142 DORSET GAOL AND THE MONMOUTH REBELLION. 



John Pearam, ditto ; Feb. 4th, John Manering, ditto ; Feb. 5th, 

 Robert Biles, ditto ; Feb. yth, Henry Hatherly, ditto ; Mary 

 Whiting; Feb. i6th, William Cumden, ditto; Feb. lyth, Henry 

 Russell, ditto. 



Probably others, such as Mary Blake, may have been prisoners, 

 but they were not so styled in the entry, and cannot, therefore, 

 be reckoned. It is noticeable that the burials of " prisoners " 

 suddenly ceased on February lyth. Perhaps the survivors were 

 then removed to healthier quarters, or perhaps our little church- 

 yard could make no more room, and some other parish succeeded 

 to the sad duty of finding them a last resting place. 



And where was the prison in which these 18 suffered and 

 died ? The history of four prisons is known in Dorchester. 

 The oldest stood once in Gaol Lane, giving its name to the 

 lower end of the long street now called Icen Way. At the 

 upper end of the street stood the gallows, from which that end 

 of the modern Icen Way received its name of Gallows Hill. 

 Old maps of Dorchester show exactly where the gallows stood, 

 but they do not mark the site of the prison. Hutchins and 

 Savage say that the gaol stood at the corner of Gaol Lane, on a 

 site afterwards occupied by the Angel Inn. An old lease of All 

 Saints' Church property, of the first half of the iyth century, 

 defines the same property as adjoining the Gaol. This 

 absolutely fixes the site of the old prison, and afterwards the 

 Angel Inn, at the corner of Icen Way and High East Street. 

 The ground is now covered by Crocker's basket shop, No. 12, 

 High East Street, and probably Nos. i and 2, Icen Way. The 

 good stone walls of these old cottages may be ccmposed of the 

 materials of the oldest gaol of Dorchester. 



But this could not have been the prison of 1685, for the same 

 historians inform us that about the year 1633 a new gaol was 

 built at the lower end of High East Street on the north side. In 

 this second gaol the godly Parson Benn ministered to the 

 prisoners and built a chapel for them. He was deprived in 1662, 

 23 years before the Monmouth Rebellion ; therefore, certainly 

 the prison of that time was the second known in history, built 



