Tag Archives: c17

Francis Winter’s Other Farewell

I have previously discussed the ballad Francis Winter’s Last Farewell, an account of the execution of Captain Winter, condemned to hang for his part in the death of a constable during a riot against the bricking up of a gate connecting the Temple to Whitefriars.

Here, I present a different ballad of the same title, one that I only recently found in the wonderful English Broadside Ballad Archive. Unlike the first Farewell, this song is decidedly uncontroversial and sparse of detail, giving no account of the crime for which he was hanged. The sentiment is overly religious, and gives the impression of being a boilerplate narrative of repentance that could be easily adapted for any execution. That said, having looked for similar versions turned to other victims of the gallows, I’ve found nothing recycling these lines.

What is of interest is that it is the only source on Winter I’ve found that refers to the Captain being married and having children. No other document I’ve found mentions his marital status or family.

There is, however, in the Whitefriars listings for the 4 Shilling tax of 1693/4, an entry for Winter (Widow), who has property worth £3.60, rental value £18, but no stock. The value of the house is average for the precinct. This could be his widow. Some support is given to this theory by the Examination of Francis Winter of March 1692, where he claimed to have been “at his owne house” at the time of the riot. (The transcription gives “at this owne house” but the manuscript clearly lacks the leading ‘t’.) This implies he was a property owner: it doesn’t say ‘in his own rooms’ as if he were renting. This house would presumably have been inherited by his wife. Against this, the Ordinary of Newgate’s Account has Winter “Contract[ing] some Debts in the World, which occasioned him to fly for Refuge into White Fryers”, giving him more of a desperate air.

As a footnote to this, another collection suggests that there is further ballad of Captain Winter, but it appears to confuse him with the highwayman Captain Whitney, executed around the same time: “A Letter to Satisfie all Persons that Whitney is not fled from Newgate.” So here is the Captain Winter’s final final farewell. I have modernised the spelling of the text and fixed a typo. Sing along: EBBA have provided a recording putting the words to the tune.

An Excellent New Song, Call’d,
Captain Winters last Farewell
To the WORLD;
Or His Mournful parting with His Wife and Children,
Who was Executed in Fleetstreet, May 17th 1693.
Tune of, All Happy Times:

Good People that do see my End,
Be cautious how your Time you spend
Without a watchful Care each day,
The best that is may go astray.

‘Tis true a shameful Death I die
For which some will me vilify,
But why should I ashamed be
Since my dear Savior died for me.

I beg all mercy from above,
The joyful peace of Heavenly Love,
As for this Life I freely give,
And beg God would my Soul receive,

Adieu my dear and loving Wife,
For now I must depart this Life;
The Fates does call, I can’t withstand,
Grim Death, who once will all Command.

But still my Prayers is for you Dear,
That you would this with Patience bear;
Be not cast down, but be content,
Altho Death is my Punishment.

My next advice to thee my Love,
Is that thou servest thy God above,
And then I doubt not but he will
Preserve thee from all danger still.

My little Lambs I bid adieu,
And leave the Charge of them to you;
Such tender Care I know you’ll take,
That shall be for the Childrens Sake.

I am concern’d the more my dear
Because a Child thee now dost bear,
Therefore thy sorrow is the more
But God I hope will thee Restore.

Farewell, for evermore adieu
This is the last farewell to you,
When thou a Widow once shall be
I hope the Lord will cherish thee.

I hope I shant forget the Prayer
Which God in Mercy did declare,
That all the World would me forgive
As I do them whilst here I live.

I dye with all the World in Peace,
And hope that when my Breath doth cease
My Soul may unto Heaven fly,
And there remain Eternally.

My Spirit Lord I recommend
Unto my Saviour, Man’s best friend
I come O Lord, I come to Thee,
O grant me blest Eternity.

Printed and Sold by T. Moore. 1693.

 

Ballad source; EBBAs usage policy; intro is CC-BY-SA.

Resource: Statutes of Ireland to 1800

Update, 22/02/2022: A more comprehensive list of volumes of Irish statutes can be found at the Statutes Project.

As a quick appendix to my previous post on English statutes, here are the Statutes of Ireland from 1310 up to the Act of Union in 1800. I know little of Irish history, but as I’ve come across some very interesting material about debtors, prisons and even sanctuaries there, I’ve been drawn towards it, hence my sifting through the legislation.

There were three collections of the Irish statutes published in the eighteenth century. I haven’t found the first, dating from 1734, anywhere on the open internet. The second was edited by one J.G. Butler, published in 1765, and is incomplete in Google’s holdings. It appears that this series was continued up to 1800; the last volume I have found is numbered 19 and dated 1799. The third set was published from 1794 to 1801, goes right up to the Act of Union, and all volumes are to be found in Google Books. To wit:

For the record, here are those volumes I have located of the 1765 series, The Statutes at Large, Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland, edited by James Goddard Butler, with the volumes continuing it to 1800.

Other sources: There is a very little pre-1800 Irish legislation on the UK legislation portal, and similarly a little at the Irish Statute Book. The Irish Legislation Database has detailed information concerning each act, but not their texts. A useful website from the University of Minnesota covers the anti-catholic Penal Laws. Wikipedia has two pages listing the acts, up to 1700 and from 1700 to 1800.

Update, 4 October 2015: 2 more volumes added to the 1765 series, nos. 5 and 9; and nos. 14 to 16 and 18, continuing this series after 1765. The latter are from the Hathi Trust archives; they allow full view of the digitization, but not downloading it.

Update, 4 October 2015: I have found some volumes from the first series, mentioned above. Going under the title Acts and Statutes Made in a Parliament begun in Dublin, it seems to have been published from the 1720s up to Butler’s consolidation in the 1760s. Being set in gothic type, its utility both for OCRing and plain reading is somewhat limited.

Resource: The Acts of Parliament

Notice: I’ve now taken up the task of scanning these volumes, proofing the OCR and organizing the statutes. Watch http://statutes.org.uk/ for progress.

The law is an important historical source, and especially so for the history of debt. Over the 200 years from Restoration to the abolition of incarceration for insolvency in 1868, there was a constant flow of acts directed at debtors, whether as defaulters, frauds, prisoners, fugitives, pitiable creatures or “evil-disposed and wicked persons.” Hundreds of acts were passed, releasing prisoners, offering amnesties to fugitives, establishing ‘Courts of Conscience’ and regulating debtor prisons. I have transcribed and published some of these statutes, and more will follow. (I’ve re-organized the site to make them easier to find: check the Statutes page for links to the various acts).

These laws have posed two problems: firstly in finding them, and then in understanding their tortuous prose. For the first, quite simply there is no free and complete repository of the legislation. The Official Home of U.K. Legislation has none of the material I require. Much as I appreciate what the National Archive has achieved – and it is a great deal – their remit has been to put current legislation online, not the historic. So although they have published everything in force from 1988 onwards, the vast majority of historic, meaning repealed, legislation is not available. The various proprietary legal databases have either been beyond my reach and pocket, or provide little more than the digital scans available elsewhere.

Which means to find old laws one has to turn to the magnificent libraries and awful metadata of Google Books and Internet Archive. There one can find many different collections of the statutes, albeit of varying quality and completeness, and in the usual disorder that results from mass, indiscriminate digitization.

These digital copies are images of the original works, pictures of books rather than transcriptions of the text, which mean they may be readable by the human eye, but not by the machine. This brings us to the second problem, of the law’s labyrinthine prose. Part of the very nature of law is that it is constantly rewritten, by parliaments and courts, who go about renewing, repealing, interpreting and clarifying, without any guarantee of consistency. The resulting vast, unwieldy corpus is difficult to navigate, full of linguistic peculiarities, tangled and convoluted. To make ones way through this maze would be far easier if one could use the computer to do some of the heavy lifting: searching, digesting, comparing, cross-referencing and so on.

The nascent field of Computational Legal Studies has produced some interesting digital research into law; for example, the Legal Language Explorer, (now dead, but preserved on archive.org) producing ngrams from U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the attempts to measure the complexity of the U.S. law by Katz and Bommarito (article and slides). If such explorations imply greater spaces to be discovered, and beyond the legal profession, they also show that useful data is an essential prerequisite. In the case of English and British statutes, that requirement is not met by the volumes scanned by Google and the Internet Archive.

