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Contesting London Bridewell, 1576–1580

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Paul Griffiths
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , July 2003 , pp. 283 - 315
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2003

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References

1 Compare Fissell, Mary, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge, 1991), chap. 8Google Scholar; Jones, Colin, Charity and Bienfaisance: The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpellier Region, 1740–1815 (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 6Google Scholar.

2 A recent survey of the early history of these hospitals is Slack, Paul, “Hospitals, Workhouses, and the Relief of the Poor in Early Modern London,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700, ed. Grell, Ole Peter and Cunningham, Andrew (London, 1997), pp. 234–51Google Scholar. See also Daly, Christopher Thomas, “The Hospitals of London: Administration, Refoundation and Benefaction, c. 1500–1572” (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar. The most complete history of Bridewell is still O'Donoghue, E. G., Bridewell Hospital, Palace, Prison, and School: From the Death of Elizabeth to Modern Times (London, 1929)Google Scholar. See also Archer, Ian W., The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), chap. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1985), pp. 164–69Google Scholar; Innes, Joanna, “Prisons for the Poor: English Bridewells, 1555–1800,” in Labour, Law, and Crime: A Historical Perspective, ed. Snyder, Francis and Hay, Douglas (London, 1987), pp. 42–122, esp. pp. 49–61Google Scholar. I will more fully examine Bridewell's first century in my forthcoming book, “Lost Londons: Crime, Control, and Change in the Capital City, 1545–1660.”

3 Guildhall Library, London (GL) MS 9057/1, fol. 12.

4 Corporation of London Record Office (CLRO) Letterbook R, fol. 227v; St. Bartholomew Hospital Archives (BHA), “The Ordre of the Hospitall of St. Bartholomewes in West Smythfield in London” (1552), fol. Av.

5 These remarks from the Bridewell Ordinances (1557) and the Declaration by London's Citizens (1553) are quoted in The Thirty-Second Report of the Charity Commissioners of England and Wales, Per Acts 38 Geo.3.c.91 and Geo.3.c.81, pt. VI, 1840 (219), xix (Charity Commissioners Report), pp. 390, 389; John Howes' MS., 1582, ed. Lempriere, William (London, 1904), p. 56Google Scholar; Bridewell Hospital Courtbook (BHC) 1, fols. 87v, 38; 2, fol. 76; 8, fol. 212v; 1, fol. 51r–v.

6 BHC 3, fol. 192; 2, fol. 110.

7 BHC 1, fol. 17v; CLRO Repertories of the Court of Aldermen (Rep.) 14, fols. 14, 24v, 29v.

8 There is a useful survey of representations of Bridewell and Bedlam in Carroll, William C., Fat King, Lean Beggar: Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca, N.Y., 1996), chap. 3Google Scholar.

9 House of Lords Main Papers (HOL MP), 21/12/1640; Public Record Office (PRO) State Papers Domestic 16/451/106; CLRO Remembrancer Books 1, fol. 153.

10 Beier, Masterless Men, p. 164; Innes, “Prisons for the Poor,” pp. 42, 53.

11 Quotations from the Bridewell charter and related relevant documents can be consulted in Charity Commissioners Report, pt. 1, pp. 390, 389, 394–95; John Howes' MS., 1582, pp. 56–60; Bacon, Francis, “A Brief Discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell,” in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, J. et al. , 14 vols. (London, 1857–74), 7:512Google Scholar; GL MSS 6, fol. 6v; 9384, “A Brief Treatise…on the Validity…of the Charter of Bridewell.”

12 The development of this wave of incarceration across western Europe is described in Spierenburg, Pieter, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., and London, 1991)Google Scholar.

13 BHC 1, fol. 158v.

14 BHC 3, fol. 412; 2, fol. 221; CLRO Reps. 13ii, fol. 463v; 14, fol. 372v; Letterbook S, fol. 107v; John Howes' MS, 1582, p. 72.

15 Charity Commissioners Report, p. 400.

16 BHC 3, fols. 183v, 405v; see also BHC 3, fols. 196, 294, 321r–v.

17 CLRO Rep. 19, fols. 170r–v, 193; Journals of Common Council (Jour.) 20(2), fol. 501v; BHC 3, fol. 428; Elton, Geoffrey, The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 78–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), H1/ST/A1/ 3, fol. 207v; GL MS 12,806/2, fol. 249.

18 CLRO Rep. 20(2), fol. 259.

19 Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum (BRHA), BHC 4, fols. 196v, 274; CLRO Rep. 25, fols. 312, 324; The Journals of All the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Collected by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, rev. P. Bowes (1682; facsimile copy, Shannon, 1973), p. 648Google Scholar; Hartley, T. E., ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, vol. 3, 1593–1601 (London, 1995), pp. 354, 421Google Scholar; Dean, David, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 250Google Scholar.

