Chapter IV: Newgate in the Seventeenth Century (2)

Nevison appears to have been arrested and in custody in 1676. He was tried for his life, but reprieved and drafted into a regiment at Tangier. He soon deserted, and returning to England, again took to the road. He was next captured at Wakefield, tried, and sentenced to death; but escaped from prison, to be finally taken up for a trifling robbery, for which he suffered at York. The depositions preserved by the Surtees’ Society show that he was the life and centre of a gang of highway robbers who worked in association. They levied black mail upon the whole country side; attended fairs, race meetings, and public gatherings, and had spies and accomplices, inn-keepers and ostlers, who kept them informed of the movements of travellers, and put them in the way of “likely jobs” to be done. Drovers and farmers who paid a tax to them escaped spoliation; but all others were very roughly handled. The gang had its head-quarters at the Talbot Inn, Newark, where they kept a room by the year, and met at regular intervals to divide the proceeds of their robberies.

Many instances are recorded of another crime somewhat akin to highway robbery. The forcible abduction of heiresses was nothing new; but it was now prosecuted with more impudence and daring than heretofore. Luttrell tells us, under date 1st June, 1683, that one Mrs. Synderfin, a rich widow, was taken out of her carriage on Hounslow Heath, by a Captain Clifford and his comrades. They carried her into France to “Calice” against her will, and with much barbarous ill-usage made her marry Clifford. Mrs. Synderfin or Clifford was, however, rescued, and brought back to England. Clifford escaped, but presently returning to London was seized and committed to custody. He pleaded in defence his great passion for the lady, and his “seeing no other way to win her.” It was not mere fortune-hunting, he declared, as he possessed a better estate than hers. But the Lord Chief Justice charged the jury that they must find the prisoners guilty, which they did, and all were sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for one year. Captain Clifford was also to pay a fine of £1000, two of his confederates £500 each, and two more £100. In the same authority is an account how--“Yesterday a gentleman was committed to Newgate for stealing a young lady worth £10,000, by the help of bailiffs, who arrested her and her maid in a false action, and had got them into a coach, but they were rescued.” Again, a year or two later, “one Swanson, a Dane, who pretends to be a Deal merchant, is committed to Newgate for stealing one Miss Rawlins, a young lady of Leicestershire, with a fortune of £4000. Three bailiff’s and a woman, Swanson’s pretended sister, who assisted, are also committed, they having forced her to marry him. Swanson and Mrs. Bainton were convicted of this felony at the King’s Bench Bar; but the bailiffs who arrested her on a sham action were acquitted, with which the court was not well pleased. Swanson was sentenced to death, and executed. As also the woman; but she being found with child, her execution was respited.” A more flagrant case was the abduction of Miss Mary Wharton in 1690, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Wharton, by Captain James Campbell, brother to the Earl of Argyll, assisted by Sir John Johnson. Miss Wharton, who was only thirteen years of age, had a fortune of £50,000. She was carried away from her relations in Great Queen Street, on the 14th Nov., 1690, and married against her will. A royal proclamation was forthwith issued for the apprehension of Captain Campbell and his abettors. Sir John Johnson was taken, committed to Newgate, and presently tried and cast for death. “Great application was made to the king and to the relations of the bride to save his life,” but to no purpose, “which was thought the harder, as it appeared upon his trial that Miss Wharton had given evident proof that the violence Captain Campbell used was not so much against her will as her lawyers endeavoured to make it.” Luttrell says, “Sir John refused pardon unless requested by the friends of Mrs. Wharton. On the 23rd December he went in a mourning coach to Tyburn, and there was hanged.” No mention is made of the arrest of Captain Campbell, whom we may conclude got off to the continent. But he benefited little by his violence, for a bill was brought into the House of Commons within three weeks of the abduction to render the marriage void, and this, although the Earl of Argyll on behalf of his brother petitioned against it, speedily passed both Houses.

