A SPARE, lean frame; a small head set forward upon a pair of sloping
shoulders; a thin, sharp nose, and rat-like eyes; a flat, hollow chest;
shrunk shanks, modestly retreating from their snuff-coloured hose--these
are the tokens which served to remind his friends of Ralph Briscoe, the
Clerk of Newgate. As he left the prison in the grey air of morning
upon some errand of mercy or revenge, he appeared the least fearsome of
mortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impression
of timidity. So abstract was his manner, so hesitant his gait, that he
would hug the wall as he went, nervously stroking its grimy surface with
his long, twittering fingers. But Ralph, as justice and the Jug knew
too well, was neither fool nor coward. His character belied his outward
seeming. A large soul had crept into the case of his wizened body, and
if a poltroon among his ancestors had gifted him with an alien type, he
had inherited from some nameless warrior both courage and resource.
He was born in easy circumstances, and gently nurtured in the distant
village of Kensington. Though cast in a scholar's mould, and very apt
for learning, he rebelled from the outset against a career of inaction.
His lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he would
fight with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in a
cheerful spirit of dogged pugnacity. Moreover, if his arms were weak,
his cunning was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his stricken
eye had paled, he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon his
enemy. Nor was it industry that placed him at the top of the class. A
ready wit made him master of the knowledge he despised.
But he would always desert his primer to follow the hangman's lumbering
cart up Tyburn Hill, and, still a mere imp of mischief, he would run
the weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of a
cock-fight. He was present, so he would relate in after years, when Sir
Thomas Jermin's man put his famous trick upon the pit. With a hundred
pounds in his pocket and under his arm a dunghill cock, neatly trimmed
for the fray, the ingenious ruffian, as Briscoe would tell you, went off
to Shoe Lane, persuaded an accomplice to fight the cock in Sir Thomas
Jermin's name, and laid a level hundred against his own bird. So lofty
was Sir Thomas's repute that backers were easily found, but the dunghill
rooster instantly showed a clean pair of heels, and the cheat was
justified of his cunning.
Thus Ralph Briscoe learnt the first lessons in that art of sharping
wherein he was afterwards an adept; and when he left school his head
was packed with many a profitable device which no book learning could
impart. His father, however, still resolute that he should join an
intelligent profession, sent him to Gray's Inn that he might study law.
Here the elegance of his handwriting gained him a rapid repute; his
skill became the envy of all the lean-souled clerks in the Inn, and he
might have died a respectable attorney had not the instinct of sport
forced him from the inkpot and parchment of his profession. Ill could
he tolerate the monotony and restraint of this clerkly life. In his eyes
law was an instrument, not of justice, but of jugglery. Men were born,
said his philosophy, rather to risk their necks than ink their fingers;
and if a bold adventure puts you in a difficulty, why, then, you hire
some straw-splitting attorney to show his cunning. Indeed, the study of
law was for him, as it was for Falstaff, an excuse for many a bout and
merry-making. He loved his glass, and he loved his wench, and he loved
a bull-baiting better than either. It was his boast, and Moll Cutpurse's
compliment, that he never missed a match in his life, and assuredly no
man was better known in Paris Garden than the intrepid Ralph Briscoe.
The cloistered seclusion of Gray's Inn grew daily more irksome. There
he would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers,
and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter
afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the
gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks,
until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the
bearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear,
the familiar monkey on his back, followed the shrill bagpipe along the
curious street, Briscoe felt that blood, not ink, coursed in his veins,
forgot the tiresome impediment of the law, and joined the throng, hungry
for this sport of kings. Nor was he the patron of an enterprise wherein
he dared take no part. He was as bold and venturesome as the bravest
ruffler that ever backed a dog at a baiting. When the bull, cruelly
secured behind, met the onslaught of his opponents, throwing them off,
now this side, now that, with his horns, Briscoe, lost in excitement,
would leap into the ring that not a point of the combat should escape
him.
