years through a feeling that is akin to Mercy and Forbearance towards my
Reader. For I well know how desperately given is John Dangerous to a
wordy Garrulity--how prone he is to make much of little things, and to
elevate to the dignity of Important and Commanding Events that which is
perchance only of the very slightest moment. By Prosing and Amplifying,
by Moralizing and Digressing, by spinning of yarns and wearing of
reflections threadbare, I might make a Great Book out of the pettiest
and most uneventful career; but even in honestly transcribing my actual
adventures, one by one,--the things I have done, and the Men and Women I
have known,--I should imperceptibly swell a Narrative, which was at
first meant to attain no great volume, to most deplorable dimensions.
And the World will no longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether
they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or
even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants
smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For
these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat
you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen
summers, but as a sturdy, well-set man of thirty-three.
Yet, lest mine Enemies and other vile Rascal Fellows that go about the
town taking away the characters of honest people for mere Envy and
Spitefulness' sake, lest these petty curmudgeons should, in their own
sly saucy manner, Mop and Mow, and Grin and Whisper, that If I am silent
as to Fifteen Years of my Sayings and Doings, I have good cause for
holding my peace,--lest these scurril Slanderers should insinuate that
during this time I lay in divers Gaols for offences which I dare not
avow, that I was concerned in Desperate and Unlawful Enterprises which
brought upon me many Indictments in the King's Courts, or that I was
ever Pilloried, or held to Bail for contemptible misdemeanours,--I do
here declare and affirm that for the whole of the time I so pass over I
earned my bread in a perfectly Honest, Legal, and Honourable Manner, and
that I never once went out of the limits of the United Kingdom. I have
heard, indeed, a Ridiculous Tale setting forth that, finding myself
Destitute in London after the Chaplain, Mr Pinchin, and I had parted
company, and after escaping from the Pressgang, I enlisted in the Foot
Guards. The preposterous Fable goes on to say that quickly mastering my
Drill, and being a favourite with my officers, whom I much pleased with
my Alacrity and Intelligence, although they were much given to laugh at
my assumptions of superior Birth, and nicknamed me "Gentleman Jack,"--I
was promoted to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the
dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I
betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming
from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at
Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watch, and a
bottle-screw. And that being taken by the Hue and Cry, and had before
Justice de Veil then sitting at the Sun Tavern in Bow Street, I should
have been committed to Newgate, tried, and most likely have swung for
the robbery, but for the strong intercession of my Captain, who was a
friend of the Gentleman robbed. That I was indeed enlarged, but was not
suffered to go scot-free, inasmuch as, being tried by court-martial for
absence without leave on the night of the gentleman's misfortune, I was
sentenced to receive three hundred lashes at the halberts. Infamous and
Absurd calumnies!
Behold me, then, in the beginning of the year 1747 in the Service of his
Sacred Majesty King George the Second. Behold me, further, installed in
no common Barrack, mean Guard-house, or paltry Garrison Town, but in one
of the most famous of his Majesty's Royal Fortresses:--a place that had
been at once and for centuries (ever since the days of Julius Caesar, as
I am told) a Palace, a Citadel, and a Prison. In good sooth, I was one
of the King's Warders, and the place where I was stationed was the
Ancient and Honourable Tower of London.
Whether I had ever worn the King's uniform before, either in scarlet as
a Soldier in his armies, or of blue and tarpaulin as a Sailor in his
Fleets, or of brown as a Riding Officer in his customs,--under which
guise a man may often have doughty encounters with smugglers that are
trying to run their contraband cargoes, or to hide their goods in
farmers' houses,--or of green, as a Keeper in one of the Royal
Chases,--I absolutely refuse to say. Here I am, or rather here I was, a
Warder and in the Tower.
