Another favourite was the ingenious Crowder,
whose humour it was to take the road habited like a bishop, and who
surprised the victims of his greed with ghostly counsel. Thus it was a
merry party that assembled in the lady's parlour, loyal to the memory of
the martyred king, and quick to fling back an offending pleasantry.
But the house in Fleet Street was a refuge as well as a resort, the
sanctuary of a hundred rascals, whose misdeeds were not too flagrantly
discovered. For, while Moll always allowed discretion to govern her
conduct, while she would risk no present security for a vague promise
of advantages to come, her secret influence in Newgate made her more
powerful than the hangman and the whole bench of judges. There was
no turnkey who was not her devoted servitor, but it was the clerk of
Newgate to whom she and her family were most deeply beholden. This was
one Ralph Briscoe, as pretty a fellow as ever deserted the law for a
bull-baiting. Though wizened and clerkly in appearance, he was of a
lofty courage; and Moll was heard to declare that had she not been sworn
to celibacy, she would have cast an eye upon the faithful Ralph, who was
obedient to her behests whether at Gaol Delivery or Bear Garden. For her
he would pack a jury or get a reprieve; for him she would bait a bull
with the fiercest dogs in London. Why then should she fear the law, when
the clerk of Newgate and Gregory the Hangman fought upon her side?
For others the arbiter of life and death, she was only thrice in an
unexampled career confronted with the law.
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