THE ACOLYTE AT THE NEWGATE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 77, 17 October 1874, Page 13

THE ACOLYTE AT THE NEWGATE.

A LEGEND OF THE CHABTER HOUSE. Chapter I. WATCHING AT THB POSTAL.

" Poob child art thou here again, this raw and bitter morning ! What manner of mother hast thou, to suffer thee out of thy bed, let alone out in the streets, to sit here in the cold, at the gates of this black prison !" Thus spoke a comely dame, attired in the garb customary to the wife of a small trader, or craftsman, to a boy of ten or eleven years old, who for the third time in. one week she found sitting under the black shadow of the portals of Newgate. Newgatb ! what a dismal doleful sound there is in the word ; what images of crime, and horror, of poverty, disease ; all imaginable., evils does it conjure up. Who can look on the walls of Newgate without a shudder ? Guilt and misery there go hand in hand ! The miserable debtor whose sole fault is the poverty which oftentimes no industry or prudence on his part could avert, is there condemned to breathe atmosphere polluted by the ruffians of a thousand crimes ! Loathsome, hideous abode ! what sighs of broken hearts — what maledictions of hard and unrepentant guilt — have thy dungeons echoed. Newgate thou art like an ugly excresence on a beauteous face, afoul blot on a sheet of white unsullied paper. But hateful as thou art, Newgate, even now, thy old age is fairand pleasant in compare with thy youth. Ugly prison, which ever claims to be new, Thou art of very ancient origin ! - ' The Newgate of old London wall was built in the time of the Norman King, Henry the First, and was a prison for felons in the days of his son John. The original building has long since been swept away, but the site and name have still remained. A black prison doubtless it always was ; and black'and horrible it loomed up through the fogs of that raw November inorning, of the year 1539, when Mistress Alice Holt, the lace' dealer of Giltspur street, spoke to the poor little child sitting at its dismal portals. An exquisitely beautiful boy, but alas ! kicking the plump round contours of childhood. His little face was painfully pinched, and cheeks sunk and hollow, with bright pink spots in the centre, and a. glitter in the violet eyes as significant of consumption, as the hollow cough, the very sound of which brought tears to the kindly matron's eyes. "Where dost thou live, little one," she inquired when the fit of coughing which had seized the boy when she firßt spoke to him had abated. " Nowhere !" he answered pitifully. "Nowhere!" reiterated Mistress Holt. "Hast thou then no parents ! no home ! Poor child ! where hast thou slept this hist bitter night? "Oh, warm and comfortable!" \e replied, his poor facejlighting up. " Cries, the ostler at the Black Bull, just bye, let me sleep in the stable ; and he gave me a breakfast, too ! And I have here a piece of nice wheaten bread for my father, if they will let me see him to-day. "Thy father! Thou hast parents, then, and thy father is here in prison !" exclaimed Alice. " No, no parents," said the chilcK sorrowfully. "My father was killed iv the wars, and my mother died when I was a little boy only six years old. lam big. lam nearly ten now !" The poor little fellow straightened up his wasted frame, and looked up with an important air to attest his maturity. "But did you not say your father was in prison!" inquired Alice. " Yes, yes ! he is. Cruel wicked men of the king took him there. Father Green, who was my mother's confessor, and was so good to me when she died, and took me to live with the fathers at the Charter House, and taught me to read and write, and let me serve at the altar though I was the littlest boy in the whole school. Oh deal* Father Green ! and all the good kind fathers. All shut up in prison-! And they are put to sleep in dark damp dungeons on a little straw, and no blanket to cover them, and hardly anything to eat. And Father Salt and Father Peerson, and many more of them, are eick, and will soon die ! And oh, I fear Father Green will die too ! I wonder the king should have such wicked men for his servants. Oh, if I were a king I would have none about me btit good people !" "Oh, the king, the king!" muttered Alice Holt. "He chooses servants like unto himself. Oh,, foul fare his light-o'-love Anne Boleyn, for she has been the cause of all ! The wrong to good Queen Katherine and the Princess Mary ; the despoiling of God's altars, and all the woes of these evil days ! Oh this wicked king ! Surely — as good Father Peto told him to his face — like the wicked king of the Jews, the dogs shall lick his blood!" Dame Alice Holt was no reformer, but her denunciations of thevile king and his paramour — for surely Anne Boleyn was nought else — were uttered in an inaudible toue, else might they have cost her her life. But the condition of the poor little boy, crouching at her feet on the cold stones, moved all the tender sympathies of her woman heart. Such a pitiable object ! — only one though !of thousands, young and old, reduced to starvation by the -withdrawal of the relief bestowed by the monasteries. His little tunic of blue Berge — a -warm and comfortable garmentwhen ho received it at the Charter House — was worn to rags. His small white shoulder, mere skin and bone, protruded through a long rent. His feet — blue and purple with the cold — bled upon the hard stones. Other garments than the scanty worn-out tunic, he had none. His head had no covering save the pale ' golden hair, which, growing with the luxuriance peculiar to the hair of those who suffer from. pulmonary complaints, fell in soft rich, glistening curls over his pal© | brow, and down to his shoulders.

