It was pleaded that where in old time no rent was charged on the Common Side, the warden Harris demanded it as if for a private chamber, and even for the dungeon as well. The answer was that the Common Side was the king’s ancient prison where for “many hundred years men were imprisoned there only” and they were not exempt from payment. In the part called the Tower Chamber there were eight bedsteads by which the warden had made seventy-one pounds by the year. In one ward, called the “Twopenny,” the inmates paid twopence a night; only in the “Beggars’ ” ward did prisoners pay nothing and receive nothing. In this last the insolvent debtor was forced to fend for himself; he was dependent upon chance charity for food, fire, clothing, bedding. Many hundreds succumbed to starvation and cold and died like dogs upon rotten straw, their nakedness barely covered by foul scanty rags. Rarely the degraded and neglected lodgers were suffered to go in search of water to cleanse the ward, but these as a rule were always filthily dirty.

The state of affairs was horrible within the gaol. No order was kept. Prisoners quarrelled and fought continually, many ranged the wards and corridors howling like lunatics all through the night and blowing horns, so that sleep was impossible to the sick and sorrowful. The lowest women entered freely, thieves took refuge there and thus avoided arrest; stolen goods were hidden in secure corners and never discovered. The prisoners went about armed and used swords and daggers freely in brawls and fights amongst themselves or in attacking the officers and servants of the gaol.

CHAPTER II
ABUSES AT THE FLEET

The Fleet, the appointed prison of the Star Chamber—Trial and conviction of Prynne and of “Freeborn” John Lilburne—Horrors in the Fleet and other debtors’ prisons reported by Moses Pitt—House of Commons Committee 1696—Ill treatment of Jacob Mendez Solas, a Portuguese prisoner—Shameful malpractices of Huggins and Bambridge—Case of Captain Mackpheadris and of Captain David Sinclair—Committal of Huggins and Bambridge to Newgate—Their trial and verdict of not guilty—Hogarth’s great picture of the Fleet Committee—Howard’s visitation in 1774—Social evils—Increase of Fleet marriages—Fleet parsons and their practices—Passing of the Marriage Act and abuses abolished.

THE Fleet was the appointed prison for the victims of the Star Chamber from the time of Elizabeth until toward the end of the reign of Charles I. It was essentially the King’s Prison to which State offenders might be committed, and to which debtors to the king on so confessing themselves might claim transfer from anywhere in the provinces if they preferred to be imprisoned in the capital. The Star Chamber, that oppressive, half-secret and wholly irresponsible tribunal, was accustomed to send to it all persons who fell under its displeasure; and this view is further confirmed by the circumstance, that whilst during the reign of Charles I we find it frequently used in this way, we do not notice any suggestion that the practice was then a new one. The two most interesting cases that belong to this part of the history of the Fleet are those of Prynne and Lilburne.

The trial of Prynne in the Star Chamber should be forever memorable as an example of the reckless disregard for law, justice, common sense and humanity which can be exhibited by high-handed judges. The following extracts will give a sufficient idea of the course of the trial and the mode of determining the sentence:—

“For the book” (the “Histriomastix” wherein he castigated the court and society severely), said Richardson, the Lord Chief Justice, “I hold it a most scandalous, infamous libel on the king’s majesty, a most pious and religious king; on the queen’s majesty, a most excellent and gracious queen, such a one as this kingdom never enjoyed the like and I think the earth never had a better,” etc. Then followed quotations from Prynne’s book, full of “outrageous opinions” on plays and players and dancing and then the first part of the sentence: “Mr. Prynne, I must now come to my sentence; I am very sorry, for I have known you long, but now I must utterly forsake you for I find that you have forsaken God” (the whole tenor of Prynne’s book was to lead men, in his way, to draw nearer to God) “ ... and forsaken all goodness. Therefore, Mr. Prynne, I shall proceed to my censure wherein I agree with my Lord Cottington: first for the burning of your book in as disgraceful manner as may be, whether in Cheapside or St. Paul’s Churchyard.... And because Mr. Prynne is of Lincoln’s Inn, and that his profession may not sustain disgrace by his punishment, I do think it fit, with my Lord Cottington, that he be put from the Bar and degraded in the University and I leave it to my lords, the lords bishop, to see that done; and for the pillory I hold it just and equal though there were no statute for it. In the case of all such crime it may be done by the discretion of the Court, so I do agree to that too. I fine him £5,000 and I know he is as well able to pay £5,000 as one-half of one thousand; and perpetual imprisonment. I do think fit for him to be restrained from writing—neither to have pen, ink nor paper—yet let him have some pretty prayer book to pray God to forgive him his sins, but to write, in good faith, I would never have him. For, Mr. Prynne, I do judge you by your book an insolent spirit and one that did think by this book to have got the name of a reformer, to set up the puritan or separatist faction.”

