NEWGATE CHAPLAINS.

HE Newgate Ordinary is not as ancient an officer

THE

as the old prison itself. There was a time when Newgate had no chaplains, except among its captives. For these, however, some thought was taken by good men outside the walls. On a June morning of 1382, Henry Burr, parson of St. Peter's, Broad-street, entered the mayor's court with a "portehors" or breviary in his hand, which he deposited quietly on the table. It was a little legacy, he explained, which his friend, Hugh Tracy, the chaplain, had charged him to deliver. Hugh had left it to priests and clerks imprisoned in Newgate, that they might read their service from it. He wished the book to remain in the gaol as long as the leaves would hold together.

It was thankfully accepted, and was formally made over to David Berteville, the gaoler. David was to be answerable for its good keeping, but Henry Burr was to be allowed to overlook the trusteeship. Accordingly, twice a year, the parson of St. Peter's went without announcement to the prison. He might go at such times as he should please, "those times being suitable

times," and having looked at the breviary, the chaplain's executor said a word or two to the clerical prisoners, drew his hood over his head and walked gravely home to Broad-street.

Small offence took clergymen themselves to the stake or the gallows in Henry VIII.'s time. A rector apt to forget commands by royal authority, sitting quietly in his study, might possibly be surprised at the appearance of a couple of officers, whose first demand was that he would hand them his service-book for inspection; or, while one was looking over the servicebook, the other would bluntly ask for the rector's private manual of devotion. If the names of the Pope and of St. Thomas of Canterbury had not been scored through or erased from the books, it was a matter of high treason; and the offender's life depended, as Dr. Hook writes, "upon the caprice of Cromwell, or upon the judicious administration of a bribe."

There were other offenders who never had the chance of a caprice that might save them, and whom no bribe could rescue. Among these were the Franciscans who mixed treason with heresy, and asserting, like some English Ultramontanists, that the Pope had the power of punishing heretical sovereigns, would have assassinated the king, as well as changed the newly-established religion. Sometimes a Franciscan was brought to Smithfield who did not think that even political murder was justifiable, yet who suffered, nevertheless, and in presence of august spectators, with

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a chaplain in attendance, such as no ordinary felon from Newgate ever had. Thus, when Friar Forest was to be executed, Cromwell desired Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, to preach the sermon at the place of suffering. Now, on those occasions, this "Newgate Chaplain Extraordinary" was expected to say something in favour of the offender, who stood by in face of Death and his apparatus. Latimer, in one of his worst moments, wrote to Cromwell, "Sir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool in my customable manner when Forest shall suffer, I should wish that my stage stood next unto Forest." little better spirit, but with no certainly apparent sincerity, Latimer adds, "If he would in heart return to his abjuration I should wish his pardon; such is my foolishness." Few persons will dissent from what the Dean of Chichester has said, in reference to this passage in Latimer's life, that "It was a sad time, when a bishop thought he should be accounted a fool for pleading the cause of an innocent man.' The age may have been coarse and cruel, as Dr. Hook says it was, but it was also a "plucky" one. Common Tyburn crowds could safely jeer at Newgate ordinaries. It was not so safe for a man at a Smithfield burning to raise a cry against the chaplain who was preaching the open-air condemned sermon, before death was inflicted on the chief patient. Nevertheless, such cry was sometimes raised; the chaplain was called a "knavish priest," and his own opinions were denounced

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as a "new heresy ! " The offence got the utterer into "limbo ;" and he was a lucky man if he went no further. Sometimes, as later by less respectable sufferers at Tyburn, the preacher had a hard word or two flung at him by the condemned whom he was exhorting. When Joan Bocher's career of vending English Bibles surreptitiously, even among the ladies of the Court, was brought to an end, and the fire was lighted at the stake to consume her, for denying that Christ took flesh of the Virgin, the chaplain plied her with explanations of passages to show that she was in error; but the last words of the bold "Maid of Kent," as she looked the preacher in the face, were :-" You lie like a rogue; go, read the Scriptures!"

In Mary's days a heretic gentleman took with him to metropolitan or country "Newgates" all the religion to be found there. Such a gentleman might be very suddenly arrested as he was walking unsuspectingly abroad. A whistle, coming from he knew not where, would bring up an officer and a couple of men with "bills," who, however, in escorting the gentleman to prison, would often walk at such a distance as to take away the idea of restraint. The gaoler's wife represented her husband in his absence. If both were away, captives and guard went and solaced themselves at the alehouse till the officials returned. If they passed the night at the inn the prisoner was heavily fettered even in bed, and had to pay for his gyves. Strangers on the road would greet the prisoner, but friends were afraid

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of compromising themselves. Capricious gaolers could find amusement in pretending that an order for execution had arrived, and they would lead the poor wretch forth, only to laugh at, and carry him back. In town there seems to have been more compassion than among country gaolers. Those of Newgate and the Compter, in the reign of Mary, were not invariably hard-hearted towards their heretic prisoners. They sometimes allowed themselves to be converted by them, and often let them go abroad at night "to consult with godly men," as old Mountayne says in his Autobiography. They gave no other pledge for their return save their own "word and promise." Heretic captives, lodging in rooms one below the other, had licence "by removing a board, to dine and sup together, and to cheer one another in the Lord," as we learn further from the once imprisoned rector of St. Michael's.

The old rector stood at the end of Soper-lane to see Queen Mary and King Philip, attended by Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner, ride through the City. A cross was carried before Pole, who blessed the people ostentatiously, but he was surprised to see them keep their caps on, hold their heads erect at the cross, and laugh at the cardinal himself. At the windows and in the streets the same spirit was manifested. Pole burst into unseemly rage, and his thoughts turned to the prisons. "Mark that house!" he cried; or "Take this knave and have him to the Compter!" and, as he "Such a sort of heretics who ever saw?" and

rode on,