A sterner subject, the prologue to a dismal drama of human life, was now to engross the pencil of this painter, who was now making his presence known and felt among his contemporaries. I speak of the strange solemn picture of the _Committee of the House of Commons_ taking evidence of the enormities wreaked on the wretched prisoners in the Fleet by Huggins and Bambridge. Let us drag these mouldering scoundrels from their dishonoured graves, and hang them up here on Cornhill, for all the world to gaze at, even as the government of the Restoration (but with less reason) hung the carcases of Cromwell and Bradshaw on Tyburn gibbet. Huggins—save the mark!—was of gentle birth, and wrote himself “Armiger.” He had bought the patent of the wardenship of the Fleet from a great court lord, and when the trade of torturing began, through usance, to tend towards satiety, he sold his right to one Bambridge, a twin demon. The atrocities committed by the pair may very rapidly be glanced at. Huggins’s chief delight was to starve his prisoners, unless they were rich enough to bribe him. Bambridge’s genius lay more towards confining his victims charged with fetters in underground dungeons, with the occasional recreation of attempting to pistol and stab them. The moneyed debtors both rascals smiled upon. Smugglers were let out through a yard in which dogs were kept; ran their cargoes; defrauded the revenue, and came back to “college.” One, who owed 10,000_l._ to the crown, was permitted to make his escape altogether. A certain T. Dumay went several times to France, being all the time in the “custody,” as the sham was facetiously termed, of the Warden of the Fleet. What was such a fraud in an age when the highest legal authorities (who would not take the fetters off Christopher Layer) gravely doubted whether the rules of the King’s Bench might not extend to Bombay, in the East Indies?[6] These surreptitiously enlarged prisoners were called “pigeons.” They had bill transactions with the tipstaves; they drew on Huggins, and then pleaded their insolvency. On the other hand, the poor debtors were very differently treated. A broken-down baronet, Sir William Rich, on refusing to pay the “baronet’s fee,” or “garnish,” of five pounds, was heavily fettered, kept for months in a species of subterranean dog-kennel; the vivacious Bambridge sometimes enlivening his captivity by threatening to run a red-hot poker through his body. This cheerful philanthropist, who was wont to range about the prison with a select gang of turnkeys, armed with halberts and firelocks, ordered one of his myrmidons to fire on “Captain Mackpheadris”—(what a name for a captain in difficulties! Lieutenant Lismahago is nothing to it). As, however, even these callous bravoes hesitated to obey so savage a behest, and as there was absolutely nothing to be squeezed in the way of garnish out of this lackpenny Captain Mackpheadris, Bambridge locked the poor wretch out of his room,