Richard II. was not so well disposed towards the city. Recklessly extravagant, wasteful and profuse in his way of living, he was always in straits for cash. The money needed for his frivolous amusements and ostentatious display he wrung from the Corporation by seizing its charters, which were only redeemed by the payment of heavy fines. The sympathies of the city were therefore with Henry Bolingbroke in the struggle which followed. It was able to do him good service by warning him of a plot against his life, and Henry, now upon the throne, to show his gratitude, and “cultivate the good understanding thus commenced with the city, granted it a new charter.” The most important clause of Henry’s charter was that which entrusted the citizens, their heirs and successors, with the custody “as well of the gates of Newgate and Ludgate, as all other gates and posterns in the same city.” The same clause gave them the office of gathering the tolls and customs in Cheap, Billingsgate, and Smithfield there rightfully to be taken and accustomed;[18] “and also the tronage, that is to say, the weighing of lead, wax, pepper, allom, madder, and other like wares, within the said city for ever.” The great concession was, however, in the reign of Edward IV., whose charter was the fullest and most explicit of any previously granted. By this the mayor, recorder, and aldermen who had been Lord Mayor were constituted perpetual justices of the peace of the city; they were also appointed justices of oyer and terminer; their customs were to be accepted as established beyond controversy by the declaration of the mayor through the recorder; they were exempted from serving as jurors, and so forth, beyond the city. The borough of Southwark was once more clearly placed under the jurisdiction of the city; the citizens were entitled to the goods and chattels of traitors and felons, and the privilege of the annual Southwark Fair, with the pie powder court, was confirmed.
By this time the gate and prison must have passed under the control of the civic authorities. They had, however, already enjoyed the privilege of contributing to its charges. This appears from an entry as far back as September 1339, in the account of expenditure of Thomas de Maryus, chamberlain. The item is for “moneys delivered to William Simond, Sergeant of the Chamber, by precept of the mayor and aldermen, for making the pavement within Newgate, £7 6s. 8d.” How complete became the power and responsibility of the Corporation and its officers is to be seen in the account given in the ‘Liber Albus’ of the procedure when new sheriffs were appointed.[19] They were sworn on appointment, and with them their officers, among whom were the governor of Newgate and his clerk. After dinner on the same day of appointment the old and new sheriffs repaired to Newgate, where the new officials took over all the prisoners “by indenture” made between them and the old.[20] They were also bound to “place one safeguard there at their own peril,” and were forbidden to “let the gaol to fenn or farm.” Other restrictions were placed upon them. It was the sheriffs’ duty also, upon the vigil of St. Michael, on vacating their office, to resign into the hands of the mayor for the time being the keys of Newgate, the Cocket or Seal of Newgate, and all other things pertaining unto the said sheriffwick.[21] All the civic authorities, mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and their servants, including the gaoler of Newgate, were forbidden to brew for sale, keep an oven, or let carts for hire; “nor shall they be regrators of provisions, or hucksters of ale, or in partnership with such.” Penalties were attached to the breach of these regulations. It was laid down that any who took the oath and afterwards contravened it, or any who would not agree to abide by the ordinance, should be forthwith “ousted from his office for ever.” It was also incumbent upon the sheriffs to put “a man sufficient, and of good repute, to keep the gaol of Newgate in due manner, without taking anything of him for such keeping thereof, by covenant made in private or openly.” Moreover, the gaoler so appointed swore before the Lord Mayor and aldermen that “neither he nor any of them shall take fine or extortionate charge from any prisoner by putting on or taking off his irons, or shall receive moneys extorted from such prisoners.” He was permitted to levy fourpence from each upon release, “as from ancient time has been the usage, but he shall take fees from no person at his entrance there;” indeed, he was warned that if he practised extortion he would be “ousted from his office,” and punished at the discretion of the mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city.
