
work would be made of us as of the Rebels in the West. And I did not
much care, for I was sick of lying in hold, amidst Evil Odours, and with
a green wound. It came even to whispering that one of us at least would
be made a Gibbeting-in-chains example for killing the Grenadier, if that
Act could be fixed on any particular Black. And half in jest, half in
earnest, the Woman-Keeper told me on the morning of the Assizes that,
young as I was (not yet twelve years of age), my bones might rattle in a
birdcage in the midst of Charlwood Chase; for if I could brain one
Grenadier, I could kill another. But yet, being so weary of the Life, I
did not much Care.
It was still somewhat of a Relief to me to come into the Dock, and look
upon State and Rich Clothes (in which I have always taken a
Gentleman-like pleasure), in the stead of all the dirt and squalor which
for so long had been my surrounding. There were the Judges all ranged, a
Terrible show, in their brave Scarlet Robes and Fur Tippets, with great
monstrous Wigs, and the King's Arms behind them under a Canopy, done in
Carver's work, gilt. They frowned on us dreadfully when we came trooping
into the Dock, bringing all manner of Deadly pestilential Fumes with us
from the Gaol yonder, and which not all the rue, rosemary, and marjoram
strewn on the Dock-ledge, nor the hot vinegar sprinkled about the Court,
could mitigate. The middle Judge, who was old, and had a split lip and a
fang protruding from it, shook his head at me, and put on such an Awful
face, that for a moment my scared thoughts went back to the Clergyman at
St. George's, Hanover Square, that was wont to be so angry with me in
his Sermons. Ah, how different was the lamentable Hole in the which I
now found myself cheek by jowl with Felons and Caravats, to the great
red-baize Pew in which I had sat so often a Little Gentleman! He to the
right of the middle Judge was a very sleepy gentleman, and scarcely ever
woke up during the proceedings, save once towards one of the clock,
when he turned to his Lordship (whom I had at once set down as Mr.
Justice Blackcap, and was in truth that Dread Functionary), saying,
"Brother, is it dinner-time?" But his Lordship to the left, who had an
old white face like a sheep, and his wig all awry, was of a more
placable demeanour, and looked at me, poor luckless Outcast, with some
interest. I saw him turn his head and whisper to the gentleman they told
me was the High Sheriff, and who sat on the Bench alongside the Judges,
very fine, in a robe and gold chain, and with a great sheathed sword
behind him, resting on a silver goblet. Then the High Sheriff took to
reading over the Calendar, and shrugged his shoulders, whereupon I
indulged in some Hope. Then he leans over to Mr. Clerk of the Arraigns,
pointing me out, and seemingly asking him some question about me; but
that gentleman hands him up a couple of parchments, and my quick Ear
(for the Court was but small) caught the words, "There are two
Indictments against him, Sir John." Whereupon they looked at me no more,
save with a Stern and Sorrowful Gravity; and the Hope I had nourished
for a moment departed from me. Yet then, as afterwards, and as now, I
found (although then too babyish to reason about it), that, bad as we
say the World is, it is difficult to come upon Three Men together in it
but that one is Good and Merciful.
I feel that my disclaimer notwithstanding the Bark of my Narrative is
running down the stream of a Garrulous talkativeness; but I shall be
more brief anon. And what would you have? If there be any circumstances
which should entitle a man to give chapter and verse, they must surely
be those under which he was Tried for his Life.
