The prisons of London were those of the Tower (for persons accused of high treason), Newgate, Ludgate, and the Fleet. The chambers over the Gates of the City were, as we have seen, also used as prisons; and the gate in Westminster leading from the Abbey to Tothill Fields. There were also places of confinement of a temporary kind, such as the Tun in Cornhill. Every liberty, again, had its own prison—as, for instance, St. Katherine by the Tower,—and its own Court. Every monastery, also, had its own prison for offending brethren. The ordinary prison consisted of two rooms, one below the other, constructed of stone, with very strong and thick woodwork. This was protected by being everywhere covered with strong square-headed nails; the windows had iron gratings; the heavy doors were studded with nails; the lower room, which was the kitchen as well as the living-room, and a sleeping-room when the prison was crowded, had a great fireplace, the chimney being strongly barred above to prevent escape that way; there was outside a very small courtyard for air and exercise. The Fleet prison, which was outside the wall, was surrounded by a narrow fosse forming a branch of the Fleet river. The arrangement of the room above, and the room below, was, of course, modified when it became necessary to enlarge prisons, and to provide for the separate accommodation of women.
When we speak of Crime and Punishment we are forced to speak of Vagrants and Rogues. Below the busy and honest life of industry, hidden away in the holes and corners of the labyrinthine City, was the life of the rogues, the vagrants, the masterless men. If anything were wanted to prove the ever-present existence of this population, one need only read the Proclamations and Acts passed from time to time. Every outbreak of foreign or civil war added to the number of those who, once being taken from their work, would never return to it, and so became tramps, highway robbers, common thieves. The nomad instinct provides another contingent of those who cannot or will not work; the criminal whom no one will employ furnishes a third contingent; the prodigal son, who yearns and longs for the life of unrestraint with women, drink, feasting, and singing, furnishes another contingent. All these people found a harbour with congenial society in the Plantagenet times, as they do now in and about the City of London. If they were not within the walls they were not far without—in Clerkenwell, in Southwark, and in Westminster. The laws for the repression of vagrancy and robbery were sound and strong. If they could have been enforced, vagrants and highway robbers would have disappeared. For the Saxon system of frank-pledge provided that the hundred—or the tything— should be responsible for every crime committed within its borders; further, if a man entertained a guest for more than two nights, he became liable for that guest. Yet without the goodwill of the people what is the use of laws? Who could enforce these laws? Robin Hood, Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley were popular heroes. As for vagrants, it was notorious that thousands were driven to vagrancy to escape starvation, through the tyrannous exactions of the overlord, or through the hard forest laws.
Another cause of vagrancy was that which remains in force to this day—the encouragement of beggars by giving them alms. There were places dotted all over the country, not monasteries only but castles and houses, where there were endowments and doles on certain days of the year; these days, of course, were perfectly well known to the tramp. The Statute of Winchester (A.D. 1285) makes it plain that the sympathies of the people were with the tramp and highway robber. It was enacted in this statute that there were to be stationed six men at every gate of the City; that the gate was to be closed from sunset to sunrise; and that the watch should arrest every suspicious person. This statute was to be enforced in every town, but in London it was further ordered that after Curfew tolled at St. Martin-le-Grand no man should go about the City streets armed; nor should he go about the streets at all unless “he be a great man or other lawful person of good repute, or their certain messenger”; and whereas “offenders do commonly meet and talk in taverns,” it was enacted that every tavern should be closed at curfew, under penalties, the last and chief of which was to be “forejudged” of his trade.
