Note 685 — THE BLACK BOOK.

black dogs of Newgate] A tract, partly verse and partly prose, called The Blacke Dogge of Newgate: both pithie and profitable for all Readers. London. 4to. n. d. (reprinted with some additions and alterations in 1638), was written, or at least professes to be written, by Luke Hutton, who, for robberies and trespasses, was hanged at York in 1598. Under the title of The Black Dog of Newgate, it was the author’s design to “shadow the knauerie, villanie, robberie, and Cunnicatching, committed daily by diuers, who in the name of seruice and office, were as it were, attendants at Newgate.” Sig. D 2. “They will vndertake if a man be robd by the way, they will helpe the party offended to his money againe, or to the theeues at the least. Likewise, if a Purse be cut, a House broken, a peece of Plate stole, they will promise the like: mary, to further this good peece of seruice, they must haue a Warrant procured from some Justice at the least, that by the sayd general Warrant, they may take vp all suspected persons: which being obteined, then marke how notably therewith they play the knaues, how shamefully they abuse the Justices who graunted the Warrant, and how notoriouslie they abuse a great sort of poore men, who neither the Warrant mentioneth, nor the partye agreeued in any wise thought to molest or trouble.” Sig. D 3. He then proceeds to give several instances of their various knaveries.