[44:1] Cromwell's house was in the city in Throgmorton Street, close to the site of the monastic house of the Austin Friars.
[45:1] This Benedict Spinola must have been an Italian with some influence. His personal relations with Burghley are manifest from a letter of congratulation sent by him to Burghley on the safe arrival of the Earl of Oxford at Milan. Other more or less confidential matters are mentioned in connection with Pasqual and Jacob Spinola, Benedict's brothers.
[62:1] Friday continued the day of horse-market until the closing of Smithfield as a market for live cattle.
[63:1] The bell which was rung at mass on the elevation of the host.
CHAPTER III
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Jesuit emissaries in Newgate—Richardson and others—Speaking ill of king's sister entails imprisonment for life—Criminal offenders—Condition of prisoners—Fanatical conduct of keeper—Nefarious practices of turnkeys—They levy blackmail—"Coney catching"—Arbitrary imprisonment imposed by House of Lords on Richard Overton—Case of Colonel Lilburne, "Freeborn John"—Royalists in gaol—Also prisoners of mark—Brother of the Portuguese ambassador charged with murder, and executed.
The disturbing elements of society continued much the same in the early part of the seventeenth century as in the years immediately preceding. There were the same offences against law and order, dealt with in the same summary fashion. Newgate was perpetually crowded with prisoners charged with the same sort of crimes. Bigotry and intolerance continued to breed persecution. All sects which differed from the faith professed by those in power were in turn under the ban of the law. The Romish priest still ventured into the hostile heretic land where his life was not worth a minute's purchase; Puritans and Non-conformists were committed to gaol for refusing to surrender their heterodox opinions: these last coming into power
were ruthlessly strict towards the openly irreligious backslider. Side by side with these sufferers in the cause of independent thought swarmed the depredators, the wrong-doers, whose criminal instincts and the actions they produced were much the same as they had been before and as they are now.