Judgments in Vacation

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

In July, 1577, Lord Burghley is again at “Buckstons” [sic] and the faithful recorder sends him a budget of news. He has been at the Mercers’ feast “and there were we all very merry ... and I told them that I was to write privately to your Lordship; and they required me all to commend them to your good Lordship; at which time the Master of the Rolls, who is no wine drinker, did drink to your Lordship a bowl of Rhenish wine and then Sir Thomas Gresham drank another, and Sir William Demsell the third and I pledged them all.” It reads like a page from the Book of Snobs.

And after the “great and royal banquet” which took place at the house of the new Master, some time we may suppose about mid-day, Fleetwood, as he tells us “walked to Powle’s to learn some news.” For in that day St. Paul’s was the Exchange and the club and the Market Place of the men of the world where news came from all quarters of the world and where news passed from lip to lip and thence out into the corners of England in such letters as this of Fleetwood’s to Lord Burghley. The extraordinary uses to which the Cathedral was put in Elizabeth’s time, are a constant theme of reproach from religious-minded men. Idlers and drunkards used to sleep on benches at the choir door, and porters, butchers and water bearers were suffered in service time, to carry and re-carry their wares across the nave, and in the upper choir itself irreverent people walked about with hats on their heads, whilst if any entered the Cathedral booted and spurred, the gentlemen of the choir left their places and demanded “spur-money” and threatened their victim with a night’s imprisonment in the choir if the tax were not paid. Such was “Powle’s” on this July afternoon when Recorder Fleetwood went down in search of news, and indeed he heard terrible tidings; for there “came suddenly into the church Edmund Downing, and he told me that he was even then come out of Worcestershire and that my Lord Chief Baron died at Sir John Hubbard’s house and that he is buried at Leicester. And he said that the common speech of that country is that Mr. Serjeant Barham should be dead at Worcester, but that is not certain. The like report goeth of Mr. Fowler, the Clerk of the same Circuit ... and a number of other gent that were at the gaol delivery at Oxon are all dead. The inquest of life and death are almost all gone. Such Clerks servants and young gent, being scholars as were at the same gaol delivery, are either dead or in great danger. Mr. Solicitor’s son and heir being brought home to his father’s house at Woodstock, lieth at the mercy of God. Mr. Attorney’s son and heir was brought very sick from Oxon to his father’s house at Harrow, where he lieth in as great danger of death as might be, but now there is some hope of amendment. The gaol delivery of Oxon, as I am told, was kept in the Town Hall, a close place and by the infection of the gaol as all men take it, this mortality grew.”

We know now all about the Oxford Black Assizes of the 5th and 6th of July, 1577, and how Judges, Sheriffs, Knights, Squires, Barristers and members of the Grand Jury were stricken down with what was probably typhus. The disease spread to the Colleges. Masters, Doctors and heads of houses left almost to a man. “The Master of Merton remained longe omnium vigilantissimus ministering to the sick. The pharmacies were soon emptied of their conserves, oils, sweet waters, pixides and every kind of confection.” Wild rumours spread abroad that it was the result of a Papist plot. In a few weeks of the Assizes, some five hundred perished, nearly all men of the better class. The disease did not attack the poor or women. There seems little doubt that the infection was among the prisoners and there is a record that two or three thieves had died in chains shortly before the Assizes. One would have supposed that such a visitation would have been a signal for prison reform, but those who have read of Howard’s experiences, know how little was done to mitigate the horrors of life in gaol until a much more recent date.

Fleetwood tells us a great deal about his own activity at this time. He is holding an oyer and terminer at the Guildhall in the vacation “to keep the people in obedience.” He sits with the Justices to discuss the abolition of alehouses and the advancement of archery, he is constant in his search after rogues and masterless men and there being cases of plague in the Savoy, he takes occasion to pass with all the constables between the bars and the tilt-yard in both the liberties, to see the houses shut, which he notes with pride “neither the Master of the Rolls nor my cousin Holcroft the Bailiff, would or durst do.” At the same time he was writing a book on “The Office of a Justice of the Peace” which was printed a hundred years later. Amidst these various employments however, he finds room for the lighter social duties and spends an afternoon with the Shoemakers of London, who “having builded a fair and a new hall, made a royal feast there for their friends, which they call their housewarming.”

