All this time within Newgate there was turbulence, rioting, disorders, accompanied seemingly by constant oppression. The prisoners were ready to brave anything to get out. General gaol deliveries were made otherwise than in due course of law. Those that were fit to serve in the sea or land forces were frequently pardoned and set free. A petition to the Lord Admiral (1589) is preserved in which certain prisoners, shut out from pardon because they are not “by law bailable,” beg that the words maybe struck out of the order for release, and state that they will gladly enter Her Majesty’s service. Many made determined efforts to escape. “The 16th December, 1556,” says Hollinshed, “Gregory, Carpenter, Smith, and a Frenchman born were arraigned for making counterfeit keys wherewith to have opened the locks of Newgate, to have slain the keeper and let forth the prisoners; at which time of his arraignment, having conveyed a knife into his sleeve, he thrust it into the side of William Whiteguts, his fellow-prisoner, who had given evidence against him, so that he was in great peril of death thereby; for the which fact he was immediately taken from the bar into the street before the justice hall, when, his hand being first stricken off, he was hanged on a gibbet set up for the purpose. “The keeper of Newgate was arraigned and indicted for that the said prisoner had a weapon about him and his hands loose, which should have been bound.” Yet the keeper of Newgate and other gaolers were by no means irresponsible agents. Two cases may be quoted in which these officials were promptly brought to book. In 1555 the keeper of the Bread Street Compter, by name Richard Husband, pasteler, “being a wilful and headstrong man,” who, with servants like himself, had dealt hardly with the prisoners in his charge, was sent to the gaol of Newgate by Sir Rowland Hill, mayor, with the assent of a court of aldermen. “It was commanded to the keeper to set those irons on his legs which were called widows’ alms; these he wore from Thursday till Sunday in the afternoon.” On the Tuesday he was released, but not before he was bound over in an hundred marks to act in conformity with the rules for the managing of the Compters. “All which notwithstanding, he continued as before: ... the prisoners were ill-treated, the prison was made a common lodging-house at fourpence the night for thieves and night-walkers, whereby they might be safe from searches that were made abroad.” He was indicted for these, and other enormities, “but did rub it out, and could not be reformed, till the prisoners were removed; for the house in Bread Street was his own by lease or otherwise, and he could not be put from it.”[47] A searching inquiry was also made into the conduct of Crowder, the keeper of Newgate in 1580,[48] or thereabouts. The State Papers contain an information of the disorders practiced by the officers of Newgate prison, levying fines and taking bribes, by old and young Crowders, the gaolers.