King's Bench Prison

King's Bench Prison

See Prisons.

Queen's Bench Prison, situate on the E. side of the Borough of Southwark: It's Rules are of a considerable Extent and Allowance somewhat better than in the Common Goals, for which reason many Debtors elsewhere confined, do by Habeas Corpus remove into this Prison, which is the proper place of Confinement in all Cases tryable in the Queen's Bench Court, whether for Debt, Dammage, Treason, Murther, &c. The Governour or Keeper hereof is call the Marshal of the Queen's Bench, a place of Profit and Trust, for which he gives good Security. The present Marshal is William Broughton, Esq;.

See Queen's Bench Court, Sect. 5.

The Kings Bench Prison, seated near St. Georges Church, generally thronged with Debtors; a Prison wherein great Abuses are committed by the Marshall or Keeper and his Underlings, and much complained of in Parliament. But I find no Redress likely to be had, by constraining the Marshall to keep the Prisoners within the Prison; he suffering them for Gratuities to go at Pleasure where they please, insomuch, that when any one asketh the Rules, or Limits of this Prison, Answer is made, At Constantinople; and indeed any where. And this makes them not regard the Payment of their just Debts, which a strict Confinement would oblige them unto for their own Advantage; no Man naturally loving a Confinement, were it in a Princes Court, much less a noysome Prison.

King's Bench Prison, Southwark, stood immediately adjoining the White Lion prison, which was on the south, and about twenty houses from the old Marshalsea which was on the north, with at one time a clear space behind the prisons and courts. The ground of Leyton's Buildings, where the prison stood, still preserves the same form. The prison was removed in 1755–1758 to a more open site, then a part of St George's Fields, at the junction of Blackman Street with Newington Causeway, where later the Borough Road was united with those streets. ...

Next is the gaol or prison of the King's Bench, but of what antiquity the same is I know not. For I have read that the Courts of the King's Bench and Chancery have oft times been removed from London to other places, and so hath likewise the gaols that serve those courts.—Stow, p. 153.

The King's Bench is in Southwark: its Rules are more extensive than those of the Fleet, having all St. George's Fields to walk in; but the Prison-House is not near so good. By a Habeas Corpus you may remove yourself from one prison to the other; and some of those gentlemen that are in for vast sums, and probably for life, chuse the one for their summer, the other for their winter habitation; and indeed both are but the shew and name of Prisons.—Macky, A Journey through England, 8vo, 1722, vol. ii. p. 3.

Bevil. But by your leave, Raines, though marriage be a prison, yet you may make the Rules as large as those of the King's Bench, that extend to the East Indies.—Shadwell, Epsom Wells, 4to, 1676.

To this prison Henry, Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V., was committed, it is said, by Judge Gascoigne, for striking or insulting him on the bench.

We have been informed that there is a lodging-room in the King's Bench Prison, which is called the Prince of Wales's chamber to this day.—Oldys's Life of Gascoigne, in Bio. Brit., vol. iii. p. 2147.

John Bradford, the martyr.

While he was in the King's Bench, and Master Saunders in the Marshalsey, both prisoners, on the backeside of those two prisons they mette manie times, and conferred together when they would.—Fox's Martyrol. ed. 1597, p. 1457.

John Penry, the writer in the Martin Marprelate controversy, was led from the prison in the High Street to St. Thomas a Watering, and there executed in 1593. The last of the Ruthvens, the son of the old Earl of Gowrie, the brother of the two Ruthvens slain in the Gowrie Conspiracy, and himself the father of Vandyck's wife, died (1652) in the King's Bench Prison. Rushworth, Clerk of the Parliament, and author of the invaluable Collections which bear his name, spent the last six years of his life in this prison, and died in 1690 "in his lodging in an alley called Rules Court, aged eighty-three years or thereabouts." Here Baxter was confined for his Paraphrase on the New Testament. Within the rules of the prison died Edward Cocker the arithmetician ("according to Cocker"). ... Here in 1752–1753 was imprisoned the unfortunate Theodore, King of Corsica.

