the "valiant Forster beat
every one who engaged him: so that he triumphed with his feathers in the
prison, though he could not do it in the field." On the tenth of April
that gentleman made his escape: and henceforth, a lieutenant, with
thirty of the Foot Guards, was ordered to do constant duty at Newgate.
Meantime, crowded as the building was, a spotted fever broke out, and
seemed likely to relieve the civil authorities from no small number of
the unfortunate prisoners.

On the eighth of May, Mr. Radcliffe was arraigned at the Exchequer Bar,
at Westminster, for High Treason: to this he pleaded not guilty. In a
few days afterwards he was brought there again, and tried upon the
indictment; he had no plea to offer in his defence, and was found
guilty.

He soon afterwards was carried to Westminster, accompanied by eleven
other prisoners, to receive sentence of death. They were conveyed in six
coaches to the Court. As the coach in which Mr. Radcliffe was seated,
drove into Fleet Street, it encountered the state carriage in which
George the First, who was then going to Hanover for the first time
since his accession, was driving. This obliged Mr. Radcliffe's coach to
stop; and, perceiving that he was opposite to a distiller's shop, he
called for a pint of aniseed, which he and a fellow-prisoner, with a
servant of Newgate, drank, and then proceeded to Westminster.

Mr. Radcliffe was several times reprieved; and it was thought he might
have been pardoned; but affrighted, perhaps, by his brother's fate, and
probably weary of imprisonment, he now began to project a plan of
escape, to which he was emboldened by the great success of several
similar attempts. Greater vigilance was, indeed, resorted to in the
prison, after the flight of Brigadier Mackintosh, who had knocked down
the turnkey, and ran off through the streets: and all cloaks,
riding-hoods, and arms, were prohibited being brought in by the visiters
who came to visit the prisoners. It is amusing to hear, that a certain
form of riding-hoods acquired, at this time, the name of a Nithsdale, in
allusion to the escape of the Earl of Nithsdale.[408]

On the day appointed for Mr. Radcliffe's escape, the prisoners gave a
grand entertainment in Newgate: this took place in a room called the
Castle, in the higher part of the prison. Mr. Radcliffe, when the party
were at the highest of their mirth, observing a little door open in the
corner of the room, passed through it followe