The first day we only held up our hands, and heard the Indictment
against us read. Some of us who were Moneyed had retained Counsellors
from London to cross-question the witnesses; for to speak to the Jury
in aid of Prisoners, who could not often speak for themselves, the
Gentlemen of the Law were not then permitted. And this I have ever held
to be a crying Injustice. There was no one, however, not so much as a
Pettifogger, to lift tongue, or pen, or finger, to save little Jack
Dangerous from the Rope. My Protector, Captain Night, was at large;
Jowler, my first friend among the Blacks, was dead; and, as Misery is
apt to make men Selfish, the rest of my companions had entirely
forgotten how friendless and deserted I was. But, just as we were going
back to Gaol, up comes to the spikes of the Dock a gentleman with a red
face, and a vast bushy powdered wig, like a cauliflower in curls. He
wore a silk cassock and sash, and was the Ordinary; but he had
forgotten, I think, to come into the Prison and read prayers to us. He
kept those ministrations against such time as the Cart was ready, and
the Tree decked with its hempen garland. This gentlemen beckons me, and
asks if I have any Counsellor. I told him, No; and that I had no
Friends ayont Mother Drum, and she was laid up, sick of a pair of sore
shoulders. He goes back to the Bench and confers with the Gentlemen, and
by and by the Clerk of the Arraigns calls out that, through the Humanity
of the Sheriff, the prisoner John Dangerous was to have Counsel Assigned
to him. But it would have been more Humane, I think, to have let the
Court and the World know that I was a poor neglected Castaway, knowing
scarcely my right Hand from my left, and that all I had done had been in
that Blindfoldedness of Ignorance which can scarcely, I trust, be called
Sin.
Back, however, we went to Gaol, and a great Rout there was made that
night by Mrs. Macphilader for the payment of all arrears of Fees and
Garnish to her; for, you see, being a prudent Woman, she feared lest
some of the prisoners should be Acquitted, or Discharged on
proclamation. And our Gang of Blacks, for whose aid their friends in
ambush--and they had friends in all kinds of holes and corners, as I
afterwards discovered to my surprise--had mostly bountifully come
forward, did not trouble themselves much about the peril they were in,
but bestowed themselves of making a Roaring Night. And hindered by none
in Authority,--for the Gaolers and Turnkeys in those days were not above
drinking, and smoking, and singing, and dicing with their charges,--they
did keep it up so merrily and so roaringly, that the best part of the
night was spent before drowsiness came over Aylesbury Gaol.
Then the next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John
the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve
honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to
try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in
ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the
Bench beside the Judges, and others in the body of the Court among the
Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in the Dock as though we had
been a Galantee Show. It is some years now since I have entered a Court
of Criminal Justice, and I do hope that this Indecent and Uncivil
Behaviour of well-bred Women coming to gaze on Criminals for their
diversion has utterly given way before the Benevolence and good taste of
a polite Age.
When, at the last, I was told to plead, and at the bidding of an Officer
of the Court, who stood underneath me, had pleaded Not Guilty, and had
been asked how I would be tried, and had answered, likewise at his
bidding, "By God and my Country," and when after that the Clerk of the
Arraigns had prayed Heaven--and I am sure I needed it, and thanked him
heartily at the time, kind Gentleman, thinking that he meant it, and not
knowing that it was a mere Legal Form--to send me a good
Deliverance,--the Judge bids me, to my great surprise, to Stand By. I
thought at first that they were going to have Mercy on me, and would
have down on my knees in gratitude to them. But it was not so; and the
sleepy old Judge, suddenly waking up, told me that there were two
Indictments against me, and that I should have the honour of being tried
separately. Goodness save us! I was looked upon as one of the most
desperate of the Gang, and was to be tried, not only under the Black
Act, but that, not having the fear of God before my eyes, but being
moved by the instigation of the Devil, I had, against the peace of our
Sovereign Lord the King, attempted feloniously to kill, slay, and murder
one John Foss, a Corporal in his Majesty's Regiment of Grenadier
Footguards, by striking him, the said John Foss, over the back, breast,
hips, loins, shoulders, thighs, legs, feet, arms, and fingers, with a
certain deadly and lethal weapon, to wit, with a demijohn of Brandy.
I was put back and kept all day in the prison. At evening came in my
comrades, and from them I learnt that the case had gone dead against
them from the beginning, that the Jury had found them guilty under the
Statute without leaving the box; and that, as the felony was one without
the benefit of Clergy, Judge Blackcap had put on a wig as black as his
name, and sentenced every man Jack of them to be hanged on the Monday
week next following.