"One named Ditche was apprehended at the session holden at Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th December, being Friday and
horse-market there."[62:1] The "Remembrancia" gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of Requests, to the lord mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had petitioned the queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to her Majesty. The lord mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate, who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T (thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as—"On the 27th of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver, and the other cast testers of tin." "The 30th of May Thomas Green, goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, beheaded, and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver."
Towards the end of the reign, in spite of the
stringent acts against vagrancy, the country swarmed with rogues and beggars—vagabonds who laid the farmers under contribution, and terrified all honest folk out of their lives. In London crime was rampant. Even then it had its organization; there were houses which harboured thieves, in which schools were maintained for the education of young pickpockets. Maitland tells us that in the spring of 1585, Fleetwood, the recorder, with several other magistrates searched the town and discovered seven houses of entertainment of felons. They found also that one Walton, a gentleman born, once a prosperous merchant, "but fallen into decay," who had kept an alehouse which had been put down, had begun a "new business." He opened his house for the reception of all the cutpurses in and about the city. In this house was a room to teach young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up; one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung round with hawk's bells, and over them hung a little sacring[63:1] bell. The purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a clever nypper. These places gave great encouragement to
evil-doers in these times, but were soon after suppressed.
In 1581 a fresh religious persecution began, happily without the sanguinary accessories of that of Mary's reign. Elizabeth had no love for the Puritans; she also began now to hate and fear the papists. Orthodoxy was insisted upon. People who would not go to church were sent first to prison, then haled before Sessions and fined a matter of twenty pounds each. Still worse fared the adherents or emissaries of Rome. In 1569 a man named John Felton had been drawn from Newgate into Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered as a traitor for affixing a bull of Pope Pius V on the gate of the Bishop of London's palace. In 1578 it is recorded that "the papists are stubborn." So also must have been the Puritans. "One Sherwood brought before the Bishop of London behaved so stubbornly that the bishop will show no more favour to those miscalled Puritans." Next began a fierce crusade against the "seminary" priests, who swarmed into England like missionaries, despatched in partibus infidelium to minister to the faithful few and bring back all whom they could to the fold. Newgate was now for ever full of these priests. They adopted all manner of disguises, and went now as soldiers, now as private gentlemen, now openly as divines. They were harboured and hidden by faithful Roman Catholics, and managed thus to glide unperceived from point
to point intent upon their dangerous business. But they did not always escape observation, and when caught they were invariably laid by the heels and hardly dealt with. Gerard Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned in 1581 at the Old Bailey before the queen's justices, and affirmed that although he was in England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that the Pope had now the same authority in England as he had a hundred years ago, and which he exercised at Rome, "with other traitorous speeches, for which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered." The same year William Dios (a Spaniard), keeper of Newgate, sent a certificate of the names of the recusants now in Newgate, "viz., Lawrence Wakeman and others, . . . the two last being of the precise sort." April 20, 1586, Robert Rowley, taken upon seas by Captain Burrows going to Scotland, is committed first to the Marshalsea, and from thence to Newgate. Next year, August 26th, Richard Young reports to Secretary Walsyngham that he has talked with sundry priests remaining in the prisons about London. "Some," he says, "are very evil affected, and unworthy to live in England. Simpson, alias Heygate, and Flower, priests, have justly deserved death, and in no wise merit her Majesty's mercy. William Wigges, Leonard Hide, and George Collinson, priests in Newgate, are dangerous fellows, as are also Morris Williams and Thomas Pounde, the
latter committed as a layman, but in reality a professed Jesuit. Francis Tirrell is an obstinate papist, and is doubted to be a spy."
We read as follows in an intercepted letter from Cardinal John Allen, Rector of the English College at Rheims, to Mr. White, seminary priest in the Clink Prison, and the rest of the priests in Newgate, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea. "Pope Sextus sends them his blessing, and will send them over for their comfort Dr. Reynolds, chief Jesuit of the college at Rheims, who must be carefully concealed," . . . with others, . . . "whose discourses would be a great joy to all heretics. They will bring some consecrated crucifixes, late consecrated by his Holiness, and some books to be given to the chiefest Catholics, their greatest benefactors." This letter was taken upon a young man, Robert Weston, travelling to seek service, "who seems to have had considerable dealings with recusants, and to have made very full confessions."
It was easier for all such to get into Newgate, at that time, than to obtain release. Henry Ash and Michael Genison, being prisoners in Newgate, petition Lord Keeper Pickering for a warrant for their enlargement upon putting in good security for their appearance; "they were long since committed by Justice Young and the now Bishop of London for recusancy, where they remain, to their great shame and utter undoing, and are likely to continue, unless he extend his mercy." In 1598