So it was that he won the friendship of his illustrious benefactress,
Moll Cutpurse. For, one day, when he had ventured too near the maddened
bull, the brute made a heave at his breeches, which instantly gave way;
and in another moment he would have been gored to death, had not Moll
seized him by the collar and slung him out of the ring. Thus did his
courage ever contradict his appearance, and at the dangerous game
of whipping the blinded bear he had no rival, either for bravery or
adroitness. He would rush in with uplifted whip until the breath of the
infuriated beast was hot upon his cheek, let his angry lash curl for
an instant across the bear's flank, and then, for all his halting foot,
leap back into safety with a smiling pride in his own nimbleness.
His acquaintance with Moll Cutpurse, casually begun at a bull-baiting,
speedily ripened, for her into friendship, for him into love. In this,
the solitary romance of his life, Ralph Briscoe overtopped even his own
achievements of courage. The Roaring Girl was no more young, and years
had not refined her character unto gentleness. It was still her habit to
appear publicly in jerkin and galligaskins, to smoke tobacco in contempt
of her sex, and to fight her enemies with a very fury of insolence. In
stature she exceeded the limping clerk by a head, and she could pick him
up with one hand, like a kitten. Yet he loved her, not for any grace
of person, nor beauty of feature, nor even because her temperament was
undaunted as his own. He loved her for that wisest of reasons, which is
no reason at all, because he loved her. In his eyes she was the Queen,
not of Misrule, but of Hearts. Had a throne been his, she should have
shared it, and he wooed her with a shy intensity, which ennobled him,
even in her austere regard. Alas! she was unable to return his passion,
and she lamented her own obduracy with characteristic humour. She made
no attempt to conceal her admiration. 'A notable and famous person,' she
called him, confessing that, 'he was right for her tooth, and made to
her mind in every part of him.' He had been bred up in the same exercise
of bull-baiting, which was her own delight; she had always praised his
towardliness, and prophesied his preferment. But when he paid her
court she was obliged to decline the honour, while she esteemed the
compliment.
In truth, she was completely insensible to passion, or, as she exclaimed
in a phrase of brilliant independence, 'I should have hired him to my
embraces.'
The sole possibility that remained was a Platonic friendship, and
Briscoe accepted the situation in excellent humour. 'Ever since he came
to know himself,' again it is Moll that speaks, 'he always deported
himself to me with an abundance of regard, calling me his Aunt.' And
his aunt she remained unto the end, bound to him in a proper and natural
alliance. Different as they were in aspect, they were strangely alike
in taste and disposition. Nor was the Paris Garden their only
meeting-ground.
His sorry sojourn in Gray's Inn had thrown him on the side of the
law-breaker, and he had acquired a strange cunning in the difficult art
of evading justice. Instantly Moll recognised his practical value, and,
exerting all her talent for intrigue, presently secured for him the
Clerkship of Newgate. Here at last he found scope not only for his
learning, but for that spirit of adventure that breathed within him. His
meagre acquaintance with letters placed him on a pinnacle high above his
colleagues. Now and then a prisoner proved his equal in wit, but as he
was manifestly superior in intelligence to the Governor, the Ordinary,
and all the warders, he speedily seized and hereafter retained the real
sovereignty of Newgate.
His early progress was barred by envy and contempt. Why, asked the men
in possession, should this shrivelled stranger filch our privileges? And
Briscoe met their malice with an easy smile, knowing that at all points
he was more than their match. His alliance with Moll stood him in
good stead, and in a few months the twain were the supreme arbiters
of English justice. Should a highwayman seek to save his neck, he must
first pay a fat indemnity to the Newgate Clerk, but, since Moll was the
appointed banker of the whole family, she was quick to sanction whatever
price her accomplice suggested. And Briscoe had a hundred other tricks
whereby he increased his riches and repute. There was no debtor came
to Newgate whom the Clerk would not aid, if he believed the kindness
profitable. Suppose his inquiries gave an assurance of his victim's
recovery, he would house him comfortably, feed him at his own table,
lend him money, and even condescend to win back the generous loan by the
dice-box.
His civility gave him a general popularity among the prisoners, and his
appearance in the Yard was a signal for a subdued hilarity. He drank
and gambled with the roysterers; he babbled a cheap philosophy with the
erudite; and he sold the necks of all to the highest bidder. Though now
and again he was convicted of mercy or revenge, he commonly held himself
aloof from human passions, and pursued the one sane end of life in an
easy security. The hostility of his colleagues irked him but little.
