London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

The following history of heartless duplicity in high places is told in the memoirs of De Grammont. The victim was one of the earliest actresses on the stage:—

“The Earl of Oxford fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke’s theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very fashionable new play: insomuch that she ever after retained that name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his passion: he had recourse to invectives and even spells: but all in vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink: this did not signify to him: but his passion at length became so violent that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, as you know, a very handsome man: he is of the Order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense: but as soon as ever you hear him speak you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage in due form, signed with his own hand: she would not, however, rely upon this: but the next day she thought there could be no danger, when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergyman and another man for a witness: the marriage was accordingly solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl’s arms upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When examination was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord’s trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over, and as for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the Sultana Roxana might have supposed in some part or other of a play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man: both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king’s feet to demand justice: she had only to rise up again without redress: and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Roxana, instead of Countess of Oxford.”

The strange story of Lord Sanquhar’s revenge belongs to the reign of James the First; it is the story of a madman: a man who went mad with brooding over a sense of shame. He was a Scottish nobleman, and he came to Whitefriars to practise fencing with one or other of the fencing-masters who had lodgings in Alsatia. He was playing with a master named Turner, and in the course of their play he received the point or the button of his adversary’s foil in his eye, the result of which accident was the loss of that eye altogether. The accident, it is said, was much regretted by Turner; considering how much it reflected upon his professional skill, this is not surprising. Lord Sanquhar, however, sometime visited the court of the French King Henry IV. When the King was in discourse with him he observed the loss of the eye and asked how that occurred. “By a sword,” said Sanquhar. “Does the man live?” asked the King.

This question set Lord Sanquhar brooding over the thing until he persuaded himself that his honour demanded the death of Turner. It is, however, wonderful that he should have perversely believed that his honour demanded the murder of Turner by two hired assassins. It was five years after the accident of the foil. The two men went to Whitefriars about seven in the evening. They found Turner sitting before his house with a friend. Apparently Turner knew them, for he invited them to drink; whereupon one of them, Carliel, turning round to cock the pistol, presented it and fired, the bullet entering the man’s heart, so that he fell back, dead. They then fled; one of them ran up a cul de sac and was taken on the spot; the other tried to escape into Scotland; and Lord Sanquhar tried to hide himself in the country.

They were all three caught. The two murderers were hanged opposite the great gate of Whitefriars—now the entrance to Bouverie Street; the noble lord was hanged in New Palace Yard.

We hear a great deal about debtors’ prisons in the course of the eighteenth century. Some effort was made in the seventeenth century to investigate their condition.

In 1677 a committee was appointed to examine into the security, not the proper treatment, of the prisoners of the King’s Bench and Fleet Street. Joseph Cooling, Marshal of the Marshalsea, deposed that he had given, for his office, security for £10,000 and paid, besides, a rent of £1400 a year. He said that he gave no liberty to the prisoners to go out; that those who would not find security were not allowed even to leave the Rules unless attended by his servants; that his servants saw that everybody was in his lodging at nightfall; that some prisoners had a whole house to themselves; that the reason of the Rules was that the prison would not hold all the prisoners; that there was a table of fees, and that he never took more than the table allowed.

Manlove, Warden of the Fleet, deposed that his office was taxed at £600 a year; that he took security from the prisoners before he suffered them to go into the Rules, and so on.

Then came the evidence of ten prisoners. They swore that when the Commissioners of Bankrupts went to the prison in order to examine one Farrington, the Marshal could only produce him twice out of eleven times that he was wanted; that when the Commissioners’ messenger entered the prison, the prisoners jumped upon him. The evidence on this point is not clear. Robert Black, another prisoner, gave evidence as to the Marshal’s exactions and tyranny. He himself had signed a petition against these exactions, and was in consequence forcibly removed to the poor side, where the exercise yard was encumbered with sheds and where he had to sleep in a damp cellar 4 feet underground, 18 feet square, with nineteen others: that prisoners had been locked up day and night, their friends refused admission to them. This evidence of Robert Black was confirmed by others.

Anne Moseley, another prisoner, gave evidence as to the filthy condition of the place where she had to sleep; she also accused the Marshal of taking £10 from her for permission to live at home and then putting her on the poor side. George Phillips, another prisoner, swore that he, with three others, was put into a room 16 feet by 15 feet, for which they had to pay a rent of £24:6:6 a year, though it was worth no more than £4 a year; that the Marshal let a number of such rooms, some of them worth no more than £6 a year, at rents of £24, £36, £46, and £62 a year.