_Forster._ Bread, bread, one penny to buy a loaf of bread, for the tender mercy.
_Rob._ O me! my shame! I know that voice full well; I'll help thy wants, although thou curse me still.
[_He stands where he is unseen by his father._
_Fors._ Bread, bread, some Christian man send back Your charity to a number of poor prisoners. One penny for the tender mercy-- [_Robert puts in money._ The hand of Heaven reward you, gentle sir! Never may you want, never feel misery; Let blessings in unnumbered measure grow, And fall upon your head, where'er you go.
_Rob._ Oh, happy comfort! curses to the ground First struck me; now with blessings I am crowned.
_Fors._ Bread, bread, for the tender mercy; one penny for a loaf of bread.
_Rob._ I'll buy more blessings: take thou all my store: I'll keep no coin and see my father poor.
_Fors._ Good angels guard you, sir; my prayers shall be, That Heaven may bless you for this charity.
_Rob._ If he knew me sure he would not say so: Yet I have comfort, if by any means I get a blessing from my father's hands.[65]
The prison of Ludgate was anciently considered to be not so much a place of confinement as a place of refuge, into which debtors threw themselves to escape from their creditors--"a keep, not so much of the wicked as of the wretched"--("non sceleratorum carcer, sed miserorum custodia"), as it is expressed in a Latin speech which was addressed by the inmates to King Philip of Spain, when he passed through the city, in 1554, and which the celebrated Roger Ascham was employed to compose. As it does not appear, however, that the persons who took up their abode here were allowed to come out again until they had discharged their debts, the distinction attempted to be drawn seems to be a somewhat shadowy one. A writer, nevertheless, quoted by Maitland, who in 1659 published a description of the house in which he had himself been for a long time a resident, expresses great indignation against the authorities for having "basely and injuriously caused to be taken down" the old inscription, affixed by Sir Stephen Forster, of _Free Water and Lodging_, "and set up another over the outward street door with only these words engraven: _This is the_ PRISON _of_ LUDGATE."[66] The prison of Ludgate stood on the south side of the street, and extended back till it almost joined a portion of the old London Wall, which ran nearly parallel to Ludgate Hill. About the year 1764 this wall is described as being eight feet and a half thick.[67] Bits of it (as before noticed) still remain in this neighbourhood.