I was bravely accoutred. A doublet of crimson cloth, with the crown, the
Royal Cipher G. R., and a wreath of laurel embroidered in gold, both on
its back and front; a linen ruff, well plaited, round my neck, sleeves
puffed with black velvet, trunk-hose of scarlet, rosettes in my slashed
shoes, and a flat hat with a border of the red and white roses of York
and Lancaster in satin ribbon,--these made up my costume. There were
forty of us in the Tower, mounting guard with drawn swords at the
portcullis gate and at the entrances to the lodgings of such as were in
hold, and otherwise attending upon unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen
who were in trouble. On state occasions, when taking prisoners by water
from the Tower to Westminster, and in preceding the Lieutenant to the
outward port, we carried Halberts or Partisans with tassels of gold and
crimson thread. But although our dress was identical, as you may see
from the prints, with that of the Beef-Eaters, we Tower Warders were of
a very different kidney to the lazy hangers-on about St. James's. Those
fellows were Anybodies, Parasites of Back-Stairs favourites, and spies
and lacqueys, transformed serving-men, butlers past drawing corks,
grooms and porters, even. They had nothing to do but loiter about the
antechambers and staircases of St. James's, to walk by the side of his
Majesty's coach when he went to the Houses of Parliament, or to fight
with the Marshalmen at Royal Funerals for petty spoils of wax-candles or
shreds of black hangings. The knaves actually wore wigs, and powdered
them, as though they had been so many danglers on the Mall. They passed
their time, when not in requisition about the Court, smoking and
card-playing in the taverns and mug-houses about Scotland Yard and
Spring Gardens. They had the run of a few servant-wenches belonging to
great people, but we did not envy them their sweethearts. Some of them,
I verily believe, were sunk so low as, when they were not masquerading
at court, to become tavern-drawers, or ushers and cryers in the courts
of law about Westminster. A very mean people were these Beef-eaters, and
they toiled not, neither did they spin, for the collops they ate.
But we brave boys of the Tower earned both our Beef and our Bread, and
the abundant Beer and Strong Waters with which we washed our victuals
down. We were military men, almost all. Some of us had fought at
Blenheim or Ramilies--these were the veterans: the very juniors had made
the French Maison du Roy scamper, or else crossed bayonets with the
Irish Brigade (a brave body of men, but deplorably criminal in carrying
arms against a Gracious and Clement Prince) in some of those well-fought
German Fields, in which His Royal Highness the Duke and my Lord George
Sackville (since Germaine, and my very good friend and Patron) covered
themselves with immortal glory. Nay some of us, One of us at least, had
fought and bled, to the amazement of his comrades and the admiration of
his commanders,--never mind where. 'Tis not the luck of every soldier to
have had his hand wrung by the Great Duke of Cumberland, or to have been
presented with ten guineas to drink his health withal by Field-Marshal
Wade. We would have thought it vile poltroonery and macaronism to have
worn wigs--to say nothing of powder--unless, indeed, the peruke was a
true Malplaquet club or Dettingen scratch.
Our duties were no trifling ones, let me assure you. The Tower, as a
place of military strength, was well looked after by the Regiment of
Foot Guards and the Companies of Artillery that did garrison duties on
its ramparts and the foot of its drawbridges; but to us was confided a
charge much more onerous, and the custody of things much more precious.
We had other matters to mind besides seeing that stray dogs did not
venture on to the Tower Green, that dust did not get into the cannon's
mouths, or that Grand Rounds received proper salutes. Was not the
Imperial Crown of England in our keeping? Had we not to look after the
Royal diadem, the orb, the sceptre, the Swords of Justice and of Mercy,
and the great parcel-gilt Salt Cellar that is moulded in the likeness of
the White Tower itself? Did it not behove us to keep up a constant care
and watchfulness, lest among the curious strangers and country cousins
who trudged to the Jewel House to see all that glittering and golden
finery, and who gave us shillings to exhibit them, there might be
lurking some Rogue as dishonest and as desperate as that Colonel Blood
who so nearly succeeded in getting away with the crown and other
valuables in King Charles the Second's time. Oh! I warrant you that we
kept sharp eyes on the curious strangers and the country cousins, and
allowed them not to go too near the grate behind which were those
priceless baubles.
But another charge had we, I trow. Of all times had this famous fortress
of the Tower of London been a place of hold for the King's prisoners.