The veracity of an historian obliges me not to disguise the bad situation of his Corsican majesty ... a prisoner for debt in the King's Bench; and so cruelly has fortune exercised her rigours upon him, that last session of Parliament he was examined before a Committee of the House of Commons on the hardships to which prisoners in that gaol had been subject.—H. Walpole, The World, February 2, 1753.

... During the period of the Commonwealth instead of the King's Bench it was called the "Upper Bench Prison."

May 9, 1653.—The committee, touching the Upper Bench Prison, gave in a list of 399 prisoners in that prison and the rules, and that their debts amounted to above £900,000.—Whitelocke.

The King's Bench Prison

(i) First Site in Borough High Street

Under the Norman kings, when the King's Court in both its general and its judicial character was itinerant, prisoners arraigned before it were detained in any convenient place near the court. During the course of the 13th century the court of King's Bench was, in practice if not in theory, separated from the King's person, offences committed within the verge of the royal court being tried in what later became the Marshalsea Court by the King's Knight Marshal, but several centuries elapsed before the prisons which served the two courts were finally differentiated from each other or settled in one place. The term Marshalsea Prison occurs from 1294²¹ onward, but throughout the mediaeval period it was often used indiscriminately for the prison of the Knight Marshal and for the prison kept by the Marshal of the Court of King's Bench, e.g., in 1324 there is a reference to John de Castello, a rebel, who was in the prison of the Marshalsea at York;²¹ and in 1339 John Gerard, "chaplain," was pardoned for robberies and for escaping from the Marshalsea prison of the King's Bench at Canterbury.²¹ There are several references on the Close and Patent Rolls to a royal prison in Southwark in the 13th century, but no indication that there was a definite house allocated for the purpose until 1373, when "the good men of the town of Suthwerk" were given a licence "to build in the high street leading from the church of St. Margaret towards the south, a house, 40 feet long and 30 feet wide, in which to hold the pleas of the Marshalsea of the king's household and to keep the prisoners of the Marshalsea while in the said town, and to hold all other the king's courts." ²¹

From this time onward there seem to have been two prisons in Southwark, one for the Court of Marshalsea and one for the Court of King's Bench. In 1384 Thomas atte Raven was pardoned for razing the houses and tenements of Richard Imworth, keeper of the Marshalsea of the King's Bench, in Southwark and for releasing the prisoners from the prisons of the King's Bench and Marshalsea there.²¹ In 1393 there is an entry on the Patent Rolls concerning a felon, John Flemmyng, who escaped from the King's Bench prison in Southwark.²¹ Prisoners cited before the Court of King's Bench were, however, still carried round the countryside in carts in the train of the itinerant justices.²¹

The chroniclers relate that Henry V, when Prince of Wales, was imprisoned in the King's Bench for striking or insulting Judge Gascoigne on the bench,²² and that Jack Cade, during his short-lived occupation of Southwark, freed the prisoners of both prisons.²³

Some victims of the religious persecutions of the Tudor period, among them John Bradford, who was burnt at Smithfield in 1555,²⁴ and John Penry, one of the writers of the Martin Marprelate Tracts, who was hanged at St. Thomas à Waterings in 1593,²⁵ were imprisoned in the King's Bench, but the earliest list of prisoners that has been found, compiled in 1561,²⁶ includes 13 debtors, 3 recusants, 1 priest, and 2 persons accused of "inconjuracion" out of a total of 71, the remainder of whom were charged with felonies or misdemeanours.