It is of course a fundamental right that everyone should have access to the laws governing them; that’s not only the inevitable corollary of the principle ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’, but also an essential check on state power. This means more than just publishing laws and judgements; they must be published freely, openly, useably and re-usably. A number of organizations are campaigning to open up the law: for example the Free Access to Law Movement, the Law.Gov campaign, and the Open Knowledge Foundation’s legislation working group.

I personally believe that this right to the law should encompass the entirety of the legislation to include the historical, the repealed, for three reasons:

One: Repeal does not mean reversal. Every enclosure bill shows this, for when struck from the book the land did not revert to common ownership. The effects of laws persist beyond their lifetimes.

Two: Repeal does not mean disappearance. The law is historically constituted and continually refers back to itself. Revoked acts and their related judgements remain a part of the legal record.

Three: Repeal does not mean forgetting. We do not live in an eternal present. We have a capacity, a need and a right to memory.

It is in this spirit that I list here all the various freely-available editions of the statutes. They may not be adequate, they may not even be accurate, but it is a gesture towards making this legislation accessible.

The next step will be to transcribe the statutes; a great and arduous task that requires collaboration and infrastructure. Happily, Wikisource have taken the digital copies of Ruffhead’s Statutes At Large, covering 1225 to 1763, and inserted it into their open transcription system. If little of it has actually been transcribed yet, it does at least show the potential for crowdsourcing legal texts, and the usefulness of Wikimedia’s infrastructure for supporting such a project.

Legislation to 1800

There are many collections of statutes; some bibliographic details can be found on Wikipedia. As they have different editorial policies and selection criteria, and as none are fully comprehensive, I’ve listed a number of sets here.

For laws up to 1811, one place to start is with the 4 volumes of The Statutes: Revised Edition from 1870. It is far from complete, as legislation repealed by 1870 is absent, but there is a handy chronological table in each volume to indicate what is present and what is not. The first four volumes of this are online at archive.org, the first three also at Google; I haven’t been able to locate any further, freely available volumes, and I’m not even sure there were any more.

Update 9 May 2015: I have located a handful of  volumes beyond the first four, and from the metadata we can see that there were at least 13 volumes.

Volume 1: Henry III to James II: 1235 – 1685:   Internet Archive   Google
Volume 2: William & Mary to 10 George III: 1688 – 1770:   Internet Archive   Google
Volume 3: 11 George III to 41 George III: 1770 – 1800:   Internet Archive   Google
Volume 4: 41 George III to 51 George III: 1801 – 1811:   Internet Archive
Volume 7: 2&3 William IV to 6&7 William IV: 1831 – 1836: Internet Archive
Volume 9: 6&7 Victoria to 9&10 Victoria: 1843 – 1846 : Internet Archive
Volume 12: 17&18 Victoria to 19&20 Victoria: 1854 – 1856: Hathi Trust
Volume 13: 20 Victoria to 24&25 Victoria: 1857 – 1861: Hathi Trust

Ruffhead’s series covers 1225 to 1763, the whole run being digitized by the Internet Archive, and is in Wikisource’s transcription system, as described above.  In 9 volumes, there is a supplementary volume with a subject index.

Volume 1: 1225 – 1460
Volume 2: 1461 – 1601
Volume 3: 1604 – 1698
Volume 4: 1699 – 1713
Volume 5: 1714 – 1729
Volume 6: 1730 – 1746
Volume 7: 1747 – 1756
Volume 8: 1757 – 1762
Volume 9: 1762 – 1763, Index and Appendix
Complete Index to the Statutes At Large

Perhaps the most often cited collection is that of Danby Pickering. The first 24 volumes were historical, going  from 1225 to 1760. After that, it became a contemporary series, publishing the legislation as it was passed. I am deeply indebted to the pseudonymous contributor on the Paradox forums for finding all the google links; I’ve added links to those volumes I’ve found on archive.org.

vol. 1 – 9 Henry III to 14 Edward III (1225-1340); archive.org
vol. 2 – 15 Edward III to 13 Henry IV (1341-1411); archive.org
vol. 3 – 1 Henry V to 23 Edward IV (1412-1482); archive.org
vol. 4 – 1 Richard III to 31 Henry VIII (1484-1539); archive.org
vol. 5 – 32 Henry VIII to 7 Edward VI (1540-1553)
vol. 6 – 1 Mary I – 35 Elizabeth I (1553-1593); archive.org
vol. 7 – 39 Elizabeth to 12 Charles II (1597-1660); archive.org
vol. 8 – 12 Charles II to 1 James II (1661-1685)
vol. 9 – 1 William & Mary to 8 William III (1688-1696); archive.org
vol. 10 – 8 William III to 1 Anne (1696-1701); archive.org
vol. 11 – 2 & 3 Anne to 8 Anne (1703-1708); archive.org
vol. 12 – 8 Anne to 12 Anne (1709-1711); archive.org
vol. 13 – 12 Anne to 5 George I (1713-1717); archive.org
vol. 14 – 5 George I to 9 George I (1718-1721); archive.org
vol. 15 – 9 George I to 2 George II (1722-1728); archive.org
vol. 16 – 2 George II to 9 George II (1729-1735); archive.org
vol. 17 – 9 George II to 15 George II (1736-1741); archive.org
vol. 18 – 15 George II to 20 George II (1742-1746); archive.org
vol. 19 – 20 George II to 22 George II (1747-1749); archive.org
vol. 20 – 23 George II to 26 George II (1750-1752); archive.org
vol. 21 – 26 George II to 30 George II (1753-1756); archive.org
vol. 22 – 30 George II to 32 George II (1757-1759); archive.org
vol. 23 – 33 George II to 1 George III (1760); archive.org
vol. 24 – Index to all Volumes

The continuation of the Pickering series gets rather confusing. Some books appear to be split into parts, others have ‘Part 1’ on the title page but don’t appear to have a sequel. Volume 44 (1802) doesn’t appear to have been digitized. Update 25 November 2015: Volume 44 part 1 can be found through Hathi Trust. Update 28 September 2016: Located the volume on Google Books.

vol. 25 2 George III to 3 George III (1761-1763); archive.org
vol. 26 4 George III to 5 George III (1764-1765); archive.org
vol. 27 6 George III to 7 George III (1765-1766); archive.org
vol. 28 8 George III to 10 George III (1767-1769); archive.org
vol. 29 11 George III to 12 George III (1770-1772); archive.org
vol. 30 13 George III to 14 George III (1773-1774); archive.org
vol. 31 15 George III to 17 George III (1775-1777)
vol. 32 18 George III to 19 George III (1778-1779)
vol. 33 20 George III to 21 George III (1780-1781); archive.org
vol. 34 22 George III to 24 George III (1782-1784)
vol. 35 25 George III to 26 George III (1785-1786)
vol. 36 27 George III to 29 George III (1787-1789)
vol. 37 30 George III to 32 George III (1790-1792)
vol. 38 General Index from 1 George III to 32 George III; archive.org
vol. 39 Pt. 1: 33 George III to 34 George III (1793-1794)
vol. 39 Pt. 2: 34 George III (1794); archive.org
vol. 40 35 George III to 36 George III (1795); archive.org
vol. 41 37 George III to 38 George III (1796-1797); archive.org
vol. 42 Pt. 1: 39 George III (1798-1799); archive.org
vol. 42 Pt. 2: 39 Geo III (Local & Personal) (1800)
vol. 43 41 George III (1801); archive.org
vol. 44 Pt. 1: 43 George III (1802-1803); Hathi Trust
vol. 45 44 George III (1803-1804); archive.org
vol. 46 46 George III (1806)

Nineteenth Century Legislation

Although my main focus is on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I’ve also needed to find various nineteenth century laws. The following list is incomplete, composed of at least two different series, mainly found in the Internet Archive, but with some from Google. Links to years and volumes I’ve missed will be very much appreciated; please leave them in the comments.

