Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [19]
Law now faced the prospect of several months in the King’s Bench prison, a loathsome penal establishment. But unlike the fortress Newgate, where the turnkey locked the prison gates and did not reappear till morning, King’s Bench was notoriously insecure. Ever since he was moved there, friends had urged him to try to escape. Even Warriston, pillar of the establishment though he was, whispered that Law was “a blockhead if he make not his escape which he may easily do considering the nature of that prison.” So far Law had resisted, hoping that he would be legally released. Now, faced with what seemed an interminable wait and a doubtful outcome, he listened. Friends offered to smuggle in tools, and by mid-October he was surreptitiously filing down the bars of his prison cell, dreaming of freedom.
It was a short-lived illusion. On October 20 the diarist Narcissus Luttrell noted that Law’s filed bars had been discovered by one of his guards. To prevent any further attempts he was put in handcuffs and leg irons. Even the stalwart Warriston now despaired. “I am afraid Mr. Law shall be hanged at last, for I am in a manner resolved to meddle no more in the matter; had he had his senses about him, he had been out of danger long before now,” he wrote despondently. A tragic conclusion seemed even more certain when Judge Holt decided that Law’s legal objections had failed. He would face the Wilson appeal as charged in the new year of 1695.
So much for the record. At this point traditional legend and probable fact diverge. According to the usual story, which Law did nothing to discourage, somehow he laid his hands on powerful opiates and more tools. Shortly before his trial, he broke free of his irons, drugged his guards, filed down the bars of his cell, scaled the prison wall—and suffered no more than a sprained ankle in the process. A waiting carriage then whisked him to the coast, where he sailed to safety on the Continent.
The truth was almost certainly rather more complex and much more astonishing. By autumn of 1694, Law had given up hope of legally escaping the death sentence, but his friends had not forgotten him and his case was still debated in court circles. The king remained irresolute, but eventually, with royal blessing, the Duke of Shrewsbury announced to Warriston that the only satisfactory conclusion would be for Law to be saved, “provided it can be done in such a manner, as that his majesty did not appear in it, nor must I [Shrewsbury].”
Warriston reacted quickly. Assuring them “that nothing was more easy than to give a verbal order to the keeper to let him make his escape, as had been done in many a thousand cases,” he began to plot Law’s escape himself. Secrecy was paramount: if either the king, the duke, or Warriston was known to have sanctioned the escape of an already notorious convicted felon, a huge public scandal might result. This time the plan succeeded. Warriston, having witnessed the bungled first attempt, knew that Law would need help to escape successfully. He found two underkeepers “to offer . . . services to Mr. Laws.” One night, soon after New Year’s, the underkeepers drugged the guards on the door, took turns to file down Law’s manacles, and released him from his cell. A few days later Warriston met the duke, who “whispered to me in a crowd, that my friend was at liberty . . . and prayed me to keep his secret.” Warriston was as good as his word and never spoke of the matter “till King William’s death, or at least that the duke was out of all business.”
To Law the freedom of which he had dreamed and despaired came as a shock. He did not expect to be pushed to liberty, and fearful that the open door and sleeping guards were merely another example of Wilson chicanery, was bemused when it happened. Years later he would own that “though he knew nothing nor does yet know of the truth . . . that he himself was surprised with the zeal and forwardness of the underkeepers who relieved one another in sawing off his irons.