the Marshalsea

Marshalsea Prison, was probably at first subservient to the Knight Marshals Court, but it is no the County Goal for Felons, the Admiralty Goal for Piracy and other Offences committed at Sea, and is the Goal to the Marshal's Court for Debt and Damage, &c. See Marshal's Court, Sect. 5 Vid. also Stat. 9 Rich. 2. Chap. 6. 2 Hen. 4. Chap. 23. Under the Knight Marshal.

Marshalsea in Southwark. Then is the Marshalsea another Goal, or Prison, so called, as pertaining to the Marshals of England. Of what continuance kept in Southwark I have not learned: but like it is, that the same hath been removeable at the pleasure of the Marshals. For I find, that in the Year 1376, the fiftieth of Edward the Third, Henry Piercy, being Marshal, kept his Prisoners in the City of London, where having committed one J. Prendargest of Norwich, contrary to the Liberties of the City of London, the Citizens, by perswasion of the Lord Fitzwalter, their Standard Bearer, took Armour, and ran with great Rage to the Marshal's Inn, brake up the Gates, brought out the Prisoner and conveyed him away, minding to have burnt the Stocks in the midst of the City; but they first sought for Sir Henry Piercy to have punished him; as I have noted in my Annals.

Sailors break up the Marshalsea.

More, About the Feast of Easter next following, John Duke of Lancaster, having caused all the whole Navy of England to be gathered together at London, it chanced a certain Esquire to kill one of the Shipmen. Which Act the other Shipmen taking in ill part, they brought their Suit into the King's Court of the Marshalsea; which then as chanced (saith mine Author) was kept in Southwark: but when they perceived that Court to be too favourable to the Murderer; and farther, that the King's Warrant was also gotten for his Pardon; they in great Fury ran to the House wherein the Murderer was Imprisoned, brake into it, and brought forth the Prisoner with his Gives on his Legs, they thrust a Knife to his Hear, and sticked him as if he had been a Hog: after this they tied a Rope to his Gives, and drew him to the Gallows. Where when they had hanged him, as though they had done a great Act, they caused the Trumpets to be sounded before them to their Ships, and there in great triumph they spent the rest of the Day.

Rebels of Kent break up the Marshalsea; Occurrences there.

Also the Rebels of Kent, in the Year 1381 brake down the Houses of the Marshalsea and Kings Bench in Southwark, took from thence the Prisoners, brake down the House of Sir John Immorth, then Marshal of the Marshalsea and Kings Bench, &c. After this, in the Year 1387, the eleventh of Richard the Second, the morrow after Bartholomew Day, the King kept a great Council in the Castle of Nottingham, and the Marshalsea of the King was then kept at Lughborough, by the space of six Days or more. In the Year 1443. Sir Walter Many was Marshal of the Marshalsea, the two and twentieth of Henry the Sixth. William Brandon, Esq; was Marshal in the eighth of Edward the Fourth. In the Year 1504. the Prisoners of the Marshalsea, then in Southwark, brake out, and many of them being taken were executed, especially such as had been committed for Felony or Treason.

Upon committing a Feltmaker to the Marshalsea, the Feltmakers rise.

In June, Anno 1592. happened a dangerous Insurrection in Southwark, occasioned by the serving a Warrant from the Lord Chamberlain, by one of the Knight Marshal's Men, upon a Feltmaker's Servant; who was committed to the Marshalsea, with certain others that were accused to his Lordship by the said Knight Marshal's Man, without cause of Offence, as themselves did affirm. He entred the House where the Warrant was to be served, with a Dagger drawn, affrighting the good Wife, who sate by the Fire with a young Infant in her Arms: and after, having taken the Prisoners, committed them to the Marshalsea; where they lay five Days without making their Answer. Certain Servants of the Feltmaker assembled together out of Barnsey Street and the Blackfriers, with a great number of loose and masterless Men, apt for such Purposes, to rescue these that were committed to the Marshalsea.

