THOMAS PURENEY, Archbishop among Ordinaries, lived and preached in the
heyday of Newgate. His was the good fortune to witness Sheppard's
encounter with the topsman, and to shrive the battered soul of Jonathan
Wild. Nor did he fall one inch below his opportunity. Designed by
Providence to administer a final consolation to the evil-doer, he
permitted no false ambition to distract his talent. As some men are born
for the gallows, so he was born to thump the cushion of a prison pulpit;
and his peculiar aptitude was revealed to him before he had time to spend
his strength in mistaken endeavour.
For thirty years his squat, stout figure was amiably familiar to all such
as enjoyed the Liberties of the Jug. For thirty years his mottled nose and
the rubicundity of his cheeks were the ineffaceable ensigns of his
intemperance. Yet there was a grimy humour in his forbidding aspect. The
fusty black coat, which sat ill upon his shambling frame, was all
besmirched with spilled snuff, and the lees of a thousand quart pots. The
bands of his profession were ever awry upon a tattered shirt. His ancient
wig scattered dust and powder as he went, while a single buckle of some
tawdry metal gave a look of oddity to his clumsy, slipshod feet. A
caricature of a man, he ambled and chuckled and seized the easy pleasures
within his reach. There was never a summer's day but he caught upon his
brow the few faint gleams of sunlight that penetrated the gloomy yard.
Hour after hour he would sit, his short fingers hardly linked across his
belly, drinking his cup of ale, and puffing at a half-extinguished
tobacco-pipe. Meanwhile he would reflect upon those triumphs of oratory
which were his supreme delight. If it fell on a Monday that he took the
air, a smile of satisfaction lit up his fat, loose features, for still he
pondered the effect of yesterday's masterpiece. On Saturday the glad
expectancy of to-morrow lent him a certain joyous dignity. At other times
his eye lacked lustre, his gesture buoyancy, unless indeed he were called
upon to follow the cart to Tyburn, or to compose the Last Dying Speech of
some notorious malefactor.
Preaching was the master passion of his life. It was the pulpit that
reconciled him to exile within a great city, and persuaded him to the
enjoyment of roguish company. Those there were who deemed his career
unfortunate; but a sense of fitness might have checked their pity, and it
was only in his hours of maudlin confidence that the Reverend Thomas
confessed to disappointment. Born of respectable parents in the County of
Cambridgeshire, he nurtured his youth upon the exploits of James Hind and
the Golden Farmer. His boyish pleasure was to lie in the ditch, which
bounded his father's orchard, studying that now forgotten masterpiece,
'There's no Jest like a True Jest.' Then it was that he felt 'immortal
longings in his blood.' He would take to the road, so he swore, and hold
up his enemies like a gentleman. Once, indeed, he was surprised by the
clergyman of the parish in act to escape from the rectory with two volumes
of sermons and a silver flagon. The divine was minded to speak seriously
to him concerning the dreadful sin of robbery, and having strengthened him
with texts and good counsel, to send him forth unpunished. 'Thieving and
covetousness,' said the parson, 'must inevitably bring you to the gallows.
If you would die in your bed, repent you of your evildoing, and rob no
more.' The exhortation was not lost upon Pureney, who, chastened in
spirit, straightly prevailed upon his father to enter him a pensioner at
Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge, that at the proper
time he might take orders.
At Cambridge he gathered no more knowledge than was necessary for his
profession, and wasted such hours as should have been given to study in
drinking, dicing, and even less reputable pleasures. Yet repentance was
always easy, and he accepted his first curacy, at Newmarket, with a brave
heart and a good hopefulness. Fortunate was the choice of this early cure.
Had he been gently guided at the outset, who knows but he might have lived
out his life in respectable obscurity? But Newmarket then, as now, was a
town of jollity and dissipation, and Pureney yielded without persuasion to
the pleasures denied his cloth. There was ever a fire to extinguish at his
throat, nor could he veil his wanton eye at the sight of a pretty wench.
Again and again the lust of preaching urged him to repent, yet he slid
back upon his past gaiety, until Parson Pureney became a byword. Dismissed
from Newmarket in disgrace, he wandered the country up and down in search
of a pulpit, but so infamous became the habit of his life that only in
prison could he find an audience fit and responsive.