Felons, nor cutpurses, nor wantons suffered we indeed in our precincts,
nor gave we the hospitality of dungeons to; but of state prisoners,
noblemen and gentlemen in durance for High Treason, or for other
offences against the Royal State and Prerogative, had we always a
plentiful store. Some of the greatest Barons--the proudest names in
England--have pined their lives away within the Tower's inexorable
walls. Walls! why there were little dungeons and casemates built in the
very thickness of those huge mural stones. In ancient days I have heard
that foul deeds were common in the fortress--that princes were done to
Death here--notably the two poor Royal infants that the wicked Richard
of Gloucester bid his hell-hounds smother and bury at the foot of the
stairs in that building which has ever since gone by the name of the
Bloody Tower. So, too, I am afraid it is a true bill that Torture was in
the bad old days indiscriminately used towards both gentle and simple in
some gloomy underground places in this said Tower. I have heard of a
Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to
torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a
Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the agonies used upon 'em should be
too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery,
rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile
mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of
"Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and
other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told; but
all had long fallen into disuse before my time. The last persons
tortured within the Tower walls were, I believe, Colonel Faux (Guido)
and his confederates, for their most abominable Gunpowder Plot, which
was to put an end to the Protestant Religion and the illustrious House
of Stuart at one fell blow; but happily came to nothing, through the
prudence of my Lord Monteagle, and the well-nigh superhuman sagacity of
his Majesty King James the First. Guy and his accomplices they tortured
horribly; and did not even give 'em the honour of being beheaded on
Tower Hall,--they being sent away as common traitors to Old Palace Yard
(close to the scene of their desperately meditated but fortunately
abortive crime), and there half-hanged, cut down while yet warm,
disembowelled, their Hearts and Inwards taken out and burnt by Gregory
(that was hangman then, and that, as Gregory Brandon, had a coat-of-arms
given him as a gentleman, through a fraud practised upon Garter King),
and their mangled bodies--their heads severed--cut into quarters, well
coated with pitch, and stuck upon spikes over London Bridge, east
Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort,
according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case
made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews,
boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from
which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England,
recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit
most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; but it is certain
that when Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at Portsmouth, and was taken
red-handed, the Courtiers, Parasites, and other cruel persons that were
about the King, would fain have had him racked; but the public,--which
by this time had begun to inquire pretty sharply about Things of
State,--cried out that Felton should not be tormented (their not loving
the Duke of Bucks too much may have been one reason for their wishing
some degree of leniency to be shown to the assassin), and the opinion of
the Judges being taken, those learned Persons, in full court of King's
Bench assembled, decided that Torture was contrary to the Law of
England, and could not legally be used upon any of the King's subjects
howsoever guilty he might have been.
But I confess that when I first took up service as a Tower Warder, and
gazed upon those horrible implements of Man's cruelty and
hard-heartedness collected in the Armoury, I imagined with dismay that,
all rusty as they had grown, there might be occasions for them to be
used upon the persons of unfortunate captives. For I had lived much
abroad, and knew what devilish freaks were often indulged in by
arbitrary and unrestrained power. But my comrades soon put my mind at
ease, and pointed out to me that few, very few, of these instruments of
Anguish were of English use or origin at all; but that the great
majority of these wicked things were from among the spoils of the Great
Armada, when the proud Spaniards, designing to invade this free and
happy country with their monstrous Flotilla of Caravels and Galleons,
provided numerous tools of Torture for despitefully using the Heretics
(as they called them) who would not obey the unrighteous mandates of a
foreign despot, or submit to the domination (usurped) of the Bishop of
Rome. And so tender indeed of the bodies of the King's prisoners had the
Tower authorities become, that the underground dungeons were now never
used, commodious apartments being provided for the noblemen and
gentlemen in hold: and a pretty penny they had to pay for their
accommodation; five guineas a day, besides warder and gentlemen gaolers'
fees, being the ordinary charge for a nobleman, and half that sum for a
knight and private esquire. Besides this, the Lieutenant of the Tower
had a gratuity of thirty pounds from every peer that came into his
custody, and twenty pounds for every gentleman writing himself
_Armiger_, and in default could seize upon their cloaks: whence arose a
merry saying--"best go to the Tower like a peeled carrot than come forth
like one."
