"But hold my torch, while I describe the entry To this dire passage. Say, thou stop thy nose; 'Tis but light pains: indeed, this dock's no rose. In the first jaws appear'd that ugly monster Y'cleped mud, which, when their oars did once stir, Belched forth an air as hot, as at the muster Of all your night tubs, when the carts do cluster, Who shall discharge first his merd-urinous load; Through her womb they make their famous road."
[Illustration: 1768. THE ARREST. (Drawn from a late real scene.)]
"Sir Fopling Flutter through his Glass Inspects the ladies as they pass, Yet still the Coxcomb lacks the Wit To guard against the Bailiff's Writ."
This prison was of great antiquity, and its genealogy, like all respectable ones, dates back to William the Conqueror, at least; for we find, under date 1197,[84] "Natanael de Leveland & Robertus filius suus r.c. de LX marcis, Pro habenda Custodia Domorum Regis de Westmonasterio, & Gaiolæ de Ponte de Fliete, quæ est hæreditas eorum a Conquestu Angliæ; ita quod non remaneat propter Finem Osberto de Longo Campo." Or, in English, "_Nathaniel de Leveland and his son Robert, fined in sixty marks, to have the Custody of the King's Houses at Westminster, and the Prison at Fleet-bridge, which had been their inheritance ever since the Conquest of England; and that they may not be hindered therein by the Counterfine of Osbert de Longchamp._"
There seems to have been some double dealing in this transaction, in which, as was only natural in those days, money went into the King's pocket.[85] "And Osbert de Longchamp fined in five hundred marks, to have the King's favour, and seizin of all his lands and chatels whereof he was disseised by the King's Command, and to have seisin of the Custody of the Gaol of London, with the Appurtenances, and of the Custody of the King's Houses of Westminster: provided that Right be done therein in the King's Court, in case any one would implead him for the same."[86]
Robert de Leveland, the son of the foregoing Nathaniel, was bitten by the then fashionable craze for Crusading, for he is found, in 1201, petitioning King John for leave to delegate the care of the King's Houses at Westminster, and the Fleet Prison, to Simon FitzRobert, Archdeacon of Wells, for the space of three years, during which time he should be in the Holy Land. His prayer seems to have been granted; but he evidently drew a little money before he went away, for, in the Chancery Rolls of the same year, he was paid £15 10s. by the City of London, on account of the King's Prison of Flete, and he also received other sums of £10 12s. 10d. for the Custody of the King's Houses at Westminster, and £7 12s. 1d. for the Custody of the Gaol of _London_.[87] By which, and also by the foregoing notice of Osbert de Longchamps, it is evident that, at that time, the Fleet prison was the principal, if not the only, prison in London.
