Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I IN THE BEGINNING, 600–1500
- 1 Bonds of Iron
- 2 Gaols Ordained
- 3 Prisons, Peasants and Pastons
- PART II SQUALOR CARCERIS, 1500–1750
- PART III EXPERIMENTATION WITH IMPRISONMENT, 1750–1863
- PART IV PUNISH AND BE DAMNED, 1863–1895
- PART V THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1895–1965
- PART VI SAFE AND SECURE? 1965–2018
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Gaols Ordained
from PART I - IN THE BEGINNING, 600–1500
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I IN THE BEGINNING, 600–1500
- 1 Bonds of Iron
- 2 Gaols Ordained
- 3 Prisons, Peasants and Pastons
- PART II SQUALOR CARCERIS, 1500–1750
- PART III EXPERIMENTATION WITH IMPRISONMENT, 1750–1863
- PART IV PUNISH AND BE DAMNED, 1863–1895
- PART V THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1895–1965
- PART VI SAFE AND SECURE? 1965–2018
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A gaol is nothing else than a common prison. And as leprosy is a malady which disgraces the body of a man so that he may not be suffered to dwell among healthy folk, so mortal sin is a kind of leprosy which makes the soul abominable to God and severs it from the community … In order that the innocent may not be tainted with their sins, gaols were ordained in all the counties so that mortal sinners might be put therein to await their judgments.
Mirror of JusticesFive jayles or prisons are in Southwark placed,
The Counter once St Margaret's church defaced
The Marshalsea, the King's Bench, and White Lyon,
Then there's the Clink where handsome lodgings be.
John Taylor, the Water PoetHenry II was only twenty-one when he came to the throne in 1154, but, young as he was, he was a fully-formed Plantagenet: energetic, irascible and interventionist. He was a veritable force of nature and his tempestuous character was felt throughout the kingdom. He took control. It was in his reign, and as a result of his actions, that the common law was forged, beginning with the Assize of Clarendon in 1166. Enforcement of the king's law required the apparatus of justice. Among other royal diktats on this subject issued that year, Henry ordered that ‘in the several counties where there are no gaols, let such be made in a borough or some castle of the king at the king's expense and from his wood … to the end that in them the sheriffs may be able to guard those who shall be arrested’ for felony. Lest their evil infect others, they were effectively quarantined from respectable society until they could be tried by the newly created itinerant royal judges called ‘justices in eyre’.
This was the first attempt to establish a regional system of common prisons as an adjunct of the king's common law, the essential infrastructure for the imposition of royal justice. County gaols, commissioned and paid for by the king, were under the authority of his sheriffs. The rest were the responsibility of municipal corporations and local dynasts. It took a long time, and further kingly intervention, for such a diverse constituency to produce results. Even his own officials could be laggard.
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- Shades of the Prison HouseA History of Incarceration in the British Isles, pp. 22 - 30Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019