Historic%20Yorkshire

THE STORY OF YORK CASTLE. 93
For, cut down and quick interred,
Earthrejected what was buried.
Halfalive or dead he rises;
Got a pardonnext assizes,
Andin York continued blowing.
Yet a sense of goodness showing.
He became an ostler after the obtainingof his pardon.
Not very dissimilaris the case of " Half-hanged Smith,"
another Yorkshireman, who recovered after hanging
fifteen minutes.
The discipline of the prison of York Castle seems to
have, up to within say the last forty years, been in an
extremelylax state. In the latter partof the seventeenth
century we readof governorsand othersmaintainingorder
byswinging enormous keys round and round at the end
of a chain, whichnotinfrequently caught prisoners on the
head,"knocking them senseless "— and no wonder. As
a necessary result of such want of discipline, escapeswere
not uncommon. It will be remembered that Eugene
Aram, who was tried for the murder of Daniel Clarke, in
x759> spoke at great length in his ingenious defence of
the unexplained disappearance of Thompson, a felon,
who had escaped about that time from York Castle. In
1780, however, while clearing away rubbish from behind
the Court House, there was found a human skeleton on a
portion of waste ground, with double irons on the legs.
That this was the skeleton of the escaped convict there
can be littledoubt. Another instance of the ill-keeping of
the prison is that dealing with the escape of twenty
French prisoners, who were confined there in 1761, and
of which six only were recaptured. In 1765 the felons
rose against the gaolers and captured the prison, but the
debtors coming to the rescue,afree fight ensued, inwhich
the under-gaoler's leg was broken. The debtors re-took
the place, and a subscription was afterwardsraised in the
city for them.
The earliest known political prisoner confined in York
Castle was Sir Rees ap Meredith, who for rebellionwas