It will be made pretty plain, I think, in subsequent pages, that these wise and righteous regulations were both flagrantly ignored and systematically contravened. The rule against farming out the prison may have been observed, and it may not be clearly proved that the sheriffs ever took toll from the gaoler. But the spirit of the law, if not its letter, was broken by the custom which presently grew general of making the gaolership a purchaseable appointment. The buying and selling of offices, of army commissions, for instance, as we have seen practised within recent years, at one time extended also to the keeperships of gaols. It is recorded in the Calendar of State papers that one Captain Richardson agreed for his place as keeper of Newgate for £3000. A larger sum, viz. £5000, was paid by John Huggins to Lord Clarendon, who “did by his interest” obtain a grant of the office of keeper of the Fleet prison for the life of Huggins and his son. One James Whiston, in a book entitled ‘England’s Calamities Discovered, or Serious Advice to the Common Council of London,’[22] strongly remonstrates against this practice, which he stigmatizes as “bartering justice for gold.” His language is plain and forcible. “Shall the public houses built at the city charges [it appears that at that time Ludgate, Newgate, the Fleet, and the Compters were all put up to the highest bidder] be sold for private lucre?... He that sells a gaoler’s place sells the liberty, the estate, the person, nay, the very lives of the prisoners under his jurisdiction.” “Purchased cruelty,” the right to oppress the prisoners, that is to say, in order to recover the sums spent in buying the place, “is now grown so bold that if a poor man pay not extortionary fees and ruinous chamber-rent, he shall be thrown into holes and common sides to be devoured by famine, lice, and disease. I would fain know,” he asks, “by what surmise of common sense a keeper of a prison can demand a recompense or fee from a prisoner for keeping him in prison?... Can he believe that any person can deserve a recompense for opening the door of misery and destruction?... But now such is the confidence of a purchaser, that to regain his sum expended he sells his tap-house at prodigious rates, ... he farms his sheets to mere harpies, and his great key to such a piece of imperious cruelty (presumably his chief turnkey) as is the worst of mankind.” Following the same line of argument, he says “it will perhaps be thought impertinent to dispute a gaoler’s demands for admitting us into his loathsome den, when even the common hangman, no doubt encouraged by such examples, will scarce give a malefactor a cast of his office without a bribe, demands very formally his fees, forsooth, of the person to be executed, and higgles with him as nicely as if he were going to do him some mighty kindness.” Eventually an act was passed specifically forbidding the sale of such places. This statute affirms that “none shall buy, sell, let, or take to farm, the office of under-sheriff, gaoler, bailiff, under pain of £500, half to the king and half to him that shall sue.”
Before leaving the subject of the sheriffs’ jurisdiction in regard to Newgate, it may be interesting to refer to a conflict between them and the Corporation as to the right to appoint the gaoler. It is recorded in the State papers, under date March 1, 1638, that Isaac Pennington and John Wollaston were elected and sworn sheriffs for the ensuing year. They went, according to ancient custom, to Newgate, where, having received the keys and the charge of the prisoners from the former sheriffs, they substituted for the actual keeper one James Francklin, who about the 15th of the following October died. Accordingly the sheriffs appointed and settled Henry Wollaston as keeper of the gaol, who peaceably executed the duties of that place for six weeks. The rest of the story is best told in the language of the record. After that time “the Lord Mayor and aldermen, never charging Wollaston with any miscarriage, sent for him to their court at Guildhall, and demanded of him the keys of the said prison, who refusing to deliver them to any without the consent of the sheriffs, was then detained until some officers were sent from the said court, who forcibly brought the officer’s servants intrusted with the said keys and prisoners by the said Wollaston, and, without the knowledge or consent of the said sheriffs, delivered them to Richard Johnson, a young man not free of the city, clerk to the recorder, whom they (the sheriffs, from whom this protest comes) consider to be very unfit for such a trust. For redress, the sheriffs by all fair means have applied themselves divers times to the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, who refuse to restore the said Wollaston. The sheriffs conceive that the trust and keeping of the said gaol, both by law and reason, ought to be in their disposition, and that it is inseparable, incident to, and of common right belonging to their office, they being liable to punishments for any escapes, and amerciaments for non-appearance of prisoners in Her Majesty’s courts of justice, with many other such like damages and fears.”
How the case was finally settled does not appear. But the matter was one in which the king (Charles I.) would probably claim to have a voice. The appointment might be in the gift and actually made by the Corporation, but the city authorities were often invited by the Court to put in some royal nominee, a request which might easily be interpreted into a command. Thus in April 1594, the Lords of the Council addressed the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, soliciting them to appoint Richard Hutchman, one of Her Majesty’s sergeants-at-arms, keeper of Newgate, vice Dios, deceased. In June the Corporation reply that they regret they cannot appoint Hutchman. The Lords’ Council now issue a peremptory order to place him in office, which was done, but the Corporation was not to be beaten. Next year a fresh representation is made to the Lords in Council, stating the reasons why the city authorities had dismissed Mr. Hutchman from his place.
