proclaimed King of Scotland. Later on, Colonel Clarke, already mentioned, was released on his signing the test, and finding securities for good behaviour. Captain Matthew Harrison is committed for bearing arms against the Parliament, and “drinking a health to Charles, the late king’s son, by name King Charles II.” The recorder is directed to examine Colonel Jones concerning Captain Harrison, and to see that he be proceeded against according to law. A declaration is made before the Council of State as to Charles Pullen, “lately a prisoner in Newgate,” committed there for being found in the Hart frigate. Pullen had escaped from prison, and was liable to the penalty of death if recaptured; but the council remit the penalty in order to exchange Pullen for Ensign Wright, a prisoner at Jersey. In Nov. 1650 John Jolfe is committed to Newgate for carrying the Roebuck out of the Commonwealth. Royalist sympathizers find but scant comfort. The keeper of Newgate is ordered to receive and imprison one Pate, and hold him in safe custody, for aiding Lieutenant-General Middleton to escape from the Tower; and a similar warrant is made out against Mitchell for being accessory to the escape of Colonel Edward Massey from the same place.
All this time prisoners of great mark were at times confined in Newgate. That noted royalist, Judge Jenkins, was among the number. His crime was publishing seditious books, and sentencing to death people who had assisted against the Parliament. He was indeed attainted of high treason under an ordinance which started in the House of Commons, and was ultimately passed, and sent to the House of Lords. A committee was sent from “the Commons’ House to Newgate, which was to interview Judge Jenkins, and make the following offer to him—viz. that if he would own the power of the Parliament to be lawful, they would not only take off the sequestrations from his estates, amounting to £500 per annum, but they would also settle a pension on him of £1000 a year.” His reply was to the following effect: “Far be it from me to own rebellion, although it was lawful and successful.” As the judge refused to come to terms with them, he remained in Newgate till the Restoration.
People of still higher rank found themselves in gaol. The brother of the Portugal ambassador, Don Pantaleon Sa, is sent, with others, to Newgate for a murder committed by them near the Exchange. It was a bad case. They had quarrelled with an English officer, Gerard, who, hearing the Portuguese discoursing in French upon English affairs, told them they did not represent certain passages aright. “One of the foreigners gave him the lie, and all three fell upon him, and stabbed him with a dagger; but Colonel Gerard being rescued out of their hands by one Mr. Anthuser, they retired home, and within one hour returned with twenty more, armed with breastplate and head-pieces; but after two or three turns, not finding Mr. Anthuser, they returned home that night.”[61] Don Pantaleon made his escape from prison a few days later, but he was retaken. Strenuous efforts were then made to obtain his release. His trial was postponed on the petition of “the Portugal merchants.” The Portugal ambassador himself had an audience of Cromwell, the Lord Protector. But the law took its course. Don Pantaleon pleaded his relationship, and that he had a commission to act as ambassador in his brother’s absence; this was disallowed, and after much argument the prisoners pleaded guilty, and desired “to be tried by God and the country.” A jury was called, half-denizens, half-aliens, six of each, who, after a full hearing, found the ambassador’s brother and four more guilty of murder and felony. Lord Chief Justice Rolles then sentenced them to be hanged, and fixed the day of execution; “but by the desire of the prisoners it was respited two days.” This was the 6th July, 1654. On the 8th, Don Pantaleon Sa was reprieved, or more exactly, his sentence was commuted to beheading. On the 10th he tried to escape, without success, and on the same day he was conveyed from Newgate to Tower Hill in a coach and six horses in mourning, with divers of his brother’s retinue with him. There he laid his head on the block, and “it was chopt off at two blows.” The rest although condemned were all reprieved, except one, an English boy concerned in the murder, who was hanged at Tyburn.[62]
Other distinguished inmates, a few years later, were Charles Lord Buckhurst, Edward Sackville, and Sir Henry Bellayse, K.B., who, being prisoners in Newgate, petitioned the Lord Chief Justice, March 10th, to be admitted to bail, one of them being ill of the small-pox. They were charged seemingly with murder. Their petition sets forth that “while returning from Waltham to London, on the 8th February, they aided some persons, who complained that they had been robbed and wounded in pursuit of the thieves, and in attacking the robbers wounded one who has since died.” Sir Thomas Towris, Baronet, petitions the king (Charles II.) “not to suffer him to lie in that infamous place, where he has not an hour of health, nor the necessaries of life. He states that he has been four months in the Tower, and five weeks in Newgate, charged with counterfeiting His Majesty’s hand, by the malice of an infamous person who, when Registrar Accountant at Worcester House, sold false debentures.” Sir Thomas “wished to lay his case before His Majesty at his first coming from Oxford, but was deceived, and the way to bounty stopped.”
CHAPTER IV.
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
(AFTER THE GREAT FIRE).
Newgate refronted in 1638—Destroyed in Great Fire of 1666—How rebuilt—Façade described—Account of interior by B. L. of Twickenham—Various parts or sides—The lodge and condemned hold—The master debtors’ side—The master felons’ side—The common debtors’ side—The common felons’ side—The press-yard and castle—The chapel—Miserable condition of inmates—Some few pleaded unhealthiness as an excuse for release—Suicides frequent—Mr. Norton—Newgate called by Recorder a nursery of rogues—Negligence of keepers—The gaoler Fells indicted for permitting escapes—Crimes of the period—Clipping and coining greatly increased—Enormous profits of the fraud—Coining within the gaol itself deemed high treason—Heavy penalties—Highway robbery very prevalent—Instances—Officers and paymasters with the king’s gold robbed—Stage coaches stopped—All manner of men took to the road, including persons of good position—Their effrontery—Whitney—His capture, and attempts to escape—His execution—Efforts to check highway robbery—A few types of notorious highwaymen—“Mulled sack”—Claude Duval—Nevison—Abduction of heiresses—Mrs. Synderfin—Miss Rawlins—Miss Wharton—Count Konigsmark—The German princess—Other criminal names—Titus Oates—Dangerfield—The Fifth Monarchy men—William Penn—The two Bishops, Ellis and Leyburn.
NEWGATE was refronted and refaced in 1638 in the manner already described.[63] No further change or improvement was made in the building until a total re-edification became inevitable, after the great fire in 1666. Of the exact effect of that conflagration upon the prison gate-house I can discover no authentic records. Knight, in his ‘London,’ gives a woodcut of the burning of Newgate, designed by Fussel, which many dismissed as imaginative rather than historically accurate. The gate as represented is altogether larger than it could possibly have been, and the aspect of the structure is very much what a nineteenth century artist would conceive a mediæval prison would be. According to a writer in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for April, 1764, Newgate was only damaged, not destroyed, in the great fire. He goes on to speak of the “present beautiful structure,” an edifice so inadequate for prison purposes, it may be remarked that it had already been condemned at this date, and schemes for its entire reconstruction propounded. This beautiful structure as represented in the woodcut is thus described by the above-mentioned writer:—
“The west side is adorned with three ranges of Tuscan pilasters with their entablatures, and in the inter columniations are four niches, in one of which is a figure representing Liberty; the word ‘libertas’ is inscribed on her cap, and at her feet lies a cat in allusion to Sir Richard Whittington, a benefactor to the prison, who is said to have made the first step to his advancement and good fortune by a cat. The inside of the gate is also adorned with a range of pilasters, with their entablatures, and in their niches
