CHAPTER IV
THE KING’S BENCH PRISON

Earliest mention—Lord Chief Justice and Prince Hal—The first prison destroyed by the Lord George rioters—Rebuilt—Notable inmates—Richard Baxter—Sir William Reresbury—Chatterton—Smollett’s description in “Roderick Random”—George Morland frequently a prisoner—John Wilkes imprisoned and the disturbances that resulted—His career and death—William Hone, the well known litterateur, lodged in the King’s Bench for debt, where he compiled his “Every Day Book,” “Table Book,” and “Year Book”—Colonel Hanger, soldier, courtier, beau—A chosen companion of the Prince of Wales—His services in the American War—His difficulties and arrest—Lord Cochrane, a distinguished naval officer—Committal to the King’s Bench—Plot of which he was the victim—His adventures in the King’s Bench—Method of escape and appearance in Parliament—Later career in South America. Brilliant services and tardy rehabilitation by the British government.

THE first King’s Bench Prison stood on the east side of the High Street Borough, Southwark, near the Marshalsea and dated from 1377, the time of Richard II. It is memorable as the prison to which Chief Justice Gascoigne committed Prince Hal, the heir apparent of the English throne, and later King Henry V, the hero of Agincourt. The royal offender, Prince Hal, had been guilty of contempt of court in taking one of his suite from the custody of the court and offering violence to the judge on his bench. The story is held by some to be apocryphal, but the Prince’s prison chamber was still shown in the time of Oldys,[5] the historian. The prison was moved to the southwest corner of Blackman’s Street and the entrance of the Borough Road, and was standing there when burned down by the Lord George Gordon rioters in 1780, but was rebuilt on the lines described by Mr. Allen in his history of Surrey, and survived until a quite recent date. According to the account there given, it occupied an extensive area of ground and consisted of one large pile of buildings about 120 yards long. The south or principal front had a pediment under which was the chapel. There were four pumps of spring and river water in the interior. It contained 224 rooms or apartments, eight of which being much larger than the others were called staterooms. A coffee-house and two public houses were to be found within the walls, with shops and stalls for the sale of meat, vegetables and necessaries like any public market. “The number of people walking about,” says Allen, “or engaged in various amusements are little calculated to impress the stranger with an idea of distress or even of confinement.” The walls surrounding the prison were thirty feet high and were crowned with a chevaux de frise to prevent escape. The “Rules” were extensive and included all St. George’s Fields, one side of Blackman Street, and part of the Borough High Street, enclosing altogether an area of three miles in circumference. These “Rules” were purchasable by prisoners at various rates; when the debt was considerable the price was eight guineas for the first hundred, and half that sum for every hundred in addition. Day rates cost 4s 2d for the first day and 3s 10d for the days following. The exact limits of the Rules were never strictly defined and Lord Ellenborough, when Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, being asked to extend them, said he saw no necessity, as to his certain knowledge they already included the East Indies, implying that fugitives had fled there. Of course in such a case the marshal was held responsible for the debt of the one who had run away. The practice of permitting prisoners to live beyond the prison originated, it was said, in the days of the Plague.

Among the earliest records of the King’s Bench prison of Southwark was a petition from the prisoners to the Privy Council for its enlargement and the erection of a chapel. It was pleaded that at this time, through over-crowding, there was “much sickness in the house.” In later days under the Commonwealth it was called the “Upper Bench Prison.” Among the early inmates of any note was Dr. Robert Recorde, said to have been physician to King Edward VI and Queen Mary; he was a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and died in the King’s Bench in 1558, when confined there for debt. John Rushworth, author of the “Historical Collections” of facts, 1618-1648, was a prisoner in the Bench for six years, and the notorious Judge Jeffreys committed Richard Baxter, the non-conformist advocate, to it for eighteen months. An inmate of title who had fallen sadly away from his high estate was Sir William Reresby, the son and heir of Sir John, whose “Memoirs and Travels,” with anecdotes and secret history of the courts of Charles II and James II are full of interest. Sir William was the third baronet, a reckless spendthrift and gamester who wasted large sums at the tables and in cock-fighting. He lost his fine estate of Dennaby at a single throw of the dice and was afterward tried and imprisoned for cheating in 1711. He eventually became a tapster in the King’s Bench.

Chatterton, the youthful poet, who forged the apocryphal poems of Thomas Rowley, the supposititious monk of the fifteenth century, was at one time a prisoner in the King’s Bench, whence he dated a letter, May 14th, 1770, saying that a gentleman had recommended him as the travelling companion for the young Duke of Northumberland, but that alas! he spoke no language but his own. Chatterton’s fraud was one of the most curious crimes in literary history. He was a native of Bristol and an attorney’s clerk, when he pretended to have discovered an ancient manuscript, which he put forward as authentic, but which was soon pronounced a forgery by Mason and Gray and other contemporary poets. Nothing daunted, Chatterton came to London to seek his fortune in literature; he produced great numbers of satirical poems, political essays and critical letters which found their way into print, but without remuneration. When threatened with penury, he committed suicide at his lodgings in Brook St., Holborn. He was undoubtedly a genius and he has been called the greatest prodigy in literature, for he was no more than eighteen when he died and he had already produced some fine, vigorous work.