They assembled themselves by occasion and pretence of their meeting at a Play on a Sunday; which, besides the breach of the Sabbath, gave opportunity of committing these and such like Disorders.

Complaint of the Marshal's Men.

Sir William Webb, Lord Maior, hearing of this Tumult, sped away with one Sheriff, to Southwark, and made Proclamation, and dismissed the Multitude; and apprehended the chief Doers and Authors of the Disorder, and committed them to Prison, to be farther punished as they deserved. And sending next Morning for the Deputy and Constable of the Borough, with divers others of best Credit, who were then present, to examine the Cause and Manner of the Disorder, he found by the Testimony of the Inhabitants, a great cause of it to be the rough dealing of the Marshal's Men, in the serving of their Warrant; not using themselves with that good discretion and moderate Usage as were meet; but after a rough and violent manner; provoking Men by such hard Dealings to contend with them, which would otherwise obey in all dutiful sort. And when these People were thus assembled in this disorderly manner, it was observed that the Knight Marshal's Men, being within the Marshalsea, issued forth with their Daggers drawn, and Bastinadoes in their Hands, beating the People. Whereof some past that way by chance, some came but to gaze, as the manner is. And afterwards drew their Swords, and several innocent Persons they slew. Whereby the Tumult was more incensed, and themselves endangered; but that help came to prevent further mischief.

The said Inhabitants of Southwark did complain further, that the said Marshals Men were very unneighbourly, and disdainful among them: refusing to pay Scot and Lot with them, or any other Duty to Church or Commonwealth. All this the Lord Maior signified to the Lord Treasurer; that so they might be admonished of their Behaviour, and to use more discretion in serving their Warrants.

The Maiors Letter to the L. Treasurer hereupon.

The said Sir William Webb, Maior, apprehending great danger in the City, when these Apprentices and others, that made the Insurrection, should be punished, because it was generally thought and known, that the Marshal's Men gave the occasion; thought fit to write to the Lord Treasurer, and to move, that this Punishment should be done with an even hand, as well upon the Knight Marshal's Men, who incited these Multitudes, by their indiscreet and violent Behaviour, as upon this base and disorderly sort that mutinied against them. Which, in case it were not done, notwithstanding the great care they had, and meant to take, to keep all things in good order (wherein also he supposed, that the Magistrates of this City never had their People in better Obedience, than at that time they had) yet they were forced to be in some doubt, that this present Mischief would not be so thorowly abated as it were to be wished. Forasmuch as the popular sort (as the said Maior proceeded) which weighed not things by Reason and Discretion, would still look upon the first Beginnings and Provocations of this Tumult; which they supposed all to have proceeded from the Knight Marshal's Men: and upon such as were slain by them, whereof some were no Medlers, but Passers-by, by chance; and also upon the issue of the Punishment inflicted upon them, which notwithstanding would be most just, touching their own deserts, yet they would suppose the same to be partial, except the other Party were punished too.

The Lord Maior had conferred with the Knight Marshall himself, whom he found to be of great Discretion and Moderation in this Matter. But it gave Offence, that his Men were committed to Prison, and bailed out; but the others were not, but continued in Prison.

Marshalsea Prison, on St. Margaret's Hill, Southwark, is a place of confinement for persons who have committed crimes at sea, as pirates, &c. and for debtors. In this prison is the Marshalsea court, the Judges of which are, the Lord Steward of his Majesty's houshold for the time being; the Steward of the court, who must be a barrister at law; and a Deputy Steward. In all civil actions tried in this court, both the plaintiff and defendant must belong to his Majesty's houshold. The persons confined in this prison for crimes at sea, take their trials at the Old Bailey.

