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 It may be added that this cruel statute, which may be read in extenso in Froude, was soon afterwards repealed, but not before another culprit, Margaret Davy by name, had suffered under its provisions for a similar offence.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
