The Chronicles of Newgate (Vol. 1&2). Griffiths Arthur
same volume of State Papers contains a petition from Richard Case to Lord Burghley, to the effect that he had been committed to Newgate “upon the unjust complaint of Mr. Benedict Spinola, relative to the lease of certain lands and tenements in London.” The petitioner further “desires to be discharged from prison, and to have the queen’s pardon,” but there is no allusion to his enlargement.[35] The impolicy of confining debtors was not to be fully realized till three more centuries had passed away. But as early as 1700 a pamphlet preserved in the ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ and entitled ‘Labour in Vain,’ anticipates modern feeling and modern legislation. The writer protests against the imprisonment of debtors, which he compares to shutting up a cow from herbage when she gives no milk. “In England we confine people to starve, contrary to humanity, mercy, or policy. One may as reasonably expect his dog,” he says, “when chained to a post should catch a hare, as that poor debtors when in gaol should get wherewithal to pay their debts.”
Details of the incarceration and sufferings of prisoners for conscience sake, in an age when polemics were backed up by the strong arm of the law, are naturally to be met with more frequently in the partisan writings of the time. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and even in that of Elizabeth, intolerance stalked rampant through the land, filling the prisons and keeping Smithfield in a blaze. Henry was by turns severe on all creeds. Now Protestants, now Catholics suffered. He began as an ardent champion of Romish doctrines, and ended by denying the supremacy of the Pope. In the first stage he persecuted so-called heretics, in the second he despoiled Church property, and sent monks and priors to gaol and to the gallows. Foxe gives a long and detailed list of the Protestant martyrs from first to last. One of the most prominent was Richard Bayfield, a monk of Bury, who became an inmate of Newgate. Foxe relates[36] that a letter of inquiry was issued by the Bishop of London to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to be present at St. Paul’s on the 20th November 1531, to receive the said Richard Bayfield, alias Soundesam, “a relapsed heretic after sentence.” The sheriffs carried him to Newgate, whence they were commanded again to bring him into Paul’s upper choir, there to give attendance upon the bishop. Later on they are ordered to have him into the vestry, and then to bring him forth again in Antichrist’s apparel to be degraded before them. “When the bishop had degraded him,” says old Foxe, “kneeling upon the highest step of the altar, he took his crosier staff and smote him on the breast that he threw him down backwards and brake his head, and that he swooned; and when he came to himself again he thanked God that he was delivered from the malignant Church of Antichrist, and that he was come into the true sincere Church of Jesus Christ militant here on earth; … and so was he led forth through the choir to Newgate, and there rested about an hour in prayer, and so went to the fire in his apparel manfully and joyfully, and there for lack of a speedy fire was two quarters of an hour alive.”
Henry was, however, impartial in his severity. In 1533 he suffered John Frith, Andrew Hewett, and other Protestants, to the number of twenty-seven, to be burned for heresy. The years immediately following he hunted to death all who refused to acknowledge him as the head of the Church. Besides such imposing victims as Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, many priests suffered. In 1534 the prior of the London Carthusians, the prior of Hexham, Benase, a monk of Sion College, and John Haite, vicar of Isleworth, together with others,[37] were sentenced to be hanged and quartered at Tyburn. In 1538 a friar, by name Forrest, was hanged in Smithfield upon a gallows, quick, by the middle and armholes, “and burnt to death for denying the king’s supremacy and teaching the same in confession to many of the king’s subjects.” Upon the pile by which Forrest was consumed was also a wooden image, brought out of Wales, called “Darvell Gatheren,” which the Welshmen “much worshipped, and had a prophecy amongst them that this image would set a whole forest on fire, which prophecy took effect.”[38]
The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared to differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his polemical powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by policy rather than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the Church he had disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the notorious Six Articles, otherwise “the whip with six tails,” or the Bloody Statute, so called from its sanguinary results. The doctrines enunciated were such that many could not possibly subscribe to them; the penalties were “strait and bloody,” and very soon they were widely inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more pages, recounts the various presentments against individuals, lay and clerical, for transgressing one or more of the principles of the Six Articles; and adds to “the aforesaid, Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter’s, in Cornhill; South, parish priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles, the king’s beerbrewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine’s; Thomas Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six Articles.” “To be short,” he adds, “such a number out of all parishes in London, and out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then apprehended through the said inquisition, that all prisons in London, including Newgate, were too little to hold them, insomuch that they were fain to lay them in the halls. At last, by the means of good Lord Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the king that the said Lord Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were called; but neither was there any person called, neither did any appear.”[39]
Bonner, then Bishop of London, and afterwards one of the queen’s principal advisers, had power to persecute even under Henry. The Bible had been set up by the king’s command in St. Paul’s, that the public might read the sacred word. “Much people used to resort thither,” says Foxe, to hear the reading of the Bible, and especially attended the reading of one John Porter, “a fresh young man, and of a big stature,” who was very expert. It displeased Bonner that this Porter should draw such congregations, and sending for him, rebuked him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended himself, but Bonner charged him with making expositions on the text,
Skeffington’s Gyves.
and gathering “great multitudes about him to make tumults.” Nothing was proved against Porter, but “in fine Bonner sent him to Newgate, where he was miserably fettered in irons, both legs and arms, with a collar of iron about his neck, fastened to the wall in the dungeon; being there so cruelly handled that he was compelled to send for a kinsman of his, whose name is also Porter, a man yet alive, and can testify that it is true, and dwelleth yet without Newgate. He, seeing his kinsman in this miserable case, entreated Jewet, the keeper of Newgate, that he might be released out of those cruel irons, and so, through friendship and money, had him up among other prisoners, who lay there for felony and murder.” Porter made the most of the occasion, and after hearing and seeing their wickedness and blasphemy, exhorted them to amendment of life, and “gave unto them such instructions as he had learned of in the Scriptures; for which his so doing he was complained, and so carried down and laid in the lower dungeon of all, oppressed with bolts and irons, where, within six or eight days, he was found dead.”
But the most prominent victim to the Six Articles was Anne Askew, the daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Lincolnshire. She was married to one Kyme, but is best known under her maiden name. She was persecuted for denying the Real Presence, but the proceedings against her were pushed to extremity, it was said, because she was befriended in high quarters. Her story is a melancholy one. First one Christopher Dene examined her as to her faith and belief in a very subtle manner, and upon her answers had her before the Lord Mayor, who committed her to the Compter. There, for eleven days, none but a priest was allowed to visit her, his object being to ensnare her further. Presently she was released upon finding sureties to surrender if required, but was again brought before the king’s council at Greenwich. Her opinions in matters of belief proving unsatisfactory, she was remanded to Newgate. Thence she petitioned the king, also the Lord Chancellor Wriottesley, “to aid her in obtaining just consideration.” Nevertheless, she was taken to the Tower, and there tortured. Foxe puts the following words into her mouth: “On Tuesday I was sent from Newgate to the sign of the Crown, where Master Rich and the Bishop of London, with all their power and flattering words, went about to persuade me from God, but I did not esteem their glosing pretences. … Then Master