A SPARE, lean frame; a small head set forward upon a pair of sloping
shoulders; a thin, sharp nose, and rat-like eyes; a flat, hollow chest;
shrunk shanks, modestly retreating from their snuff-coloured hose—these
are the tokens which served to remind his friends of Ralph Briscoe, the
Clerk of Newgate. As he left the prison in the grey air of morning upon
some errand of mercy or revenge, he appeared the least fearsome of
mortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impression
of timidity. So abstract was his manner, so hesitant his gait, that he
would hug the wall as he went, nervously stroking its grimy surface with
his long, twittering fingers. But Ralph, as justice and the Jug knew too
well, was neither fool nor coward. His character belied his outward
seeming. A large soul had crept into the case of his wizened body, and if
a poltroon among his ancestors had gifted him with an alien type, he had
inherited from some nameless warrior both courage and resource.
He was born in easy circumstances, and gently nurtured in the distant
village of Kensington. Though cast in a scholar's mould, and very apt for
learning, he rebelled from the outset against a career of inaction. His
lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he would fight
with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in a cheerful
spirit of dogged pugnacity. Moreover, if his arms were weak, his cunning
was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his stricken eye had paled,
he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon his enemy. Nor was it
industry that placed him at the top of the class. A ready wit made him
master of the knowledge he despised.
But he would always desert his primer to follow the hangman's lumbering
cart up Tyburn Hill, and, still a mere imp of mischief, he would run the
weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of a
cock-fight. He was present, so he would relate in after years, when Sir
Thomas Jermin's man put his famous trick upon the pit. With a hundred
pounds in his pocket and under his arm a dunghill cock, neatly trimmed for
the fray, the ingenious ruffian, as Briscoe would tell you, went off to
Shoe Lane, persuaded an accomplice to fight the cock in Sir Thomas
Jermin's name, and laid a level hundred against his own bird. So lofty was
Sir Thomas's repute that backers were easily found, but the dunghill
rooster instantly showed a clean pair of heels, and the cheat was
justified of his cunning.
Thus Ralph Briscoe learnt the first lessons in that art of sharping
wherein he was afterwards an adept; and when he left school his head was
packed with many a profitable device which no book learning could impart.
His father, however, still resolute that he should join an intelligent
profession, sent him to Gray's Inn that he might study law. Here the
elegance of his handwriting gained him a rapid repute; his skill became
the envy of all the lean-souled clerks in the Inn, and he might have died
a respectable attorney had not the instinct of sport forced him from the
inkpot and parchment of his profession. Ill could he tolerate the monotony
and restraint of this clerkly life. In his eyes law was an instrument, not
of justice, but of jugglery. Men were born, said his philosophy, rather to
risk their necks than ink their fingers; and if a bold adventure puts you
in a difficulty, why, then, you hire some straw-splitting attorney to show
his cunning. Indeed, the study of law was for him, as it was for Falstaff,
an excuse for many a bout and merry-making. He loved his glass, and he
loved his wench, and he loved a bull-baiting better than either. It was
his boast, and Moll Cutpurse's compliment, that he never missed a match in
his life, and assuredly no man was better known in Paris Garden than the
intrepid Ralph Briscoe.
The cloistered seclusion of Gray's Inn grew daily more irksome. There he
would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and
biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter afternoons
he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless
trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed
intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him
to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back,
followed the shrill bagpipe along the curious street, Briscoe felt that
blood, not ink, coursed in his veins, forgot the tiresome impediment of
the law, and joined the throng, hungry for this sport of kings. Nor was he
the patron of an enterprise wherein he dared take no part. He was as bold
and venturesome as the bravest ruffler that ever backed a dog at a
baiting. When the bull, cruelly secured behind, met the onslaught of his
opponents, throwing them off, now this side, now that, with his horns,
Briscoe, lost in excitement, would leap into the ring that not a point of
the combat should escape him.