Poor, poor, child!" cried compassionate Alice, taking in her plump warm palm the little cold and wasted hand, "and did they turn you out of the monastery when the fathers were sent to prison?" No, answered the child. •' But master Bedyl had me flowed Jets? \ oT %i^ n the -- I°^ Fatw Green aw& y *° p™^ ™* « « that Master Bedyl was wicked, and the king was wicked, too. Then he a treaß , 01 } 0Ue 'young urchin, who of right ought to swir.j upon £?h£o«t 7£ bade Ot^ c a PP ari '<>" *n° came to tarn the Inl J?ll » ?£ mm ° naßter y hold »«. while the other beat mo with *uffJSL~~??A« e ™° P °° r h ] rte Mlow sobbed in collection of his thf scars sHlir" ""* ° m my Bhoulderß - An <* I >»»• his blt h»h »T k £' bb ° 7 !* ri PP ed j1"j 1 " »gg* d tunic down, and showed cicatrized Bhoulders aU Beamed w *& wheals and wounds scarce Alice Holt burst into tears. iniqu"t£ Bh?^8 h ?^° rd! " Bhe exclaimed ' " how fcng *Ut thou suffer these said a vSce^ Zr ear! of atonement for *c people's sins is complete !" Ch^w&wT a "? be s el( L BtaTldin S be9ide her » mercer of the Chepe, whohad been heavily fined for assisting one of the deprived monks, who had refused to acknowledge the king's supremacy. th™™ 1 !?/ 0 "?' dd TVT V Miß , tress Holt >" he »i"pered. "Had other than myself overheard you, those few word 9 might have co 9 t you dear." «™t «!?* • W•' I animer « d Alice - " But good Master Lambton, is not this a sight, sir, to provoke anger in the blessed Job ?" 6 Bh ? wed " ie , ex coriated shoulders of the poor child to the mercer, as she tenderly covered them again with the ragged tunic. mercer the ° harter House '" she A«d «i the «, nD l H Ti5? m6S h ° in thl ' 9 cond »tion?" inquired the mercer, "for the school children are generally taken in charge !" beCttUß6 X"^ the k^ cd ' and r ran «i" wThn h ? 8i °r l ? e t ? " in^ ired MaBtOT Lambton. StlJ'ohMrli rf h- ' hl % maste^ is » man, and Giles has two Cs here at t L nr^o °T *° f^ d ' Theu there is one of fche tu ™- te^see StthVr rli aon " hh ° l9 g°°& to me, and lets me in sometimes $T^Wjth!i£ pr "° n "" sM hrn °°" w»p«i-WtU. wV ■ L ' he > il o» > nodded assent. He could trust to the bitterness with 23 5275 £x? indeed ' — h - : *

Deciphering Bras* Documents.— M. Eatchelofc, an officer of the Pam law courts has succeeded in an ingenious manner in transcribing a number of the registers which were burnt during the Cominuiie. ahese registers had remained so long in the fire that each bookseemedto have become a homogenous, mass more like aslab of charcoal than anything else ; and when an attempt was mode to detach a leaf, it fell away into powder. Many scientific men had examined these unpromising black blocks, when M. Katchelot hit upon he following method ol operation :_l n the first place, he cut off the Jack of the book, so as to leave nothing but the mass of leaves, which the firo had caused to adhere to each other ; he then steeped the book ami aftenyards exposed it, all wet as it was, to the heat at the mouth oincalorfere; the water as it evaporated, raised the loaves one by one and they could be separated, but with extraordinary precaution Each sheet was then deciphered a nd transcribed, and the copy certified by a legal officer. In this way, the records of nearly 70^000 official acts have been saved. The appearance of the pages was very curi ous ; the writing appeared of a dull black, while tie "paper was 3 lustrous black, something like velvet decorations on a black satin ground, so that the entries were not difficult to read. By the last mail steamer from Melbourne there loft for England a young man named Henry SulUvan, who was recently working in a 7°£im tSS him" .^ 8S Week At H ° me a Bice Untune