Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/63

Rh Moreover, in the year 1241, the Jews of Norwich were hanged for circumcising a Christian child; their house called the Thor was pulled down and destroyed; Aron, the son of Abraham, a Jew, at London, and the other Jews, were constrained to pay twenty thousand marks at two terms in the year, or else to be kept perpetual prisoners in Newgate of London, and in other prisons. In 1255, King Henry III. lodging in the tower of London, upon displeasure conceived towards the city of London, for the escape of John Offrem, a prisoner, being a clerk convict, out of Newgate, which had killed a prior that was of alliance to the king, as cousin to the queen: he sent for the mayor and sheriffs to come before him to answer the matter; the mayor laid the fault from him to the sheriffs, forasmuch as to them belonged the keeping of all prisoners within the city; and so the mayor returned home, but the sheriffs remained there prisoners by the space of a month and more; and yet they excused themselves, in that the fault chiefly rested in the bishop's officers; for whereas the prisoner was under custody, they at his request had granted license to imprison the offender within the gaol of Newgate, but so as the bishop's officers were charged to see him safely kept. The king, notwithstanding all this, demanded of the city three thousand marks for a fine.

In the year 1326, Robert Baldoke, the king's chancellor, was put in Newgate, the 3rd of Edward III. In the year 1337, Sir John Poultney gave four marks by the year to the relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385, William Walworth gave somewhat to relieve the prisoners in Newgate, so have many others since. In the year 1414, the gaolers of Newgate and Ludgate died, and prisoners in Newgate to the number of sixty-four. In the year 1418, the parson of Wrotham, in Kent, was imprisoned in Newgate. In the year 1422, the first of Henry VI., license was granted to John Coventre, Jenken Carpenter, and William Grove, executors to Richard Whittington, to re-edify the gaol of Newgate, which they did with his goods.

Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime mayor of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield, and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near to the common fountain and chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital) to the gaols of Newgate, and Ludgate, for the relief of the prisoners. Tuesday next after Palm Sunday 1431, all the prisoners of Ludgate were removed into Newgate by Walter Chartesey, and Robert Large, sheriffs of