So it was that he won the friendship of his illustrious benefactress, Moll
Cutpurse. For, one day, when he had ventured too near the maddened bull,
the brute made a heave at his breeches, which instantly gave way; and in
another moment he would have been gored to death, had not Moll seized him
by the collar and slung him out of the ring. Thus did his courage ever
contradict his appearance, and at the dangerous game of whipping the
blinded bear he had no rival, either for bravery or adroitness. He would
rush in with uplifted whip until the breath of the infuriated beast was
hot upon his cheek, let his angry lash curl for an instant across the
bear's flank, and then, for all his halting foot, leap back into safety
with a smiling pride in his own nimbleness.
His acquaintance with Moll Cutpurse, casually begun at a bull-baiting,
speedily ripened, for her into friendship, for him into love. In this, the
solitary romance of his life, Ralph Briscoe overtopped even his own
achievements of courage. The Roaring Girl was no more young, and years had
not refined her character unto gentleness. It was still her habit to
appear publicly in jerkin and galligaskins, to smoke tobacco in contempt
of her sex, and to fight her enemies with a very fury of insolence. In
stature she exceeded the limping clerk by a head, and she could pick him
up with one hand, like a kitten. Yet he loved her, not for any grace of
person, nor beauty of feature, nor even because her temperament was
undaunted as his own. He loved her for that wisest of reasons, which is no
reason at all, because he loved her. In his eyes she was the Queen, not of
Misrule, but of Hearts. Had a throne been his, she should have shared it,
and he wooed her with a shy intensity, which ennobled him, even in her
austere regard. Alas! she was unable to return his passion, and she
lamented her own obduracy with characteristic humour. She made no attempt
to conceal her admiration. 'A notable and famous person,' she called him,
confessing that, 'he was right for her tooth, and made to her mind in
every part of him.' He had been bred up in the same exercise of
bull-baiting, which was her own delight; she had always praised his
towardliness, and prophesied his preferment. But when he paid her court
she was obliged to decline the honour, while she esteemed the compliment.
In truth, she was completely insensible to passion, or, as she exclaimed
in a phrase of brilliant independence, 'I should have hired him to my
embraces.'
The sole possibility that remained was a Platonic friendship, and Briscoe
accepted the situation in excellent humour. 'Ever since he came to know
himself,' again it is Moll that speaks, 'he always deported himself to me
with an abundance of regard, calling me his Aunt.' And his aunt she
remained unto the end, bound to him in a proper and natural alliance.
Different as they were in aspect, they were strangely alike in taste and
disposition. Nor was the Paris Garden their only meeting-ground.
His sorry sojourn in Gray's Inn had thrown him on the side of the
law-breaker, and he had acquired a strange cunning in the difficult art of
evading justice. Instantly Moll recognised his practical value, and,
exerting all her talent for intrigue, presently secured for him the
Clerkship of Newgate. Here at last he found scope not only for his
learning, but for that spirit of adventure that breathed within him. His
meagre acquaintance with letters placed him on a pinnacle high above his
colleagues. Now and then a prisoner proved his equal in wit, but as he was
manifestly superior in intelligence to the Governor, the Ordinary, and all
the warders, he speedily seized and hereafter retained the real
sovereignty of Newgate.
His early progress was barred by envy and contempt. Why, asked the men in
possession, should this shrivelled stranger filch our privileges? And
Briscoe met their malice with an easy smile, knowing that at all points he
was more than their match. His alliance with Moll stood him in good stead,
and in a few months the twain were the supreme arbiters of English
justice. Should a highwayman seek to save his neck, he must first pay a
fat indemnity to the Newgate Clerk, but, since Moll was the appointed
banker of the whole family, she was quick to sanction whatever price her
accomplice suggested. And Briscoe had a hundred other tricks whereby he
increased his riches and repute. There was no debtor came to Newgate whom
the Clerk would not aid, if he believed the kindness profitable. Suppose
his inquiries gave an assurance of his victim's recovery, he would house
him comfortably, feed him at his own table, lend him money, and even
condescend to win back the generous loan by the dice-box.