20 BRHA BHC 4, fols. 440v, 441v, 460.

21 CLRO Jour. 40, fols. 206, 211. See also BHA Governors' Journal 4, fols. 313v– 14.

22 BHC 8, fol. 20.

23 BHC 2, fol. 72; 1, fol. 95.

24 BHC 3, fols. 293v, 294.

25 BHC 5, fol. 420; 3, fols. 214, 257. See also CLRO Rep. 19, fol. 338; BHC 1, fol. 38; 3, fols. 173, 176, 214; 5, fols. 108v, 116; 7, fol. 35v; 8, fols. 23, 92v; 9, fols. 189– 90; BRHA BHC 4, fols. 331v, 391; HOL MP, 21/12/140.

26 For some other cases, see BHC 1, fol. 11; 2, fols. 145v, 189, 191v–92; 3, fols. 173, 176, 184v, 189, 218, 328, 331, 331v, 345v, 396; 5, fols. 162v, 324, 380v; 6, fols. 120v, 126v, 149, 236, 287v, 419; 7, fols. 42, 121v; 8, fols. 45, 169v, 212; BRHA BHC 4, fol. 127.

27 Allegations of wrongdoing and corruption within Bridewell will be more fully examined in my “Lost Londons.”

28 BHC 3, fol. 187v. Examples of other threats and fears include BHC 3, fols. 67, 187v, 327v, 357, 389v, 400; 5, fol. 421.

29 BHC 3, fol. 299; 7, fol. 39. See also BHC 1, fol. 55v; 2, fols. 52v, 147v, 221, 256v; 3, fols. 196, 347v; 6, fol. 279v; 7, fol. 126v; 8, fols. 94v, 343.

30 CLRO Rep. 19, fol. 211v; BHC 3, fols. 321r–v, 347v; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, pp. 253–54; BHC 3, fols. 187v, 242v–43; PRO Star Chamber 5/B/108/33 (STAC), Giles Cannon/examination; CLRO Remembrancer Books 1, fols. 37r–v.

31 Archer, Pursuit of Stability, chap. 6.

32 John Howes' MS, 1582, p. v.

33 CLRO Jour. 20, fols. 499–503v; Rep. 20, fol. 235; BHC 3, fol. 428; GL MSS 12,806/2, fol. 297v; 9384, fols. 5, 6v.

34 Bacon, “A Brief Discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell,” p. 7; British Library (BL) Thomason Tracts E38 (12), “Brief Collections Out of Magna Charta: Or, the Knowne Good Old Lawes of England” (1643).

35 Though in this case Parliament had passed legislation in 1572 for “confirmation of the gifts made to the poor” in the hospitals. See LMA, H1/ST/A1/3, fols. 82, 84, 86.

36 A series of articles by T. G. Barnes provides the best discussion of Star Chamber records as historical sources and the circumstances in which they were produced. See his “Due Process and Slow Process in the Late Elizabethan and Early-Stuart Star Chamber,” American Journal of Legal History 6 (1962): 221–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Archives and the Archival Problems of the Elizabethan and Early Stuart Star Chamber,” in Prisca Munimenta: Studies in Archival and Administrative History Presented to A. E. J. Hollaender, ed. Ranger, Felicity (London, 1973)Google Scholar, “Star Chamber and the Sophistication of the Criminal Law,” Criminal Law Review (1977), pp. 316–26, and “Star Chamber Litigants and Their Counsel, 1596–1641,” in Legal Records and the Historian, ed. Baker, J. H. (London, 1978), pp. 7–28Google Scholar. More recent studies include Hindle, Steve, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000), chap. 3Google Scholar; and Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), chap. 6Google Scholar.

37 See Griffiths, Paul, “Overlapping Circles: Imagining Criminal Communities in London, 1545–1645,” in Communities in Early Modern Britain: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Shepard, Alexandra and Withington, Philip (Manchester, 2000), pp. 115–33Google Scholar.

38 There is more background information on the leading prostitutes, pimps, and keepers in this case in Archer, Pursuit of Stability, chap. 6; and Griffiths, Paul, “The Structure of Prostitution in Elizabethan London,” Continuity and Change 8, no. 1 (1993): 39–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 This bunch included the goldsmiths Patrick Brew, Thomas Hartop, and Edward Wilkes; the barber surgeon James Markedaye; the printer Robert Greenwood; the “gent” William Gunter; William Herbert of the Middle Temple; and William Guy of St. Andrew, Holborn. I must thank Maggie Pelling for information about Markedaye, who is included in “The Bibliographical Index of Medical Practitioners, 1500–1720,” which can be consulted at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. We know the ages of six of these men from the head of their Star Chamber depositions: four of them were aged between forty and forty-seven, one was thirty-six, and the youngest was twenty-seven years old.

40 BHC 3, fols. 240–41v, 242v–43, 246.

41 PRO STAC5/B/21/3, Anthony Bate, bill of complaint.

42 PRO STAC5/B/53/40, Robert Winch, interrogatories.

43 Rolles's Bridewell examination can be followed in BHC 3, fols. 132r–v, 133r–v. Bate's payment to Breame is mentioned there.