Sir Edward Coke followed, and among other things said: “Mr. Prynne, I do declare you to be a schism-maker in the Church, a sedition-sower in the Commonwealth, a wolf in sheep’s clothing; in a word omnium malorium nequissimus. I shall fine him £10,000, which is more than he is worth and less than he deserveth. I will not set him at liberty no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who though he cannot bite will foam. He is so far from being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul; he is fit to live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tigers like himself, therefore do I condemn him to perpetual imprisonment as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men, nor see light. Now for corporal punishment, my Lords, I shall burn him in the forehead and slit him in the nose.... I should be loth he should escape with his ears, for he may get a periwig which he now so much inveighs against and so hide them or force his conscience to make use of his unlovely love locks on both sides.”

These abominable barbarities were all inflicted in public, the branding, the mutilation, the loss of ears, and afterwards poor Prynne, stout and unyielding to the last, was remanded to the Fleet where his friends on visiting him found him “serene in spirit and still cheerfully patient.” His chief persecutor had been Archbishop Laud who was present in Court throughout, and this fact was remembered against the cruel prelate when later he was himself arraigned and sentenced to death. Prynne was a second time tried and sentenced to lose the hacked remnant of his ears.

A second victim of the Star Chamber’s intolerance of criticism was John Lilburne, “Freeborn John,” who refused to incriminate himself, standing on his rights as a freeborn Englishman. His alleged offence (with his printer Wharton) was the publication of libellous and seditious books, called “News from Ipswich.” They were both remanded to the Fleet for the present, but on the 13th February (1638) were again brought up and pressed to reconsider their determination. Still inflexible, they were sent back to the Fleet under a fine of £500 each and with an addition in Lilburne’s case of a remarkable punishment. Foiled in their attempt to break men’s spirits by fines, imprisonments, brandings, slitting of noses, etc., another degrading punishment was now borrowed from the felon-code,—whipping. “To the end,” runs the sentence, “that others may be the more deterred from daring to offend in the like manner hereafter, the court hath further ordered and decreed that the said John Lilburne shall be whipt through the street from the Prison of the Fleet unto the pillory, to be erected at such time and in such place as this court shall hold fit; and that both he and Wharton shall be set in the said pillory and from thence returned to the Fleet.” The pillory was placed between Westminster Hall gate and the Star Chamber and Lilburne was whipped from the prison thither “smartly.” Rushworth says, “Whilst he was whipt at the cart and stood in the pillory, he uttered many bold speeches against tyranny of bishops, etc., and when his head was in the hole of the pillory he scattered sundry copies of pamphlets (said to be seditious) and tossed them among the people, taking them out of his pocket.” The Star Chamber Council was sitting at the time and was informed of this last-mentioned incident; when, consistent in their acts, they ordered him to be gagged immediately, which was done. Lilburne then stamped with his feet, and the people understood his meaning well enough,—that he would speak if he were able. This was not all. At the same sitting of the Council an order was made directing that Lilburne should be “laid alone with irons on his hands and legs in the wards of the Fleet, where the basest and meanest sort of prisoners” were, with other regulations in a similar spirit. This punishment also was carried into effect for a time, but ultimately brought to a summary conclusion through an accident in the prison. “Lilburne,” says Rushworth, “having for some time endured close imprisonment, lying with double irons on his feet and hands and laid in the inner wards of the prison, there happened a fire in the prison of the Fleet, near to the place where he was prisoner, which gave a jealousy that Lilburne, in his fury and anguish, was desperate and had set the Fleet Prison on fire, not regarding himself to be burnt with it; whereupon the inhabitants without the Fleet (the street then not being five or six yards over from the prison door) and the prisoners all cried, ‘Release Lilburne or we shall all be burnt!’ and thereupon they ran headlong and made the warden remove him out of his hold, and the fire was quenched and he remained a prisoner in a place where he had some more air.” He continued in prison till November the 3d, 1640, when the Long Parliament began and then he was released and immediately applied to the House of Lords for redress, who granted it in the most satisfactory manner, not merely declaring his sentence and punishment most unjust and illegal, but ordering the erasure of the proceedings from the files of all courts of justice, “as unfit to continue on record.” On the breaking out of the Civil War, Lilburne fought bravely, we need not say on which side. Freeborn John was one of the most impracticable as well as courageous of enthusiasts (Marten said of him, if there were none living but himself, John would be against Lilburne, and Lilburne against John); and the Parliament pleased him little better than the King; so he wrote against them too, and was banished upon pain of death if he returned. But Freeborn John would and did return, and was immediately arraigned at the Old Bailey, where he was publicly acquitted, “which for joy occasioned a great acclamation of the people present.” He died a Quaker and was buried in Moorfields, four thousand citizens and other persons honouring his remains by following them to the grave.