Notwithstanding it must be apparent, even to a very ordinary
understanding, that the Law must be executed both in civil and criminal
cases, and that without such execution those who live under its
protection would be very unsafe, yet it happens so that those who feel
the smart of its judgment (though drawn upon them by their own misdeeds,
follies or misfortunes which the Law of man cannot remedy or prevent)
are always clamouring against its supposed severity, and making dreadful
complaints of the hardships they from thence sustain. This disposition
hath engaged numbers under these unhappy circumstances to attempt
screening themselves from the rigour of the laws by sheltering in
certain places, where by virtue of their own authority, or rather
necessities, they set up a right of exemption and endeavour to establish
a power of preserving those who live within certain limits from being
prosecuted according to the usual course of the Law.
Anciently, indeed, there were several sanctuaries which depended on the
Roman Catholic religion, and which were, of course, destroyed when
popery was done away by Law. However, those who had sheltered themselves
in them kept up such exemption, and by force withstood whatever civil
officers attempted to execute process for debt, and that so vigorously
that at length they seemed to have established by prescription what was
directly against Law. These pretended privileged places increased at
last to such an extent that in the ninth year of King William, the
legislature was obliged to make provision by a clause in an Act of
Parliament, requiring the sheriffs of London, Middlesex, and Surrey, the
head bailiff of the Dutchy Liberty, or the bailiff of Surrey, under the
penalty of one hundred pounds, to execute with the assistance of the
_posse comitatus_ any writ or warrant directed to them for seizing any
person within any pretended privilege place such as Whitefriars, the
Savoy, Salisbury Court, Ram Alley, Mitre Court, Fuller's Rents,
Baldwin's Gardens, Montague Close or the Minories, Mint, Clink, or Dead
Man's Place.[50] At the same time they ordered the assistance for
executing the Law, of any who obey the sheriff or other person or
persons in such places as aforesaid, with very great penalties upon
persons who attempt to rescue persons from the hands of justice in such
place.
This law had a very good effect with respect to all places excepting
those within the jurisdiction of the Mint, though not without some
struggle. There, however, they still continued to keep up those
privileges they had assumed, and accordingly did maintain them by so far
misusing persons who attempted to execute processes amongst them, by
ducking them in ditches, dragging them through privies or "lay stalls,"
accompanied by a number of people dressed up in frightful habits, who
were summoned upon blowing a horn. All which at last became so very
great a grievance that the legislature was again forced to interpose,
and by an act of the 9th of the late King, the Mint, as it was commonly
called, situated in the parish of St. George's, Southwark, in the county
of Surrey, was taken away, and the punishment of transportation, and
even death, inflicted upon such who should persist in maintaining there
pretended privileges.
Yet so far did the Government extend its mercy, as to suffer all those
who at the time of passing the Act were actually shelterers in the Mint
(provided that they made a just discovery of their effects) to be
discharged from any imprisonment of their persons for any debts
contracted before that time. By this Act of Parliament, the privilege of
the Mint was totally taken away and destroyed.
The persons who had so many years supported themselves therein were
dissipated and dispersed. But many of them got again into debt, and
associating themselves with other persons in the same condition, with
unparalleled impudence they attempted to set up (towards Wapping) a new
privileged jurisdiction under the title of the Seven Cities of Refuge.
In this attempt they were much furthered and directed by one Major
Santloe, formerly a Justice of Peace, but being turned out of
commission, he came first a shelterer here, and afterwards a prisoner in
the Fleet. These people made an addition to these laws which had
formerly been established in such illegal sanctuaries, for they provided
large books in which they entered the names of persons who entered into
their association, swearing to defend one another against all bailiffs
and such like. In consequence of which, they very often rescued
prisoners out of custody, or even entered the houses of officers for
that purposes. Amongst the number of these unhappy people, who by
protecting themselves against the lesser judgments of the Law involved
themselves in greater difficulties, and at last drew on the greatest and
most heavy sentence which it could pronounce, was him we now speak of.
Charles Towers was a person whose circumstances had been bad for many
years, and in order to retrieve them he had turned gamester. For a
guinea or two, it seems, he engaged for the payment of a very
considerable debt for a friend, who not paying it at his time, Towers
was obliged to fly for shelter into the Old Mint, then in being. He went
into the New, which was just then setting up, and where the Shelterers
took upon them to act more licentiously and with greater outrages
towards officers of Justice than the people in any other places had
done. Particularly they erected a tribunal on which a person chosen for
that purpose sat as a judge with great state and solemnity. When any
bailiff had attempted to arrest persons within the limits which they
assumed for their jurisdiction, he was seized immediately by a mob of
their own people, and hurried before the judge of their own choosing.
There a sort of charge or indictment was preferred against him, for
attempting to disturb the peace of the Shelterers within the
jurisdiction of the Seven Cities of Refuge. Then they examined certain
witnesses to prove this, and thereupon pretending to convict such
bailiff as a criminal, he was sentenced by their judge aforesaid to be
whipped or otherwise punished as he thought fit, which was executed
frequently in the most cruel and barbarous manner, by dragging him
through ditches and other nasty places, tearing his clothes off his
back, and even endangering his life.
