NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Prison records meagre--Administration of justice and state of
crime--Lenity alternates with great severity--Disturbances in
London--The ‘Black Waggon’--A ’prentice riot--Criminal inmates of
Newgate--Masterless men--Slandering the Corporation--Robbery with
violence--Debtors--Conscience prisoners--Martyrs in reign of Henry
VIII.--Religious dissidents: Porter, Anne Askew--Maryan
persecutions--Rogers--Bishop Hooper--Philpot--Alexander the cruel
gaoler of Newgate--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--Condition of gaol--Oppression of the
inmates and their disorderly conduct--Gaolers of that 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. There were
prisons, but these receptacles, except for debtors, were only the ante
chambers of the pillory and the scaffold. 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,[28] 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.[29] 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.[30] 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 heinous offenders.
Yet there were occasional spasmodic intervals of 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 on 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.
Newgate, like all other gaols, was at times scandalously over-crowded,
not only with the felons and trespassers who long languished waiting
trial, but with far less guilty offenders. There were also the debtors
and the conscience prisoners: the delinquents whose crime was
impecuniosity or commercial failure, and the independent thinkers who
stoutly maintained their right to profess forms of belief at variance
with the government creed of the hour. 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 ante-chamber 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.”[31] Again, the ringleaders of false inquests, Darby, Smith,
and Simson by name, were, in the first year of Henry’s reign (1509),
condemned to ride about the city with their faces to the 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.[32]
A longer story and a heavier doom was that of the ’prentice lads who
upon ‘Evil May-day,’ as it was afterwards called, raised a tumult in the
city against the competition of foreign workmen, who were about this
time established in great numbers in the suburbs. One John Lincoln, a
meddlesome city broker, was so much exercised at this foreign
interference that he went about seeking a parson who would declaim
against it from the pulpit. One Dr. Bell or Bele, who was to preach at
the Spital Church, agreed to read from the pulpit a bill which this
Lincoln had drawn up, and which set forth the wrongs suffered by native
artificers and merchants. Dr. Bell followed the reading by an
inflammatory sermon upon the text _Pugna pro Patria_, by which “many a
light-headed person took courage and openly spoke against” the
foreigners. As divers ill things had been done of late by these
strangers, the people’s rancour was kindled most furiously against them.
Conflicts took place in the streets between “the young men of the city”
and the strangers, so that several of the former were committed to
Newgate. Among others Stephen Studley, skinner, and Stephenson Betts.
Then arose “a secret rumour that on May-day following the city would
slay all the aliens.” News thereof reached Cardinal Wolsey, who summoned
the Lord Mayor, and desired him to take all due precautions. It was
settled by agreement between the Corporation and the cardinal that
every citizen should be commanded to shut up his doors after nine at
night, and keep his servants within. It so chanced that Alderman Sir
John Mundy the same night, coming from his ward, found two young men
playing at the bucklers, and many others looking on. The order for early
closing had not indeed been fully circulated as yet. Sir John Mundy
ordered the combatants to desist, and on their hesitation was for
sending them to the Compter. But the apprentices rose against the
alderman, crying, “’Prentices! clubs! clubs!” A crowd soon collected,
the alderman took to flight, and by eleven at night there were in Cheap
six or seven hundred “serving-men, watermen, courtiers, and others,” and
out of St. Paul’s Churchyard came some three hundred more. The mob,
growing riotous, attacked the Compter and released all prisoners
confined therein for “hurting the strangers”; thence they went to
Newgate and set free Studley and Betts. Gaining courage by these
excesses, they ranged the streets, throwing sticks and stones, spoiling
all they found. The strangers were the principal victims. The house of
one Mewtas, a Picard, and those of other Frenchmen residing at the
Greengate, Leadenhall, were broken open and plundered. The riot
continued till three in the morning, “at which time they began to
withdraw, but by the way were taken by the mayor and others, and sent to
the Tower, Newgate and the Compters to the number of three hundred.”
The king took very summary measures for the punishment of the rioters.
