Prisons and Punishments in Late Medieval London
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Prisons and Punishments in Late Medieval London Christine Winter Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London Royal Holloway, University of London, 2012 2 Declaration I, Christine Winter, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 3 Abstract In the history of crime and punishment the prisons of medieval London have generally been overlooked. This may have been because none of the prison records have survived for this period, yet there is enough information in civic and royal documents, and through archaeological evidence, to allow a reassessment of London’s prisons in the later middle ages. This thesis begins with an analysis of the purpose of imprisonment, which was not merely custodial and was undoubtedly punitive in the medieval period. Having established that incarceration was employed for a variety of purposes the physicality of prison buildings and the conditions in which prisoners were kept are considered. This research suggests that the periodic complaints that London’s medieval prisons, particularly Newgate, were ‘foul’ with ‘noxious air’ were the result of external, rather than internal, factors. Using both civic and royal sources the management of prisons and the abuses inflicted by some keepers have been analysed. This has revealed that there were very few differences in the way civic and royal prisons were administered; however, there were distinct advantages to being either the keeper or a prisoner of the Fleet prison. Because incarceration was not the only penalty available in the enforcement of law and order, this thesis also considers the offences that constituted a misdemeanour and the various punishments employed by the authorities. Incarceration did not necessarily entail enforced inactivity and the ways a prisoner might occupy his time, including writing, working or even planning an escape, are discussed. Lastly, an investigation is made into the causes and numbers of prison deaths in the medieval period. 4 Table of Contents DECLARATION 2 ABSTRACT 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 LIST OF FIGURES 6 LIST OF TABLES 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 8 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 9 INTRODUCTION 10 CHAPTER ONE: THE PURPOSE OF IMPRISONMENT 17 CHAPTER TWO: THE PHYSICALITY OF PRISONS IN MEDIEVAL LONDON 48 The Fleet 54 Newgate 65 Ludgate 75 CHAPTER THREE: CONDITIONS IN LONDON’S MEDIEVAL PRISONS 79 CHAPTER FOUR: THE MANAGEMENT OF LONDON’S MEDIEVAL PRISONS 107 CHAPTER FIVE: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: THE RESPONSE OF THE CITY’S RULERS TO THE PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC ORDER 137 CHAPTER SIX: DOING TIME: HOW PRISONERS OCCUPIED THEIR DAYS 170 CHAPTER 7: DYING TO GET OUT OF PRISON: AN ANALYSIS OF CORONERS’ ROLLS INVESTIGATING DEATHS IN THE PRISONS OF MEDIEVAL LONDON 203 CONCLUSION 229 APPENDIX ONE THE KEEPERS OF LONDON’S MEDIEVAL PRISONS 240 5 THE KEEPERS OF THE FLEET PRISON 241 THE KEEPERS OF LUDGATE PRISON 243 THE KEEPERS OF THE MARSHALSEA OF KING’S BENCH 244 THE KEEPERS OF THE MARSHALSEA OF THE HOUSEHOLD 244 THE KEEPERS OF NEWGATE PRISON 245 THE CONSTABLES OF THE TOWER OF LONDON 246 APPENDIX TWO A PRISONER’S PRAYER 247 APPENDIX THREE DEATHS IN LONDON, 1276-1451 251 BIBLIOGRAPHY 268 6 List of Figures Figure 2:1. A close approximation of the locations of prisons in medieval London..49 Figure 2:2. LAARC diagram of the foundations of the ‘Gaol of London’………….55 Figure 2:3. LAARC map showing the Fleet prison site in the medieval period ……57 Figure 2:4. LAARC diagram of the Fleet prison site in the Tudor period…………..61 Figure 2:5. The extent of The Rules of the Fleet Prison…………………………….63 Figure 2:6. Medieval masonry uncovered at the site of Newgate gaol……………...66 Figure 2:7. Underlying water at the site of Newgate gaol…………………………..68 Figure 2:8. Section of plan of the Greyfriars showing Newgate, 1619……………..71 Figure 2:9. Underground passageway at site of Newgate prison…………………...73 Figure 2:10. A cell beneath The Viaduct public house, Newgate Street……………74 Figure 3:1. Frontispiece from ‘The Counter Scuffle’……………………………….87 Figure 3:2. Medieval wall painting of The Seven Acts of Mercy…………………..91 Figure 3:3. Begging at the Fleet prison……………………………………………...94 Figure 3:4. Impression of the Poultry Compter…………………………………....102 Figure 5:1. Sketch of a pillory to confine two people simultaneously…………….150 Figure 5:2. Seventeenth-century etching of a two-person pillory……………….…155 Figure 5:3. Manuscript decoration showing a set of stocks…………………….