made before.' 1 The basis of the work, as Marprelate points out, is Stephens' Thesaurus. 'His Lordship of Winchester is a great Clarke; for he hath translated his Dictionarie called Cooper's Dictionary verbatim out of Robert Stephanus his Thesaurus; and ilfavored, to, they say.'2 The author of A Dialogue says that it was the boast of the Romanists that they could make Bishop Cooper 'beleeve the moone is made of greene cheese.'

8. Imprisonment under Bishop Whitgift.-In the month of March 1590 a series of 'conferences' were held between certain ecclesiastical dignitaries and clergy and the Nonconformists confined in the prisons of London. Of those appointed to the Fleet was Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, vicar of St. Giles', and one of Whitgift's chaplains. He and his colleague sat in the 'parlor' of the gaol, and from his 'close prison' below there was summoned before them Henry Barrowe, who had been some years in the Fleet. Barrowe's appearance Andrewes made this pious observation:

On

For close imprisonment you are most happy. The solitary and contemplative life I hold the most blessed life. It is the life I would choose.

It is not necessary to give Barrowe's dignified and feeling reply. The meaning of close imprisonment was well enough known to Andrewes, as one of the agents in carrying out Whitgift's oppressive system and especially as a press censor. To-day he is known by repute as a saint; one who could be seraphically devout in Greek and Latin. But it is advisable to forget that Bishop Andrewes was once Whitgift's chaplain, if one would enjoy the Devotions. The bloom fades from the Preces when we call to mind the above piece of brutal cynicism.

What the Fleet was as a prison we may see in the

1A Briefe View, 165. 'Licence to Thos. Cooper of Oxford to print the Eng. dictionary at first called "Bibliotheca Eliota," but now called "Thesaurus utriusque linguae Latae et Britanae."' Rymer's Foedera (Hardy), ii.

1563, May 12.

2 THE EPISTLE, 46.

3 A Dialogue wherin is plainly laide open, sig. B 3.

defence of Harris, the warden, in which he seeks to rebut the serious charges alleged against him by the prisoners, not many years later than the conference referred to, and while the state of the prison remained unchanged; and especially may we appreciate the facts in the vivid summary of Dr. Jessop which introduced the printed edition of Harris's statement.1 Here we see the Warden holding a hereditary office, deriving an income from fleecing the prisoners or their compassionate friends. Very pitiful is the case of insolvent debtors, and Nonconformists mulcted in ruinous and impossible fines were insolvent debtors, immured in the Beggars' Ward. They had not the legal or recognised claim of a pauper or a criminal; they were prisoners as long as their creditors chose; therefore, in many cases, for life. Unless their friends could pay for their keep and satisfy the Warden's various extortions, then there was nothing for them but to die of starvation; of cold, and want, and unspeakable squalor; 'dying literally like dogs in their corner, mouldy straw beneath them, and foul rags spread over their shivering emaciated forms.' The condition of a prisoner in the Common Ward 'was only a shade better.' Friends were allowed to contribute to his comfort. He could buy his own bedding; but he had to pay a fine to the Warden if another prisoner was not to share his bed. Public women went in and out of the prison without restriction. Gambling was continually going on, and along with it brawling and fighting, often resulting in death by misadventure'; no legal inquiry being made as to the cause of such misadventures. The depraved prisoners robbed one another, and combinea against those who shunned their company and refused to pay black mail.' The place often resounded with the howling of drunken prostitutes and their associates. The filth and vermin were such as to-day would seem incredible. How hard the lot of those whose punishment was the most

1 The Economy of the Fleete or An Apologeticall Answeare of Alexander Harris (late Warden there) unto XIX Articles sett forth against him by the Prisoners. Ed. from the original MS. by Dr. Augustus Jessop. (Camd. Soc. 1879.)

severe the close prisoners, who had neither light nor air nor exercise, the imagination must try to picture. Often, as in the case of Whitgift's ecclesiastical victims, eminent ministers such as Udall and Wigginton being among their number, they were laden with heavy chains. Even a pattern saint, like Lancelot Andrewes, might be forgiven for not desiring such a horrid fate.

1

Many, as we should expect, died of the harsh and foul conditions of prison life. Parsons, the Jesuit, in his report states that 'some Catholics died in Newgate by the stench of that prison, and others miserably tormented with the stinking smells of the place.' The prison diseases were all putrid fevers. So fearfully insanitary were some prisons that it is recorded that, at the Oxford assizes in 1577 three hundred people, among them the High Sheriff, died of 'gaol distemper,' infected, says the annalist, by the stench of the prisoners' brought before the court.2 A consideration of these grave facts enables us more fully to appreciate the petitions issuing from the prisoners in their misery, conscious that they were the victims of a lawless ecclesiastical oppression.3

Well, here our brethren lye-How long, Lord, holy and true, Thou knowest!-in dungeons, in hunger, in cold, and in nakedness, with all outward distresses; for these bloody men will neither allow meat, drink, fire, lodging, nor suffer any whose hearts the Lord would stir up for their relief to have any access unto them, purposing belike to imprison them unto death, as they have done seventeen or eighteen others in the same noisome gaols within these six years.