1807 47 Geo 3
1808 48 Geo 3
1809 49 Geo 3
1810 50 Geo 3
1811 51 Geo 3
1812 52 Geo 3
1813 53 Geo 3
1814 54 Geo 3
1815 55 Geo 3
1816 56 Geo 3
1817 57 Geo 3
1818 58 Geo 3
1819 59 Geo 3
1820 60 Geo 3 & 1 Geo 4
1821 1 & 2 Geo 4
1822 3 Geo 4
1823 4 Geo 4
1824 5 Geo 4
1825 6 Geo 4
1826 7 Geo 4
1827 7 & 8 Geo 4
1828 9 Geo 4
1829 10 Geo 4
1830 11 Geo 4 / 1 Will 4
1831 1 Will 4
1832 2 & 3 Will 4
1833  3 & 4 Will 4
1834  4 & 5 Will 4
1835  5 & 6 Will 4
1836  6 & 7 Will 4
1837  7 Will 4 / 1 Vic
1837-8  1 & 2 Vic
1839  2 & 3 Vic
1840  3 & 4 Vic
1841  4 & 5 Vic
1842  5 & 6 Vic
1843  6 & 7 Vic
1844  7 & 8 Vic
1845  8 & 9 Vic
1846 9 & 10 Vic
1847 10 & 11 Vic

1847-8 11 Vic / 11 & 12 Vic
1849  12 & 13 Vic
1850  13 & 14 Vic
1851 14 & 15 Vic & on Google
1852 15 & 16 Vic
1853 16 & 17 Vic
1854 17 & 18 Vic
1854-5 18 & 19 Vic
1855-6 19 & 20 Vic
1857  20 Vic
1858  21 & 22 Vic
1859 22 Vic
1860 22 & 23 Vic
1861  24 & 25 Vic
1862 25 & 26 Vic
1863 26 & 27 Vic
1864 27 & 28 Vic
1865  28 & 29 Vic
1866  29 & 30 Vic
1867  30 Vic / 30 & 31 Vic
1867-8 31 & 32 Vic
1869  32 & 33 Vic  Another ed.
1870  33 & 34 Vic
1871 34 & 35 Vic
1872  35 & 36 Vic
1873 36 & 37 Vic
1874  37 & 38 Vic
1875 38 & 39 Vic
1877  40 & 41 Vic
1881  44 & 45 Vic
1882 45 & 46 Vic
1884 48 & 49 Vic
1892  55 & 56 Vic
1896  59 & 60 Vic
1902  2 Edw 7
1904  4 Edw 7
1906  6 Edw 7

Update 6/5/2014

I have found some more volumes from the early nineteenth century, many of which I have added to the list above. I’ve also found that there were two related series – the Statutes at Large of England and Great Britain, and The Statutes at Large of Great Britain and Ireland –  published at that time, edited first by Tomlins and then Raithby, and then Simons. The former goes up to 1800, and so there’s considerable overlap with all the other editions listed above. Raithby also produced a three volume index, covering the period from the Magna Carta to 49 George III.

Raithby, Statutes At Large of England and Great Britain, in 20 volumes.

Volume 2: 1 Richard II 1377 to 19 Henry VII 1504: Archive  Google
Volume 3: 1 Henry VIII 1509 to 7 Edward VI 1553: Archive  Google
Volume 4: 1 Mary 1553 to 16 Charles I 1604: Archive  Google
Volume 6: 8 William III to 6 Anne 1707: Google
Volume 7: 7 Anne 1708 to 1 George I 1715: Google
Volume 8: 3 George I 1716 to 13 George I 1726: Google
Volume 9: 1 George II 1727 to 15 George II 1742: Google
Volume 10: 16 George II 1743 to 23 George II 1750: Google
Volume 12: 1 George III 1760 to 7 George III 1767: Google
Volume 13: 8 George III 1768 to 14 George III 1774: Google
Volume 14: 15 George III 1775 to 19 George III 1779: Google
Volume 15: 20 George III 1780 to 24 George III 1784: Google
Volume 17: 28 George III 1788 to 32 George III 1792: Google
Volume 18: 33 George III 1793 to 35 George III 1795: Google
Volume 20: 39 George III 1798 to 41 George III 1800: Google

Raithby’s Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland:

Updates 28/8/2016 and 11/10/2016: A set of these volumes, annoyingly without volume 10, has been uploaded to the Internet Archive by the University of Southampton. But hallelujah, the elusive Volume the Tenth has been located on Google, as has the 14th through to the 18th, which appears to be the last of this series. Note that later volumes are edited by one N. Simons, rather than Raithby.

Volume 1: 41 George III 1801 to 43 George III 1803: Google  Archive.org
Volume 2: 44 George II 1804 to 46 George II 1806: Archive.org
Volume 3: 47 George III 1807 to 49 George III 1809: Google  Archive.org
Volume 4: 50 George III 1810 to 52 George III 1812: Google  Archive.org
Volume 5: 53 George III to 54 George III 1814: Google  Archive.org
Volume 6: 55 George III 1815 to 56 George III 1816: Google  Archive.org
Volume 7: 57 George III 1817 to 59 George III 1819: Archive.org
Volume 8: 60 George III 1820 to 3 George IV 1822: Archive.org
Volume 9: 4 George IV 1823 to 5 George IV 1824: Google  Archive.org
Volume 10: 6 George IV 1825 to 7 George IV 1826: Google
Volume 11: 7 & 8 George IV 1827 to 10 George IV 1829: Google  Archive.org
Volume 12: 11 George IV 1829 to 2 & 3 William IV 1832: Google  Archive.org
Volume 13: 3 & 4 William IV 1833 to 5 & 6 Willian IV 1835: Archive.org
Volume 14: 6 & 7 William IV 1836 to 1 & 2 Victoria 1838:  Google
Volume 15: 2 & 3 Victoria 1839 to 5 Victoria 1841: Google
Volume 16:  5 & 6 Victoria 1842 to 6 & 7 Victoria 1843. Pt 1: Google Pt 2: Google
Volume 17: 7 & 8  Victoria 1844 to 8 & 9 Victoria 1845. Pt 1: Google Pt 2: Google
Volume 18: 9 & 10 Victoria 1846 to 10 & 11 Victoria 1847: Google

Raithby’s An index to the statutes at large: from Magna Carta, to the forty ninth year of George III inclusive:

Volume 1: Abatement to Inrolment. Google
Volume 2: Insane Persons to Roly Poly. Google
Volume 3: Roman Catholics to Zouch (Souche) and Seymour (Lord). Google

Other Sources

British History Online has two sets of legislation, available under somewhat restrictive terms of use: the complete Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, from 1642 to 1660, and volumes 5, 6 and 7 (out of 11) of  Raithby’s Statutes of the Realm, covering 1628 to 1701. Various copies of the Interregnum collection are available, readable but not downloadable without a partner account, at Hathi Trust; the final volume, containing the introduction, chronology and index, is freely available at archive.org. Similarly, Hathi Trust has a complete set of Statutes of the Realm available for reading online, but downloadable only by a select few.

Update 28/8/2016: The University of Southampton has uploaded some volumes of Raithby’s Statutes to the Internet Archive.

The National Archives’ offical government repository site, as mentioned above, has all legislation from 1988 onwards, and some  historic material. For laws before the Magna Carta, there is the Early English Laws project, although I’m not sure whether it is still active.

As mentioned above, Wikipedia have a great many useful entries describing, listing and classifying the laws and their attendant structure. The best entry page for these, containing links to lists of statutes by parliament and period, is the List of Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom.

Acknowledgements: Big tip of the hat to Andrew Gray of Wikipedia for introducing me to the crowd-sourced transcription on WikiSource, and for other wikipedia help. Likewise to the pseudonymous Abdul Goatherd, who did most of the legwork gathering Google’s Danby Pickering editions, and published it on this old forum.

Resource: The Harleian Miscellany

Once again, a post on the disorganized digitized, this time the Harleian Miscellany (Wikipedia entry), a selection of pamphlets and texts from the archive of the first two Earls of Oxford. First published in the mid eighteenth century, two new editions were simultaneously published in the early nineteenth century, one augmented and one reorganized.

It truly is a miscellany, comprising many and various “small tracts and fugitive pieces” as Samuel Johnson describes them, covering a wide range of subjects over two centuries. Johnson defends these apparently ephemeral texts as central to English freedom:

There is, perhaps, no Nation, in which it is so necessary, as in our own, to assemble, from Time to Time, the small Tracts and fugitive Pieces, which are occasionally published: For, besides the general Subjects of Enquiry, which are cultivated by us, in common with every other learned Nation, our Constitution in Church and State naturally gives Birth to a Multitude of Performances, which would either not have been written, or could not have been made publick in any other Place.

and goes on to make a case for their intellectual and literary values as well. He also offers a novel explanation for the lack of organization in the compilation:

Of the different Methods which present themselves, upon the first View of the great Heaps of Pamphlets, which the Harleian Library exhibits, the two which merit most Attention, are to distribute the Treatises according to their Subjects or their Dates …. By ranging our Collection in Order of Time, we must necessarily publish those Pieces first, which least engage the Curiosity of the Bulk of Mankind …. By confining ourselves for any long Time to any Single Subject, we shall reduce our Readers to one Class, and, as we shall lose all the Grace of Variety, shall disgust all those who read chiefly to be diverted.