A good picture of the King’s Bench is given by Smollett about this date (1750) in his “Roderick Random:” “The prison is situated in St. George’s Fields, about a mile from the end of Westminster Bridge, and it appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. Except the entrance, where the turnkeys keep watch and ward, there is nothing in the place that looks like a gaol, or bears the least colour of restraint. The street is crowded with passengers; tradesmen of all kinds here exercise their different professions; hawkers of all sorts are admitted to call and vend their wares as in any open street in London. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican. Here the voice of misery never complains; and indeed little else is to be heard but the sounds of mirth and jollity. At the further end of the street, on the right hand, is a little paved court leading to a separate building, consisting of twelve large apartments called ‘State rooms,’ well furnished, and fitted up for the reception of the better sort of Crown prisoners; and on the other side of the street, facing a separate piece of ground, is the Common Side, a range of rooms occupied by prisoners of the lowest order, who share the profits of the begging-box, and are maintained by this practice and some established funds of charity. We ought also to observe that the gaol is provided with a neat chapel, in which a clergyman in consideration of a certain salary, performs divine service every Sunday.”

Artists shared with men of letters the honours of the King’s Bench. One whose work is perhaps more highly appreciated to-day than in his own time was George Morland, the painter, who was born in London on the 26th June, 1763, and was the son of Henry Robert Morland and grandson of George Henry Morland. He is said by Cunningham to have been lineally descended from Sir Samuel Morland, while other biographers go so far as to assert that he had only to claim the baronetcy in order to get it. He began to draw at three years old and at the age of ten (1773) his name appears as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Although the publishers reaped the principal profit from the sale of his works, Morland’s credit and resources enabled him for some years to lead the rollicking life he loved without much pressure of monetary care. At one period he kept eight saddle horses at the White Lion Inn. But as time passed he became crippled with debts and a prey to creditors who gave him no peace. He lived a hunted life and was only able to escape from the bailiffs by his knowledge of London and the assistance of friends and interested picture dealers. He fled from one house to another, residing now in Lambeth, now in East Sheen, now Queen Anne Street, the Minories, Kensington or Hackney. At this last place his strict seclusion aroused a suspicion that he was a forger of bank notes and his premises were searched at the instance of the bank directors, who afterward made him a present of £40 for the inconvenience caused by their mistake.

In November, 1799, Morland was at last arrested for debt, and he was allowed to take lodgings “within the Rules” of the King’s Bench to which his most discreditable friends constantly flocked. During this mitigated imprisonment he sank lower and lower. According to the “Dictionary of National Biography” he was often drunk for days together and generally slept on the floor in a helpless condition. It is probable that these stories are exaggerated, for he still produced an enormous quantity of good work. “For his brother alone,” says Redgrave, “he painted 192 pictures between 1800 and 1804, and he probably painted as many more for other dealers during the same period, his terms being four guineas a day and his drink.” Another account says that during his last eight years he painted 490 pictures for his brother and probably 300 more for others, besides making hundreds of drawings. His total production is estimated at no less than four thousand pictures. In 1802 he was released under the Insolvent Debtors’ Act but his health was ruined and his habits irremediable. About this time he was seized with palsy and lost the use of his left hand so that he could not hold his palette. Notwithstanding this, he seems to have gone on painting to the last, when he was arrested again for a publican’s score and died in a sponging house in Eyre Street, Cold Bath Fields, on 27th October, 1804. His much wronged wife was so afflicted at the news of his death that she died three days afterward and both were buried together in the burial ground attached to St. James’ Chapel in the Hampstead Road.

Morland’s epitaph on himself was, “Here lies a drunken dog.” His propensities to drink and low pleasure appear to have been unusually strong. He had opportunities of indulging them at an unusually early age and throughout life, except for a short interval of courtship and domesticity, he was surrounded by associates who encouraged his debauchery. “But though he was vain and dissolute he was generous, good natured and industrious and appears to have been free from the meaner and more malicious forms of vice. It should also be placed to his credit that however degraded his mode of life, he did not degrade his art to the same level.”

It would be difficult to define the exact place of John Wilkes in the history of this time, but he figures largely in that of the King’s Bench prison, both as an inmate and the cause of much loss of life in the disturbances to which his committal gave rise. To-day he is rightly judged as an insolent demagogue who misled the ignorant public by his intemperate attacks upon the government and his offensive writings in the North Briton, which cost him several duels and an embittered prosecution. He gained immense popularity with the mob as his long trial proceeded, which culminated in serious riots when the case at last went against him, and he was sent to the King’s Bench. The carriage in which he was conveyed was seized by the crowd, the horses removed, and the vehicle was dragged to a public house in Spital Fields north of the present Liverpool Street Railway Station. Here he was allowed to alight and at eleven o’clock at night to escape from his over zealous friends, taking immediate advantage of his liberty to surrender himself at the King’s Bench prison. The next day a vast mob collected outside the prison, and some hostile demonstration was feared. Nothing worse occurred than the tearing down of the fences surrounding the prison and burning them in a bonfire, while the residents in the neighbourhood were compelled to illuminate their windows. Legal proceedings were resumed in the days following and Wilkes’ counsel pleaded for arrest in judgment on the ground of illegal action, but the Crown would not yield, and a day was fixed for the final discussion whether or not the sentence of outlawry passed on him should be maintained.