There were even no chains used in this state prison; of fetters and
manacles we had indeed a plenitude, all of an antique pattern and
covered with rust; but no irons such as are put upon their prisoners by
vulgar gaolers in Newgate and elsewhere. I have heard say, that when
poor Counsellor Layer, that was afterwards hanged, drawn, and quartered
as a Jacobite, and his head stuck atop of Temple Bar hard by his own
chambers,--was first brought for safer custody to the Tower, breakings
out of Newgate having been common, the Government sent down word that,
as a deep-dyed conspirator and desperate rebel, he was to be
double-ironed. Upon this Mr. Lieutenant flies into a mighty heat, and
taking boat to Whitehall, waits on Mr. Secretary at the Cockpit, and
tells him plainly that such an indignity towards his Majesty's prisoners
in the Tower was never heard of, that no such base modes of coercion as
chains or bilboes had ever been known in use since the reign of King
Charles I., and that the King's warders were there to see that the
prisoners did not attempt Evasion. To which Mr. Secretary answered, with
a grim smile, that notwithstanding all the keenness of the watch and
ward, he had often heard of prisoners escaping from durance in the
Tower, notably mentioning the case of my Lord Nithesdale, who escaped in
his lady's clothes, and without more ado informed the Lieutenant that
Counsellor Layer must be chained as directed, even if the chains had to
be forged expressly for him. Upon which Mr. Lieutenant took a very surly
leave of the Great Man, cursing him as he comes down the steps for a
Thief-catcher and Tyburn purveyor, and sped him to Newgate, where he
borrowed a set of double-irons from the Peachum or Lockit, or whatever
the fellow's name it was that kept that Den of Thieves. And even then,
when they had gotten the chains to the Tower, none of the warders knew
how to put them on, or cared to sully their fingers with such hangman's
work; and so they were fain to have a blacksmith with his anvil, and a
couple of turnkeys down from Newgate, to rivet the chains upon the poor
gentleman's limbs; he being at the time half dead of a Strangury; but so
cruel was justice in those days.
When I first came to the Tower, we had but few prisoners; for it was
before the Great Rebellion of the 'Forty-five; and for a few years
previous the times had been after a manner quiet. Now and then some
notorious Jacobite, Seminarist, or seditious person was taken up; but he
was rarely of sufficient importance to be confined in our illustrious
Prison; and was either had to Newgate, or else incarcerated in the
lodgings of a King's Messenger till his examinations were over, and he
was either committed or Enlarged. These Messengers kept, in those days,
a kind of Sponging Houses for High Treason, where Gentlemen Traitors who
were not in very great peril lived, as it were, at an ordinary, and paid
much dearer for their meat and lodging than though they had been at some
bailiffs lock-up in Cursitor Street, or Tooke's Court, or at the Pied
Bull in the Borough. We had, it is true, for a long time a Romanist
Bishop that was suspected of being in correspondence with St. Germain's,
and lay for a long time under detention. He was a merry old soul, and
most learned man; would dine very gaily with Mr. Lieutenant, or his
deputy, or the Fort Major, swig his bottle of claret, and play a game
of tric-trac afterwards; and it was something laughable to watch the
quiet cunning way in which he would seek to Convert us Warders who had
the guarding of him to the Romanist faith. They let him out at last upon
something they called a _Nolle prosequi_ of the Attorney-General, or
some suchlike dignitary of the law--which _nolle prosequi_ I take to be
a kind of _habeas corpus_ for gentlefolks. He was as liberal to us when
he departed as his means would allow; for I believe that save his
cassock, his breviary, a gold cross round his neck, and episcopal ring,
and a portmantel full of linen, the old gentleman had neither goods nor
chattels in the wide world: indeed, we heard that the Lieutenant lent
him, on leaving, a score of gold pieces, for friendship-sake, to
distribute among us. But he went away--to foreign parts, I infer--with
flying colours; for every body loved the old Bishop, all Romanist and
suspected Jacobite as he was.