The original series comes in 8 volumes published between 1744 and 1746 and was ‘printed for T. Osborne in Gray’s Inn’. The second set, re-typeset with the same texts but in (nearly) chronological order, was issued in 12 volumes between 1808 and 1811, by Robert Dutton of  Gracechurch Street. The third edition was issued between 1808 and 1813 in 10 volumes, the texts printed in the same order as the original, two supplementary volumes providing some new material, and was published by Messrs White, Cochrane and Murray of Fleet Street, and Harding of St. James’s Street.

For the original and reissue, I’ve given links to both Google and Archive.org copies, for each interface has its own advantages. With Google books, search works far better, but for reading and for downloading I prefer the archive.org interface. The third, revised  edition is, as far as I can tell, only on archive.org, as it was digitized by them from the copies held by Brigham Young University.

The Original Series, 1744-1746

The Second Edition, 1808-1811

Contents and index to the second edition digitized at archive.org and transcribed with linkage.

The Third, Revised Edition, 1808-1813

All digitized by, and hosted at, Archive.org, from copies at Brigham Young University. The last volume has an index to the entire series.

Resource: Narcissus Luttrell’s State Affairs

Luttrell's Brief Relation flyleaf
Luttrell caressed

I’ve previously commented on some of the difficulties with the voluminous digital archives available on the web. Google Books and archive.org offer an extraordinary amount of material, but the curation – meaning the organization and metadata – is often deficient. Finding a complete series of a publication, or just a specific volume, is far more difficult than it should be; choosing the best digitization from the many copies turns the labyrinth into a maze.

Sifting and sorting  documents is part and parcel of the historian’s task. I hope that sharing the results will become standard practice too, for not only does a gift produce a rosy glow, but it prevents an arduous task being repeated.

This post is the first of three such siftings, dealing with Narcissus Luttrell’s Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs. (Also sifted are The Harleian Miscellany and The Statutes At Large.) Luttrell was a minor political figure, being an MP twice, a JP. His posthumous importance is due to his book collecting and political diary-keeping, the Brief Historical Relation…., first published very posthumously in 1857, being a product of both.

It is a somewhat chaotic compilation of news from home and abroad, jumbling up accounts of military campaigns, political manoeuvres, criminal charges and births, deaths and marriages. One thing follows another, the only connection being the date. A single page carries news of the Ottoman Empire and Flanders, the sailing of the West India fleet, a patent for the preservation of “fish or foul a considerable time after ’tis killed”, a bookseller sent to Newgate for publishing libels, and more besides. But it gives a sense of the great business of government, sometimes has information unavailable elsewhere, and is useful for establishing chronologies.

I’ve put links to both the Archive.org and Google Books versions as each has its own advantages. Google has more reliable search and better OCR, but Archive.org offers more formats and has a better online presentation. I hope I have found the cleanest and clearest versions, but cannot say I’ve checked every page.

Volume 1: Sept 1678 – Dec 1689.
Archive.org  Google Books

Volume 2: Jan 1690 – Jan 1st 1693.
Archive.org  Google Books

Volume 3: Jan 1693 – Dec 1695.
Archive.org  Google Books

Volume 4: Jan 1696 – Dec 1700.
Archive.org  Google Books

Volume 5: Jan 1701 – Dec 1705.
Archive.org  Google Books

Volume 6: Jan 1706 – April 1714, and index to the whole series.
Archive.org  Google Books

Further reading: Luttrell on Wikipedia  Luttrell in History of Parliament Online

The 1697 ‘Escape of Debtors’ act

I have previously – and only briefly – discussed the 1697 act against the sanctuaries, looking at those places named in it, and their geographical distribution. Below, I present the full text of the statute. The abolition of ‘pretended privileged places’ is just one clause, number 15, out of 22. The rest of the act concerns the management of the prisons, specifically the Fleet and the King’s Bench, the escape of imprisoned debtors, and extortionate practices against prisoners. Certain provisions tacked on the end are made for particular individuals.

Again, as with the other legislation I’ve transcribed, it’s nearly impossible to read. Every clause is a single sentence, every sentence a clause, terms are continually repeated, singulars reinforced with plurals. And that’s before considering the archaic and latin terms used. Add to this the need for context – the motivations driving the law, the parliamentary debate around it, the manner of its writing, the whole legal apparatus producing and enforcing it – and the modern reader is at a considerable distance from it. This distance is further increased given the way the laws inter-relate with each other, defining terms, clarifying clauses, repealing some sections, augmenting others. The whole of the law is more than the sum of its statutes.

So this body of texts requires different ways of reading, to bring out the structures, links and patterns embodied within. Laws can be data-mined, to pull out names and locations for example. The vocabulary can be counted, to show stock phrases and unusual occurrences. Texts can be visualized, with ‘graphs, maps and trees’, to use Franco Moretti’s taxonomy. The computer now allows us to do this, although not as easily as one might think. In this way one can read the whole of the law, going beyond the time-consuming, comprehension-limited and mind-melting strictures of turning every page.

My next few posts will look at ways of analyzing the tortured prose below. But as a quick taster, note that the section pertaining to the sanctuaries adds ‘she’ and ‘her’ to the list of subjects, as in “he, she or they.” Only in this one clause, and then only towards the end, in the parts relating to the aiding, abetting and concealing escapees, are women so specified. From the other legislation I’ve read, this is quite rare; a quick search has revealed a solitary ‘she’ in the Black Act §2. Gender in the law is an important question, and one eminently susceptible to the digital techniques as mentioned above.

Note: Spelling has not been modernised; italics and marginalia have been omitted.

 

8 & 9 William III c.27 An act for the more effectual relief of creditors in cases of escapes, and for preventing abuses in prisons and pretended privileged places.

Whereas by reason of the many grievous extortions and ill practices of such persons who have for several years past respectively executed the offices of marshal of the King’s Bench, warden of the Fleet, and keeper of the Marshalsea, Newgate, and other prisons, and by several pretended privileged places within this realm, both creditors and debtors have been notoriously abused, and the good intents on the law wholly eluded: for reformation thereof be it enacted by the King’s most excellent majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That from and after the first day of May, one thousand six hundred ninety seven, all prisoners, either upon contempt or mesne process, or in execution, who are or shall be committed to the custody of the marshal of the King’s bench prison, or the warden of the Fleet, shall be actually detained within the said prisons of the King’s Bench and Fleet, or the respective rules of the same, until they shall be from thence discharged by due course of law; and if at any time from and after the said first day of May, the said marshal or warden, or any other keeper or keepers of any prison, shall permit and suffer any prisoner committed to their custody, either on mesne process or in execution, to go or be at large out of the rules of their respective prisons (except by virtue of some writ of Habeas Corpus, or rule of court, which rule of court shall not be granted but by motion made or petition read in open court) every such going or being out of the said rules shall be adjudged and deemed, and is hereby declared to be an escape.

II. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, every person or persons obtaining judgement in any action of escape against the said marshal or warden, or their respective lawful deputy or deputies, shall and may have, not only several remedies already by law allowed for obtaining satisfaction thereon, but the judges of the respective courts where such judgement shall be obtained (upon oath before them made by the persons or persons obtaining such judgement, that the same was obtained without fraud or covin, and that the debt of the prisoner making such an escape was a true and real debt and unsatisfied) shall, upon motion made to them in open court for that purpose, sequester the fees and profits of the office of marshall or warden, or so much, or such part or proportion thereof, as the said court wherein such motion shall be made shall think it fit and reasonable, with respect to the debt or debts due from such prisoner or prisoners so escaping, and in the first place apply the same towards satisfaction of the debt or debts due from the prisoner or prisoners who escaped, together with all costs and damages recovered in such action of escape.

III. And to the end that such satisfaction may not be deferred by any writ of error brought for delay only, be it enacted, That if the said marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, shall at any time after the said first day of May, sue forth any writ or writs of error to reverse any judgment given in any action of escape, such marshal or warden, or their respective deputy of deputies, shall be obliged to put in special bail, or in default thereof no execution shall be stayed, nor any sequestration of the profits delayed.

