Now and again more serious crimes are recorded. In March 1528, Stephen reports to Thomas Cromwell that between the hours of six and seven, “five thieves knocked at the door of Roderigo the Spaniard, which dwelleth next the goldsmith against your door.[34] Being asked who was there, they answered one from the Court, to speak with Roderigo. When the door was opened three of them rushed in and found the said Roderigo sitting by the fire with a poor woman dwelling next to Mrs. Wynsor. Two tarried and kept the door, and strangled the poor woman that she should not cry. They then took Roderigo’s purse, and killed him by stabbing him in the belly, but had not fled far before two of them were taken and brought to Newgate.” Debtors were too small fry to be often referred to in the chronicles of the times. Now and again they are mentioned as fitting objects for charity, royal and private. In the king’s book of payments is the following entry, under date May 1515. “Master Almoner redeeming prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the Compter, £20.” The State Papers, 1581, contain a commission to the Lord Mayor, recorder, and sheriffs of London, and many others, all charitable folk, and some sixty in number, to compound with the creditors of poor debtors, at that time prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the two Compters of the city. Although debtors in gaol who volunteered for service on shipboard were discharged by proclamation from the demands of their creditors, as a general rule committal to Newgate on account of monetary mismanagement appears to have been more easily compassed than subsequent release. The same volume of State Papers contains a petition from Richard Case to Lord Burghley, to the effect that he had been committed to Newgate “upon the unjust complaint of Mr. Benedict Spinola, relative to the lease of certain lands and tenements in London.” The petitioner further “desires to be discharged from prison, and to have the queen’s pardon,” but there is no allusion to his enlargement.[35] The impolicy of confining debtors was not to be fully realized till three more centuries had passed away. But as early as 1700 a pamphlet preserved in the ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ and entitled ‘Labour in Vain,’ anticipates modern feeling and modern legislation. The writer protests against the imprisonment of debtors, which he compares to shutting up a cow from herbage when she gives no milk. “In England we confine people to starve, contrary to humanity, mercy, or policy. One may as reasonably expect his dog,” he says, “when chained to a post should catch a hare, as that poor debtors when in gaol should get wherewithal to pay their debts.”