ad to the world, and utterly
forgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to
set them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place of
custody. But they, refusing to comply, lest they should incur the anger
of the mob, turned them into the streets, where they wandered up and
down hardly remembering the ways untrodden by their feet so long, and
crying--such abject things those rotten-hearted jails had made them--as
they slunk off in their rags, and dragged their slipshod feet along the
pavement.

Even of the three hundred prisoners who had escaped from Newgate, there
were some--a few, but there were some--who sought their jailers out and
delivered themselves up: preferring imprisonment and punishment to the
horrors of such another night as the last. Many of the convicts, drawn
back to their old place of captivity by some indescribable attraction,
or by a desire to exult over it in its downfall and glut their revenge
by seeing it in ashes, actually went back in broad noon, and loitered
about the cells. Fifty were retaken at one time on this next day, within
the prison walls; but their fate did not deter others, for there they
went in spite of everything, and there they were taken in twos and
threes, twice or thrice a day, all through the week. Of the fifty just
mentioned, some were occupied in endeavouring to rekindle the fire; but
in general they seemed to have no object in view but to prowl and lounge
about the old place: being often found asleep in the ruins, or sitting
talking there, or even eating and drinking, as in a choice retreat.

Besides the notices on the gates of the Fleet and the King's Bench,
many similar announcements were left, before one o'clock at noon, at
the houses of private individuals; and further, the mob proclaimed their
intention of seizing on the Bank, the Mint, the Arsenal at Woolwich, and
the Royal Palaces. The notices were seldom delivered by more than one
man, who, if it were at a shop, went in, and laid it, with a bloody
threat perhaps, upon the counter; or if it were at a private
house, knocked at the door, and thrust it in the servant's hand.
Notwithstanding the presence of the military in every quarter of the
town, and the great force in the Park, these messengers did their
errands with impunity all through the day. So did two boys who went
down Holborn alone, armed with bars taken from the railings of Lord
Mansfield's house, and demanded money for the ri