Bell the preacher was arrested and sent to the Tower. A commission of
_oyer_ and _terminer_ was forthwith opened at the Guildhall, and the
whole of the prisoners, to the number of two hundred and seventy-eight,
were marched through the streets, tied with ropes, and put upon their
trial. Lincoln the ringleader and other thirteen were sentenced to be
hanged, drawn, and quartered; for execution whereof ten pairs of gallows
were put up in divers parts of the city: “before each of the Compters,
at Newgate, St. Martin’s, Aldersgate, and Bishopgate, which gallows were
set on wheels, to be removed from street to street and door to door as
the prisoners were to be executed.” Lincoln suffered death, but the rest
were reprieved pending the king’s pleasure. He lay at his manor of
Greenwich just then, and thither the mayor, recorder, and divers
aldermen repaired to beg mercy for the city. But Henry VIII. was not to
be easily appeased. He still blamed the city authorities for not
checking these disorders in a more determined fashion, and referred them
for answer to his chancellor the cardinal. Wolsey granted them his
favour for a consideration, and counselled them to again petition the
king. They came to him, therefore, at his palace of Westminster, to the
number of four hundred men, in their shirts, bound together with ropes,
and with halters about their necks, and were at first sharply rebuked by
the cardinal, who told them they deserved death. But at the earnest
entreaty of the attendant lords, who were much moved by the humiliating
sight, they were pardoned and dismissed. The gallows in the city were
taken down, and all in durance were set free. Thus ended the “black
waggon,” as the procession of citizens was called, but “not, as it is
thought, without paying a considerable sum of money to the cardinal to
stand their friend, for at that time he was in such power he did all
with the king.”[33]
A few further extracts will serve to describe some other 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.”
It was not less dangerous to let the tongue wag too freely against the
city authorities. Articles are exhibited (April, 1524) against “John
Sampye, tailor, for saying (1) that he had been wrongfully imprisoned in
the Compter by the Mayor of London and Nicholas Partriche, alderman; (2)
that they had no power to send any man to ward; (3) that many were cast
away by lying in the Compter and Newgate at the command of the
Corporation.” The Corporation appear also to have dealt in a very
high-handed fashion with the city bakers, possibly to break down their
monopoly, but a little on personal private grounds. In 1526 the bakers
petition Wolsey for redress, setting forth that they have always been
accustomed to “occupy the making and selling of bread for the city, and
since the time of Edward II. have been used to take up wheat arriving in
London at the price given them by the mayor; but within the last five
years certain persons, aldermen and others, out of malice to the mystery
and under colour of common weal, have procured that all the wheat coming
to the city should be garnered at the Bridge House, and the bakers
suffered to buy no other.... Lately the mayor and aldermen tried to
compel the bakers to buy two thousand quarters of musty wheat at 12_s._
when sweet wheat may be bought for 7_s._ or 8_s._” When some bakers
refused the mayor sent them to Newgate for eleven days, and shut up
their houses and shops, not allowing their wives or families to visit
them or buy their bread.
Now and again 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.[34] 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 number,
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.[35] 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
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[36] 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 that he
threw him down backwards and brake his head, and that he swooned; and
when he came to himself again he thanked God that he was delivered from
the malignant Church of Antichrist, and that he was come into the true
sincere Church of Jesus Christ militant here on earth; ... and so was he
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,[37] 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 armholes, “and burnt 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.”[38]
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 beerbrewer, 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.”[39]
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 attended the
reading of 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, rebuked him very sharply for
his reading. Porter defended himself, but Bonner charged him with making
expositions on the text,
[Illustration: SKEFFINGTON’S GYVES.]
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 melancholy 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
[Illustration: TORTURE IN THE TOWER.]
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
there-for. 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 proto-martyr--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; 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.”[40]
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,
[Illustration: THE TORTURE OF THE BOOT.]
‘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, committed to Newgate,[41] 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 you 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 came 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,
Feb. 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 night-gown, Bible, and lute, and then he goes on to describe
Newgate as follows:[42]--
“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. 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 sessions
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.”[43] 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, headed, 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 for 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 cut-purses in and about
the city. In this house was a room to learn 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[44] 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.
Years before (1569) a man, 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 (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 that he had a hundred
years past, and which he had at Rome, “with other traitorous speeches,
for the which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.” The
same year William Dios (a Spaniard?), keeper of Newgate, sends 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 26, 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,[45] 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 just then--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[46] 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 maybe 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 Hollinshed, “Gregory, Carpenter,
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 by no means
irresponsible agents. 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 wilful 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.”[47] A searching inquiry was also made into the conduct of Crowder,
the keeper of Newgate in 1580,[48] or thereabouts. The State Papers
contain an information of the disorders practiced 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. Apparently Crowder had no chance of being reinstated, for his
friend the Lord Chancellor tries next to get his pension raised. The
exact amount is not stated, but Sir Thomas Bromley suggests that it
should be made up to £40, twenty nobles of which should be paid by his
successor. There is no mention of any such increase having been
conceded.