The debtors in the King's Bench petitioned the King in 1624 against imprisonment for debt, saying that it was against the fundamental laws and well-being of the state, and that 80 had died of starvation in that prison during the year, and asking that if the whole estate of a debtor had been seized by his creditors he might be freed from confinement.²⁷

In 1653, Sir John Lenthall, then Marshal, in obedience to an order of the Council of State, sent in a list of the 393 prisoners in his charge.²⁸ Of these, 2 were on a plea of murder, 10 of trespass, and 2 by the "command of the Court"; most of the rest were detained for debt; several had been in prison for over 20 years. The total sum involved was £976,122. Seventeen of the prisoners were women.

In 1576 a commission which included the Bishop of London and the Dean of St. Paul's, was appointed to relieve "poor prisoners confined for debt in the Queen's Bench." ²⁷ The commission met with considerable opposition from the Marshal and his officers, but it continued in existence until the end of Elizabeth's reign, and it was perhaps due to its efforts that a clause was inserted into the Act for the relief of the poor of 1601²⁹ providing for money to be collected by counties and corporate bodies throughout the kingdom for the relief of poor prisoners in the King's Bench and Marshalsea. There were a number of private charities for the relief of prisoners, but it is doubtful if at any time more than a small proportion of the proceeds reached them. The income of the keeper was derived from what he could exact from those in his charge,ⁿ² and though there may have been keepers who contented themselves with their legitimate fees, the majority extorted all they could get by fair means or foul. In addition to the sufferings inflicted by the Marshal and his underlings, new prisoners were often fleeced by old-established inmates who tyrannized over their fellows.³¹ In the 18th century they set up a Mock Court with steward and other officers, which dispensed the charities and even let out the rooms at a profit.

An illuminating account of the descent of the office of Marshal of the King's Bench is given in the Act of 1754³² which authorized the rebuilding of the prison. James I, in 1616, granted the office to Sir William Smith, from whom it passed to Sir John Lenthall and then to William Lenthall. The latter mortgaged it in February, 1684, to Sir John Cutler and, as the mortgage was not cleared, the office was afterwards assigned to Ebenezer Blackwell, goldsmith, in trust for Lenthall's heirs. The Act set aside £10,500 to pay off the mortgagees so that the office might revert to the Crown.

For many years the prisoners were kept in two houses known as the Angel and the Crane, the former giving its name to Angel Place, which bounded it on the south (see the plan on p. 10). In the reign of Henry VIII the owner of these houses, Richard Fulmerston, added a new building with a brick wall round it "for ye more safe Custody of the Prisoners." Edward VI acquired the freehold of the buildings, and thenceforward they were let on lease, with the Marshal as tenant or sub-tenant. In 1696, William III leased³³ the whole property to Charles Bertie and others in trust for the Duke of Leeds, a grant which was renewed until 1761, when the old buildings were demolished and a building lease of the site was granted to Benjamin Powell and Edward Layton³⁴ who formed the alley known as Layton's Buildings. Part of Layton's house there, with its bowed projection into the court (Plate 4a), is still standing. Layton was a back or vat maker, as was his successor in the house, Florance Young (fn. 35), who died in 1835, and was buried in St. George's churchyard.

Nos. 201 to 205, Borough High Street now occupy the site of the frontage of the old King's Bench.

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²¹ Cal. of Pat. Rolls.
²³ Camden Society, Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, 1852.
²⁴ J. Foxe, Ecclesiasticall Historie ... and Monuments of Martyrs, 1641, Vol. III, P. 307.
²⁵ Dict. of Nat. Biog.
²⁶ P.R.O., SP 12/18.
²⁷ Cal., of State Papers (Dom.).
²⁸ A List of all Prisoners in the Upper Bench Prison, ... the Third of May, 1653 ... by Sir John Lenthall ...
²⁹ Public Act 43 Eliz. I cap. 2.
³⁰ The Journals of the House of Commons.
³¹ Guildhall Library, MS. 659/1.
³² Public Act 27 Geo. II cap. 17.
³³ P.R.O., LR 1/121, f. 124b.
³⁴ Ibid., LR 1/122, f. 98.
³⁵ Messrs. Jacobs, Young and Westbury, Deeds.