It was easier for all such to get into Newgate just then--than to obtain release. Henry Ash and Michael Genison, being prisoners in Newgate, petition Lord Keeper Pickering for a warrant for their enlargement upon putting in good security for their appearance; “they were long since committed by Justice Young and the now Bishop of London for recusancy, where they remain, to their great shame and utter undoing, and are likely to continue, unless he extend his mercy.” In 1598 George Barkworth petitions Secretary Cecil “that he was committed to Newgate six months ago on suspicion of being a seminary priest, which he is not; has been examined nine times, and brought up at sessions four times; begs the same liberty of the house at Bridewell which was granted him at Newgate.” Political prisoners were not wanting in Newgate in the Elizabethan period. In 1585 instructions are given[46] to the recorder to examine one Hall, a prisoner in Newgate, charged with a design for conveying away the Queen of Scots. This was a part of Babington’s conspiracy, for which Throgmorton also suffered. Other victims, besides the unfortunate Queen herself, were Babington, Tichbourne, and many more, who after trial at the Old Bailey, and incarceration in Newgate, were hanged in St. Giles’s Fields. The execution was carried out with great barbarity; seven of the conspirators were cut down before they were dead and disembowelled. Another plot against Elizabeth’s life was discovered in 1587, the actors in which were “one Moody, an idle, profligate fellow, then prisoner in Newgate, and one Stafford, brother to Sir Edward Stafford.” The great Queen Bess in these last days of her reign went in constant terror of her life; and a third conspiracy to poison her, originating with her own physician and Lopez, a Jew, led to their execution as traitors. Again, Squires, a disbanded soldier, was charged with putting poison on the pommel of her saddle, and although he admitted his guilt upon the rack, he declared when dying that he was really innocent.