Bishop Hooper soon followed Rogers to the stake. The same Monday night, Feb. 4, 1555, the keeper of Newgate gave him an inkling that he should be sent to Gloucester to suffer death, “and the next day following, about four o’clock in the morning before day, the keeper with others came to him and searched him and the bed wherein he lay, to see if he had written anything, and then he was led to the sheriffs of London and other their officers forth of Newgate, to a place appointed not far from Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, where six of the Queen’s Guards were appointed to receive him and to carry him to Gloucester, …” where execution was to be done.
We obtain a curious insight into the gaol at Newgate during Mary’s reign from the narrative of the ‘Hot Gospeller.’ Edward Underhill, a yeoman of the Guard, was arrested in 1553 for “putting out” a ballad which attacked the Queen’s title. Underhill was carried before the Council, and there got into dispute with Bourne, a fanatic priest whom he called a papist. “Sir John Mason asked what he meant by that, and he replied, ‘If you look among the priests of Paul’s you will find some mumpsimusses there. This caused much heat, and he was committed to Newgate.” At the door of the prison he wrote to his wife, asking her to send his night-gown, Bible, and lute, and then he goes on to describe Newgate as follows:[42]—
“In the centre of Newgate was a great open hall; as soon as it was supper-time the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was Alexander, with his wife came and sat down, and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony. Underhill being the first that for religion was sent into that prison. One of the felons had served with him in France. After supper this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured one to have a bed in his (Underhill’s) chamber who could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary’s guard, yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, or else he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper’s hands and his wife’s, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. ‘Well,’ said Underhill, ‘I have sent for my Bible, and, by God’s grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not hide it from them.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I am poor; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well; and I will show you the nature and manner of them, for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well; wherefore, you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry and to drink wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can show you.’
“The honour of being ‘white son’ to the governor and governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after. Underhill duly provided the desired entertainment. The governor gave him the best room in the prison, with all other admissible indulgences.
“At last, however, the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many draughts of air, threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted his lodgings, but to no purpose; the evil savours followed him. The keeper offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable. Finally the wife put him away in her store closet, amidst her best plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the Earl of Bedford.”
There was a truce to religious persecution for some years after Mary’s death. Throughout Edward’s reign and the better part of Elizabeth’s it was only the ordinary sort of criminal who was committed to the gaol of Newgate. The offences were mostly coining, horse-stealing, and other kinds of thefts. “One named Ditche was apprehended at the sessions holden at Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th December, being Friday and horse-market there.”[43] The ‘Remembrancia’ gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of Requests, to the Lord Mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had petitioned the Queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to Her Majesty. The Lord Mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate, who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T (thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as—“On the 27th of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver, and the other cast testers of tin.” “The 30th of May Thomas Green, goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, headed, and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver.”
Towards the end of the reign, in spite of the stringent acts against vagrancy, the country swarmed with rogues and beggars—vagabonds who laid the farmers under contribution, and terrified all honest folk out of their lives. In London crime was rampant. Even then it had its organization; there were houses which harboured thieves, in which schools were maintained for the education of young pickpockets. Maitland tells us that in the spring of 1585, Fleetwood the recorder with several other magistrates searched the town and discovered seven houses of entertainment for felons. They found also that one Walton, a gentleman born, once a prosperous merchant, “but fallen into decay,” who had kept an alehouse which had been put down, had begun a “new business.” He opened his house for the reception of all the cut-purses in and about the city. In this house was a room to learn young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up; one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung round with hawk’s bells, and over them hung a little sacring[44] bell. The purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a clever nypper. These places gave great encouragement to evil-doers in these times, but were soon after suppressed.
In 1581 a fresh religious persecution began, happily without the sanguinary accessories of that of Mary’s reign. Elizabeth had no love for the puritans; she also began now to hate and fear the papists. Orthodoxy was insisted upon. People who would not go to church were sent first to prison, then haled before sessions and fined a matter of twenty pounds each. Still worse fared the adherents or emissaries of Rome. Years before (1569) a man, John Felton, had been drawn from Newgate into Paul’s Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered as a traitor for affixing a bull of Pope Pius V. on the gate of the Bishop of London’s palace. In 1578 it is recorded that “the papists are stubborn.” So also must have been the puritans. “One Sherwood brought before the Bishop of London behaved so stubbornly that the bishop will show no more favour to those miscalled puritans.” Next began a fierce crusade against the “seminary” priests, who swarmed into England like missionaries, despatched in partibus infidelium to minister to the faithful few and bring back all whom they could to the fold. Newgate was now for ever full of these priests. They adopted all manner of disguises, and went now as soldiers, now as private gentlemen, now openly as divines. They were harboured and hidden by faithful Roman Catholics, and managed thus to glide unperceived from point to point intent upon their dangerous business. But they did not always escape observation, and when caught they were invariably laid by the heels and hardly dealt with. Gerard Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned (1581) at the Old Bailey before the Queen’s justices, and affirmed that although he was in England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that the