Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/422

Maiden though a staunch Hanoverian, had preached against the oath as sinful, and had retreated to Scotland to avoid it. The affair came before the general synod of Ulster in June 1704, when Malcome was rebuked and McCracken admonished.

In 1720 the non-subscription controversy broke out in Belfast in connection with the installation of Samuel Haliday [q. v.] Malcome adhered to subscription, and was the inventor of the phrase ‘new light,’ which, in a criticism of John Abernethy (1680–1740) [q. v.], he applies to the position of the non-subscribers. It is observable, however, that he does not employ it in its present received sense, as denoting a new departure in theology. His point is that ‘a set of men, by preaching and printing, pretend to give new light to the world by putting personal persuasion in the room of a church government.’

He died at Dunmurry on 17 May 1729, and was buried there on 20 May. Reid speaks of him as ‘aged’ in 1720; but he must have been under seventy at the time of his death. He published: 1. ‘Personal Persuasion no Foundation for Religious Obedience … friendly Reflections on a Sermon … by … Abernethy,’ &c., Belfast, 1720,18mo. 2. ‘More Light … Remarks on the late Vindication … By a true lover of Presbyterian Principles,’ &c. [Belfast], 1721–2, 32mo (conjectured by Reid to be Malcome's). 3. ‘The Dangerous Principles … revived … by our Modern New Lights,’ &c., Belfast, 1726, 12mo. Letters by Malcome are printed in Thomas Gowan's ‘Power of Presbyters,’ 1711, 4to, and in. ‘Remarks on a Pamphlet … by … Tisdall,’ 1716, 4to, by Joseph Boyse [q. v.]

 MALDEN, DANIEL (d. 1736), prison-breaker, said to have been born at Canterbury, was bred a postilion, but had served for a time in the navy and been discharged previous to his adoption of street robbery as a profession. He was condemned in the early part of 1736 for stealing a large parcel of linen at Islington, and ordered for execution on 24 May, but on that morning he contrived to escape. Acting on a hint from the previous occupant of his cell, he raised one of the floor planks, using the leg of a stool as a lever, and dropped into the cell beneath him, which was on the ground floor. Then he got through the bars into the pressyard, and thence, by way of the chapel and the ordinary's house, on to the roof of the prison. Traversing the roofs of several adjoining houses, he got finally into the garret window of an empty house, ‘late a pastrycook's in Newgate Street’ (, Weekly Miscellany, 29 May 1736), and wrapping his irons close to his legs ‘with rags and pieces of my jacket, as if I had been gouty or lame,’ he went ‘out at a kitchen window, up one pair of stairs into Phoenix Court, and so through the streets to my home in Nightingale Lane’ (Ordinary's Account of Executions, November 1736). Early in June he was retaken in Rosemary Lane. He was now bestowed in the ‘old condemned hold,’ and doubly loaded with irons. A keeper named Austen left him his rations on the night of Sunday, 13 June, ‘when he seemed to be very well secured.’ A few hours later he managed to effect his second and most remarkable escape. Having worked (by means of a knife which he had secreted) through the staple to which he was fastened, he used it to burrow through his floor. When he had made a practicable opening, he dived down head first through the funnel, in which he narrowly escaped sticking fast, into the main sewer of the prison. Though still encumbered by chains weighing nearly one hundred pounds, he made his way along the sewer. Newgate runners were at once let into the sewer to look for him, and found the bodies of two persons who had been smothered in trying to escape. But Malden, after remaining forty-eight hours in the sewer, eventually got out in a yard ‘against the pump in Town Ditch, behind Christ's Hospital.’ There he was in great danger of detection, but he finally reached Little Britain, where a sympathiser gave him a pot of beer, for he had ‘torn his flesh in a terrible manner,’ and was in a most exhausted condition, and procured a smith to knock off his fetters. Malden again lingered about London, was heard of in Rosemary Lane, and on 26 June was reported to have been taken at Reading (Craftsman, 26 June 1736). He subsequently, however, made for Harwich, by way of Enfield, and passed over to Flushing, where he was nearly persuaded to take foreign service, but preferred to return to England ‘to find his wife.’ In September ‘the noted Daniel Malden was taken at Canterbury,’ where he seems to have found employment as a groom or jockey. Akerman, a noted runner, brought him up to London on 26 Sept. He reached the capital handcuffed, and with his legs chained under the horse's belly, yet guarded by thirty or forty horsemen. The roads and streets were