Stealing from a dwelling appears to have met with the same barbarous punishment. A glimpse of the gentle ways of twelfth-century “justice” is revealed in an account of a supposed miracle. A certain Ailward, being accused of housebreaking (committed apparently under considerable provocation to recover a debt), was lodged for some time in Bedford Prison.[117] After having failed in the water ordeal and being convicted, he was taken out to the usual place of punishment, where his eyes were blinded, he was mutilated, and the parts were buried in the ground. He is said to have been restored through St. Thomas of Canterbury. By the time of Edward I. we begin to arrive at sentences of imprisonment, and read of such penalties as one year and then a fine, or two years in default of fine, in the first Statutes of Westminster. For such offences as carrying off a nun, allowing a prisoner to evade prison, or stealing tame beasts out of parks, a sentence of three years might be awarded besides the customary fine. As we have seen, the profits of “justice” were highly regarded; the fines were precious perquisites of the Crown (and sometimes of subordinate administrators and officials as well). The prisons were used as “squeezers” to extort them. “Imprisonment,” say Pollock and Maitland,[118] “was, as a general rule, but preparatory to a fine. After a year or two the wrongdoer might make fine; if he had no money he was detained for a while longer. In the thirteenth century the king’s justices wield a wide ‘common law’ power of ordering that an offender be kept in custody. They have an equally wide power of discharging him upon his making a fine with the king.” In Henry III.’s reign “The wrongdoer but rarely goes to prison, even for a moment.[119] On the plea roll the _custodiatur_ which sends him to gaol is followed at once by ‘Finem fecit per unam markam’ (or whatever the sum might be), and then come the names of those who are pledges for the payment. The justices do not wish to keep him in prison; they wish to make him pay money.” The authors just quoted say that the fines were generally light, and give several instances[120]—it doubtless depended much upon the judges and the reign. But wherever there are enclosing walls, there are certain to be abuses behind them.[121] Judicial and administrative scandals kept on occurring.[122] In the fourteenth century many persons are said to have perished of hunger and thirst,[123] and many died in prison about the time of the Black Death (1349).[124] Into the fifteenth century the complaints continue; we read the following in the _Liber Albus_:[125] “Whereas great outcry has been made heretofore as to many wrongs and misprisons done by the gaolers of Newgate and Ludgate and their officers and servants, ...” and new regulations were made (and no doubt broken, as the others had been) respecting fees the prisoners should pay.