And, in the nick, the chaplaincy of Newgate fell vacant. Here was the
occasion to temper dissipation with piety, to indulge the twofold ambition
of his life. What mattered it, if within the prison walls he dipped his
nose more deeply into the punch-bowl than became a divine? The rascals
would but respect him the more for his prowess, and knit more closely the
bond of sympathy. Besides, after preaching and punch he best loved a
penitent, and where in the world could he find so rich a crop of erring
souls ripe for repentance as in gaol? Henceforth he might threaten,
bluster, and cajole. If amiability proved fruitless he would put cruelty
to the test, and terrify his victims by a spirited reference to Hell and
to that Burning Lake they were so soon to traverse. At last, thought he, I
shall be sure of my effect, and the prospect flattered his vanity. In
truth, he won an immediate and assured success. Like the common file or
cracksman, he fell into the habit of the place, intriguing with all the
cleverness of a practised diplomatist, and setting one party against the
other that he might in due season decide the trumpery dispute. The trusted
friend of many a distinguished prig and murderer, he so intimately
mastered the slang and etiquette of the Jug, that he was appointed arbiter
of all those nice questions of honour which agitated the more reputable
among the cross-coves. But these were the diversions of a strenuous mind,
and it was in the pulpit or in the closet that the Reverend Thomas Pureney
revealed his true talent.
As the ruffian had a sense of drama, so he was determined that his words
should scald and bite the penitent. When the condemned pew was full of a
Sunday his happiness was complete. Now his deep chest would hurl salvo on
salvo of platitudes against the sounding-board; now his voice, lowered to
a whisper, would coax the hopeless prisoners to prepare their souls. In a
paroxysm of feigned anger he would crush the cushion with his clenched
fist, or leaning over the pulpit side as though to approach the nearer to
his victims, would roll a cold and bitter eye upon them, as of a cat
watching caged birds. One famous gesture was irresistible, and he never
employed it but some poor ruffian fell senseless to the floor. His stumpy
fingers would fix a noose of air round some imagined neck, and so devoutly
was the pantomime studied that you almost heard the creak of the
retreating cart as the phantom culprit was turned off. But his conduct in
the pulpit was due to no ferocity of temperament. He merely exercised his
legitimate craft. So long as Newgate supplied him with an enforced
audience, so long would he thunder and bluster at the wrongdoer according
to law and the dictates of his conscience.
Many, in truth, were his triumphs, but, as he would mutter in his
garrulous old age, never was he so successful as in the last exhortation
delivered to Matthias Brinsden. Now, Matthias Brinsden incontinently
murdered his wife because she harboured too eager a love of the
brandy-shop. A model husband, he had spared no pains in her correction. He
had flogged her without mercy and without result. His one design was to
make his wife obey him, which, as the Scriptures say, all wives should do.
But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for
the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was
as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath,
and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the
Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and
seventeen other malefactors the moving discourse which here follows:
'We shall take our text,' gruffed the Ordinary 'From out the Psalms:
"Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." And
firstly, we shall expound to you the heinous sin of murder, which is
unlawful (1) according to the Natural Laws, (2) according to the Jewish
Law, (3) according to the Christian Law, proportionably stronger. By
Nature 'tis unlawful as 'tis injuring Society: as 'tis robbing God of what
is His Right and Property; as 'tis depriving the Slain of the satisfaction
of Eating, Drinking, Talking, and the Light of the Sun, which it is his
right to enjoy. And especially 'tis unlawful, as it is sending a Soul
naked and unprepared to appear before a wrathful and avenging Deity
without time to make his Soul composedly or to listen to the thoughtful
ministrations of one (like ourselves) soundly versed in Divinity. By the
Jewish Law 'tis forbidden, for is it not written (Gen. ix. 6): "Whosoever
sheddeth Man's Blood, by Man his Blood shall be shed"? And if an Eye be
given for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth, how shall the Murderer escape with
his dishonoured Life? 'Tis further forbidden by the Christian Law
(proportionably stronger).
But on this head we would speak no word, for were not you all, O miserable
Sinners, born not in the Darkness of Heathendom, but in the burning Light
of Christian England?
'Secondly, we will consider the peculiar wickedness of Parricide, and
especially the Murder of a Wife. What deed, in truth, is more heinous than
that a man should slay the Parent of his own Children, the Wife he had
once loved and chose out of all the world to be a Companion of his Days;
the Wife who long had shared his good Fortune and his ill, who had brought
him with Pain and Anguish several Tokens and Badges of Affection, the
Olive Branches round about his Table? To embrew the hands in such blood is
double Murder, as it murders not only the Person slain, but kills the
Happiness of the orphaned Children, depriving them of Bread, and forcing
them upon wicked Ways of getting a Maintenance, which often terminate in
Newgate and an ignominious death.