His civility gave him a general popularity among the prisoners, and his
appearance in the Yard was a signal for a subdued hilarity. He drank and
gambled with the roysterers; he babbled a cheap philosophy with the
erudite; and he sold the necks of all to the highest bidder. Though now
and again he was convicted of mercy or revenge, he commonly held himself
aloof from human passions, and pursued the one sane end of life in an easy
security. The hostility of his colleagues irked him but little. A few tags
of Latin, the friendship of Moll, and a casual threat of exposure
frightened the Governor into acquiescence, but the Ordinary was more
difficult of conciliation. The Clerk had not been long in Newgate before
he saw that between the reverend gentleman and himself there could be
naught save war. Hitherto the Ordinary had reserved to his own profit the
right of intrigue; he it was who had received the hard-scraped money of
the sorrowing relatives, and untied the noose when it seemed good to him.
Briscoe insisted upon a division of labour. 'It is your business,' he
said, 'to save the scoundrels in the other world. Leave to me the profit
of their salvation in this.' And the Clerk triumphed after his wont:
freedom jingled in his pocket; he doled out comfort, even life, to the
oppressed; and he extorted a comfortable fortune in return for privileges
which were never in his gift.
Without the walls of Newgate the house of his frequentation was the 'Dog
Tavern.' Thither he would wander every afternoon to meet his clients and
to extort blood-money. In this haunt of criminals and pettifoggers no man
was better received than the Newgate Clerk, and while he assumed a manner
of generous cordiality, it was a strange sight to see him wince when some
sturdy ruffian slapped him too strenuously upon the back. He had a joke
and a chuckle for all, and his merry quips, dry as they were, were
joyously quoted to all new-comers. His legal ingenuity appeared
miraculous, and it was confidently asserted in the Coffee House that he
could turn black to white with so persuasive an argument that there was no
Judge on the Bench to confute him. But he was not omnipotent, and his zeal
encountered many a serious check. At times he failed to save the necks
even of his intimates, since, when once a ruffian was notorious, Moll and
the Clerk fought vainly for his release. Thus it was that Cheney, the
famous wrestler, whom Ralph had often backed against all comers, died at
Tyburn. He had been taken by the troopers red-handed upon the highway.
Seized after a desperate resistance, he was wounded wellnigh to death, and
Briscoe quoted a dozen precedents to prove that he was unfit to be tried
or hanged. Argument failing, the munificent Clerk offered fifty pounds for
the life of his friend. But to no purpose: the valiant wrestler was
carried to the cart in a chair, and so lifted to the gallows, which cured
him of his gaping wounds.
When the Commonwealth administered justice with pedantic severity,
Briscoe's influence still further declined. There was no longer scope in
the State for men of spirit; even the gaols were handed over to the stern
mercy of crop-eared Puritans; Moll herself had fallen upon evil times; and
Ralph Briscoe determined to make a last effort for wealth and retirement.
At the very moment when his expulsion seemed certain, an heiress was
thrown into Newgate upon a charge of murdering a too importunate suitor.
The chain of evidence was complete: the dagger plunged in his heart was
recognised for her own; she was seen to decoy him to the secret corner of
a wood, where his raucous love-making was silenced for ever. Taken off her
guard, she had even hinted confession of her crime, and nothing but
intrigue could have saved her gentle neck from the gallows. Briscoe,
hungry for her money-bags, promised assistance. He bribed, he threatened,
he cajoled, he twisted the law as only he could twist it, he suppressed
honest testimony, he procured false; in fine, he weakened the case against
her with so resistless an effrontery, that not the Hanging Judge himself
could convict the poor innocent.
At the outset he had agreed to accept a handsome bribe, but as the trial
approached, his avarice increased, and he would be content with nothing
less than the lady's hand and fortune. Not that he loved her; his heart
was long since given to Moll Cutpurse; but he knew that his career of
depredation was at an end, and it became him to provide for his declining
years. The victim repulsed his suit, regretting a thousand times that she
had stabbed her ancient lover. At last, bidden summarily to choose between
Death and the Clerk, she chose the Clerk, and thus Ralph Briscoe left
Newgate the richest squire in a western county. Henceforth he farmed his
land like a gentleman, drank with those of his neighbours who would crack
a bottle with him, and unlocked the strange stores of his memory to
bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate. Still devoted to sport, he
hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as his youthful imagination
could never have pictured. So he lived a life of country ease, and died a
churchwarden. And he deserved his prosperity, for he carried the soul of
Falstaff in the shrunken body of Justice Shallow.
