In the stores of the State Paper Office are to be found heartrending appeals for mercy, from prisoners sinking under dire diseases from too close contiguity, or from long confinement in one apartment. Consumption seems to have been very prevalent; and in Newgate the gaol fever raged. For this rigorous confinement the excuse was, that it had been found impossible to give the prisoners air, without risk of escape. In Chester, the townspeople conspired to assist the poor wretches in this endeavour; and perhaps, in regard to those of meaner rank, the authorities were not very averse to the success of such efforts, for the prisons were crowded, and the expense of even keeping the unfortunate captives alive began to be a source of complaint on the part of Government. The great majority of the prisoners of the north were country gentlemen, Roman Catholics, from Cumberland and Northumberland,--men who were hearty and sincere in their convictions of the righteousness of their cause--men, whose ancestors had mustered their tenantry in the field for Charles the First. To those whose lives were spared, a petition was recommended, and taken round for signature, praying that their sentence of death or of imprisonment might be exchanged for transportation. But, whether these high-spirited gentlemen expected that another insurrection might act in their favour, or whether they preferred death to a final farewell, under circumstances so dreadful, to their country, does not appear. They mostly refused to sign the petition, which was offered to them singly: and the commandant at Preston, Colonel Rapin, in his correspondence with Lord Townshend, expresses his annoyance at their obstinacy, and expatiates on the inconvenience of the numbers under his charge at Preston. At length, after Captain John Dalzell, brother to the Earl of Carnwath, had signed the petition, a large body of the prisoners were ordered to be transported without their petitioning, and to be put in irons. They were hurried away to Liverpool, to embark thence for the Colonies, gentlemen and private soldiers mingled in one mass; but orders were afterwards sent by Lord Townshend to detain the gentlemen. Three hundred and twenty-seven prisoners had, however, been already shipped off. Those who remained were not permitted to converse, even with each other, without risk,--one Thomas Wells being appointed as a spy to write to the Jacobites, and to discourse with them, under the garb of friendliness, in order to draw out their real sentiments.[21] From this digression, which may not be deemed irrelevant, since it marks the spirit of the times, we return to the unhappy prisoners in the Tower, which was now thickly tenanted by the fallen Jacobites.