In the same prison is the Palace Court, the jurisdiction of which extends twelve miles round the palace of Westminster, the city of London only excepted; and the debtors within any part of Westminster, and twelve miles round, may be carried to this prison for a debt of 40s. Actions for debt are tried in this court every Friday, and there are the same Judges, Counsellors and Attorneys here as in the Marshalsea court; these are, besides the Judges already mentioned, a Prothonotary, a Secondary, and Deputy Prothonotary; four Counsellors, and six Attorneys. But in this curt neither the plaintiff nor defendant must belong to his Majesty's houshold.

The buildings are mean and ruinous; but the court-room is pretty spacious and convenient.

Marshalsea-Prison, High-Street, Borough,—behind 118, about ⅓ of a mile on the L. from London-bridge.

Marshalshea (The), a prison in High Street, Southwark, attached to the King's House, and adjoining the King's Bench, and so called "as pertaining to the Marshals of England." The Court of the Marshalsea was an ancient court held by the steward and marshal of the King's House, and had a general jurisdiction over all offences committed between the servants of the royal household within the verge, that is, a circle of 12 miles round the residence of the King; but in the 28th of Edward I. (1300) its jurisdiction was limited to trespasses done within the verge, and to "contracts and covenants that one of the King's House shall have made with another of the same house." In the time of James I. doubts arose as to the jurisdiction in this matter of trespass, and by Bacon's advice the King created a new court called the Court of the Verge. [See Verge, Court o£] The Palace Court, which had the right to try all personal actions, though neither of the parties concerned belonged to the royal household, where the cause of action arose within 12 miles of Whitehall, was created by Charles I., and confirmed by Charles 11.¹ The Marshalsea Court and Prison and the Palace Court were abolished by the 12 and 13 Vict., c. 101, and the prison was shortly after taken down. The Marshalsea Prison was the second in importance of the five great prisons existing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The first was the Tower; the second the Marshalsea, attached to the King's House; the third the Fleet, for Westminster Hall; the fourth the Compter, for the City of London; and the fifth the Gatehouse, for the city of Westminster. The chief officer was the marshal, whose men attended at the Privy Council door, as the officers of the Warden of the Fleet did at the Star Chamber door.² When the Gaol Committee made their inquiry in 1729 they found that "the prison of the Marshalsea doth belong to the Court of Marshalsea of the King's Household and to the Court of Record of the King's Palace of Westminster," and that the Knight Marshal of the King's Household farmed it out to his Deputy Marshal for the yearly rent of £140, and the further yearly rent of £260 arising from lodging money; and in the Act of Parliament (5 and 6 Vict., c. 22), by which it is consolidated with the Queen's Bench and the Fleet, it is thus described: "The prison of the Marshalsea of Her Majesty's household is a prison for debtors and for persons charged with contempt of Her Majesty's Courts of the Marshalsea, the Court of the Queen's Palace of Westminster, and the High Court of Admiralty, and also for Admiralty prisoners under sentence of courts martial."

The date of the first establishment of the Marshalsea in Southwark is unknown. It was here, however, as early as Edward III.'s reign, and was destroyed by the rebels of Kent in 1381. It stood on the south side of the High Street, between King Street and Mermaid Court, and over against Union Street¹ "The Palace Court, or the Court of the Marshalsea of the Queen's House," of which the Lord Steward was the judge, was removed in 1801 from Southwark to Scotland Yard, and finally abolished December 31, 1849.

It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid bouses standing back to back, so that tbere were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs, who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door, closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle ground, in which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.—Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, chap. vi.

When Dickens was writing Littie Dorrit (1856), he made a careful examination of the locality to ascertain whether any portion of the Marshalsea Prison was yet standing. He found little beyond some parts of the lowered walls, the "narrow yard," and "the very paving stones of the extinct Marshalsea" which he discovered after much search in "Marshalsea Place turning out of Angel Court leading to Bermondsey."² Another quarter of a century has further reduced these poor vestiges of the old prison, and Angel Court (it is the first narrow passage north of St. George's church) will certainly not now repay an exploratory visit; and it may be as well to point out that the remains found and described by Dickens were a part of the old King's Bench Prison of 1758, though when the King's Bench and the White Lion prisons were removed to St. George's Fields and Horsemonger Lane the Marshalsea seems to have taken up their site. The Marshalsea proper lay some distance north of Angel Court.