Again, who was to enforce these laws? What police were there to arrest night walkers? Who was to ascertain whether a tavern was closed or not? Accordingly, after the weak rule and troubled time of Edward II., we find his son in 1328 making a Proclamation against the granting of Charters of Pardon for Robberies, Manslaughters, Felonies, etc. Again, two years later, it is ordered that if suspicious persons pass by they may be arrested, either by day or by night, and delivered up to the Sheriff, who will judge if they be “Roberdes men, wastours, or Draghlacthe” (draw latches). The three Proclamations—23 Edward III., 25 Edward IV., and 2 Richard II.—concerning labour and vagrancy forbade absolutely the giving of alms to sturdy beggars. But proclamations availed nothing: the peasants left their villages and wandered about the roads; the men-at-arms wandered with them; the cripples, the blind, the maimed, the mutilated, wandered from town to town; the leper walked along with his “clack dish”; the strolling minstrel walked with them; and they were all rogues and thieves and murderers together. Sometimes they were set in the stocks; how could that have any effect upon a tramp? Shame he had none; trade he had none; employer he had none; vagrancy ran through his veins; there was no other life possible for him. Prison was the only cure for vagrancy; and that, imprisonment for life. Imprisonment, however, generally shortened life very quickly. A case is mentioned by Jusserand (Wayfaring Life, p. 366) in which two men and one woman were imprisoned as vagrants without being charged with any robbery. It was at a place called Thorlestan; one of the men died in prison; the other man lost one foot; the woman lost two feet by putrefaction. The prison, in fact, was a foul and noisome place, not paved, not cleaned, in which fever always lingered. In the fourteenth century there is mentioned for the first time the influx of people from the country into London. In the year 1359 the following Proclamation was issued:—
“Forasmuch as many men and women, and others, of divers Counties, who might work, to the help of the common people, have betaken themselves out of their own country to the City of London, and do go about begging there, so as to have their own ease and repose, not wishing to labour or work for their sustenance, to the great damage of such the common people; and also, do waste divers alms, which would otherwise be given to many poor folks, such as lepers, blind, halt, and persons oppressed with old age and divers other maladies, to the destruction of the support of the same: We do therefore command on behalf of our Lord the King, whom may God preserve and bless, that all those who go about begging in the said city, and who are able to labour and work, for the profit of the common people, shall quit the said city between now and Monday next ensuing, and if any such shall be found begging after the day aforesaid, the same shall be taken and put in the stocks on Cornhulle, for half a day the first time: and the second time he shall be taken he shall remain in the stocks one whole day: and the third time he shall be taken, and shall remain in prison for 40 days, and then forswear the said city for ever. And every constable, and the bedel of every ward of the said city, shall be empowered to arrest such manner of folks, and to put them in the stocks in manner aforesaid.”
In the Vision of Piers Plowman there is a powerful contrast between the honest labourer and the beggar. In the description of the latter there is a touch which opens up a wide field of wickedness. “They observe,” he says, “no law, nor marry women with whom they have been connected. They beget bastards who are beggars by nature, and either break the back or some other bone of their little ones, and go begging with them on false pretences ever after. There are more misshapen children among such beggars than among any other men that walk on the earth.”
A BEGGAR
From Romaunt of the Rose in British Museum. Harl. MS. 4425.
This chapter belongs to the period which ends with the last of the Plantagenets. Yet the legislation of the next century, which was conducted on much the same lines as that of Richard II., and designed to meet the same evils, may be considered here as showing the condition of the City as regards beggars and rogues and persons without a trade. We have seen that Order after Order, Statute after Statute, Proclamation after Proclamation, was passed for the suppression of the rogue, who, nevertheless, continually multiplied and thrived. They tried other methods. They ordered sixteen Beadles of the four hospitals—Christ’s, Bartholomew’s, St. Thomas’s, and Bridewell—to divide the City between them, taking six wards for the party of four, and to arrest all the beggars of the City: the impotent and the aged, the sick, the lame, the blind they were to take to St. Bartholomew’s or St. Thomas’s; the children were to be taken to Christ’s Hospital; the sturdy beggars and vagabonds were to be taken to Bridewell, where they would receive “Payment”—it need not be explained what was the nature of the remuneration. It is not stated that success attended this measure, but the imagination pictures the sturdy beggar marching out of Bishopsgate, and Newgate, and Ludgate, with all possible speed, and with the air of an honest craftsman, while the impotent and the rest of them betook themselves to Southwark. At every gate of the City was planted one of the Beadles. It seems an odd service to exact of an Hospital officer to watch those who entered and those who went out; and every Beadle was to inquire of the collectors in every Ward for the houses which harboured vagrants; and these vagrants and sturdy beggars who should be set to work should be attended by a Beadle. Strange as it may appear, this method produced no visible decrease in the number of beggars and vagabonds, maimed soldiers, and masterless men, by whom the City was infested. They then made trial of a City Police. At first it was a beginning only. They appointed two City Marshals for the clearance of disorderly persons, whom they had authority to banish. One supposes that they did banish them, but it is certain that they came back again. Yet, for a time, the City Marshals succeeded; the chief haunts of rogues at this time were the new streets about Clerkenwell and Islington. On one occasion, a great and unexpected search being made in these places, several hundreds were arrested and taken to Bridewell, where they were all flogged and set to work. Yet a few years later the proclamations against masterless men were out again, with more vigorous search and more arrests and more floggings.