One West, who had got amongst them, being arrested by John Errington,
who carried him to his house by Wapping Wall, the Shelterers in the New
Mint no sooner heard thereof, but assembling on a Sunday morning in a
great number, with guns, swords, staves, and other offensive weapons,
they went to the house of the said John Errington, and there terrifying
and affrighting the persons in the house rescued John West, pursuant, as
they said, to their oaths, he being registered as a protected person in
their books of the Seven Cities of Refuge. In this expedition Charles
Towers was very forward, being dressed with only a blue pea-jacket,
without hat, wig or shirt, with a large stick like a quarter-staff in
his hand, his face and breast being so blackened that it appeared to be
done with soot and grease, contrary to the Statute made against those
called The Waltham Blacks, and done after the first day of June, 1723,
when that Statute took place.
Upon an indictment for this, the fact being very fully and dearly
proved, notwithstanding his defence, which was that he was no more
disguised than his necessity obliged him to be, not having wherewith to
provide himself clothes, and his face perhaps dirty and daubed with mud,
the jury found him guilty, and he thereupon received sentence of death.
Before the execution of that sentence, he insisted strenuously on his
innocence as to the point on which he was found guilty and condemned,
viz., having his face blacked and disguised within the intent and
meaning of the Statute, but he readily acknowledged that he had been
often present and assisted at such mock courts of justice as were held
in the New Mint, though he absolutely denied sitting as judge when one
Mr. Westwood, a bailiff, was most abominably abused by an order of that
pretended court. He seemed fully sensible of the ills and injuries he
had committed by being concerned amongst such people, but often said
that he thought the bailiffs had sufficiently revenged themselves by the
cruel treatment they had used the riotous persons with, when they fell
within their power, particularly since they hacked and chopped a
carpenter's right arm in such a manner that it was obliged to be cut
off; had abused others in so terrible a degree that they were not able
to work, or do anything for their living. He himself had received
several large cuts over the head, which though received six weeks
before, yet were in a very bad condition at the time of his death.
As to disguises, he constantly averred they were never practised in the
New Mint. He owned they had had some masquerades amongst them, to which
himself amongst others had gone in the dress of a miller, and his face
all covered with white, but as to any blacking or other means to prevent
his face being known when he rescued West he had none, but on the
contrary was in his usual habit as all the rest were that accompanied
him. He framed as well as he could a petition for mercy, setting forth
the circumstances of the thing, and the hardship he conceived it to be
to suffer upon the bare construction of an Act of Parliament. He set
forth likewise, the miserable condition of his wife and two children
already, she being also big of a third. This petition she presented to
his Majesty at the Council Chamber door, but the necessity there was of
preventing such combinations for obstructing justice, rendered it of no
effect. Upon her return, and Towers being acquainted with the result, he
said he was contented, that he went willingly into a land of quiet from
a world so troublesome and so tormenting as this had been to him. Then
he kneeled down and prayed with great fervency and devotion, after which
he appeared very composed and showed no rage against the prosecutor and
witnesses who had brought on his death, as is too often the case with
men in his miserable condition.
On the day appointed for his execution, he was carried in a cart to a
gallows whereon he was to suffer in Wapping, the crowd, as is not common
on such occasions, lamenting him, and pouring down showers of tears, he
himself behaving with great calmness and intrepidity. After prayers had
been said, he stood up in the cart, and turning towards the people,
professed his innocence in being in a disguise at the time of rescuing
Mr. West, and with the strongest asserverations said that it was Captain
Buckland and not himself who sat as judge upon Mr. Jones the bailiff,
though, as he complained, he had been ill-used while he remained a
prisoner upon that score. To this he added that for the robberies and
thefts with which he was charged, they were falsities, as he was a dying
man. Money indeed, be said, might be shaken out of the breeches pocket
of the bailiff when he was ditched, but that whether it was or was not
so, he was no judge, for he never saw any of it. That as to any design
of breaking open Sir Isaac Tilliard's house, he was innocent of that
also. In fine, he owned that the judgment of God was exceeding just for
the many offences he committed, but that the sentence of the Law was too
severe, because, as he understood it, he had done nothing culpable
within the intent of the Statute on which he died. After this, he
inveighed for some time against bailiffs, and then crying with vehemency
to God to receive his spirit, he gave up the ghost on the 4th of
January, 1724-5.
However the death of Towers might prevent people committing such acts as
breaking open the houses of bailiffs, and setting prisoners at liberty,
yet it did not quite stifle or destroy those attempts which necessitous
people made for screening themselves from public justice, insomuch that
the Government were obliged at last to cause a Bill to be brought into
Parliament for the preventing such attempts for the future, whereupon in
the 11th year of the late King, it passed into a law to this effect:
That if any number of persons not less than three, associate themselves
together in the hamlet of Wapping, Stepney, or in any other place within
the bills of mortality, in order to shelter themselves from their debts,
after complaint made thereof by presentment of a grand jury, and should
obstruct any officer legally empowered and authorised in the execution
of any writ or warrant against any person whatsoever, and in such
obstructing or hindering should hurt, wound or injure any person; then
any offender convicted of such offence, should suffer as a felon and be
transported for seven years in like manner as other persons are so
convicted. And it is further enacted by the same law that upon
application made to the judge of any Court, out of which the writs
therein mentioned are issued, the aforesaid judge, if he see proper, may
grant a warrant directly to the sheriff, or other person proper to raise
the _posse comitatus_, where there is any probability of resistance. And
if in the execution of such warrant any disturbance should happen, and a
rescue be made, then the persons assisting in such rescue, or who
harbour or conceal the persons so rescued, shall be transported for
seven years in like manner as if convicted of felony, but all
indictments upon this statute are to be commenced within six months
after the fact committed.