IV. And whereas it is notorious that divers great sums of money and other rewards have been given to, and actually received by, the several persons executing the respective offices of marshal and warden, and other keepers of the several prisons within this kingdom, to assist or permit prisoners in their custody to escape, in open defiance and contempt of the laws of this realm: for preventing the like evil practices for the time to come, be it further enacted, That if any marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, or any keeper of any other person within this kingdom, shall take any sum of money, reward or gratuity whatsoever, or security for the same, to procure, assist, connive at, or permit any such escape, and shall thereof be lawfully convicted, the said marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, or such other keeper of any prisons as aforesaid, shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of five hundred pounds, and his said office, and be for ever after incapable of executing any such office.

V. Provided always, That this act, nor any thing therein contained, shall extend, or be construed to extend to make void such securities, or any of them, as shall at any time or times hereafter be given by any prisoner or prisoners for his or their lodging or lodgings without the aforesaid prisones, or ether of them, within the rules of the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or either of them, so as such security or securities be not taken for the enlargement of any prisoner or prisoners out of or beyond the rules of the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or either of them respectively.

VI. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, no retaking on fresh pursuit shall be given in evidence on the trial of any issue in any action of escape against the said marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, or against any other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons as aforesaid, unless the same be specially pleaded, nor shall any special plea be taken, received, or allowed, unless oath can be first made in writing by the marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, or by such other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons as aforesaid, against whom such action shall be brought, and filed in the proper office of the respective courts, that the prisoner for whose escape such action is brought did without his consent, privity, or knowledge make such escape; and if such affidavit shall at any time afterwards appear to be false, and the marshal or warden or other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, shall be convicted thereof by due course of law, such marshal or warden or other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons shall forfeit the sum of five hundred pounds.

VII. And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, That if at any time after the said first day of May, any prisoner who is or shall be committed in execution to either or any of the said respective prisons, shall escape from thence by any ways or means howsoever, the creditor or creditors, at whose suit such prisoner was charged in execution at the time of his escape, shall or may retake such prisoner by any new Capias, or Capias ad satisfaciendum, or sure forth any other kind of execution on the judgment, as if the body of such prisoner had never been taken in execution.

VIII. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if the said marshal or warden for the time being, or their respective deputy or deputies, or other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, shall, after one day’s notice in writing given for that purpose, refuse to shew any prisoner committed in execution to the creditor at whose suit such prisoner was committed or charged, or to his attorney, every such refusal shall be adjudged to be an escape in law.

IX. And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, That if any person or persons whatsoever, desiring to charge any person with any action or execution, shall desire to be informed by the said marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies, or by any other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, whether such person be a prisoner in his custody, or not, the said marshal or warden, or such other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, shall give a true note in writing thereof to the person so requesting the same, or to his lawful attorney, upon demand at his office for that purpose, or in default thereof shall forfeit the sum of fifty pounds; and if such marshal or warden, or their respective deputy or deputies exercising the said office, or other keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, shall give a note in writing that such person is an actual prisoner in her custody, every such note shall be accepted and taken as sufficient evidence that such person was at that time a prisoner in actual custody.

X. And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, That on or before the four and twentieth day of June, one thousand six hundred ninety seven, all and every the conveyances, grants, and mortgages of the inheritance of the aforesaid prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or either of them, and of the prison-houses, lands, tenements, buildings, and other hereditaments to the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet or either of them respectively belonging, or in any wise appertaining, and all leases thereof, and the respective titles of the marshal of the King’s Bench and warden of the Fleet prisons thereunto, or of him or them in whom the inheritance or inheritances of, in, and to the said prisons, and prison-houses, and premises, or either of them, now are, and all trusts and declarations of trusts thereunto, or unto either of them relating, shall be inrolled (viz.) that of the marshal of the King’s Bench in the King’s Bench court, and that of the warden of the Fleet in the court of Common Pleas at Westminster; and that all future conveyances, grants, and mortgages, of the inheritance of the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or of either of them, or of any part of either of them, and all leases thereof, and all trusts and declarations of trust thereunto or unto either of them relating, shall be so inrolled in the respective courts, as aforesaid, within six months next after the executing of every or any such conveyances, grants, mortgages, or leases, or such trusts or declarations of trusts thereunto or unto either of them relating, or of any of them; and if any such conveyances, grants, or mortgages, of the inheritance of the said prisons of King’s Bench or Fleet, or either of them, or of any part of either of them, of any such trusts or declarations of trust thereunto or unto either of them relating, or any leases of the said premisses, be not so inrolled within the times limited as aforesaid, in the said courts respectively, as aforesaid, that then and in such case, as well the present as all future conveyances, grants, and mortgages of every of them, and the inheritance of the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or either of them, or of any part of either of them, and all leases thereof, and all trusts and declarations of trust thereunto, or unto any of them relating, shall be and are hereby declared to be utterly void and of none effect, as if the same had never been executed; any law, statute, or custom, to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.

XI. And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, the said offices of marshal of the King’s bench prison, and warden of the Fleet, and each of them, shall be executed by the several persons to whom the inheritance of the prisons, prison-houses, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments, of the said prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, or either of them, shall then belong or appertain respectively, in his or their respective proper person or persons, or by his or their sufficient deputy or deputies; for which deputy or deputies, and for all forfeitures, escapes, and other misdemeanors, in their respective offices by such deputy or deputies permitted, suffered, or committed, the said person or persons, in whom the aforesaid inheritances respectively are or shall then be, shall be answerable, and the profits and aforesaid inheritances of the said several offices shall be sequestred, seized, or extended to make satisfaction for such forfeitures, escapes, and misdeameanors respectively, as if permitted, suffered, or committed by the person or persons themselves, or either of them, in whom the respective inheritances of the said prisons shall then be.

XII. And whereas the way of proceeding against the warden of the Fleet prison by bill in the courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer at Westminster is found to be very dilatory; be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, it shall and may be lawful to and for any person or persons, having cause of action against the warden of the Fleet prison, upon bill filed in the said courts of Common Please or Exchequer against the said warden, and a rule being given to plead thereto, to be out eight days at most after filing such bill, to sign judgment against the said warden of the Fleet, unless he plead to the said bill within three days after such rule is out.

XIII. And for the more easy and quick obtaining of judgment against any person or persons who now is or hereafter shall be a prisoner or prisoners in the aforesaid prison of the Fleet; be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, it shall and may be lawful to and for any person or persons, who hath or shall have any cause of action against any prisoner or prisoners, who now is, or are, or hereafter shall be committed to the said prison of the Fleet, after filing or entring of a declaration in such action with the proper officer, to deliver a copy of such declaration or declarations to any such defendant or defendants in any personal action or actions, or to the turnkey or porter of the said Fleet prison, and, after rule given thereupon to plead, to be out at eight days at most after delivery of such copy of declaration or declarations, and affidavit made of such delivery before the lord chief justice, or one other of the justices of the Common Pleas, or before the lord chief baron, or some other of the barons of the coif of the Exchequer at Westminster, of the delivery of such declaration or declarations to the defendant or defendants, in such action or actions, or to the turnkey or porter of the said Fleet prison, as aforesaid, to sign judgment in such action or actions against such defendant or defendants, as if such defendant or defendants had been actually charged at the bar of the Common Pleas or Exchequer with such action or actions; any law, statute, usage, or custom, to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.

XIV. And whereas great sums of money have been and are still taken of the prisoners of the aforesaid prisons of King’s Bench and Fleet, and other prisons, under pretence of chamber rent, although the said prisoners have not had the actual possession of any chamber within the said prisons, or any of them; for the avoiding of that inconvenience for the future be it enacted, That from and after the said first day of May, no prisoner or prisoners shall pay, or be compellable to pay any chamber rent for any chamber within either or any of the said prisons, for an longer time than he or they is or are actually in possession of the said chamber or chambers, and that during such time as he or they is or are actually in possession of any such chamber or chambers within either or any of the said prisons as aforesaid, such prisoner or prisoners shall not pay above the sum of two shillings and six pence per week for any such chamber; and if the marshal of the King’s Bench prison, warden of the Fleet, or keeper or keepers of any other prison or prisons, as aforesaid, shall take or demand any greater sum or sums of money for the use of such chamber, than the sum of two shillings and six pence per week, he or they so taking or demanding shall in such case, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of twenty pounds.

