First person: The Inhumanity of an Oxford Jaylor

If there is one person who could claim the title of greatest villain in the thousand-year history of Oxford Castle & Prison, it would have to be William Smith, Marshal Provest of the Kings army, and the jailor at Oxford during the civil war of 1642-46. He is recorded to have beat, tortured and starved his prisoners to death, both rich and poor alike. An incredible series of complaint letters and pamphlets document his many abuses, the most significant of which is the ‘Inhumanity of the King’s Prison Keeper at Oxford’, which is signed by 70 former prisoners all detailing his alleged abuses (1).

The first of these complaints were published by Parliament on the 14th February 1643 (2),  and a larger selection on the 21st March along with a determination to make King Charles aware of the conditions and persuade him to improve them (3). Parliament’s requests were initially met with refusal but they continued to apply pressure. Smith was reviled by parliamentarians and a series of escapes under his watch, including the chief writer of the above-mentioned pamphlet, Edmund Chillenden, must surely have weakened his credibility with royalists. 

In response to the complaints against him, William Smith was removed from office and replaced by a Mr. Thorpe. This is confirmed by the memoires of Edmund Ludlow, who stayed briefly at Oxford Prison (4),  and in a letter written by Edmund Nicholas dated March 17th 1644 which mentions that Smith had been imprisoned by the parliament at Oxford to answer the charges made against him (5).

Prisons in the seventeenth century are very different to what we might expect. Both the parliamentarians and royalists charged prisoners of war for their accommodation (14) and, as you might expect treatment, would be very different for rich and poor captives. The situation at Oxford Castle however appears to have been especially dire. After being dismissed, Smith himself complained that he had received no wages for eight months, was given insufficient guards by the mayor and had been forced to pay the upkeep for 28 of Prince Maurice’s horses, while only having been given an allowance for eight. (15)

The number of escapes alone during his tenure suggests truth in the second statement. Smith was clearly in need of money, both for himself and to run the prison - and his only source of income would therefore have been the prisoners. If this funding was insufficient, then the response would have been extortion. This is exactly what seems to have happened. One of the key complaints that appears again and again is that Smith was greedy. 

There are fifteen reported incidents of extortion within the Inhumanity of the King’s Prison Keeper alone. For example, he apparently hired a priest to denounce parliament to the prisoners, but when the priest asked for payment, Smith clapped them in irons until they relinquished any demands for compensation. (16) As Smith would later complain himself to excuse his actions, (17) these accusations suggest critical underfunding. Yet, according to these accounts, he also refuses to allow help for the prisoners even when the expense is paid by others, such as when a group of women gather seven shillings to give bread only to be refused by Smith. (18)

Similarly he appears to have sometimes allowed doctors to visit, while charging them for the privilege, but on other occasions refuses all requests for medical help resulting in the deaths of prisoners. (19) From the view of the prisoners this behaviour was deeply irrational and the explanation was likely cruelty. At the same time, I do not think these conditions can simply be blamed upon a single man. Instead it speaks to a system of underfunding, corruption and incompetence at the beginning of a civil war.

We have numerous examples of what would happen to those who refused. For example, after a man called Peniman summoned the prisoners to take it, due to a need for soldiers, and they refused “Smith ran after us as fast as his lame legs would give him leave drives us all up again into the Tower striking us with his Cane, swearing deeply that he would wake take it, or he would make us to shit as small as a Rat.” (22) (This was a threat of starvation.) Even those who accepted did not always come out well. In the Inhumanity of the King’s Prison Keeper, the men of Cirencester, even after accepting the protestation, were fined so heavily that it drove one man to suicide. (23)

Smith undoubtedly deserves much of the hatred against him. The sheer volume of complaints against him stand as clear testament to his cruelty. He does seem however to have been placed in a difficult position, with demands made of him that he had no way to reasonably achieve. Conditions do seem to have improved in the later part of the war, though that is likely to have been because of changing circumstances as well as his removal. Prisons as well as prisoner swaps became more organised (24) and it is also likely that the number of prisoners at Oxford Castle decreased rapidly towards the end of the war in 1646 due to scarcity and imminent attack. (25) As if often the case in history, the answer to the simple question of whether William Smith was a villain or unfairly slandered, is complicated, and a bit of both.