The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2Griffiths, Arthur
History
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
Henry was, however, impartial in his severity. In 1533 he suffered John
Frith, Andrew Hewett, and other Protestants, to the number of
twenty-seven, to be burned for heresy. The years immediately following
he hunted to death all who refused to acknowledge him as the head of the
Church. Besides such imposing victims as Sir Thomas More, and Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, many priests suffered. In 1534 the prior of the
London Carthusians, the prior of Hexham, Benase, a monk of Sion College,
and John Haite, vicar of Isleworth, together with others,[37] were
sentenced to be hanged and quartered at Tyburn. In 1538 a friar, by
name Forrest, was hanged in Smithfield upon a gallows, quick, by the
middle and armholes, “and burnt to death for denying the king’s
supremacy and teaching the same in confession to many of the king’s
subjects.” Upon the pile by which Forrest was consumed was also a wooden
image, brought out of Wales, called “Darvell Gatheren,” which the
Welshmen “much worshipped, and had a prophecy amongst them that this
image would set a whole forest on fire, which prophecy took effect.”[38]
The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared
to differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his
polemical powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by
policy rather than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the
Church he had disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the
notorious Six Articles, otherwise “the whip with six tails,” or the
Bloody Statute, so called from its sanguinary results. The doctrines
enunciated were such that many could not possibly subscribe to them; the
penalties were “strait and bloody,” and very soon they were widely
inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more pages, recounts the various
presentments against individuals, lay and clerical, for transgressing
one or more of the principles of the Six Articles; and adds to “the
aforesaid, Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter’s, in Cornhill; South, parish
priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles, the
king’s beerbrewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine’s; Thomas
Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six
Articles.” “To be short,” he adds, “such a number out of all parishes in
London, and out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then
apprehended through the said inquisition, that all prisons in London,
including Newgate, were too little to hold them, insomuch that they were
fain to lay them in the halls. At last, by the means of good Lord
Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the king that the said Lord
Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that one should be bound
for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the
Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were
called; but neither was there any person called, neither did any
appear.”[39]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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