some outrage of more than usual enormity, he would slip round to the Old Bailey and prefer a bill of indictment against the prisoners he had maltreated, for riot, or an attempt to break prison. He had always plenty of understrappers ready to swear for him; and the poor, penniless, friendless gaol-bird was glad to compromise with his tormentor by uncomplaining silence.[7] Already had these things been censured by highest legal authorities; at least the judges had occasionally shaken their wise heads and declared the abuses in the Fleet to be highly improper: “You may raise your walls higher,” quoth Lord King; “but there must be no prison within a prison.” An excellent dictum if only acted upon. At last, the prisoners began to die of ill-usage, of starvation and disease, or rather, _it began to be known_, that they were so dying, and died every year of our Lord. A great public outcry arose. Humane men bestirred themselves. The legislature was besieged with petitions. Parliamentary commissioners visited the gaol, and a committee of the House of Commons sat to hear those harrowing details of evidence of which I have given you a summary. Bambridge was removed from his post, but the _vindicte publique_ was not appeased. First, Huggins, the retired esquire, and Barnes, his assistant, were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of Edward Arne, a prisoner. Page, the hanging judge, presided, but from that stern fount there flowed waters of mercy for the monster of the Fleet. Owing chiefly to his summing up, a special verdict was returned, and Huggins and the minor villain were acquitted. Huggins’s son was a well-to-do gentleman of Headley Park, Hants, had a taste for the fine arts, translated _Ariosto_, and collected Hogarthian drawings! It was as though Sanson should have collected miniatures of Louis the Sixteenth, or Simon the cobbler statuettes of the poor little captive Capet of the Temple.