XV. And for the preventing for the future the many notorious and scandalous practices used in many pretended privileged places in and about the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark in the county of Surrey, by obstructing the execution of legal process there, and thereby defrauding and cheating great numbers of people of their honest and just debts; be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said first day of May, it shall and may be lawful for any person or persons, who have or hath any debt or debts, sum or sums of money due or owing to him from any person or persons who now is, or hereafter shall be and reside within the White Friers, Savoy, Salisbury Court, Ram Alley, Mitre Court, Fuller’s Rents, Baldwin’s Gardens, Montague Close, or the Minories, Mint, Clink, or Deadman’s Place, upon legal process taken out against such person or persons, to demand and require the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, head bailiff of the liberty of the duchy of Lancaster, or high sheriff of the county of Surrey, or bailiff of the liberty of the borough of Southwark for the time being (as the case shall require, if the plaintiff think it requisite) or their respective deputy or deputies, officer or officers, to take, and they are hereby enabled respectively to take the Posse Comitatus, or such other power as to him or them or any of them shall seem requisite, and enter the said pretended privileged place, and any or either of them (as the case shall require) and to arrest, and in the case of resistance or refusal to open the doors, to break open any door or doors to arrest such person or persons upon any mesne or other process, extent or execution, or to seize the goods of any such person or persons upon any execution or extent; and if the said sheriff or sheriffs, head bailiff, or their deputy or deputies, officer or officers, or either or any of them shall neglect or refuse (upon such request) with such force to do their best endeavours for the executing of such process, execution or extent, he or they so neglecting or refusing to execute such process, execution or extent, shall forfeit to the plaintiff or plaintiffs in such action the sum of one hundred pounds, to be recovered by action of debt, bill, plaint or information, in which no essoin, protection, or wager of law, or more than one imparlance shall be allowed; and if in the executing of such process, execution or extent, any person or persons shall oppose or resist any such officer or officers, or any of them, or any who shall be aiding or assisting to him, them, or any of them, in the executing of such process, execution or extent, he or they so offending shall, for every time he or they shall so offend, forfeit the sum of fifty pounds, and moreover shall be by some justice of the peace committed to the common gaol of such county, city or place where such offence shall be committed, there to remain without bail or mainprize until the next assizes, sessions of oyer and terminer, and general gaol delivery, to be held for such county, city or place; and such offender or offenders being of such offence or offences duly convicted, every such offender shall suffer and undergo such imprisonment, and be set in the pillory, as the court where such conviction shall be shall think fit; and if any rescous shall be made of any prisoner taken by any such officer or officers as aforesaid, upon any such process, execution or extent, within the limits of any the before mentioned pretended privileged places, by any person or persons whatsoever, such person or persons so making such rescous, or aiding, assisting or abetting the same, and being thereof lawfully convicted, shall respectively forfeit to the plaintiff in any such action the sum of five hundred pounds, to be recovered by action of debt, bill, plaint or information, in any of his Majesty’s courts at Westminster, in which action, bill, plaint or information, no essoin, privilege, protection, wager of law, or more than one imparlance shall be allowed; and if after such recovery had against any person or persons for such rescous, or for aiding, assisting or abetting the same, the person or persons against whom such recovery shall be had, shall refuse or neglect to pay to the plaintiff in such action, or to his, her or their executors, administrators or assigns, the sum or sums of money recovered, with full costs of suit, within one month after judgment signed upon such recovery, and demand made, that then the person or persons so refusing or neglecting as aforesaid, upon producing a copy of the judgment upon which such recovery shall be had, and oath made that the money recovered is not paid, shall, by order of such court wherein the said person or persons was or were so convicted, of or for any suit rescous, or for aiding, assisting or abetting the same, be transported by the sheriff or sheriffs of the county, city or place where such conviction shall happen to be, to one of his Majesty’s plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for the space of seven years; and if the person or persons so transported, shall return again to this kingdom within the space of seven years, he, she or they so returning, shall be and is hereby adjudged guilty of felony, and shall not be allowed the benefit of clergy, but shall suffer and forfeit as in cases of felony where clergy is not allowed; and if any person or persons, inhabiting within either or any of the aforesaid pretended privileged places, shall receive, conceal or harbour any person or persons, who shall have made any rescous as aforesaid, he, she or they so receiving, concealing or harbouring any such person or persons, knowing or having had notice that such person or persons had been guilty of such offence, being thereof convicted by due course of law, shall be, by order of that court where such conviction shall happen to be, by the sheriff or sheriffs of the county, city of place where the offence was committed, transported to some or one of his Majesty’s plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for the space of seven years, unless such person or persons shall, within the space of one month next after such conviction, pay to the plaintiff or plaintiffs in such action or suit, the full debt or duty for which such action or suit was brought, with full costs; and if he, she or they shall return into this kingdom within the said space of seven years, he, she or they so returning, shall be and is hereby adjudged guilty of felony, and shall not be allowed the benefit of clergy, but shall suffer and forfeit as in cases of felony, where clergy is not allowed.

XVI. And be it further enacted, That the several penalties before in and by this act inflicted, and not particularly disposed of, shall go one half to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, and the other half to him or them that will sue for the same, to be recovered as aforesaid.

XVII. And for the prevention of disputes touching this act, be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the same, and every clause and thing therein contained, shall be deemed, adjudged, and taken to be a general law, and that it shall not be needful to shew or set forth the same or any clause thereof in pleading, and that the same, and all clauses therein, shall be construed most largely and beneficially for the preventing of all the mischiefs, abuses, escapes, and other inconveniences herein provided against; and further, that if any person or persons shall at any time be sued for putting in execution any power or authority given by this act, such person and persons shall and may plead the general issue, and give in evidence this act, and the special matter; and if the plaintiff or plaintiffs in such action shall be nonsuit, or a verdict given for a defendant or defendants, or if the plaintiff or plaintiffs discontinue their action, or if upon demurrer judgment shall be given for the defendant or defendants, every such defendant or defendants shall have his or their double costs.

XVIII. Saving unto Martha Johnson widow, Thomas Johnson, and John Johnson, sons of the said Martha, and Frances her daughter, their heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, all such right, title, estate, equity, interest and demand, as she or they now have, or shall or may have, challenge or claim, of, in or unto all or any of the houses and shops belonging to the office of the warden of the Fleet, or to the prison of the Fleet, herein before contained, as fully and effectually, to all intents and purposes, as she or they had before the making of this act, as if this act had never been had or made.

XIX. Provided nevertheless, That nothing in this act contained shall extend to prejudice, impeach, or lessen any security or securities for any sum or sums of money made or given, by or out of the said office of marshal of the Marshalsea of the couret of King’s bench, or the profits thereof, by William Lenthall esquire, to Sir John Cutler baronet deceased, or to Edmund Boulter esquire, executor of the said Sir John Cutler, or to any other person or persons in trust for them or either of them, or to subject the said office, or the profits thereof, or the person or persons in whom the same are or shall be vested, to any of the forfeitures or penalties in this act contained, other than such as they are or may be liable unto before the making of this act, until such sum or sums of money, secured thereby, shall be fully satisfied and paid; any thing in this act contained to the contrary thereof notwithstanding.

XX. Saving unto Anthony Smith mariner, his heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, all such right, title, estate, equity, interest and demand, as he or they now have, or shall or may have, challenge or claim, of, in or unto the office of the warden of the Fleet, or the prison of the Fleet, or all or any of the houses and shops belonging to the office of warden of the Fleet, or to the prison of the Fleet, or herein before contained (by virtue of two decrees in Chancery, the one of them made the two and twentieth day of June, one thousand six hundred eighty three, and the other of them the six and twentieth day of January, one thousand six hundred eighty five, whereby four hundred twenty five pounds, and the interest thereof, was and is decreed to be paid to the said Anthony Smith out of the said office, houses, shops and appurtenances, after a mortgage made thereof by Thomas Bromhall unto Henry Norwood esquire was satisfied) as fully and effectually to all intents and purposes, as he or they had before the making of this act, and as if this act had never been had or made.