Henry VI. made Littleton, the great lawyer, steward or judge of the Marshalsea Court. During the reign of Edward VI. Bonner was confined "in the most vile dungeon of the Marshalsea." On the accession of Elizabeth he was again committed to the Marshalsea, and "after having lived in his confinement some years in a cheerful condition, which made some compare him to Dionysius the Tyrant," he died there September 5, 1569, and three days afterwards was buried at midnight in the churchyard of St. George's, Southwark. According to a contemporary satirist a temporary pulpit was erected opposite the prisoner's door to enable zealous preachers to address the bishop.

One morne betime I looked forthe, as ofte as I did before
And did se a pulpit, in churcheswise, made by my prison dore,
A preacher there was, that Crowly hight, whiche preached in that place,
A meane, if God had loved me, to call me then to grace.
A Commemoration or Dirige of Bastard Edmonde Boner, alias Savage, usurped Bishoppe of London, 1569.

Christopher Brooke, the poet, was confined here for giving Ann More in marriage to Dr. Donne unknown to her father; and here Wither wrote his best poem, "The Shepherd's Hunting." In 1623 Sir John Eliot, the Vice-Admiral of Devon, was committed to the Marshalsea.¹ On October 29, 1629, he was transferred to the Marshalsea from the Tower, or as he pleasantly expressed it, "left his palace in London for his country house in Southwark."² He was permitted to attend the morning lecture at St. Mary Overy's, and mentions a man bringing him a present of game on his way there. On February 12, 1630, he was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure, and pay a fine of £2000. Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, in 1634 committed a broker of Long Lane to the Marshalsea for selling a church robe with the name of Jesus on it to the players, to be worn by one representing a heathen priest. [See Long Lane.]

Lord Chamberlain, Go, break among the press, and find a way out
To let the troop pass fairly, or I'll find
A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII. , Act. v. Sc. 3.

A coach being called, I was carried to the Marshalsea, attended by a bailiff and his follower. ... The turnkey guessing, from my appearance, that I had got money in my pocket, received me with the repetition of the Latin word depone, and gave me to understand that I must pay beforehand for the apartment I should chuse to dwell in—Smollet, Roderick Random, chap. lxi.

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¹ The jurisdiction of the Court accompanied a progress, but not a chase.
² Lansdowne MS., No. 74, a paper "touching the Marshalsea" drawn up by the Marshal and addressed to Lord Burghley.

¹ Plan in Wilkinson.
² Dickens, preface to Little Dorrit.

The Marshalsea

The early history of the Marshalsea prison is inextricably mixed with that of the King's Bench. As has already been shown (p. 9), the Marshal often kept prisoners in Southwark in the 13th century and had a permanent building there in the 14th century. The Court and Prison were at first used only for offences committed within the verge of the King's Court, but from 1430 onward there are references to the Admiralty Court in Southwarkⁿ³ and to sailors imprisoned for piracy, etc.²⁶ The references to imprisonment in the Marshalsea for debt begin about the same time.

Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea from 1550 to 1553 and again from 1560 until his death there in 1569.²⁵ In January, 1550, we are told that the Knight Marshal removed his bed, leaving him only straw and a coverlet to lie in, because he would not pay a fee of £10.²³ A list of 34 prisoners there in 1561²⁶ includes, in addition to Bonner, only 3 prisoners for religion, 1 for debt, 1 "for Ronnynge away from the Gallys," and several mariners sent in by the Lord Admiral "for Suspecyons of peracye." Like the King's Bench and the White Lion, the Marshalsea was used for the confinement of recusants in the 1580's and of followers of the Earl of Essex in 1601, (fn. 27) but thereafter the majority of prisoners in the Marshalsea were debtors, though it continued to serve as a prison for the Court of Admiralty until its closure in 1842.

Although conditions in all the Southwark prisons were bad there are indications that they were worse in the Marshalsea, perhaps because the prisoners were entirely at the mercy of the Knight Marshal or his deputy. The complaint of a Frenchman, M. La Touche, in 1629, that he was detained in "hunger and nakedness" because he could not pay the prison charges, although an order had been issued for his release, is typical of many. ²⁷ In 1639 the prisoners revolted, pulled down the palings about the house and attacked the watch with stones, brickbats, and firebrands. One of their accusations against Hall, the undermarshal, was that 23 women were lodged in one room where there was no space for them even to lie down.²⁷ In 1718 an anonymous rhymester called the Marshalsea an "earthly Hell,"⁴⁸ a description which was more than justified by the findings of the Committee, appointed by Parliament in 1729, to inquire into conditions in the gaols.⁴⁹ The prisoners were tortured with irons, beating, and by being locked up with human carcases. They were confined in so small a space that many were stifled to death in the heat of summer, and those who survived ill-treatment often died of starvation, since the keepers took most of what was given in charity. The report states that in the warmer weather 8 or 10 died every 24 hours. Some slight improvements were made as a result of the inquiry but the root cause of the trouble was not removed, the prison continued to be run for private profit.

In 1635 William Way, whose uncle, Thomas Way, had been keeper of the Marshalsea as early as 1559,²¹ sold the property to George Tucker under the description of "All that great Messuage called the Marshalsey used for the prison of His Maties Houshold now in the Tenure ... of Sr Edward Varney" together with a number of tenements, 9 of them in Mermaid Yard, and a garden.⁵⁰ Thirty-three years later, when the premises were leased by Tucker's successor, Eleanor Rowe, to John Lowman, they consisted of some newly-erected brick buildings with a yard in front and a garden lying on the east side of the yard, and an old building called the lodge on the south side of the yard, and a number of small houses which were not considered to be part of the prison.⁵¹ Lowman built a new court house which continued in use until the removal of the prison. After the fire in Borough High Street of 1676 the Assizes and Sessions Courts were also held there for a time. Lowman's nephew, who was keeper early in the 18th century, specialized in thumb screws, iron hoods, and other forms of torture to extract the last halfpenny out of his unfortunate captives⁵² (see Plate 5b). As late as 1811 a prisoner is reported as dying of want.³⁸ In 1729 there were 401 prisoners in the Marshalsea of whom 82 were housed on the Master's side. They paid during the year for their lodging £555 2s. on the Master's side and £41 12s. on the Common side.

John Howard in 1776 described the Marshalsea as "an old irregular building (rather several buildings) in a spacious yard. There are, in the whole, near sixty rooms; and yet only six of them now left for common-side Debtors. Of the other rooms,—Five are let to a man who is not a prisoner ... Four rooms, the Oaks, are for women ... There are above forty rooms for men on the Master's-side, in which are about sixty beds; yet many prisoners have no ... place to sleep in but the chapel, and the tap-room."⁴² Prisoners on the Master's side had the use of rackets courts and of a little back court for skittles, though there can have been little room for them within the narrow confines of the prison.

From 1666 to 1724, when the White Lion had become ruinous, the sheriff's prisoners were lodged in the Marshalsea⁵³ and became an additional source of profit to the Keeper, but by 1799, when Horsemonger Lane Gaol was opened, the Marshalsea buildings had in their turn become too bad for further use and the County Gaol was purchased and altered to serve as a prison for the Marshal and the Admiralty. It is this building which is described by Dickens in Little Dorrit as "an oblong pile of barrack building partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top."ⁿ⁴

The old site was sold to Samuel Davis, cooper, in 1802, but the prisoners were not removed until 1811. No. 119 (now 163) Borough High Street, and the building over the entrance to Mermaid Court were acquired about 1824 by a firm of wholesale drapers, Gainsford and Wicking, who erected a five-storey building with a double-fronted shop there.ⁿ⁵ In 1952, when extensive alterations were being made to these premises, a bricked-up arch, 18 feet high and 9 feet wide, was found in the rear wall on the north side of and at right angles to Mermaid Court. It is 168 feet 4 inches from the frontage line of Borough High Street and is 18 inches thick. Theories were rife that this was part of the old Marshalsea and perhaps of the court-house there, but as the engraving reproduced on Plate 5a shows, the court-house formed a projection on the south front of the north side of the court-yard of the prison at some distance from the wall in question, and accounts of the prison buildings in 1800–11 describe them as so dilapidated and ruinous that it is difficult to believe that anything so substantial as this arch could have formed part of them. In general the brickwork appears to date from the early 19th century, though some of the bricks used are probably earlier. The evidence available suggests that the wall and arch formed part of the cooper's workshop built by Samuel Davis circa 1812, who perhaps used some of the bricks from the old prison for the purpose.

The ground and buildings of the second Marshalsea were put up for auction in July, 1843, and sold for £5,100 to W. G. Hicks, ironmonger.⁵⁵ They then comprised the Keeper's house, a substantial three-storey brick building and eight separate dwelling houses of brick and slate, the suttling house, the Admiralty Prison, and a chapel and some paved yards. These are shown on the plan on p. 10.ⁿ⁶ The premises were enclosed from Borough High Street by iron gates. Parts of the Keeper's house, kitchen, suttling house, and the eight dwelling houses have been incorporated into the premises of George Harding & Sons, Ltd., hardware merchants, at the rear of No. 207 Borough High Street, though they cannot be seen from the road.

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ⁿ³ E.g., in July, 1430, John Kelke, being sued, could not find a counsel in Norfolk or Suffolk, and the Admiral, John, Duke of Bedford, "revoked the case to his principal court at Southwerk."

ⁿ⁴ Entries in the prison register show that John Dickens was imprisoned there from Febrauary to May, 1824, for a debt of £10.

ⁿ⁵ Samuel Davis bought only the part of the prison near Borough High Street which was built on land owned by the Crown. He already owned six tenements and a cooperage on the south side of Mermaid Court, and it is significant that the rateable value of the cooperage was substantially increased in 1813 when he got possession of the Marshalsea property. Gainsford and Wicking later acquired most or all of the property owned by Davis, but the two firms subsisted side by side for a few years and the deeds which would show the exact date and nature of the transfer seem to have been destroyed. The ground on which the back part of the Marshalsea stood was owned by the Gosling family and leased to the Deputy Marshal of the prison. The Gosling property, which adjoined Tennis Court, was acquired by the London County Council between 1950 and 1951, and this together with other land running parallel with Borough High Street and extending from Newcomen Street down to Long Lane, has been used for the extension of the Tabard Garden Housing Estate.

ⁿ⁶ The new site being too small for the inclusion of a court house, a new Marshalsea Court House was built in Scotland Yard.

²¹ Cal. of Pat. Rolls.
²³ Camden Society, Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. J. G. Nichols, 1852.
²⁵ Dict. of Nat. Biog.
²⁶ P.R.O., SP 12/18.
²⁷ Cal., of State Papers (Dom.).38
⁴² J. Howard, The State of the Prisons..., 1777.
⁴⁸ Hell in Epitome or, a Description of the M . . SH . . SEA, 1718.
⁴⁹ Report from the Committee appointed to enquire into the State
⁵¹ Ibid., Deed D 89.
⁵² L.C.C., Members' Library, John Burns' Coll., Prisoners Last Appeal to the Commons of England.
⁵³ S.C.R.O., QS 2/1/7–12.
⁵⁵ Commissioners of Crown Lands, Sale Book 15.