of these barbarous places. The Bishop of Lincoln, in the old persecuting days, had at his palace at Woburn "a cell in his prison called Little-Ease," so named because it was so small that those confined in it could neither stand upright nor lie at length. Other bishops possessed similar means of bodily correction and spiritual persuasion.
This was worse than the Guildhall cells, with all their gloomy horror; and if the magistrates entertained their unwilling guests at the town jail, we may rest satisfied they did not eat the bread of adversity and drink the water of affliction in Little-Ease, but in some more spacious apartment. We have no evidence that they did so entertain them, and the traditional lodging-place of these intercepted Pilgrims is the Guildhall and nowhere else. It is probable, all the same, that a good part of their captivity was spent in the town prison.
Although the magistrates, from Mayor John Mayson downward, felt for the sufferers and doubtless ameliorated their condition as far as they could, it was not until after a month's imprisonment that the greater part were dismissed and sent back, baffled, plundered, and heart-broken, to the places they had so lately left, there to endure the scoffs of their neighbours and the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline.
Seven of the principal men, treated as ring-leaders, were kept in prison and bound over to the assizes. Apparently nothing further was done with them. Brewster is said to have been the chief sufferer both in person and pocket. He had eluded a warrant by leaving for Boston, and we know this was in September, because on the fifteenth of that month the messenger charged to apprehend Brewster and another man, one Richard Jackson of Scrooby, certified to the Ecclesiastical Court at York "that he cannot find them, nor understand where they are." On the thirtieth of September also the first payment is recorded to Brewster's successor as postmaster at Scrooby.
How the imprisoned Separatists fared, there is nothing to show. No assize record exists. The Privy Council Register, which could have thrown light on the matter, was destroyed in the Whitehall fire of 1618; and the Boston Corporation records, which doubtless contained some entry on the subject that would have been of the greatest interest now, are also disappointing, as the leaves for the period, the first of a volume, have disappeared.
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