There was a truce to religious persecution for some years after Mary’s death. Throughout Edward’s reign and the better part of Elizabeth’s it was only the ordinary sort of criminal who was committed to the gaol of Newgate. The offences were mostly coining, horse-stealing, and other kinds of thefts. “One named Ditche was apprehended at the sessions holden at Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th December, being Friday and horse-market there.”[43] The ‘Remembrancia’ gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of Requests, to the Lord Mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had petitioned the Queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to Her Majesty. The Lord Mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate, who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T (thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as--“On the 27th of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver, and the other cast testers of tin.” “The 30th of May Thomas Green, goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, headed, and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver.”