Then came that dreadful era of rebellion of which I have spoken, and we
Tower Warders found that our holiday time was over. Whilst the war still
raged in Scotland, scarcely a day passed without some person of
consequence being brought either by water to Traitor's Gate, or by a
strong escort of Horse and Foot to the Tower Postern; not for active
participation in the Rebellion, but as a measure of safety, and to
prevent worse harm being done. And many persons of consequence, trust
me, saved their heads by being laid by the heels for a little time while
the hue and cry was afoot, and Habeas Corpus suspended. Fast bind, safe
find, is a true proverb; and you may thank your stars, even if your
enemies have for a time bound you with chains and with links of iron,
if, when the stormy season has gone past, you find your head still safe
on your shoulders. Now it was a great Lord who was brought to the Tower,
and from whom Mr. Lieutenant did not forget to claim his thirty-pound
fee on entrance; for "here to-day, gone to-morrow," he reasoned, and so
shot his game as soon as he had good parview of the same. Now it was
some Cheshire or Lancashire Squire, snatched away from his Inn, at the
Hercules' Pillars, or the Catherine Wheel in the Borough, as being
vehemently suspected of Jacobitism. These gentlemen mostly took their
captivity in a very cheerful and philosophical manner. They would call
for a round of spiced beef, a tankard of ale, and a pipe of tobacco, so
soon as ever they were fairly bestowed in their lodgings; drank to the
King--taking care not to let us know whether his name began with a G or
a J, with many jovial ha-has, and were as happy as the day was long, so
it seemed to us, if they had but a pack of cards and a volume of the
Gentleman's Recreation, or Academy of Field Sports. What bowls of punch,
too, they would imbibe o' nights, and what mad carouses they would have!
Such roaring Squires as these would have been much better bestowed in
the Messengers' Houses; but these were all full, likewise the common
gaols; nay, the debtors' prisons and vile sponging-houses were taken up
by Government for the temporary incarceration of suspected persons.
How well do I remember the dreadful amazement and consternation which
broke over this city when the news came that the Prince--I mean the
Pretender--had utterly routed the King's troops commanded by Sir John
Cope at Prestonpans; that the Misguided Young Man had entered
Edinborough at the head of a furious mob of Highlandmen, whose
preposterous style of dress I never could abide, and who in those days
we Southrons held as being very little better than painted Savages; that
the ladies of the Scottish capital had all mounted the white cockade,
and were embroidering scarves for the Pretender and his officers, and
that the Castle of Edinborough alone held out 'gainst this monstrous
uprising to destroy authority! But how much greater was the Dismay in
London when we learnt that the Rebels, not satisfied with their
conquests in his Majesty's Scottish Dominions, had been so venturous as
to invade England itself, and had actually advanced so far as the
trading town of Derby! Then did those who had been long, albeit
obscurely, suspected of Jacobitism, come forth from their lurking holes
and corners, and almost openly avow their preference for the House of
Stuart. Then did very many respectable persons, formerly thought to be
excellently well affected towards King George's person and Government,
become waverers, or prove themselves the Turncoats they had always, in
secret, been, and seditiously prophesy that the days of the Hanoverian
dynasty were numbered. Then did spies and traitors abound, together with
numbers of alarming rumours, that the Chevalier had advanced as far as
Barnet on the Great North Road; that his Majesty was about to convey
himself away to Hanover; that the Duke of Cumberland was dead; that
barrels of gunpowder had been discovered in the Crypt beneath
Guildhall, and in the vaults of the Chapel Royal; that mutiny was rife
among the troops; that the Bank of England was about to break, with
sundry other distracting reports and noises.
Of course authority did all it could to reassure the public mind, tossed
in a most tempestuous manner as it was by conflicting accounts.
Authority bestirred itself to put down seditious meetings by
proclamation, and to interdict residence in the capital to all known
Papists; whereby several most estimable Catholic gentlemen (as many
there be of that old Faith) were forced to leave their Town Houses, and
betake themselves to mean and inconvenient dwellings in the country. The
gates of Temple Bar were now shut, on sudden alarms, two or three times
a week; as though the closing of these rotten portals could in any way
impede the progress of rebellion, or do any thing more than further to
hamper the already choked-up progress of the streets. The Lord Mayor was
mighty busy calling out the Train-bands, and having them drilled in
Moorfields, for the defence of the City; and a mighty fine show those
citizen soldiers would have made no doubt to the bare-legged
Highlandmen, had they come that way. The Guards at all the posts at the
Court end of the town were doubled, and we at the Tower put ourselves
into a perfect state of defence. Cannon were run out; matches kept
lighted; whole battalions maintained under arms; munitions and
provisions of war laid in, as though to withstand a regular siege;
drawbridges pulled up and portcullises lowered, with great clanking of
chains and gnashing of old iron teeth;--and rich sport it was to see
those old rust-eaten engines once more brought into gear again.