NON-CRIMINAL
PRISONS
CHAPTER I
THE FLEET PRISON
The great debtors’ prisons of England notorious for their callous neglect and inhuman treatment—Denounced by John Howard, the philanthropist—The Fleet, the King’s Bench and the Marshalsea—Origin of the Fleet—Early government—Closely connected with religious and political persecution—Bishop Hooper—Account of the Fleet at the beginning of the seventeenth century—Charges of cruelty brought against Warden Alexander Harris—Charitable bequests—Fees extorted—Prices charged for chamber-rent—Deplorable state of the prison.
THE three principal prisons in London in the fourteenth century were the Fleet, the King’s Bench and the Marshalsea, but Newgate took precedence in interest because identified with its earliest history. All have their peculiar histories full of interesting associations, replete with memories of famous inmates and striking incidents, and all are worthy of detailed description. All alike received prisoners for debt and on occasion, more heinous offenders, especially in the earlier years of their existence. The old King’s Bench was the peculiar prison for the Court of that name, but it also took debtors committed by the Court of Exchequer and the Court of Common Pleas. The Marshalsea Court, so called from having been originally under the control of the Knight Marshal of the Royal Household, was at first intended to settle differences between the lesser servants of the palace, and had its own judge, counsel and attorneys, but none except members of Clifford’s Inn were permitted to practise in this court. The jurisdiction of this court extended twelve miles round Whitehall, excluding the city of London. It also served the Admiralty Court and received prisoners charged with piracy.
The Fleet prison took its name from the little stream long stigmatised as the “Fleet[1] Ditch,” the open sewer or water-way which rose in the eastern ridge of Hampstead Hill, flowed by “Oldbourne” or Holborn under four bridges to discharge into the Thames on the west side of Blackfriars bridge. As time passed this ditch, after being deepened once or twice to allow for water traffic, became more and more pestilential and was at length filled up and arched over, becoming then the site of Fleet Market in what is now known as Farringdon Street, on which the main gates of the prison opened. The building was of great antiquity and is first mentioned in authentic records about A. D. 1197. A deed of that date granted it to the safe keeping of one Nathaniel de Leveland and his son Robert, in conjunction with the King’s Houses at Westminster. It is stated that the Fleet prison had been the inheritance of the Levelands since the time of the Norman Conquest. Four years later this same Robert de Leveland petitioned King John for leave to hand over the wardenship of the Fleet to Simon Fitz-Robert, archdeacon of Wells, while he, Leveland, proceeded with the crusaders to the Holy Land. He returned very shortly afterward, as appears from a grant of moneys made him by the City of London in 1205, his salary for guardianship of the prison. His wife Margaret was also granted an allowance as keeper of the Westminster Royal Houses.
Many entries in the records show that in those early days the Fleet was a place of detention for offenders of all sorts as well as of ordinary debtors, and especially of defaulters owing money to the King’s Exchequer. The Chamberlain of Chester in the reign of Edward I was imprisoned in the Fleet for a year on account of a debt to the King. A similar case was that of the sheriffs of Nottingham and Derby, who were detained in 1347 for sums owing to the Exchequer in the reign of Edward III; another, that of William de Hedersete, who was answerable for great “arrears to our lord the King,” through a deceased partner who had died insolvent. The Fleet received debtors for the Court of Chancery, and was essentially the King’s prison to which were committed all who came under his displeasure or failed in their obligations and payments. When one Guy de Codemore was ordered into exile and did not leave the country, forthwith he was thrown into the Fleet. French prisoners of war taken in the capture of Harfleur, in 1423, were brought to the Fleet. When Sir Geoffrey Poole of Hampshire fell out with a neighbour, the Lord Privy Seal summoned him to appear before him and committed him to the Fleet until the King’s (Henry VIII) further pleasure should be known. Lady Poole won her husband’s pardon this time, but Sir Geoffrey was again in trouble the very next year for assaulting the parson of Pacton in the county of Sussex.
In these troublous times various offenders found themselves in the Fleet. It was a place of penitence for young gentlemen who misbehaved, such as the son and heir of Sir Mathew Browne of Surrey who, with his servants, was guilty of arson in a wood; a printer who sold seditious books was committed to it in 1541; the riotous servants of a gentleman of the Privy Chamber were laid by the heels in the Fleet. Smugglers and all who infringed the Customs’ laws were committed to the prison as debtors to the King. A ship master of Southampton who was “privately conveying five packets of wool to Flanders without a license” was arrested and sent to the Fleet, the wool being seized and the captain fined half the value of his ship. It was made a place for the detention of state prisoners, for when Cowley, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, was under examination in 1541 he was lodged in the Fleet until the King himself should come to London. This was the fate of the illustrious knight, Sir John Falstaff, when he bearded the Lord Chief Justice, as Shakespeare tells us in “Henry IV”:—
“Go carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet,
Take all his company with him.”
Poets, dramatists and pamphleteers were from time to time cast into the Fleet, and it was christened by Pope the “Haunt of the Muses.” Among the first was Lord Surrey and among the latter Nash, author of the satirical play “The Isle of Dogs.” Wycherley, the wit and dramatist, who married the Countess of Drogheda, languished for seven years as a debtor in the Fleet, and Sir Richard Baker, author of the famous “Chronicles,” wrote them as a means of subsistence when an impecunious debtor there, where he died. Francis Sandford, author of the “Genealogical History,” also died in the prison in 1693. James Howell, who wrote the delightful “Familiar Letters” during the troublous times of the Civil War, was a tenant of the Fleet prison in the years 1643 to 1647. In one of his letters dated from the Fleet in 1643, he describes his arrest one morning betimes, by five men armed with “swords, pistols and bills,” who took him to gaol where, as he says, “as far as I can tell I must lie at dead anchor a long time unless some gentle gale blow thence to launch me out.” He consoles himself, however, with the thought that all Englishmen being islanders, are, in effect, prisoners.