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
Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned (1581) at the Old
Bailey before the Queen’s justices, and affirmed that although he was in
England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that
the Pope had now the same authority in England that he had a hundred
years past, and which he had at Rome, “with other traitorous speeches,
for the which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.” The
same year William Dios (a Spaniard?), keeper of Newgate, sends a
certificate of the names of the recusants now in Newgate, “viz. Lawrence
Wakeman and others, ... the two last being of the precise sort.” April
20, 1586, Robert Rowley, taken upon seas by Captain Burrows going to
Scotland, is committed first to the Marshalsea, and from thence to
Newgate. Next year, August 26, Richard Young reports to Secretary
Walsyngham that he has talked with sundry priests remaining in the
prisons about London. “Some,” he says, “are very evil affected, and
unworthy to live in England. Simpson, alias Heygate, and Flower,
priests, have justly deserved death, and in no wise merit Her Majesty’s
mercy. William Wigges, Leonard Hide, and George Collinson, priests in
Newgate, are dangerous fellows, as are also Morris Williams and Thomas
Pounde, the latter committed as a layman, but in reality a professed
Jesuit. Francis Tirrell is an obstinate papist, and is doubted to be a
spy.”
We read as follows in an intercepted letter from Cardinal John Allen,
Rector of the English College at Rheims, to Mr. White, seminary priest
in the Clink,[45] and the rest of the priests in Newgate, the Fleet, and
the Marshalsea. “Pope Sextus sends them his blessing, and will send them
over for their comfort Dr. Reynolds, chief Jesuit of the college at
Rheims, who must be carefully concealed,” ... with others, ... “whose
discourses would be a great joy to all heretics. They will bring some
consecrated crucifixes, late consecrated by his Holiness, and some books
to be given to the chiefest Catholics, their greatest benefactors.” This
letter was taken upon a young man, Robert Weston, travelling to seek
service, “who seems to have had considerable dealings with recusants,
and to have made very full confessions.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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