A few tags of Latin, the friendship of Moll, and a casual threat of
exposure frightened the Governor into acquiescence, but the Ordinary was
more difficult of conciliation. The Clerk had not been long in Newgate
before he saw that between the reverend gentleman and himself there
could be naught save war. Hitherto the Ordinary had reserved to his
own profit the right of intrigue; he it was who had received the
hard-scraped money of the sorrowing relatives, and untied the noose when
it seemed good to him. Briscoe insisted upon a division of labour. 'It
is your business,' he said, 'to save the scoundrels in the other world.
Leave to me the profit of their salvation in this.' And the Clerk
triumphed after his wont: freedom jingled in his pocket; he doled out
comfort, even life, to the oppressed; and he extorted a comfortable
fortune in return for privileges which were never in his gift.
Without the walls of Newgate the house of his frequentation was the 'Dog
Tavern.' Thither he would wander every afternoon to meet his clients and
to extort blood-money. In this haunt of criminals and pettifoggers no
man was better received than the Newgate Clerk, and while he assumed a
manner of generous cordiality, it was a strange sight to see him wince
when some sturdy ruffian slapped him too strenuously upon the back. He
had a joke and a chuckle for all, and his merry quips, dry as they were,
were joyously quoted to all new-comers. His legal ingenuity appeared
miraculous, and it was confidently asserted in the Coffee House that he
could turn black to white with so persuasive an argument that there was
no Judge on the Bench to confute him. But he was not omnipotent, and his
zeal encountered many a serious check. At times he failed to save the
necks even of his intimates, since, when once a ruffian was notorious,
Moll and the Clerk fought vainly for his release. Thus it was that
Cheney, the famous wrestler, whom Ralph had often backed against all
comers, died at Tyburn. He had been taken by the troopers red-handed
upon the highway. Seized after a desperate resistance, he was wounded
wellnigh to death, and Briscoe quoted a dozen precedents to prove that
he was unfit to be tried or hanged. Argument failing, the munificent
Clerk offered fifty pounds for the life of his friend. But to no
purpose: the valiant wrestler was carried to the cart in a chair, and so
lifted to the gallows, which cured him of his gaping wounds.
When the Commonwealth administered justice with pedantic severity,
Briscoe's influence still further declined. There was no longer scope
in the State for men of spirit; even the gaols were handed over to the
stern mercy of crop-eared Puritans; Moll herself had fallen upon evil
times; and Ralph Briscoe determined to make a last effort for wealth
and retirement. At the very moment when his expulsion seemed certain,
an heiress was thrown into Newgate upon a charge of murdering a too
importunate suitor. The chain of evidence was complete: the dagger
plunged in his heart was recognised for her own; she was seen to decoy
him to the secret corner of a wood, where his raucous love-making was
silenced for ever. Taken off her guard, she had even hinted confession
of her crime, and nothing but intrigue could have saved her gentle
neck from the gallows. Briscoe, hungry for her money-bags, promised
assistance. He bribed, he threatened, he cajoled, he twisted the law
as only he could twist it, he suppressed honest testimony, he procured
false; in fine, he weakened the case against her with so resistless an
effrontery, that not the Hanging Judge himself could convict the poor
innocent.
At the outset he had agreed to accept a handsome bribe, but as the trial
approached, his avarice increased, and he would be content with nothing
less than the lady's hand and fortune. Not that he loved her; his heart
was long since given to Moll Cutpurse; but he knew that his career
of depredation was at an end, and it became him to provide for his
declining years. The victim repulsed his suit, regretting a thousand
times that she had stabbed her ancient lover. At last, bidden summarily
to choose between Death and the Clerk, she chose the Clerk, and thus
Ralph Briscoe left Newgate the richest squire in a western county.
Henceforth he farmed his land like a gentleman, drank with those of his
neighbours who would crack a bottle with him, and unlocked the strange
stores of his memory to bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate. Still
devoted to sport, he hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as his
youthful imagination could never have pictured. So he lived a life of
country ease, and died a churchwarden. And he deserved his prosperity,
for he carried the soul of Falstaff in the shrunken body of Justice
Shallow.