A really heavy sessions must have been a terrible experience since this is what the Recorder evidently regards as a light one. “At the last Sessions,” he writes, “there were executed eighteen at Tyburn, and one, Barlow, born in Norfolk but of the house of the Barlows in the county of Lancashire, was pressed. They were all notable cut-purses and horse-stealers. It was the quietest Sessions that ever I was at.” At the beginning of the year he makes an audit of known criminals “that I may know what new may be sprung up this last year and where to find them if need be” and he makes out a list of “receivers and gage takers and melters of stolen plate and such like.”

Part of his duty was the actual police work of “searching out of sundry that were receptors of felons.” In the course of this duty he tells Burghley on another occasion of the discovery of a den that Dickens might have used as a model in Oliver Twist, so little had the ways of criminals altered from Elizabeth to Victoria. “Amongst our travels this one matter tumbled out by the way, that one, Walters, a gentleman born and some time a merchant of good credit, who falling by time into decay, kept an alehouse at Smart’s Keye (Quay) near Billing’s Gate, and after some misdemeanour being put down he reared up a new trade of life and in the same house he procured all the cut-purses about this city to repair to his same house. There was a school-house set up to learn young boys to cut purses. There were hung up two devices, the one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters and was hung about with hawk’s bells, and over the top did hang a little sacring bell; and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a publique foyster, and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without the noise of the bells, he was adjudged a judicial nipper.” Note that a foyster is a pick-pocket, and a nipper is termed a pick-purse or a cut-purse.

The path of an honest judge in the days of Elizabeth was beset with difficulties. Although bribes were not actually offered to the individual magistrate, yet he was written to by influential persons about the Court, and he had to choose between doing his duty and incurring the dislike of powerful men. Fleetwood complains “that when by order we have justly executed the law ... we are wont either to have a great man’s letter, a lady’s ring, or some other token from some other such inferior persons as will devise one untruth or another to accuse us of if we prefer not their unlawful requests.” Our honest Recorder is strong to maintain the principle that all men are equal in the sight of the law.

Here is a typical case of which he complains: “Mr. Nowell of the Court hath lately been in London. He caused his man to give a blow unto a carman. His man hath stricken the carman with the pommel of his sword and therewith hath broken his skull and killed him. Mr. Nowell and his man are likely to be indicted thereof, I am sure to be much troubled with his letters and his friends, and what by other means, as in the very like case heretofore, I have been even with the same man. Here are sundry young gentlemen that use the Court that most commonly term themselves gentlemen; when any of them have done anything amiss, and are complained of or arrested for debt, then they run unto me and no other excuse or answer can they make but say—‘I am a gentleman, and being a gentleman I am not thus to be used at a slaves and a colion’s (scullion’s) hands.’ I know not what other plea Mr. Nowell can plead. But this I say, the fact is foul.”

A “gentleman” in England in Elizabethan days seems to have thought himself as little amenable to law as an American millionaire, but Fleetwood had the English gist of the matter in him when he says “the fact is foul.”

But though the Recorder stood firm against the hangers on of the Court, London was not a happy soil for judicial integrity. He never attained to the promotion he deserved, and maybe it was because he could not dishonour his office to serve his friends at Court. Such mercy as the Recorder could honestly show to a prisoner, he was only too ready to exercise. “Truly, my Lord,” he writes, “it is nothing needful to write for the stay of any to be reprieved for there is not any in our commission of London and Middlesex but we are desirous to save or stay any poor wretch if by colour of any law or reason we may do it. My singular good Lord, my Lord William of Winchester was wont to say: ‘When the Court is furthest from London then is there the best justice done in all England.’ I once heard as great a personage in office and authority as ever he was and yet living say the same words. It is grown for a trade now in the Court to make means for reprieves; twenty pounds for a reprieve is nothing, although it be but for bare ten days. I see it will not be holpen unless one honoured gentleman who many times is abused by wrong information—and surely upon my soul not upon any evil meaning—do stay his pen. I have not one letter for the stay of a thief from your Lordship.”