Nor can we fail to feel the pathos of their longing to be set free, even by way of Tyburn.

1 Strype, Annals, III. i. p. 600.

2 The State of the Prisons of Eng. and Wales, John Howard (1777), pp. 17, 18. See also case at Taunton, where Judge, Serjeant, Sheriffs, and some hundreds besides, died from infection brought by prisoners from Ivelchester Gaol. Ibid. p. 18.

3 We have a painful account of the London prisons, nearly two centuries later, notwithstanding some small changes for the better that had been effected, in The State of the Gaols in London, Westminster, and the Boro' of Southwark, by Wm. Smith, M.D., 1771. The turnkeys, says Dr. Smith, took a glass of spirits in the morning when they opened the doors. It turned them sick (p. 10).

K

Bishop Bonner, Story, Weston dealt not after this sort; for those whom they committed close they brought them in short space openly unto Smithfield to end their misery, and to begin their never-ending joy; whereas Bishop Elmar, Doctor Stanhope, and Master Justice Young, with the rest of that persecuting and blood-thirsty faculty, will do neither of these; no Fellon, no Murderer, no Traytor in the Land are thus dealt with.1

They press for trial and sentence, for the fact is that many of the prisoners at this time had never been brought to trial. In the lists of prisoners compiled by the Nonconformists during these years, we have not infrequently the note, that a prisoner has not been formally charged or examined. And the same fact comes out in some of the official lists. For example:

John Sparowe, Citizen and Fishmonger of London, of the age of sixty yeres.

In the White Lyon and Clink 4 yeres. Committed by the Privy Council for delivering a Petition to the Queenes Majesty concerninge diverse sectaries: never examined since his Imprisonment.

Katharen Unwin, widow, late of Christchurche, 35 years.

In prison a month for being with Penry's wife and others when she delivered a Petition to the Lord Keeper. Had not been examined.2

In the lamentable petition delivered to ye Queenes Maiestye the 13. of March 1588'-about the time when Martin Marprelate was writing his first tract-written it has been shrewdly suspected by Henry Barrowe, at that time in the Fleet, we have a description of the imprisonment suffered by the Bishops' victims. They complain of 'barringe and locking them vp close prisoners in the most vnholsome and vyle prisones, and their deteyninge them, without bringing them to their answeres, vntyll the Lord by death put an ende to their myseries. . . Some they haue Cast into the Little Ease, some they haue put into

1 More Work for the Dean, by T. Wall, 1681, p. 15 f.

2 Harl. MSS., 7042, 115 f.

3 A fourth kind of torture was a cell called "little ease." It was of so small dimensions and so constructed that the prisoner could neither stand,

the Myll Causinge them to be beaten with Cudgels in their prysones.'

1

9. The London Prisons in 1588.-We meet with the names of most of the prisons in London-including Southwark and Westminster-in the Marprelate Tracts and the literature to which they gave rise. North of the Thames, commencing at the west, we have

This was built

(1) The GATEHOUSE at Westminster. over two gateways into the precincts of the Abbey, and was the property of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. It was much used by Whitgift in connection with the ecclesiastical courts. Prisoners convened before the Star Chamber at Westminster or the High Commission at Lambeth Palace were conveniently imprisoned at the Gatehouse.

(2) BRIDEWELL, originally the site of a castle, was divided from Blackfriars by the Fleet Ditch, a tidal estuary to the stream of that name. Here Henry VIII. built the palace of Bridewell, which his son Edward gave to the city; first as a poorhouse, but later, in the time of John Stowe-his Survey of London was published in 1589-it was used as a house of correction, where all strumpets, night-walkers, pickpockets, vagrant and idle persons, also incorrigible and disobedient servants,' were lodged. Persons of good condition bitterly complained of being sent to Bridewell, seeing it was a prison ordeyned for persons of most vyle conversacon and base condition.' Many of the Nonconformists were confined here, where they suffered very greatly if condemned to close imprisonment in an evil inner cell called 'Little Ease.'" Bridewell is still a prison, and can be used in certain special cases. The Chamberlain of London in his jurisdiction over city apprentices can commit an unruly apprentice to Bridewell for a period not exceeding three months; usually for seven or fourteen days.3

walk, sit, or lie at length. He was compelled to draw himself upon a squatting posture and so remained several days.'-Lingard, Hist. of Eng. (1825), viii. 522. 1 Harl. MSS., 6848, 7. Arber's Sketch, 36.

2 See THE EPISTLE, 28.*

3 See Report of Royal Commission 1893 on the City of London, its Government, etc., pp. 108, 109.