He published in the same year "The Cry of the Oppressed, being a true and tragical account of the unparallel'd suffering of multitudes of poor imprisoned debtors in most of the gaols of England, under the tyranny of the gaolers and other oppressors.... Together with the case of the Publisher." The sufferings of the debtors he knew by personal experience, and his revelation is one of horrors perpetrated in the Fleet and elsewhere, and illustrated with very graphic copper-plates. His account of his own troubles occupies sixty-seven pages, and shows him to have been a reckless speculator. Having been educated as a haberdasher, he undertook to be a publisher, and simultaneously to be a builder.
He probably obtained his release before 1695, as in that year he published a letter relative to some discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, by a parson named George Hicker, d.d., and in 1696 he wrote the account of Anne Jefferies, given above. He was married to a Miss Upman. The date of his death is not known. Justice Tregeagle, who was the special "persecutor" of Anne Jefferies, is very well remembered in Cornish legend. He was a particularly wicked man and harsh steward, and lies buried near the chancel of S. Breock. His home was Trevorder, in that parish.
THOMAS KILLIGREW, THE KING'S JESTER
The Killigrew family seems to have possessed a great hankering after the stage, for four of them were playwrights. Indeed, Henry Killigrew, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, began at the age of seventeen, when a play written by him was performed at the nuptials of Lord Charles Herbert with Lady Mary Villiers, at the Black Friars. Some critics present objected that one of the characters, representing a boy of seventeen, talked too freely for his age, and Falkland replied "that it was neither monstrous nor impossible for one of seventeen years to speak at such a rate; when he that made him speak in that manner, and who wrote the whole play, was himself no older."
Sir William Killigrew, Knt., who was loyal to Charles I, and stood high in favour with Charles II, usher of the privy chamber and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, also wrote plays, tragi-comedies, but they do not appear to have taken with the public.
But the man who was most stage-stricken of the family was Thomas, the fourth son of Sir Robert Killigrew, born in 1611. He became early in life page of honour to Charles I, and he attended Charles II when in exile. At this period, when Charles was sorely in need of money, Thomas Killigrew was despatched as "Resident" to Venice, in 1652, "to borrow money of English merchants for his (Charles's) owne subsistence," and "to press the Duke to furnish Us with a present some (sum) of money and we will engage ourselves by any Act or Acts to repay with interest, and so likewise for any Arms or Ammunition he shall be pleased to furnish Us withall. The summe you shall move him to furnish Us with shall be Ten thousand Pistolls."
