It was at this prison, in the reign of Charles I., that Dr. Lamb, the conjurer, died, after being nearly torn to pieces by the mob. He was a creature of the Duke of Buckingham, and had been accused of bewitching Lord Windsor. On the 18th of June Lamb was insulted in the City by a few boys, who soon after being increased by the acceding multitude, they surrounded him with bitter invectives, which obliged him to seek refuge in a tavern in the Old Jewry; but the tumult continuing to increase, the vintner, for his own safety, judged it proper to turn him out of the house, whereupon the mob renewed their exclamations against him, with the appellations of "wizard," "conjuror," and "devil." But at last, perceiving the approach of a guard, sent by the Lord Mayor to his rescue, they fell upon and beat the doctor in such a cruel and barbarous manner, that he was by the said guard taken up for dead, and carried to the Compter, where he soon after expired. "But the author of a treatise, entitled 'The Forfeiture of the City Charters,'" says Maitland, "gives a different account of this affair, and, fixing the scene of this tragedy on the 14th of July, writes, that as the doctor passed through Cheapside, he was attacked as above mentioned, which forced him to seek a retreat down Wood Street, and that he was there screened from the fury of the mob in a house, till they had broken all the windows, and forced the door; and then, no help coming to the relief of the doctor, the housekeeper was obliged to deliver him up to save the spoiling of his goods.
"When the rabble had got him into their hands, some took him by the legs, and others by the arms, and so dragging him along the streets, cried, 'Lamb, Lamb, the conjuror, the conjuror!' every one kicking and striking him that were nearest.
"Whilst this tumult lasted, and the City was in an uproar, the news of what had passed came to the king's ear, who immediately ordered his guards to make ready, and, taking some of the chief nobility, he came in person to appease the tumult. In St. Paul's Churchyard he met the inhuman villains dragging the doctor along; and after the knight-marshal had proclaimed silence, who was but ill obeyed, the king, like a good prince, mildly exhorted and persuaded them to keep his peace, and deliver up the doctor to be tried according to law; and that if his offence, which they charged him with, should appear, he should be punished accordingly; commanding them to disperse and depart every man to his own home. But the insolent varlets answered, that they had judged him already; and thereupon pulled him limb from limb; or, at least, so dislocated his joints, that he instantly died."
This took place just before the Duke of Buckingham's assassination by Felton, in 1628. The king, very much enraged at the treatment of Lamb, and the non-discovery of the real offenders, extorted a fine of £6,000 from the abashed City.
Dekker, the dramatist, was thrown into this prison. This poet of the great Elizabethan race was one of Ben Jonson's great rivals. He thus rails at Shakespeare's special friend, who had made "a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face upon it. Thou hast forgot how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.
Dekker thus delineates Ben:—"That same Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet apple, when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon water next my heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate—to see his face make faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets."
Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite, Horace's—"You staring Leviathan! Look on the sweet visage of Horace; look, parboil'd face, look—has he not his face punchtfull of eylet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan?"
Ben Jonson's manner in a playhouse is thus sketched by Dekker:—"Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests stolen from the Temple's revels; not to sit in a gallery where your comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants, to make all the house rise and cry—'That's Horace! That's he that pens and purges humours!'"
But, notwithstanding all his bitterness, Dekker could speak generously of the old poet; for he thus sums up Ben Jonson's merits in the following lines:—
"Good Horace! No! My cheeks do blush for thine,
As often as thou speakest so; where one true
And nobly virtuous spirit for thy best part
Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart!
I make account, I put up as deep share
In any good man's love, which thy worth earns,
As thou thyself; we envy not to see
Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy.
No, here the gall lies;—we, that know what stuff
Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk
On which thy learning grows, and can give life
To thy one dying baseness; yet must we
Dance anticks on your paper.
But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould,
I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold."