The Works of William Harrison Ainsworth

by William Harrison Ainsworth

  Still clinging to hope, he flew up-stairs, but could find no traces there of any of the inmates of the dwelling; and with a heart now completely crushed, he descended to the chamber he had just quitted. Here he found Clement Lanyere surveying the scene of confusion around him with a stern and troubled look. Sir Jocelyn instantly rushed up to him, and seizing him by the arm, fiercely demanded what had become of Aveline?

  “She is in the hands of Sir Francis Mitchell,” replied the promoter, shaking-him off; “and, for aught I know, may be wedded to him by this time.”

  “Wedded!” almost shrieked the young man. “Impossible! she would never consent — and he would not dare have recourse to violence.”

  “Though he might not, his partner, Sir Giles Mompesson, would have no such scruples,” returned the promoter. “But perhaps you are right, and Aveline’s determined resistance may intimidate them both so that they may abandon their design. I hope so for your sake, and for hers also — but I have my fears.”

  “You know more than you choose to avow, Sir,” said Sir Jocelyn sternly,— “and as you value your life, I command you to speak plainly, and tell me what has happened, and where I shall find Aveline.”

  “So commanded by any other than yourself, Sir Jocelyn,” rejoined the promoter, “I would not speak; but to you I say, as I have before declared, that Aveline is undoubtedly in the power of Sir Francis Mitchell, and that it will rest entirely with herself whether she escapes him or not.”

  “And you have caused me to be detained while she has been carried off,” exclaimed Sir Jocelyn, furiously. “Fool that I was to trust you! You are in league with the villains.”

  “Think of me what you please, and say what you will — you shall not anger me,” rejoined the promoter. “I discovered your flight from the place of refuge I had procured for you, and guessing where you had come, followed you hither. Your danger is not past. Vainly will you seek Sir Francis Mitchell. You will not find him, — but you will find a serjeant-at-arms with a Star-Chamber warrant for your arrest. To this you can offer no resistance; and what will follow? I will tell you: — immediate incarceration in the Fleet Prison. And when safely lodged there, how, may I ask, are you to liberate Aveline?”

  “I must trust to chance,” replied Sir Jocelyn. “I can no longer place any reliance upon you. Stand aside, and let me pass. I would not harm you.”

  “You cannot injure one whose intentions are friendly to you as mine are. Listen to me, and let what I have to say sink deeply into your breast. Do anything rather than render yourself amenable to the accursed tribunal I have named. Abandon mistress, friend, relative — all who are near and dear to you — if they would bring you within its grasp.”

  “And do you venture to give me this shameful council? Do you think I will attend to it?” cried Sir Jocelyn.

  “I am sure you will, if you hear me out — and you shall hear me,” the promoter exclaimed with so much authority that the young man, however impatient, could not refuse attention, to him. “Look me in the face, Sir Jocelyn! Regard me well! Behold these ineffaceable marks made by the heated iron, and the sharpened knife! How came they there? From a sentence of the Star-Chamber. And as my offence was the same as yours, so your sentence will correspond with mine. Your punishment will be the same as mine — branding and mutilation. Ha! I perceive I have touched you now.”

  “What was your offence, unhappy man?” asked Sir Jocelyn, averting his gaze from the hideous aspect which, now lighted up with mingled emotions of rage and despair, had become absolutely appalling.

  “The same as your own, as I have said,” replied the other;— “a few hasty words impugning the justice of this vindictive court. Better had I have cut out my tongue than have given utterance to them. But my case more nearly resembled yours than I have yet explained, for, like you, I had incurred the displeasure of Sir Giles Mompesson, and was by him delivered to these hellish tormentors. Acting under cover of the Star-Chamber, and in pursuance of its iniquitous decrees, he nailed me to the pillory, and so fast, that the ears through which the spikes were driven were left behind. Think how you would like that, Sir Jocelyn? Think what you would feel, if you stood there on that infamous post, a spectacle to the base and shouting rabble, with a paper fastened to your breast, setting forth your crimes, and acquainting all that you were a Star-Chamber delinquent?”

  “Enough, Sir,” interrupted Sir Jocelyn.

  “Ay, enough — more than enough,” rejoined the other; “but I cannot spare you the whole of the recital, however painful it may be to you. My own sufferings will be yours, if you heed not. So I shall go on. In robbing me of my ears, the executioner had only half done his work. He had still further to deface the image of his Maker, — and he hesitated not in his task. No savage in the wilds could have treated his deadliest enemy worse than he treated me; and yet the vile concourse applauded him, and not a word of pity escaped them. My sentence was fully carried out; my features for ever disfigured; and the letters of shame indelibly stamped upon my cheek. You may read them there now if you will look at me.”

  “You thrill me with horror,” said Sir Jocelyn.

  “Ay, mine is not a mirthful history, though that fiend in human form, Sir Giles, hath often laughed at it,” rejoined the promoter. “It might make you shudder, and perchance move you to tears, if you could hear it all; but for the present, I shall confine myself to such portions of it as bear upon your own perilous position — and I therefore hold myself out as a lesson to you. Again, I bid you look upon this ravaged countenance, and say, if by any stretch of fancy you can persuade yourself it was once as comely as your own. You find it difficult to believe my words — yet such was the fact. Ay,” he continued, in a tone of profoundest melancholy, “I was once proud of the gifts nature had vouchsafed me; too proud, alas! and I was punished for my vanity and self-boasting. In those days I loved — and was beloved in return — by a damsel beautiful as Aveline. After my horrible punishment, I beheld her no more. Knowing she must regard me with aversion, I shunned her. I desired not to be an object of pity. Bring this home to your own breast, Sir Jocelyn, and think how direful would be your lot to be driven for ever from her you love. Yet, such has been my case.”

  “I cannot bear the contemplation — it were madness,” cried the young man.

  There was a brief pause, after which Lanyere resumed his story.

  “At the time of being cast into the Fleet Prison, my prospects were fair enough. When I came forth I was utterly ruined. Existence was a burden to me, and I should have ended my days by my own hand, if the insatiable desire of vengeance had not bound me to the world. For this alone I consented to live — to bear the agonies of blighted love — to endure the scorn and taunts of all with whom I was brought into contact. Nay, I attached myself to him who had so deeply wronged me, to ensure revenge upon him. My great fear was, lest I should be robbed of this precious morsel; and you may remember that I struck up your sword when it had touched his breast. He must die by no other hand than mine.”

  “Your vengeance has been tardy,” observed Sir Jocelyn.

  “True,” replied the other. “I have delayed it for several reasons, but chiefly because I would have it complete. The work is begun, and its final accomplishment will not be long postponed. I will not destroy him till I have destroyed the superstructure on which he has built his fortunes — till all has crumbled beneath him — and he is beggared and dishonoured. I have begun the work, I say. Look here!” he cried, taking a parchment from his doublet. “You would give much for this deed, Sir Jocelyn. This makes me lord of a large property in Norfolk, with which you are well acquainted.”

  “You cannot mean the Mounchensey estates?” cried Sir Jocelyn. “Yet now I look at the instrument, it is so.”

  “I obtained this assignment by stratagem,” said the promoter; “and I have thereby deprived Sir Giles of the most valuable portion of his spoils; and though; he thinks to win it back again, he will find himself deceived. My measures are too well taken. This
is the chief prop of the fabric it has taken him so long to rear, and ere long I will shake it wholly in pieces.”

  “But if you have become unlawfully possessed of this property, as would appear to be the case by your own showing, you cannot hope to retain it,” said the young knight.

  “Trust me, Sir Jocelyn, I shall prove a better title to it than Sir Giles could exhibit,” rejoined Lanyere; “but this is not a time for full explanation. If I carry out my schemes, you will not be the last person benefited by them.”

  “Again, I ask you, what possible interest you can feel in me?” demanded the young knight with curiosity.

  “Next to myself, you have been most injured by Sir Giles, and even more than myself are you an object of dislike to him. These would suffice to excite my sympathy towards you; but I have other and stronger reasons for my friendly feeling towards you, which in due season you shall know.”

  “All your proceedings are mysterious,” observed Sir Jocelyn.

  “They must needs be so from the circumstances in which I am placed. I am compelled to veil them as I do my hateful features from the prying eyes of men: but they will be made clear anon, and you will then understand me and my motives better. Ha! what is this?” he suddenly exclaimed, as a noise outside attracted his attention. “Fly! fly! there is danger.”

  But the warning was too late. Ere the young man, who stood irresolute, could effect his retreat from the back of the cottage, the door was thrown open, and a serjeant-at-arms, with three attendants in black gowns and flat caps, and having black staves in their hands, entered the room.

  Sir Jocelyn had partly drawn his sword, but restored it to the scabbard on a glance from Lanyere.

  “Resistance must not be offered,” said the latter, in a low tone. “You will only make a bad matter worse.”

  The serjeant-at-arms, a tall, thin man, with a sinister aspect, advanced towards the young knight, and touching him with his wand, said— “I attach your person, Sir Jocelyn Mounchensey, in virtue of a warrant, which I hold from the High Court of Star-Chamber.”

  “I yield myself your prisoner, Sir,” replied Sir Jocelyn. “Whither am I to be taken?”

  “You will be taken before the Lords of the Council in the first instance, and afterwards, in all probability, be consigned to the custody of the wardens of his Majesty’s gaol of the Fleet,” replied the serjeant-at-arms.

  “I would fain know the nature of my offence?” said Sir Jocelyn.

  “You will learn that when the interrogatories are put to you,” replied the official. “But I am told you have disparaged the dignity of the High Court, and that is an offence ever severely punished. Your accuser is Sir Giles Mompesson.”

  Having said thus much, the serjeant-at-arms turned to the promoter, and inquired, “Are you not Clement Lanyere?”

  “Why do you ask?” rejoined the other.

  “Because if you are he, I must request you to accompany me to Sir Giles Mompesson.”

  “Lanyere is my name,” replied the other; “and if I decline to attend you, as you request, it is from no disrespect to you, but from distaste to the society into which you propose to bring me. Your warrant does not extend to me?”

  “It does not, Sir,” replied the serjeant-at-arms. “Nevertheless—”

  “Arrest him!” cried a voice at the back of the house, — and a window being thrown open, the face of Sir Giles Mompesson appeared at it— “Arrest him!” repeated the extortioner.

  The serjeant-at-arms made a movement, as if of compliance; but Lanyere bent towards him, and whispered a few words in his ear, on hearing which the official respectfully retired.

  “Why are not my injunctions obeyed, Sir?” demanded Sir Giles, furiously, from the window.

  “Because he has rendered me good reason why he may not be molested by us — or by any one else,” replied the officer, significantly.

  Lanyere looked with a smile of triumph at the extortioner, and then turning to Sir Jocelyn, who seemed half disposed to make an attack upon his enemy, said in an under-tone, “Harm him not. Leave him to me.”

  After which he quitted the cottage.

  Sir Giles then signed to the serjeant-at-arms to remove his prisoner, and disappeared; and the attendants, in sable cloaks, closing round Sir Jocelyn, the party went forth.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  The Old Fleet Prison.

  Mention is made of a prison-house standing near the River Fleet as early as the reign of Richard I.; and this was one of the oldest jails in London, as its first wardens, whose names are on record, Nathaniel de Leveland, and Robert his son, paid, in 1198, a fine of sixty marks for its custody; affirming “that it had been their inheritance ever since the Conquest, and praying that they might not be hindered therein by the counter-fine of Osbert de Longchamp,” to whom it had been granted by the lion-hearted monarch.

  The next warden of the Fleet, in the days of John, was Simon Fitz-Robert, Archdeacon of Wells, — probably a near relative of Robert de Leveland, as the wardship of the daughter of the said Robert, as well as the custody of the jail, was also committed to him. The freehold of the prison continued in the Leveland family for upwards of three centuries; until, in the reign of Philip and Mary it was, sold to John Heath for £2300 — a large sum in those days, but not more than the value of the property, which from the way it was managed produced a large revenue to its possessor.

  The joint wardens of the Fleet at the time of our history were Sir Henry Lello and John Eldred; but their office was executed by deputy in the person of Joachim Tunstall, by whom it was rented. As will naturally be supposed, it was the object of every deputy-warden to make as much as he could out of the unfortunate individuals committed to his charge; and some idea of the infamous practices of those persons may be gathered, from a petition presented to the Lords of the Council in 1586 by the then prisoners of the Fleet. In this it is stated that the warden had “let and set to farm the victualling and lodging of all the house and prison of the Fleet to one John Harvey, and the other profits of the said Fleet he had let to one Thomas Newport, the deputy there under the warden; and these being very poor men, having neither land nor any trade to live by, nor any certain wages of the said warden, and being also greedy of gain, did live by bribing and extortion. That they did most shamefully extort and exact from the prisoners, raising new customs, fines, and payments, for their own advantage. That they cruelly used them, shutting them up in close prisons when they found fault with their wicked dealings; not suffering them to come and go as they ought to do; with other abominable misdemeanours, which, without reformation, might be the poor prisoners’ utter undoing.”

  In consequence of this petition, a commission of inquiry into the alleged abuses was appointed; but little good was effected by it, for only seven years later further complaints were made against the warden, charging him with “murders and other grave misdemeanours.” Still no redress was obtained; nor was it likely it would be, when the cries of the victims of this abominable system of oppression were so easily stifled. The most arbitrary measures were resorted to by the officers of the prison, and carried out with perfect impunity. Their authority was not to be disputed; and it has been shown how obedience was enforced. Fines were inflicted and payment made compulsory, so that the wealthy prisoner was soon reduced to beggary. Resistance to the will of the jailers, and refusal to submit to their exactions, were severely punished. Loaded with fetters, and almost deprived of food, the miserable captive was locked up in a noisome subterranean dungeon; and, if he continued obstinate, was left to rot there. When he expired, his death was laid to the jail-fever. Rarely were these dark prison secrets divulged, though frequently hinted at.

  The moral condition of the prisoners was frightful. As the greater portion of them consisted of vicious and disorderly characters, these contaminated the whole mass, so that the place became a complete sink of abomination. Drunkenness, smoking, dicing, card-playing, and every kind of licence were permitted, or connived at; and the stronger prisone
rs were allowed to plunder the weaker. Such was the state of things in the Fleet Prison at the period of our history, when its misgovernment was greater than it had ever previously been, and the condition of its inmates incomparably worse.

  During the rebellion of Wat Tyler, the greater part of the buildings constituting the ancient prison were burnt down, and otherwise destroyed; and, when rebuilt, the jail was strengthened and considerably enlarged. Its walls were of stone, now grim and hoary with age; and on the side next to the Fleet there was a large square structure, resembling Traitor’s Gate at the Tower, and forming the sole entrance to the prison. To this gate state-offenders were brought by water after committal by the Council of the Star-Chamber.

  Nothing could be sterner or gloomier than the aspect of the prison on this side — gray and frowning walls, with a few sombre buildings peeping above them, and a black gateway, with a yawning arch, as if looking ready to devour the unfortunate being who approached it. Passing through a wicket, contrived in the ponderous door, a second gate was arrived at, and this brought the captive to the porter’s lodge, where he was delivered up to the jailers, and assigned a room in one of the wards, according to his means of paying for it. The best of these lodgings were but indifferent; and the worst were abominable and noisome pits.

  On entering the outer ward, a strange scene presented itself to the view. Motley groups were scattered about — most of the persons composing them being clad in threadbare doublets and tattered cloaks, and wearing caps, from which the feathers and ornaments had long since disappeared; but there were a few — probably new coiners — in somewhat better attire. All these wore debtors. Recklessness and effrontery were displayed in their countenances, and their discourse was full of ribaldry and profanity. At one side of this ward there was a large kitchen, where eating and drinking were constantly going forward at little tables, as at a tavern or cookshop, and where commons were served out to the poorer prisoners.