The affair of Count Konigsmark may be classed with the foregoing, as another notorious instance of an attempt to bring about marriage with an heiress by violent means. The lady in this case was the last of the Percies, the only child and heiress to the vast fortune of Jocelyn, the Earl of Northumberland. Married when still of tender years to the Earl of Ogle, eldest son of the Duke of Newcastle, she was a virgin widow at fifteen, and again married against her consent, it was said, to Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat;[72] “Tom of Ten Thousand,” as he was called on account of his income. This second marriage was not consummated; Lady Ogle either “repented herself of the match and fled into Holland,”[73] or her relatives wished to postpone her entry into the matrimonial state, and she was sent to live abroad. Previous to her second marriage, a young Swedish nobleman, Count Konigsmark, when on a visit to England, had paid his addresses to her, but he had failed in his suit. After his rejection he had conceived a violent hatred against Mr. Thynne. The Count was “a fine person of a man, with the longest hair I ever saw,[74] and very quick of parts. He was also possessed of great wealth and influence;” “one of the greatest men,” Sir John Reresby tells us, “in the kingdom of Sweden; his uncle being at that time governor of Pomerania, and near upon marrying the King’s (of Sweden) aunt.” Konigsmark could command the devoted service of reckless men, and among his followers he counted one Captain Vratz, to whom he seems to have entrusted the task of dealing with Mr. Thynne. Vratz, although a brave soldier, who had won his promotion at the siege of Mons, under the Prince of Orange, and to whom the King of Sweden had given a troop of horse, was willing to act as an assassin. The Count came to London, living secretly in various lodgings, as he declared to hide a distemper from which he suffered, but no doubt to direct privately the operations of his bravoes. Vratz associated with himself one Stern, a Swedish lieutenant, and Boroski, “a Polander,” who had arrived in England destitute, and whom, it was subsequently proved, the Count had furnished with clothes and arms. The murderers, having set a watch for their victim, attacked him at the corner of Pall Mall, about the spot where Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands, as he was riding on Sunday night the 21st February, 1681, in his carriage from the Countess of Northumberland’s house. One of them cried to the coachman, “Stop, you dog!” and a second, Boroski, immediately fired a blunderbuss charged with bullets into the carriage. Four bullets entered Mr. Thynne’s body, each of which inflicted a mortal wound. The murderers then made off.

The unfortunate gentleman was carried dying to his own house, where he was presently joined by the Duke of Monmouth, his intimate friend, Lord Mordaunt, and Sir John Reresby, specially sent by King Charles, who feared that some political construction would be put upon the transaction, and was anxious that the perpetrators of the crime should be apprehended. Reresby, who was an active magistrate, granted warrants at once against several suspected persons, and he himself, accompanied by the Duke of Monmouth and others, made a close search, which ended in the arrest of Vratz in the house of a Swedish doctor, in Leicester Fields. His accomplices were also soon taken, and all three were examined by the King in Council, when they confessed that they had done the deed at the instigation of Count Konigsmark, “who was lately in England.”[75] At the same time a Monsieur Foubert, who kept an “Academy” in London, which a younger brother of Count Konigsmark attended, was arrested as being privy to the murder, admitted that the elder brother had “arrived incognito ten days before the said murder, and lay disguised till it was committed, which gave great cause to suspect that the Count was at the bottom of the whole bloody affair.”[76] The King despatched Sir John Reresby to seize Konigsmark, “but the bird had flown; he went away betimes, on the morning of the day after the deed was perpetrated.”[77] He went down the river to Deptford, then to Greenwich, and the day after to Gravesend, where he was taken by two King’s messengers, accompanied by “Mr. Gibbons, servant to the Duke of Monmouth, and Mr. Kidd, gentleman to Mr. Thynne.” He was dressed “in a very mean habit, under which he carried a naked sword.” When seized he gave a sudden start, so that his wig fell off, and the fact that he wore a wig, instead of his own hair as usual, was remembered against him at his trial, as an attempt at disguise. The Count was carried to an inn in Gravesend, where he expressed very great concern when he heard that his men had confessed; declaring that it (the murder) was a stain upon his blood, “although one good action in the wars, or lodging on a counterscarp, would wash all that away.” His captors received the £200 reward, promised in the _Gazette_, and in addition the £500 offered by Sir Thomas Thynne, Mr. Thynne’s heir.

