over which the fierce and notoriously cruel Judge Jeffreys was to preside.
So paralysed by horror was the poor mother, whose health had long been very frail, that she had been unable herself to leave the house and seek permission to visit her sons. And Hannah had persuaded her not to attempt a task so much beyond her powers.
"I will go first, mother," she said. "I will go with my good grandfather, who will gain me admission, and we will take money with us. Money will do much within Newgate, they say, to ameliorate the condition of the prisoners. Another day thou shalt go; but let me be the first."
So Hannah had gone under the safe-keeping of her grandfather, Mr. Kiffin, a citizen well known and greatly respected in the town, and the mother was awaiting their return in a fever of anxiety.
She was turning over in her bewildered brain a thousand schemes for the preservation of her boys. But the more she pondered, the more helpless did she become. True, she had many friends, and several possessed of wealth and influence in the city; but these were for the most part, from their strong Protestant and dissenting or Puritan leanings, so obnoxious to the Court party that intervention by them would do rather harm than good.
Her own father, Mr. Kiffin, was one of these.
