Although not in Chronological Order, I may as well add another, and the only other mention that has come under my notice of a female Warden (1677):[92] "A Woman Guardian of the Fleet, marries her Prisoner in Execution; he is immediately out of Execution; for the Husband cannot be Prisoner to his Wife, it being repugnant that she, as jaylor, should have custody of him, and he, as husband, the custody of her."
Without some effective supervision, as is the case with our Prison Commissioners, abuses were bound to creep in, and the Governor or Warden of any Prison, (who doubtless had paid heavily for the appointment) had to recoup himself by squeezing the unfortunate prisoners, and we shall find several examples of this in the Fleet. The earliest seems to have been in the second year of Henry IV. (1400) when a petition was presented to Parliament[93] which prays, in its quaint Norman French that "les fees de Gardien de Flete sorént mys en certain" that the fees might be settled.
It is possible that extra fees were taken for a certain amount of liberty allowed to the prisoners by the Warden, who would allow him to go out of gaol on certain conditions, and we may be certain, for a _consideration_ also. The Warden was answerable for his Prisoner, and if he escaped, he had to pay the debt, so that we may be certain that his ephemeral liberty was highly purchased. That this was the case we find in 7 and 8 Hen. IV. (1406)[94] "que si ascun Gaoler lesseroit tiel Prisoner aler a large par mainprise[95] ou en baile, que adonques le persone envers qi le dit Prisoner estoit condempne aureoit sa action et recoverir envers le dit Gaoler." Or in English, "_That if any Gaoler allowed such Prisoner to go at large, either by mainprize or bail, that, then, the Person to whom the Prisoner was indebted might have his action, and recover against the said Gaoler._" Yet, notwithstanding this, there were many actions brought against the Wardens for allowing their prisoners to escape. A relic of this power of the Wardens to accord a certain amount of liberty to their prisoners, obtained till the last hours of the Fleet. There was, in the _Rules_, a defined district surrounding the Prison, in which prisoners, on providing approved sureties for the amount of their debt, and paying some fee, might reside, on condition that they did not overstep the boundaries. That this custom of granting temporary _exeats_ was very ancient, is indisputable, for, in the 1 Richard II. (1377) a complaint was made that the Warden of the Fleet "sometimes by mainprize, or by bail, and sometimes without any mainprize, with a Baston of the Fleet," _i.e._, accompanied by a prison official, would allow his charges to go abroad, "even into the country."