They carried him at once to London, before the King in Council, where he was examined, but the Council being unwilling to meddle on account of his quality, as connected with the kingdom of Sweden, he was then taken before Chief Justice Pemberton, who could, if he thought fit, send him to gaol. He was examined again till eleven at night, and at last, “much against the Count’s desire,” committed him to Newgate. He stood upon his innocency, and confessed nothing, yet “people are well satisfied that he is taken.”[78] While in Newgate, Count Konigsmark was lodged in the governor’s house, and was daily visited by persons of quality. Great efforts were now made to obtain his release. The M. Foubert, already mentioned, came to Sir John Reresby, and offered him any money to withdraw from the prosecution, but the overtures were stoutly rejected, and his emissary was warned to be cautious “how he made any offers to pervert justice.” A more effectual attempt at bribery was probably made on the jury, of whom the prisoner challenged eighteen. He had their names on a list, and knew beforehand whom he could or could not trust. The Judge, Lord Chief Justice Pemberton, was also clearly in his favour. The defence set up was that Vratz had taken upon himself to avenge an affront offered by Mr. Thynne to his master, and Count Konigsmark denied all knowledge of his follower’s action. The Count tried to explain the privacy in which he lived, and his sudden flight. But the counsel for the prosecution laid great stress on the intimacy between him and the murderers; the absence of any object on the part of the latter, unless instigated by the former. The Chief Justice, however, summed up for the Count, assuring the jury that a master could not be held responsible for the acts of his servants, if ignorant of them, and that if they thought the Count knew nothing of the murder till after it was done, they must acquit him. Which they did, “to the no small wonder of the auditory,” as Luttrell says, “as more than probable good store of guineas went amongst them.” Konigsmark was set at liberty at the end of the trial, but before his discharge he was bound in heavy securities, in £2000 himself, and £2000 from two friends, to appear at the King’s Bench bar the first day of the following term. “Yet notwithstanding, the Count is gone into France, and it is much doubted whether he will return to save his bail.”[79] After his departure he was challenged by Lord Cavendish and Lord Mordaunt, but no duel came off, Konigsmark declaring that he never received the cartel till too late. His agents or accomplices, or whatever they may be called, were convicted and executed.[80]

Count Konigsmark did not long survive Mr. Thynne, nor did he succeed in winning Lady Ogle’s hand. That doubly widowed yet virgin wife presently married the Duke of Somerset, by whom she had two sons. As for Konigsmark, according to the ‘Amsterdam Historical Dictionary,’ quoted in Chambers’ ‘Book of Days,’ he resumed the career of arms, and was wounded at Cambray in 1683. He afterwards went to Spain with his regiment, and distinguished himself on several occasions; after that he accompanied an uncle Otto William to the Morea, where he was present at the battle of Argas. In this action he so overheated himself that he was seized with pleurisy, and died at the early age of twenty-seven, within little more than four years of the murder of Mr. Thynne. It was another Count Konigsmark, near relative of this, Count Philip, whose guilty intrigue with Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I., when Elector of Hanover, led to his assassination in the Electoral palace.

In the foregoing the softer sex were either victims or the innocent incentives to crime. In the case of that clever and unscrupulous impostor Mary Moders, otherwise Carelton, commonly called the German Princess, it was exactly the opposite. The daughter of a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral, she married first a shoemaker; then, dissatisfied with her lot, ran off to Dover and committed bigamy with a doctor. She was apprehended for this, tried, and acquitted for want of evidence. She next passed over into Holland, and went the round of the German spas, at one of which she encountered a foolish old gentleman of large estate, who fell in love with her and offered marriage. She accepted his proposals and presents; but having cajoled him into intrusting her with a large sum to make preparations for the wedding, she absconded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where she took ship and came over to London. Alighting at the Exchange Tavern, kept by a Mr. King, she assumed the state and title of a princess, giving herself out as the ill-used child of Count Henry Van Wolway, a sovereign prince of the empire. John Carelton, a brother-in-law of her landlord’s, at once, “in the most dutiful and submissive manner,” paid his addresses to her, and she at last condescended to marry him. Carelton was presently undeceived by an anonymous letter, which proved his wife to be a cheat and impostor. The princess was arrested, committed to Newgate, and tried for polygamy at the Old Bailey, but was a second time acquitted. On her release, deserted by Carelton, she took to the stage, and gained some reputation, especially in a piece written for her entitled the ‘German Princess.’ Her fame spread through the town, and she was courted by numberless admirers, two of whom she played off against each other; and having fleeced both of several hundred pounds, flouted them for presuming to make love to a princess. Another victim to her wiles was an elderly man, “worth about £400 per annum,” who loaded her with gifts; he was “continually gratifying her with some costly present or another, which she took care to receive with an appearance of being ashamed he should heap so many obligations on her, telling him she was not worthy of so many favours.”[81] One night when her lover came home in liquor, she got him to bed, and when he was asleep rifled his pockets, securing his keys and a bill on a goldsmith for a hundred pounds. Opening all his escritoires and drawers, she stole everything, gold pieces, watches, seals, and several pieces of plate, and then made off. After this she led a life of vagabondage, moving her lodgings constantly, and laying her hands on all she could steal. She was adroit in deceiving tradesmen, and swindled first one and then another out of goods. At last she was arrested for stealing a silver tankard in Covent Garden, and committed again to Newgate. This time she was found guilty and cast for death, but the sentence was commuted to transportation. She was sent in due course to Jamaica, but within a couple of years escaped from the plantations, and reappeared in England. By some means she managed to pass off as a rich heiress, and inveigled a rich apothecary into marriage, but presently robbed him of above £300 and left him. Her next trick was to take a lodging in the same house with a watchmaker. One night she invited the landlady and the watchmaker to go to the play, leaving her maid, who was a confederate, alone in the house. The maid lost no time in breaking open the watchmaker’s coffers, and stole therefrom thirty watches, with about two hundred pounds in cash, which she carried off to a secure place in another part of the town. Meanwhile the “princess” had invited her dupes to supper at the Green Dragon Tavern in Fleet Street, where she managed to give them the slip and joined her maid. This was one of the last of her robberies. Soon afterwards fate overtook her quite by accident. The keeper of the Marshalsea, in search of some stolen property, came to the house where she lodged, in New Spring Gardens, and saw her “walking in the two-pair-of-stairs room in a night-gown.” He went in, and continuing his search, came upon three letters, which he proceeded to examine. “Madam seemed offended with him, and their dispute caused him to look at her so steadfastly that he knew her, called her by her name, and carried away both her and her letters.”[82] She was committed and kept a prisoner till 16th January, 1673, when she was arraigned at the Old Bailey, as the woman Mary Carelton, for returning from transportation. On the last day of the sessions she received sentence of death, “which she received with a great deal of intrepidity.”