XXI. Provided nevertheless, That nothing in this act contained shall be deemed, construed or adjudged to take away, lessen, charge or prejudice the right, title or interest of Thomas Norwood, surviving executor of Henry Norwood, as for, touching or concerning a debt of two thousand one hundred fifty and three pounds, and interest, secured to the said Henry Norwood, by virtue of a mortgage of the office of warden of the Fleet prison, bearing date the twenty third day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred seventy and six, or so much thereof as is justly due thereupon; nor to take away, lessen or prejudice the right, title or interest of John Clements of the Middle Temple, London, gentleman, as for, touching or concerning a debt of two thousand two hundred ninety nine pounds, and interest, secured to the said John Clement, in trust for himself and others, by virtue of a mortgage of the said office of warden, bearing date the third of May, one thousand six hundred seventy and eight, or so much thereof as is justly due thereupon.

XXII. And be it further enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, That all and every deputation or deputations, grant or grants, at any time heretofore made or executed by William Lenthall esquire, of the said office of marshal of the Marshalsea of the said court of King’s Bench, is and are hereby declared void and of none effect; and that all and every succeeding marshal shall from time to time, and at all times hereafter, be constituted and appointed by the said William Lenthall, his heirs and assigns, by and with the consent in writing under the hand and seal of Edmund Boulter esquire, his executors, administrators and assigns, until the debt owing by the said William Lenthall to the said Edmund Boulter, executor of Sir John Cutler baronet deceased, be satisfied.

Source: Pickering, Danby, ed., The Statutes at Large, vol. 10.

Two Rescues

If there is a particular practice that epitomises the sanctuaries, it is the rescue. This was the forcible release of a prisoner from the custody of an authority, be it the law, the military or bailiffs. Whilst it was common enough during the eighteenth century – especially when the press gang was on the prowl – the sanctuaries provided two enhancements: a ready crew for mounting them and a place of safety from recapture.

The following document from 1697 shows a rescue more or less carried out ‘to order.’ Two men were being taken under habeas corpus from Somerset to the London courts; a letter requesting their rescue was sent to one Thomas Gurney in Whitefriars, who raised a troop and intercepted them. Gurney seems to have been an important figure in Alsatia: not only was he the organizer of this escape, but he had also been involved in the riot against the Templars that led to the execution of Francis Winter. I will be writing more about him in the future. But otherwise, with part of the document illegible and no other information on this trial or the original case, many questions are left hanging. Why were the men being taken to London? Were they criminals or witnesses? Who required their rescue?

Thomas Gurney, was Indicted for a Riot and Rescous committed at the Cross-Keys in Arundel-street, and Rescuing one Robert Webb, and Samuel Moore Prisoners, who were brought out of Somersetshire, by virtue of their Habeas Corpus’s, by one Richard Fox. It appeared that there was a Letter sent to this Gurney to the Clubb, at the Rising-Sun in Water-Lane; in which was, That a Friend of his desired the Assistance of 8 men for a Friend that was in trouble. Some of White-Friars men accordingly went to Rescue him from the Rose at Knights-bridge; but missed of their design, and heard that they were in Arundel-street; …. [a section of the text is unreadable] …. and carried them to the Temple-stairs, and got them in Boats, and carried them to Dorset-stairs, and from thence to Gurneys House in White-Fryers, they pursuing them there, the Fryers-men beat them, and knockt them down. The Trial lasted long; and the Jury having considered the matter, found him Guilty.

Source: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 31 August 2011), February 1697, trial of Thomas Gurney (t16970224-49).

There was another sort of rescue, where debtors were aided in escaping into the sanctuaries. This may have had a criminal aspect, of setting up a front business, obtaining goods on credit and then absconding. But there is no mention of this in the following account from 1690, where one of the ‘White Fryers men’ was charged with a murder committed in the course of the escape.

John Goodson as principal, and Abraham Hartslop as Accessary, were both tryed for the Murther of one Bartholomew Long on the 8th day of May last, giving him a mortal Bruise with a Quarter-Staff upon the head, of which he instantly died. The Evidence declared, that some rude Fellows viz White Fryers Men, were striving to get away some Goods out of the Prosecutor’s house in Cow-lane , the Tenant, viz. a Broker, designing to make his Escape deceitfully into the Mint: But the Landlord interposing, they made a great Mutiny, and Riotous Tumult, threatning to be the death of any who should oppose them, and had several Quarter-staves, and short wooden pocket pistols, (as they term them) which are to be used in Chambers, or narrow places, with other Instruments of Cruelty.

Goodson, was seen to strike the deceased with an Ashen Quarter-staff about five Foot long, of which he immediately died. But it did not appear that Hartslope struck any Blow. The Surgeon said that the deceased died of the Bruise. Goodson offer’d but little for himself, only that he was hired as a Porter to get away the Goods and called some Evidence, who gave a fair account of his former Conversation. But there being but one Evidence that swore positively Goodson struck the Blow, a Debate arose between the Court and the Jury; afterwards they came to this Result, That the matter should at present be found Special , &c.

Source: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 31 August 2011), June 1690, trial of John Goodson Abraham Hartslop (t16900605-5).

A curiosity of this account is that the Alsatians were to take a fellow from nearby Cow Street, just north of Whitefriars, across the Thames to Southwark Mint. This suggests, perhaps, co-operation between the sanctuaries.

Resources: Canting Dictionaries

To round off this series of posts on canting language, here are links to those pre-Victorian cant, slang and jargon vocabularies freely available on the internet. More are to be found in various subscription archives; these are not listed here both because they are not open to the general public, and because it is important to show that there are alternatives. The digital vaults should not be the first resort, as much for ethical as economic reasons.

The difficulty with using Archive.org and Google Books, from whence much of the material below can be obtained, is that the metadata, being generated by machine, is generally patchy and frequently erroneous. This makes it all the more important that what the historian does in the course of writing history – compile reference material – is made public, for all to benefit from, as well as allowing the story to be checked.

Three other resources of note are: Pascal Bonenfant’s database of cant, drawn from three dictionaries dating from 1737, 1811 and 1819; LEME, the Lexicons of Early Modern English, is an ingenious resource, although partly behind a paywall so of limited use to non-subscribers; and finally, I have started a list of canting dictionaries through the facilities provided by the Open Library.

Finally, throughout this series of posts, I have drawn on the first volume of Julie Coleman’s excellent History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries.

Thomas Harman, A caveat or warning for common cursetors, vulgarly called vagabonds, (1567). The first of the glossaries, compiled through interrogating suspected rogues. A reprint from 1814 is available from Archive.org. Open Library.

Samuel Rowland, Martin Mark-all Beadle of Bridewell, (1610). In Volume 2 of his collected works. Open Library.

Thomas Shadwell, Glossary to The Squire of Alsatia, (1688). Subject of my previous post.

B.E., Gent., A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew, in its several tribes, of gypsies, beggers, thieves, cheats, &c. with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, figurative speeches, &c. First published in 1698, the Internet Archive has a scan of an 1899 reprint. Open Library.

Nathan Bailey, Canting Dictionary, (1736), extracted from Bailey, The New Universal Etymological Dictionary, (1727). Transcribed at From Old Books; the fifth edition of the  full dictionary is available via Google.

Bampfylde-Moore Carew, The life and adventures of Bampfylde-Moore Carew. Picaresque account of the ‘King of the Beggars’, the edition of 1750 contained a canting glossary. Archive.org. Open Library.

Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published 1785 and frequently reprinted and re-edited. Transcribed at From Old Books and also available at Gutenberg and  Archive.org. Open Library

The Language of Alsatia: earliest uses

When was the word ‘Alsatia’ first applied to Whitefriars? Cunningham’s Handbook of London (1850) states:

“ALSATIA. A cant name given before 1623 to the precinct of Whitefriars, then and long after a notorious place of refuge and retirement for persons wishing to avoid bailiffs and creditors. The earliest use of the name is contained in a quarto tract by Thomas Powel, printed in 1623, and called “Wheresoever you see mee, trust unto Yourselfe, or the Mysterie of Lending and Borrowing.” The second in point of time is in Otway’s play of The Soldier’s Fortune, (4to, 1681), and the third in Shadwell’s celebrated Squire of Alsatia (4to, 1688) ….”

Today, due to mass digitization, accurate searching, and hopefully accurate transcription as well, we can say that the first use in print was in 1676 – August 29th, according to the license declared on the cover – in a satirical tract ‘The Character of an Honest Lawyer‘, signed by one ‘H.C.’ According to this, such a paradigm of rectitude never

maintains any correspondence with the Knights of Alsatia, or Ram-ally-Vouchers ….

