Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 2: From the eighteenth century to its demolitionGriffiths, Arthur
History
Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 2: From the eighteenth century to its demolition
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
As time passed, the early martyrs to freedom of speech, such men as
Prynne, Bastwick and Daniel Defoe, were followed by many victims to
similar oppression. One of the first to suffer after Defoe was the
nonjuring clergyman Lawrence Howell, who died in Newgate. He was
prosecuted about 1720 for writing a pamphlet in which he denounced
George I as a usurper. He was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and
sentenced to pay a fine of £500 to the king, to find sureties for an
additional sum, to be imprisoned in Newgate for three years, and during
that term to be twice whipped. He was also to be degraded and stripped
of his gown by the common executioner. Howell asked indignantly of
his judges, "Who will whip a clergyman?" "We pay no deference to your
cloth," replied the court, "because you are a disgrace to it, and have
no right to wear it." The validity of his ordination was also denied by
the court, and as Howell continued to protest, the hangman was ordered
to tear off his gown as he stood there at the Bar. The public whipping
was not inflicted, but Howell died soon afterwards in Newgate.
Next came Nathaniel Mist, who was sentenced in 1721 to stand in the
pillory, to pay a fine, and suffer imprisonment for reflecting upon
the action of George I as regards the Protestants in the Palatinate.
His paper, the _Weekly Journal_ or _Saturday's Post_, was notoriously
Jacobite in its views. Soon afterwards he came under the displeasure
of the House of Commons for instituting comparisons between the times
of the rebellion of 1715 and those which followed, and was committed
to Newgate for uttering a "false, malicious, and scandalous libel."
This interference by the House with Mist's publications in a matter
which did not concern its privileges is characterized by Hallam as
an extraordinary assumption of parliamentary power. Tom Paine, whose
rationalist writings gained him much obloquy later on, was one of
the next in point of time to feel the arm of the law. In 1724 he
was convicted of three libels on the Government, fined £100, and
imprisoned for a year. A clergyman, William Rowland, was put in the
pillory in 1729 for commenting too freely in print on two magistrates
who had failed to convict and punish prisoners charged with unnatural
crimes. Mr. Rowland was pilloried in his canonical habit, and preached
all the time to the multitude, complaining of the injustice of his
sentence, whereupon the people, amongst whom were several women, made a
collection for him.
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