'Bloodthirsty men, we have said, shall not live out half their Days. And
think not that Repentance avails the Murderer. "Hell and Damnation are
never full" (Prov. xxvii. 20), and the meanest Sinner shall find a place
in the Lake which burns unto Eternity with Fire and Brimstone. Alas! your
Punishment shall not finish with the Noose. Your "end is to be burned"
(Heb. vi. 8), to be burned, for the Blood that is shed cries aloud for
Vengeance.' At these words, as Pureney would relate with a smile of
recollected triumph, Matthias Brinsden screamed aloud, and a shiver ran
through the idle audience which came to Newgate on a Black Sunday, as to a
bull-baiting. Truly, the throng of thoughtless spectators hindered the
proper solace of the Ordinary's ministrations, and many a respectable
murderer complained of the intruding mob. But the Ordinary, otherwise
minded, loved nothing so well as a packed house, and though he would
invite the criminal to his private closet, and comfort his solitude with
pious ejaculations, he would neither shield him from curiosity, nor
tranquillise his path to the unquenchable fire.
Not only did he exercise in the pulpit a poignant and visible influence.
He boasted the confidence of many heroes. His green old age cherished no
more famous memory than the friendship of Jonathan Wild. He had known the
Great Man at his zenith; he had wrestled with him in the hour of
discomfiture; he had preached for his benefit that famous sermon on the
text: 'Hide Thy Face from my sins, and blot out all my Iniquities'; he had
witnessed the hero's awful progress from Newgate to Tyburn; he had seen
him shiver at the nubbing-cheat; he had composed for him a last dying
speech, which did not shame the king of thief-takers, and whose sale
brought a comfortable profit to the widow. Jonathan, on his side, had
shown the Ordinary not a little condescension. It had been his whim, on
the eve of his marriage, to present Mr. Pureney with a pair of white
gloves, which were treasured as a priceless relic for many a year. And
when he paid his last, forced visit to Newgate, he gave the Chaplain, for
a pledge of his esteem, that famous silver staff, which he carried, as a
badge of authority from the Government, the better to keep the people in
awe, and favour the enterprises of his rogues.
Only one cloud shadowed this old and equal friendship. Jonathan had
entertained the Ordinary with discourse so familiar, they had cracked so
many a bottle together, that when the irrevocable sentence was passed,
when he who had never shown mercy, expected none, the Great Man found the
exhortations of the illiterate Chaplain insufficient for his high purpose.
'As soon as I came into the condemned Hole,' thus he wrote, 'I began to
think of making a preparation for my soul; and the better to bring my
stubborn heart to repentance, I desired the advice of a man of learning, a
man of sound judgment in divinity, and therefore application being made to
the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, he very Christian-like gave me his
assistance.' Alas! Poor Pureney! He lacked subtlety, and he was instantly
baffled, when the Great Man bade him expound the text: 'Cursed is every
one that hangeth on a tree.' The shiftiest excuse would have brought
solace to a breaking heart and conviction to a casuist brain. Yet for once
the Ordinary was at a loss, and Wild, finding him insufficient for his
purpose, turned a deaf ear to his ministrations. Thus he was rudely
awakened from the dream of many sleepless nights. His large heart almost
broke at the neglect.
But if his more private counsels were scorned, he still had the joy of
delivering a masterpiece from the pulpit, of using 'all the means
imaginable to make Wild think of another world,' and of seeing him as
neatly turned off as the most exacting Ordinary could desire. And what
inmate of Newgate ever forgot the afternoon of that glorious day (May the
24th, 1725)? Mr. Pureney returned to his flock, fortified with punch and
good tidings. He pictured the scene at Tyburn with a bibulous
circumstance, which admirably became his style, rejoicing, as he has
rejoiced ever since, that, though he lost a friend, the honest rogue was
saved at last from the machinations of the thief-taker.
So he basked and smoked and drank his ale, retelling the ancient stories,
and hiccuping forth the ancient sermons. So, in the fading twilight of
life, he smiled the smile of contentment, as became one who had emptied
more quarts, had delivered more harrowing discourses, and had lived
familiarly with more scoundrels than any devil-dodger of his generation.