….157 Figure 5:4. Southwark c.1542 showing two styles of pillory and a cage………….158 Figure 5:5. A man being dragged on a hurdle, as depicted in a London Journal….161 Figure 6:1. The soul imprisoned in the body………………………………………181 7 List of Tables Table 4:1. A comparison of committals to the Fleet and Newgate prisons from the Letter Books and Close Rolls, 1273-1438………………………………………… 132 Table 4:2. Claims by petitioners in Chancery, c. 1386-1529………………………133 Table 5:1. Instances of public punishments recorded in the Letter Books, Plea and Memoranda Rolls and Journals…………………………………………………… 160 Table 7:1. An example of a list of jurymen recorded on TNA Just 2/94a…………208 Table 7:2. Causes of death in the City of London, 1272-1451…………………….213 Table 7:3. Comparison of ‘rightful’ deaths within and without the prison walls, 1315-1340…………………………………………………………………………219 Table 7:4. Deaths within prisons compared with deaths in the wards of London, 1315-1340………………………………………………………224 8 Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been written without the scholarly support and encouragement of Professor Caroline Barron. Her unerring confidence that there was enough source material for a reassessment of London’s medieval prisons, and her faith in my ability to do this subject justice, inspired a determination to finish what I had started despite a series of almost overwhelming circumstances. Her kindness and patience have been very much appreciated. I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding me a full-time studentship. I am very grateful to both the AHRC and Royal Holloway for their continued understanding and the extensions to my deadline. I would also like to thank the London Archaeological Archive Research Centre for allowing me to use information and images from the excavation report on the site of the Fleet prison. No work entailing such a commitment of time and energy could ever be written without the support of family and friends and this is no exception. I hope that maybe one day my daughter will feel she would like to read this – and I am sorry that my father never will. 9 List of Abbreviations Bracton Bracton de Legibus st Consuetudinibus Angliae CCR Calendar of Close Rolls Cal. Cors. Rolls Calendar of Coroners’ Rolls of the City of London Cal. Inq. Misc Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous Cal. Inq. pm Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem CEMCR Calendar of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls CFR Calendar of Fine Rolls Chrons. of Ed I & Ed II Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I & Edward II CLR Calendar of Liberate Rolls CPMR Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls Œconomy Alexander Harris, The Œconomy of the Fleet EHR English Historical Review FVP Fleet Valley Project (LAARC) Great Chronicle The Great Chronicle of London GL MS Guildhall Library manuscript Husting Wills Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting Journal Journals of the Court of Common Council, LMA LAARC London Archaeological Archives Research Centre LBA&c Calendar of the Letter Books of the City of London, A-L LMA London Metropolitan Archives Memorials Memorials of London and London Life in the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries The Mirror of Justices The Mirror of Justices, ed. by W. J.Whittaker Munimenta Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OED Oxford English Dictionary Pipe Roll The Great Roll of the Pipe PROME The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (CD-ROM edn) Rep. Repertories of the Court of Aldermen, LMA SBH St Bartholomew’s Hospital archives TLAMAS Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society TNA The National Archives VCH Victoria County History 10 Introduction The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the prisons of medieval London, with specific reference to their management and the living conditions experienced by the prisoners. The idea for this study germinated when it became clear that in many of the books and articles regarding the history of crime and punishment in England, the prisons of medieval London were either only cursorily referred to, or the history of Newgate and the Fleet prisons had been discussed without annotation of the sources.1 While the study of London’s medieval prisons is hindered by the complete absence of actual prison records, there was the possibility that there might be enough material scattered throughout a variety of sources to fill this gap in our knowledge. Three historians had previously undertaken academic studies of London’s medieval prisons. In 1944 Margery Bassett published an article entitled ‘Newgate Prison in the Middle Ages’, in which she stated her intention to undertake a series of studies on medieval prison administration; unfortunately, this only extended to a sister-paper, ‘The Fleet Prison in the Middle Ages’, which was published the following year.2 In 1947 Marjorie Honeybourne wrote about the history of the keepership of the Fleet and the topography of that prison.3 Both Bassett and Honeybourne were exceptionally 1 Arthur Griffiths, The Chronicles of Newgate (London: Chapman and Hall, 1884); John Ashton, The Fleet: its River, Prison and Marriages (London: Unwin, 1888); W. Eden Hooper, The History of Newgate and the Old Bailey (London: Underwood, 1935); Richard H.