FLEET PRISON. A celebrated London jail, which stood on the east side of Farringdon Street, on what was formerly called Fleet Market. The keeper of it was called the Warden of the Fleet. It derived its name from the Fleet rivulet (so named from its rapidity), which flowed into the Thames. In 1842 the separate jurisdiction an ciently vested in the wardens of the Fleet and the INIarshalsea was abolished, and their func tions transferred to the Court of Queen's Bench, the Fleet being thenceforth known as the Queen's prison. The Fleet was the royal prison as far back as the twelfth century. The followers of \Vat Tyler burned it in the reign of Richard 11. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it acquired a high historical interest from its hav ing been the prison of the religious martyrs of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and of the po litical victims of the courts of the Star Chamber and High Commission in that of Charles I. On the
abolition of the Star Chamber, in 1641. the Fleet became a place of confinement for debtors and persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. During the eighteenth century it was the scene of every kind of atrocity and brutality. from the extortion of the keepers and the custom of permitting the warden to underlet it. The Fleet was several times rebuilt ; the last building was erected after the burning of the older one in the Gordon riots of 1780, the predecessor of which had been de stroyed in the great fire of London in 1666. Lat terly it usually contained 250 prisoners, and kept ward of about 60 outdoor (Menus for debt priv ileged to live within the rules. See DEBTOR.