Another State paper, dated 1633, gives a draft of a letter recommending one A. B. for the appointment of keeper, vacant by the “nomination of one not deemed to have been legally put in.” Some seventy years later, according to another authority, the question was definitely settled. In this (dated 1708) it is set forth that “the keeper of the prison holds that place of great trust under the queen (Anne), giving about £8000 security, and the prison is turned over to each of the new sheriffs when sworn in by delivering them a key. The place is in the gift of the Lord Mayor and aldermen.”
Let us return to Mediæval Newgate. Whatever the authority, whether royal or civic, the condition of the inmates must have been wretched in the extreme, as the few brief references to them in the various records will sufficiently prove. The place was full of horrors; the gaolers rapacious and cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the gaol, and some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. Prisoners detained on minor charges were cast into deep dungeons, and there associated with the worst criminals. All were alike threatened, nay tortured, till they yielded to the keepers’ extortions, or consented to turn approvers and swear away the lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the charity and good-will of the benevolent for food and raiment. As far back as 1237 it is stated that Sir John Pulteney gave four marks by the year to the relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385 William Walworth, the stalwart mayor whose name is well remembered in connection with Wat Tyler’s rebellion, gave “somewhat” with the same good object. “So have many others since,” says the record. The water supply of the prison, Stowe tells, was also a charitable gift. “Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime Mayor of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near unto the common fountain and Chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital) to the gaols of Ludgate and Newgate, for the relief of the prisoners.”
In 1451, by the will of Phillip Malpas, who had been a sheriff some twelve years previous, the sum of £125 was bequeathed to “the relief of poor prisoners.” This Malpas, it may be mentioned here, was a courageous official, ready to act promptly in defence of city rights. In 1439 a prisoner under escort from Newgate to Guildhall was rescued from the officer’s hands by five companions, after which all took sanctuary at the college of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.[23] “But Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshal, the sheriffs of London, were no sooner acquainted with the violence offered to their officer and the rescue of their prisoner, than they, at the head of a great number citizens, repaired to the said college, and forcibly took from thence the criminal and his rescuers, whom they carried in fetters to the Compter, and thence, chained by the necks, to Newgate.”
For food the prisoners were dependent upon alms or upon articles declared forfeit by the law. Thus some bread of light weight, seized on the 10th August 1298, was ordered to be given to the prisoners in Newgate. Again, the halfpenny loaf of light bread of Agnes Foting of Stratford was found wanting 7 shillings (or 4⅕ oz.) in weight; therefore it was adjudged that her bread should be forfeited, and it also was sent unto the gaol. All food sold contrary to the statutes of the various guilds was similarly forfeited to the prisoners. The practice of giving food was continued through succeeding years, and to a very recent date. A long list of charitable donations and bequests might be made out, bestowed either in money or in kind. A customary present was a number of stones of beef. Some gave penny loaves, some oatmeal, some coals. Without this benevolence it would have gone hard with the poor population of the Gatehouse gaol. It was not strange that the prison should be wasted by epidemics, as when in 1414 “the gaoler died and prisoners to the number of sixty-four;” or that the inmates should at times exhibit a desperate turbulence, taking up arms and giving constituted authority much trouble to subdue them, as in 1457 when they broke out of their several wards in Newgate, and got upon the leads, where they defended themselves with great obstinacy against the sheriffs and their officers, insomuch that they, the sheriffs, were obliged to call the citizens to their assistance, whereby the prisoners were soon reduced to their former state.
The evil effects of incarceration in Newgate may be further judged by the fate which overtook the city debtors who were temporarily removed thither from Ludgate. An effort had been made in 1419 to put pressure upon them as a class. An ordinance was issued by Henry V. closing the Ludgate prison for debtors. It had been found that “many false men of bad disposition and purpose have been more willing to take up their abode there, so as to waste and spend their goods upon the ease and license that there is within, than pay their debts.” Wherefore it was ordained that “all prisoners therein shall be removed and safely carried to Newgate, there to remain each in such keeping as his own deserts shall demand.” The order was, however, very speedily rescinded. A later ordinance in the same year sets forth that “whereas, through the abolition and doing away with the prison of Ludgate, which was formerly ordained for the good and comfort of citizens and other reputable persons, and also by reason of the fœtid and corrupt atmosphere that is in the hateful gaol of Newgate, many persons who lately were in the said prison of Ludgate, who in the time of William Sevenoke, late mayor, for divers great offences which they had there compassed were committed to the said gaol (of Newgate), are now dead, who might have been living, it is said, if they had