CHAPTER II
NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Prison records meagre—Administration of justice and state of crime—Leniency alternates with great severity—Criminal inmates of Newgate—Masterless men—Robbery with violence—Debtors—Conscience prisoners—Martyrs in reign of Henry VIII—Religious dissidents: Porter, Anne Askew—Maryan persecutions—Rogers—Bishop Hooper—Alexander, the cruel gaoler of Newgate—Philpot—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—Babington's conspiracy—Conspiracies against the life of Elizabeth—Gaolers of the 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. 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,[41:1] 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. 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. 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 criminal offenders.
Yet there were spasmodic intervals of the most 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 for the 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.
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 antechamber 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." Again, the ringleaders of false inquests, Darby, Smith, and Simson by name, were, in the first year of Henry VII's reign (1509), condemned to ride about the city with their faces to their 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.