Prison records meagre--Administration of justice and state of crime--Lenity alternates with great severity--Disturbances in London--The ‘Black Waggon’--A ’prentice riot--Criminal inmates of Newgate--Masterless men--Slandering the Corporation--Robbery with violence--Debtors--Conscience prisoners--Martyrs in reign of Henry VIII.--Religious dissidents: Porter, Anne Askew--Maryan persecutions--Rogers--Bishop Hooper--Philpot--Alexander the cruel gaoler of Newgate--Underhill the hot gospeller in Newgate--Crime in Elizabeth’s reign--The training of young thieves--Elizabethan persecutions: both puritans and papists suffered--The seminary priests--Political prisoners--Condition of gaol--Oppression of the inmates and their disorderly conduct--Gaolers of that period generally tyrants--Crowder, keeper of Newgate, called to account. The prison records of the sixteenth century are very meagre. No elaborate system of incarceration as we understand it existed. The only idea of punishment was the infliction of physical pain. There were prisons, but these receptacles, except for debtors, were only the ante chambers of the pillory and the scaffold. The penalties inflicted were purely personal, and so to speak final; such as chastisement, degradation, or death. England had no galleys, no scheme of enforced labour at the oar, such as was known to the nations of the Mediterranean seaboard, no method of compelling perpetual toil in quarry or mine. The germ of transportation no doubt was to be found in the practice which suffered offenders who had taken sanctuary to escape punishment by voluntary exile,[28] but it was long before the plan of deporting criminals beyond seas became the rule. In Henry VIII.’s time, says Froude, “there was but one step to the gallows from the lash and the branding-iron.” Criminals did not always get their deserts, however. Although historians have gravely asserted that seventy-two thousand executions took place in this single reign, the statement will not bear examination, and has been utterly demolished by Froude.[29] As a matter of fact offenders far too often escaped scot free through the multiplication of sanctuaries, which refuges, like that of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, existed under the very walls of Newgate, the negligence of pursuers, and not seldom the stout opposition of the inculpated.[30] Benefit of clergy claimed and conceded on the most shadowy grounds was another easy and frequent means of evading the law. Some judges certainly had held that the tonsure was an indispensable proof; but all were not so strict, and “putting on the book,” in other words, the simple act of reading aloud, was deemed sufficient. So flagrant was the evasion of the law, that gaolers for a certain fee would assist accused persons to obtain a smattering of letters, whereby they might plead their “clergy” in court. It may be added that although