The prisoners included many persons of note. Two of them—Mr. Forster, who thought himself slighted and ill-used because, in consideration of his seat in Parliament, he had not been imprisoned in the Tower; and Francis Anderson, esquire, commonly called Sir Francis, a gentleman of £2,000 per annum—had apartments in the governor's house at £5 per head per week. There were also Colonel Oxborough, Brigadier Macintosh, the two Talbots, the Shaftos, Mr. Wogan, and Captain Menzies, who with their adherents and servants were thrust into the worst dungeons,—such as "the lion's den" and the "middle dark,"—till for better lodgment they had advanced more money than would have rented one of the best houses in Piccadilly or St. James's Square. The fee or premium paid by Mr. Forster and Sir Francis Anderson for being accommodated in the governor's house was £60, and it cost the latter twenty-five guineas more to keep off his irons. Mr. Widdrington, Mr. Ratcliffe, and others paid twenty guineas apiece for the like favour at their first coming in; and every one that would not be turned to the common side, ten guineas, besides one guinea and ten shillings per man for every week's lodging, although in some rooms the men lay four in a bed. As the result of these extortions it was computed that Mr. Pitt cleared some £3,000 or £4,000 in three or four months, besides "valuable presents given in private, and among others a stone horse." Money was, however, plentiful among the incarcerated Jacobites, and so far as was consistent with their situation, they lived right royally. Sympathetic friends from without plied them with wines and luxurious diet. They had every day a variety of the choicest eatables in season, "and that too as early as the greatest and nicest ladies."[136:1] Forty shillings for a dish of peas was nothing to their pockets, nor 13_s._ for a dish of fish. These, "with the best French wine, was an ordinary regale." They "lived in this profuse manner, and fared so sumptuously through the means of daily visitants and helps from abroad." Money circulated plentifully within the prison. While it was difficult to change a guinea at any house in the street, nothing was more easy than to have silver for gold in any quantity in Newgate. Nor did many of them lack female sympathy. Ladies of the first rank and quality, even tradesmen's wives and daughters, "made a sacrifice of their husbands' and parents' rings and precious movables for the use of those whom the law had appointed to be so many sacrifices themselves." "It is not to be supposed that a champion so noted for the cause as Captain Silk was neglected; for he had his full share of those treats which soon made his clothes too little for his corpse." When not feasting and chambering, the prisoners found diversion in playing shuttlecock, "at which noble game the valiant Forster beat all who engaged him, so that he triumphed with his feather in the prison though he could not do it in the field."[137:1]