She appeared more gay and brisk than ever on the day of her execution. When the irons were removed from her on her starting for Tyburn, she pinned the picture of her husband Carelton to her sleeve, and carried it with her to the gallows. She discovered herself to a gentleman in the crowd as a Roman Catholic, and having conversed with him for some time in French, on parting said, _Mon ami, le bon Dieu vous benisse_. At the gallows she harangued the crowd at some length, and died as she had lived, a reckless although undoubtedly gifted and intelligent woman.

Prominent among the criminal names of this epoch is that of the informer, Titus Oates, no less on account of the infamy of his conduct than from the severe retribution which overtook him in the reign of James II. The arraignment of Green, Berry, and Laurence Hill for the trial of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, who were brought for the purpose “from Newgate to the King’s Bench Bar,” is a well-known judicial episode of the year 1678. Oates was the principal witness against them; but he was followed by Praunce, an approver, and others. After much evidence for and against, and much equivocation, the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs summed up the evidence strongly for conviction. When the jury soon returned a verdict of guilty, the Lord Chief Justice commended them, and said if it were the last word he had to speak he would have pronounced them guilty. Sentence was then given, and within a fortnight they were executed. These victims of the so-called Popish Plot were, however, amply and ruthlessly avenged. Macaulay tells the story. Oates had been arrested before Charles II.’s death for defamatory words, and cast in damages of £100,000. He was then, after the accession of James II., tried on two indictments of perjury, and it was proved beyond doubt that he had by false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. “His offence, though in a moral light murder of the most aggravated kind, was in the eye of the law merely a misdemeanour.” But the tribunal which convicted made its punishment

proportionate to the real offence. Brutal Judge Jeffries was its mouthpiece, and he sentenced him to be unfrocked and pilloried in Palace yard, to be led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head; to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and after an interval of two days to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He was to be imprisoned for life, and every year to be brought from his dungeon and exposed in different parts of the capital. When on the pillory he was mercilessly pelted, and nearly torn to pieces. His first flogging was executed rigorously in the presence of a vast crowd, and Oates, a man of strong frame, long stood the lash without a murmur. “But at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still continued to descend. When he was unbound it seemed he had borne as much as the human frame could bear without dissolution.... After an interval of forty-eight hours Oates was again brought out from his dungeon. He seemed unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge.” He was again flogged, although insensible, and a person present counted the stripes as seventeen hundred. “The doors of the prison closed upon him. During many months he remained ironed in the darkest hole in Newgate.” A contemporary account written by one of his own side declares he received “upwards of two thousand lashes--such a thing was never inflicted by any Jew, Turk, or heathen but Jeffries.... Had they hanged him they had been more merciful; had they flayed him alive it is a question whether it would have been so much torture.”[83]

Dangerfield, another informer of the Oates type, but of lesser guilt, was also convicted and sentenced to be similarly flogged from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. “When he heard his doom he went into agonies of despair, gave himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral. His forebodings were just. He was not indeed scourged quite so severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates’s iron strength of body and mind.” On his way back to prison he was assaulted by Mr. Francis, a Tory gentleman of Gray’s Inn, who struck him across the face with a cane and injured his eye. “Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him in pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield’s body, which had been frightfully lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly if not wholly caused by the stripes which he had received.” The Government laid all the blame on Francis, who was tried and executed for murder.

