The persons who had so many years supported themselves therein were
dissipated and dispersed. But many of them got again into debt, and
associating themselves with other persons in the same condition, with
unparalleled impudence they attempted to set up (towards Wapping) a new
privileged jurisdiction under the title of the Seven Cities of Refuge.
In this attempt they were much furthered and directed by one Major
Santloe, formerly a Justice of Peace, but being turned out of
commission, he came first a shelterer here, and afterwards a prisoner in
the Fleet. These people made an addition to these laws which had
formerly been established in such illegal sanctuaries, for they provided
large books in which they entered the names of persons who entered into
their association, swearing to defend one another against all bailiffs
and such like. In consequence of which, they very often rescued
prisoners out of custody, or even entered the houses of officers for
that purposes. Amongst the number of these unhappy people, who by
protecting themselves against the lesser judgments of the Law involved
themselves in greater difficulties, and at last drew on the greatest and
most heavy sentence which it could pronounce, was him we now speak of.

Charles Towers was a person whose circumstances had been bad for many
years, and in order to retrieve them he had turned gamester. For a
guinea or two, it seems, he engaged for the payment of a very
considerable debt for a friend, who not paying it at his time, Towers
was obliged to fly for shelter into the Old Mint, then in being. He went
into the New, which was just then setting up, and where the Shelterers
took upon them to act more licentiously and with greater outrages
towards officers of Justice than the people in any other places had
done. Particularly they erected a tribunal on which a person chosen for
that purpose sat as a judge with great state and solemnity. When any
bailiff had attempted to arrest persons within the limits which they
assumed for their jurisdiction, he was seized immediately by a mob of
their own people, and hurried before the judge of their own choosing.
There a sort of charge or indictment was preferred against him, for
attempting to disturb the peace of the Shelterers within the
jurisdiction of the Seven Cities of Refuge. Then they examined certain
witnesses to prove this, and thereupon pretending to convict such
bailiff as a criminal, he was sentenced by their j