A brief mention, coupled with ‘Knight’ rather than the squire more common later, and with ‘Ram Alley vouchers.’ Ram Alley was a sanctuary in the precincts of the Temple, abolished along with Alsatia by the act of 1697; a ‘voucher’ was a witness-for-hire.

Before continuing with the chronology of the term, it’s worth considering where and when it wasn’t used. Powell’s 1623 guide to London’s sanctuaries, contrary to Cunningham, did not use it, and Whitefriars is mentioned only obliquely. Similarly, Brome’s play A Mad Couple Well-Match’d, dating from before the civil war but first published in 1653, has the lines:

I need no more insconsing now in Ram-alley,
nor the Sanctuary of White-fryers , the Forts of Fullers-rents,
and Milford-lane, whose walls are dayly batter’d
with the curses of bawling creditors. My debts are payd;
and here’s a stock remayning of Gold, pure Gold harke
how sweetly it chincks.

There’s a clear opportunity to use the term Alsatia here, especially given the explicit mention of Whitefriars. That it is not used implies that it hadn’t yet been coined. Furthermore, its absence implies that Whitefriars hadn’t become the epitome of sanctuary. From the literary evidence, that was not to come until the 1670s, after the Civil War, Plague and Great Fire of London.

The next use of Alsatia in its sense of refuge is a few months after ‘H.C.’, in the prologue to Settle’s play Pastor Fido, licensed December 26th 1676. Although used in passing, it is  the first appearance of the squire:

Another keeps a Miss the modish way;
And when poor Duns, quite weary, will not stay,
The hopeless Squire’s into Alsatia driven;
Yet pretty Charming Sinner is forgiven.

Around this time, there’s a crop of passing mentions. Aphra Behn – once a debtor herself – refers to ‘New Alsatia’ in The Debauchee (1677), her adaptation of Brome’s play. Rawlins has a character as ‘foul mouth’d as a decayed sinner in the lower Alsatia’ (Tunbridge Wells, 1678); Otway’s The Cheats of Scapin (1677) and L’Estrange’s Citt and Bumpkin (1680) also make brief use of it.

It’s not until Otway’s The Soldiers Fortune (1681) that Alsatia and its denizens move out from the wings, with the squire’s portrait being fleshed out:

‘Tis a fine equipage I am like to be reduced
to ; I shall be ere long as greasy as an Alsatian bully ;
this flopping hat, pinned up on one side, with a sandy,
weather-beaten peruke, dirty linen, and, to complete
the figure, a long scandalous iron sword jarring at my
heels

Then in 1686 Alsatia becomes one of the settings of  Aphra Behn’s The Lucky Chance. Bredwel describes the garrett of the debt-ridden aristocrat Gayman, who has sought refuge in Whitefriars:

I was sent up a Ladder rather than a pair of Stairs; at last I scal’d the top, and enter’d the inchanted Castle; there did I find him, spite of the noise below, drowning his Cares in Sleep.
….

‘Tis a pretty convenient Tub, Madam. He may lie a long in’t, upright, there’s just room for an old join’d Stool besides the Bed, which one cannot call a Cabin, about the largeness of a Pantry Bin, or a Usurer’s Trunk; there had been Dornex Curtains to’t in the days of Yore; but they were now annihilated, and nothing left to save his Eyes from the Light, but my Landlady’s Blue Apron, ty’d by the strings before the Window, in which stood a broken six-penny Looking-Glass, that shew’d as many Faces as the Scene in Henry the Eighth, which could but just stand and then the Comb-Case fill’d it.

Two years later, Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (1688), containing the first glossary to collect the term, made the fullest use of both the place and its Dramatis Personae. But by bringing the sanctuaries to the authorities’ attention, and inveighing strongly against such areas, it may have paved the way to the legislation of 1697 that stripped most of them of the right of refuge. It may therefore have a better claim to be one of the last, not first uses, of the term Alsatia.

Addendum: I’ve just discovered the Historical Thesaurus of English, which erroneously dates Alsatia to 1688. More interestingly, it also cites the personification ‘Alsatian’ to 1691, and places ‘Minter’, after the inhabitants of Southwark Mint, to circa 1700 – 1723.

The Milford Lane Bermudas

The major problem with the historical slang discussed in the previous post is that our main source for it, the canting vocabularies, cannot be taken as proof of what was actually voiced. Not only do contemporary dictionaries dramatically transform the aural into the written, but for these lexicons we cannot be sure that their terms were widely used, or even used at all, or that they had the meaning prescribed to them. Their motives, whether to titillate a reader or inform a magistrate, make them still more opaque, as does their cannibalizing, copying and  reuse, with all the slips and mistakes that introduces.

Consequently, one needs to find examples of use, preferably in material that hasn’t been ‘worked up’ for an audience. Although plays have been a useful source for cant phrases, and although there is a connection between the theatre players and vagabondage, they are at root artistic works intended to be performed publicly, quite contrary to the purposes of argot.

Criminal records, especially depositions and testimony, may be a more fruitful source for the spoken language of the time. For example, the extract below is taken from the Middlesex calendar of the sessions records, 1616:

Francis Bradshawe of St. Clement Danes, gentleman, brought to the Court for abusing John Blanksby and John Cawcatt, constables of the Duchy, when they came with a warrant to apprehend one Captain Stokes for suspicion of murder, by virtue of Mr. Michell’s warrant, “and when they commanded him in the Kinges Matles name to goe with them he would not but in scoffing manner willed them in the Kinges name to goe with him.” Committed for default of sureties and afterwards handed in bail until the next Sessions to Oliver Smith of St. Clement Danes, tailor, and Ralph Garrett of Holborn, gentleman, to be of good behaviour, and to do his best endeavour to apprehend the said Captain Stokes, who escaped by means of the said Francis “out of the Barmoodoes in Milforde Lane”

(source: British History Online)

‘Barmoodoes’, ‘Bermudas’ in modern orthography*, was defined by Grose as “A cant name for certain places in London, privileged against arrests.” The modern lexiographer of slang Eric Partridge considers it to mean a specific area, around Drury Lane. Willey, in Brewer’s Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable (2009), combines both definitions, calling it “the name for certain no-go areas where criminals hid themselves away and the authorities were not inclined to pursue them. It was applied in particular to the lanes and passageways running near Drury Lane, and to parts of Southwark.” (p.40)**

But here it is used to refer to Milford Lane, running south from the Strand to the Thames, as can be seen from the map below.

Milford Lane in the 17th century
Milford Lane in the 17th century

Milford Lane wasn’t a sanctuary in the sense that it had any particular rights attached to it, as Whitefriars or Southwark Mint had. According to Thomas Powell‘s 1623 guide to the sanctuaries of London, it was held more or less by force of arms:

THe next is Milford lane, to which certaine Captaines and their companies being long since cashiered, betooke themselues, and liking the situation of it, did there erect diuers workes, both to the land-side and the water for their ensafing.

As they came in by conquest, so they hold it by the sword; and howsoeuer their title hath beene much disputed heretofore, yet they haue now commuted the matter, proued plantation, pretended the first discouery: and withall haue reduced it to a most absolute Hanse and free towne of it selfe without dependency.

Ben Jonson, who appears to have been the first to use Bermudas in this sense, in print at least, may well have been referring to Milford Lane in his poem Underwoods (published 1640), implying that the inhabitants were debtors turned pirates:

But these Men ever want: their very Trade
Is borrowing; that but stopt, they do invade
All as their Prize, turn Pyrates here at Land,
Ha’ their Bermudas, and their Streights i’ th’ Strand

So perhaps there was another resonance to the term Bermudas, as a haunt for pirates. Note that it was a Captain that was being pursued in the testimony above!

* A use of this spelling to mean the Bermudas proper, can be found in Horne’s 1666 Brief Description of the Province of Carolina.

** Interestingly, the Brewer’s Dictionary of 1894 gives a different meaning, although still referencing the alleys around Drury Lane and Covent Garden:

To live in the Bermudas, i.e. in some out-of-the-way place for cheapness. The shabby genteel hire a knocker in some West-end square, where letters may be left for them, but live in the Bermudas, or narrow passages north of the Strand, near Covent Garden.

See also the undated edition at archive.org combining the cheapness motif with that of sanctuary.