No. II .
TOWER BILLS THE Tower Bills are a series of accounts sent in by the Lieutenant of the Tower for such prisoners as he maintained at the expense of the Crown . They do not form an absolutely complete list of the prisoners, for Elizabeth made men of wealth pay for themselves. No reference will be found to Philip, Earl of Arundel, who was in the Tower from 1585-1595, nor to a man like George Gifford , who left his name on two places in the Beauchamp Tower , with the date, August, 1585 , but he was a pensioner of the Court , and it would seem an agent provocateur. In Bill No. 39 , the charges of Thomas Abington are sent in for a year and a half. The reason probably was that , as all his estates had been seized , payment could no
longer be made from them. Again , there are some cases of what looks like bad book-keeping or dishonesty. Thus Alexander Bryant was sent to the Tower to be tortured on the 3rd of May, 1581 (J. R. Dasent, Acts of Privy Council, xiii, 37) , but payment for his keep is demanded for the whole term beginning on Lady Day. Smaller faults are also observable here and there. In spite of these defects, the Tower Bills present us with invaluable information regarding the most conspicuous victims of religious persecution, not obtainable elsewhere. The series commences at the time when Elizabeth's government was still trusting to a policy of slowly starving Catholicism to death. The prisoners in the early lists are chiefly sympathisers with Mary Stuart. The only English sufferer for religion seems to be Henry Alway, who will easily be identified with the Alwey mentioned at page 60 of our first volume , and with him the venerable Confessor, Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh. At Christmas, 1577 , we find Thomas Sherwood, who is found with a cross opposite his name on the 9th of February, 1577-8, though his martyrdom is generally dated on the 7th. is not till the end of 1580 that new priests from the seminaries, Johnson, Cottam , Kirby, & c. , are sent in here to be tortured , for the Tower was the only prison in which this abuse of royal power was regularly practised. In 1581 we find a greatly increased number of prisoners, including John Hart, whose Diarium Turris (first printed anonymously at the end of the Roman edition of Sander, De Schismate, 1585 , and frequently since then) gives the most valuable account we possess of the sufferings endured by the prisoners. The Diary is sometimes, by error, attributed to Edward Rishton, who brought out the first edition of Sander ; in which edition , however, this Diary is not found . But, as appears from these bills, Hart was the only possible writer, whose term of imprisonment coincides with the Diary , while Rishton seems never to have been in the Tower at all. Hart's constancy failed for a time under the terrors of his prison , but he eventually recovered courage, and persevered in the good confession. Nichols, who figures close beside him, fell away altogether . The loss of the bills for the second half-year of 1581 prevents us getting any notice of Father Campion, but the bills for 1582 show, by the curt note mort . or ex. against this or that name, what the date was at which those martyrs suffered. In the bill for Michaelmas, 1583 , will be noticed the name of William Carter . This was the printer executed on a preposterous charge of exciting Catholics to assassinate Elizabeth , because he had printed a book which praised Judith. Then will be noticed the gradually increasing number of sufferers for other sham plots, the Ardens, Somervilles, &c. They show how Walsingham was gradually persuading Elizabeth and public opinion that her life was in danger. On the 10th of July, 1584 , the Prince of Orange was assassinated in Holland, and the excitement caused by it enabled Walsingham's party to pass the bloody code, known as that of the 27th year of Elizabeth , according to which every Catholic priest was considered a traitor by the mere fact of his coming into England .
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