Religion and politics still continued to supply their quota of inmates. The law was still cruelly harsh to Roman Catholics, Quakers, and all Nonconformists.

The Fifth Monarchy men in 1661, when discomfited and captured, were lodged in Newgate, to the number of twenty or more. Venner, the ringleader, was amongst them. The State Trials give the trial of one John James, who was arraigned at the King’s Bench for high treason. He was found guilty of compassing the death of the king, and suffered the cruel sentence then in force for the crime. James has left some details of the usage he received in Newgate, especially in the matter of extortion. Fees to a large amount were exacted of him, although a poor and needy wretch, “originally a small coal-man.” In the press-yard he paid 16_s._ to the keeper Hicks for the use of his chamber, although he only remained there three or four days. The hangman also came to demand money, that “he might be favourable to him at his death,” demanding twenty pounds, then falling to ten, at last threatening, unless he got five, “to torture him exceedingly. To which James said he must leave himself to his mercy, for he had nothing to give him.” Yet at the execution, the report says the sheriff and the hangman were so civil to him as to suffer him to be dead before he was cut down. After that he was dismembered; some of them were burnt, the head and quarters brought back to Newgate in a basket, and exposed upon the gates of the city. Venner and several others suffered in the same way.

Many Quakers were kept in Newgate, imprisoned during the king’s pleasure for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Thus John Crook, Isaac Grey, and John Bolton were so confined, and incurred a præmunire or forfeiture of their estates. But the must notable of the Quakers were Penn and Mead. In its way this is a most remarkable trial, on account of the overbearing conduct of the Bench towards the prisoners. In 1670 these two, the first described as gentleman, the second as linen-draper, were indicted at the Old Bailey for having caused a tumultuous assembly in Gracechurch Street. The people collected, it was charged, to hear Penn preach. The demeanour of the prisoners in the court was so bold, that it drew down on them the anger of the recorder, who called Penn troublesome, saucy, and so forth. The jury were clearly in their favour, and brought in a verdict of not guilty, but the court tried to menace them. The Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Stirling, was especially furious with Penn, crying, “Stop his mouth; gaoler, bring fetters and stake him to the ground.” At last the jury, having refused to reconsider their verdict, were locked up; while Penn and Mead were remanded to Newgate. Next day the jury came up, and adhered to their verdict. Whereupon the recorder fined them forty marks apiece for not following his “good and wholesome advice,” adding, “God keep my life out of your hands.”[84] The prisoners demanded their liberty, “being freed by the jury,” but were detained for their fines imposed by the judge for alleged contempt of court. Penn protested violently, but the recorder cried, “Take him away!” and the prisoners were once more haled to Newgate. Edward Bushell, one of the above-mentioned jurors, who was committed to Newgate in default of payment of fine, subsequently sued out a Habeas Corpus, and was brought before Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, who decided in his favour, whereon he and the other jurymen were discharged from gaol.

There were Roman Catholics too in Newgate, convicted of participation in the Popish plot. Samuel Smith the ordinary publishes in 1679 an account of the behaviour of fourteen of them, “late Popish malefactors, whilst in Newgate.” Among them were Whitehead, provincial, and Fenwick, procurator, of the Jesuits in England, and William Harcourt, pretended rector of London. The account contains a description of Mr. Smith’s efforts at conversion and ghostly comfort, which were better meant than successful.

After the revolution of 1688 there was an active search after Romish priests, and many were arrested; among them two bishops, Ellis and Leyburn, were sent to Newgate. They were visited in gaol by Bishop Burnet, who found them in a wretched plight, and humanely ordered their situation to be improved. Other inmates of Newgate at this troublous period were the Ex-Lord Chief Justice Wright and several judges. It was Wright who had tried the seven bishops. Jeffries had had him made a judge, although the Lord Keeper styled him the most unfit person in the kingdom for that office. Macaulay says very few lawyers of the time surpassed him in turpitude and effrontery. He died miserably in Newgate about 1690, where he remained under a charge of attempting to subvert the Government.