Note 3. 1. 20 — GLOSSARY

our two Pounds, the Compters. The London Compters or Counters were two sheriff’s prisons for debtors, etc., mentioned as early as the 15th century. In Jonson’s day they were the Poultry Counter and the Wood Street Counter. They were long a standing joke with the dramatists, who seem to speak from a personal acquaintance with them. Dekker (Roaring Girle, Wks. 3. 189) speaks of ‘Wood Street College,’ and Middleton (Phoenix, Wks. 1. 192) calls them ‘two most famous universities’ and in another place ‘the two city hazards, Poultry and Wood Street.’ Jonson in Every Man in (Wks. 1. 42) speaks of them again as ‘your city pounds, the counters’, and in Every man out refers to the ‘Master’s side’ (Wks. 2. 181) and the ‘two-penny ward,’ the designations for the cheaper quarters of the prison.