44 BHC 3, fol. 243.

45 Ibid., fol. 192.

46 BHC 1, fol. 103.

47 BHC 3, fol. 215v.

48 Goldsmith Company Library (GCL) company minute book I, fol. 199. I am assuming that Bate would have been about twenty-four years old at the close of his apprenticeship.

49 Ibid., fols. 236, 252; GCL company minute book K, fols. 61, 74.

50 GCL company minute book K, fols. 212, 218.

51 Ibid., fols. 293, 304, 358.

52 Ibid., fols. 462, 425, 432; GCL company minute book L, fols. 59, 139, 140, 62, 151, 83.

53 GCL company minute book L, fols. 147, 150.

54 Ibid., fols. 223, 279, 280.

55 The broader context of this is discussed by Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), chaps. 6 and 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by Alexandra Shepard, “Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England, c. 1580–1640,” Past and Present, no. 167 (2000): 75–106.

56 Rappaport, Steve, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 See Bernard Capp, “The Double Standard Revisited: Plebeian Women and Male Sexual Reputation in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 162 (1999): 70– 100.

58 CLRO Reps. 19, fol. 397; 20, fol. 38v.

59 BHC 3, fols. 242v–43; PRO STAC5/B/108/33, Agnes Williams, Jane Robinson, Joanne Higgins, examinations.

60 PRO STAC5/B53/40, Robert Winch, interrogatories; B/108/33, Henry Boyer, examination.

61 BHC 3, fols. 27v, 32v, 133.

62 Ibid., fols. 101v, 132r–v, 133.

63 Ibid., fols. 169, 171v.

64 Ibid., fols. 186, 190v–91, 207, 241v.

65 Ibid., fols. 215v, 243r–v, 298r–v.

66 Ibid., fols. 220, 222v, 221v, 246v.

67 Ibid., fols. 207v, 280v.

68 Rolles was put on trial at Hertford Assizes on 15 July 1577, and he is described as a “yeoman” of Hertford. He was charged with stealing a brown bay mare (worth £7) on 18 May 1577 in Hertford and was sentenced to hang at the Assizes. See Cockburn, J. S., ed., Calendar of Assize Records: Hertfordshire Indictments: Elizabeth I (London, 1975), pp. 133, 134, 138Google Scholar.

69 See J. A. Sharpe, “ 'Last Dying Speeches': Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present, no. 107 (1985): 144–67; Gatrell, V. A. C., The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994), chaps. 1–3Google Scholar.

70 BHC 3, fol. 231.

71 PRO STAC5/B/11/18, William Gunter, interrogatories; William Herbert, Robert Greenwood, James Markadaye, William Hartop, examination.

72 PRO STAC5/B/11/18, William Gunter, William Guy, Thomas Hartop, Edward Wilkes, Robert Greenwood, James Markadaye, William Hartop, interrogatories.

73 BHC 3, fol. 231; PRO STAC5/B/103/33, William Gunter, articles.

74 PRO STAC5/B/11/18, William Gunter, articles; William Gunter, William Guy, Thomas Hartop, Edward Wilkes, Robert Greenwood, James Markadaye, William Hartop, interrogatories.

75 BHC 3, fols. 193v, 280v, 196, 221, 220v, 246, 304.

76 Ibid., fol. 241v.

77 Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p. 232; CLRO Rep. 19, fol. 198; BHC 3, fols. 246, 296, 242.

78 BHC 3, fols. 296, 308, 329r–v.

79 Ibid., fols. 329r–v, 330.

80 BL Additional MS 48019, fol. 151.

81 CLRO Rep. 20, fols. 38v, 40v.

82 Ibid., fol. 88v.

83 Ibid., fols. 111v, 115v–16.

84 BHC 5, fol. 68.

85 GL MS 12,806/3, fol. 40.

86 BHC 3, fol. 241v; PRO STAC5/B/11/18, Marie Donnolly, examination.

87 BHC 3, fol. 303v; PRO STAC5/B/11/18, Michael Blower, examination.

88 Griffiths, “Overlapping Circles,” p. 126.

89 CLRO Rep. 20, fols. 285v, 298v; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, pp. 231–33.

90 Tawney, R. H. and Power, E., eds., Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols. (London, 1924), 3:441Google Scholar.

91 The figures for the later periods are drawn from BHC 6–9. I have adapted figures presented by Ian Archer in Pursuit of Stability, p. 239, table 6.1. He does not produce figures for illegitimacy cases, though they were also being prosecuted at high levels in the Elizabethan period. I will provide complete figures for prosecuted crime at Bridewell between 1604–58 in “Lost Londons.”

92 GCL company minute books N, fol. 6; O, fol. 555; GL MS 3018/1, fol. 66v.