An instruction to the lord mayor and sheriffs in the State Papers (Dec., 1649) directs them to examine the miscarriages of the under officers of Newgate who were favourers of the felons and robbers there committed, and to remove such as appear faulty. The nefarious practices of the Newgate officers were nothing new. They are set forth with much quaintness of diction and many curious details in a pamphlet of the period, entitled the "Black Dogge of Newgate." There was a tavern entitled the "Dogge Tavern in Newgate," as appears by the State Papers, where the place is indicated by an informer for improper practices. The pamphlet sheds a strong light upon the evil-doings of the turnkeys, who appear to have been guilty of
the grossest extortion, taking advantage of their position as officers of the law to levy blackmail alike on criminals and their victims. Of these swindling turnkeys or bailiffs, whom the writer designates "coney-catchers," he tells many discreditable tales.
The term coney-catching had long been in use to define a species of fraud akin to our modern "confidence trick," or, as the French call it, the vol à l'Americain. Shakespeare, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," makes Falstaff call Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol "coney-catching rascals." The fraud was then of but recent introduction. It is detailed at length by Robert Greene in his "Notable Discovery of Cozenage," published in 1591. He characterizes it as a new art. Three parties were needed to practise it, called respectively the "setter," the "verser," and the "barnacle;" their game, or victim, was the "coney." The first was the decoy, the second was a confederate who plied the coney with drink, the third came in by accident should the efforts of the others to beguile the coney into "a deceit at cards" have failed. In the end the countryman was completely despoiled. Later on there was a new nomenclature: the setter became the "beater," the tavern to which the rogues adjourned was the "bush," and the quarry was the "bird." The verser was the "retriever," the barnacle was the "pot-hunter," and the game was called "bat-fowling." Greene's exposure was
supposed to have deprived the coney-catchers of a "collop of their living." But they still prospered at their nefarious practices, according to the author of the "Black Dogge."
Plain symptoms of the approaching struggle between the king and the commons are to be met with in the prison records. Immediately after the meeting of the Long Parliament, orders were issued for the enlargement of many victims of Star Chamber oppression. Among them was the celebrated Prynne, author of the "Histriomatrix,"[83:1] who had lost his ears in the pillory; Burton, a clergyman, and Bastwick, a physician, who had suffered the same penalties—all came out of prison triumphant, wearing ivy and rosemary in their hats. Now Strafford was impeached and presently beheaded; Laud also was condemned. The active interference of Parliament in all affairs of State extended to the arrest of persons suspected of treasonable practices. There are many cases of imprisonment more or less arbitrary in these troubled times. Another petition may be quoted, that of Richard Overton, "a prisoner in the most contemptible gaol of Newgate," under an order of the House of Lords. Overton tells us how he was brought before that House "in a warlike manner, under pretence of a criminal fact, and called upon to answer interrogations concerning himself which he conceived to be illegal and contrary to the national rights,
freedoms, and properties of the free commoners of England, confirmed to them by Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Act for the Abolishment of the Star Chamber." Overton was therefore emboldened to refuse subjection to the said House. He was adjudged guilty of contempt, and committed to Newgate, where he was seemingly doomed to lie until their lordships' pleasure should be further signified, which "may be perpetual if they please, and may have their wills, for your petitioner humbly conceiveth that he is made a prisoner to their wills, not to the law, except their wills may be a law." On this account he appealed to the Commons "as the most sovereign Court of Judicature in the land," claiming from them, "repossession of his just liberty and freedom, or else that he may undergo the penalty prescribed by the law if he be found a transgressor." Whether Overton was supported by the Commons against the Lords does not appear, but within three years the Lower House abolished the House of Peers.
Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green, London
Here is yet another petition from a better known inmate of Newgate, the obstinately independent Colonel Lilburne, commonly called "Freeborn John." Lilburne was always at loggerheads with the government of the city. In 1637, when following the trade of a bookseller, he was convicted by the Star Chamber for publishing seditious libels, and sentenced to the pillory, imprisonment, and a fine of £5,000. In 1645 he fell foul of the Parliament,