Bodenham Rewse was even more active thanJenkins, and moved easily from
prosecuting ‘loose’ women on behalf of the reform societies to other targets. He
was, for example, the only witness, besides the victim, in the prosecution of a
highwayman at the Old Bailey in February 1695 —though he failed to earn a
large reward when the accused was acquitted by the jury.^54 He more than made
up for this in the following year, when he shared a reward of a thousand pounds
with four others for the part he played in the arrest of one of the conspirators in
the plot to assassinate William III.^55 In the meantime he had taken up the pros-
ecution of coiners and clippers. He was involved in such cases in 1694 and
1696 ,^56 and even more actively towards the end of the decade, when counter-
feiting rather than clipping was at the heart of the Mint’s concerns. By 1699 at
the latest Rewse was one of several thief-takers employed by Newton at the Mint
to seek out and arrest coiners. He worked frequently with a man we shall learn
more about presently, Robert Saker (occasionally spelled Seger or Segars), who
was an active thief-taker over this period. In March 1699 Saker deposed before
Newton that having learned from an informer that one John Ellis had given her
counterfeit money to put off for him, he, Rewse, and a constable lay in wait and
apprehended Ellis in Aldersgate Street, searched him, and found him carrying
counterfeit coins.^57 In December Rewse got a warrant from Newton on the basis
of ‘certain concurrent informacon that he hath had from severall Persons’
and—again with Saker and a constable—arrested Humphrey Hanwell in
Southwark as he was making counterfeit shillings in a cellar.^58 And, under an-
other warrant from Newton, he also arrested Cecilia Labree, who was to be in
and out of court on coining charges over the next several years.^59
That Rewse had acquired a considerable knowledge of coining networks in
London and in the country by the end of the decade is confirmed by his being
able to depose before Newton in December 1699 about the identity of a man in
whom the warden of the Mint was interested, and able to confirm—or so he
said—that he had been indicted at the Old Bailey for coining eighteen months
earlier.^60 Newton clearly put a good deal of faith in him. And it was perhaps
through this connection, or perhaps because he had been in and around the
London prisons so much in the course ofhis hunting for coiners and had made
sufficient money by it (rather than as an embroiderer, which he continued to be
called in court documents), that Rewse was able to buy the post of head turnkey,
or deputy keeper, of Newgate gaol in 1701.^61
Detection and Prosecution 239as they must have anticipated, equipment used in the making of counterfeit half guineas (CLRO:
London Sess. Papers, September 1696 ).
(^54) CLRO: SF 408 , February 1695 , Gaol Delivery ind. (Harrison). (^55) CTB 1696 – 7 , p. 277.
(^56) CLRO: SF 404 , August 1694 , Gaol Delivery inds. (Ilive and Penny); SF 405 , October 1694 , Gaol
Delivery ind. (Harris); SM 66 , August 1695 , Gaol Delivery recogs. 8 and 9 ; SF 412 , August 1695 , Gaol
Delivery ind. (Walthall).
(^57) PRO, Mint 15 / 17 , no. 164. (^58) PRO, Mint 15 / 17 , nos. 253 – 4 , 295.
(^59) CLRO: London Sess. Papers,January–February 1700. (^60) PRO, Mint 15 / 17 , no. 238.
(^61) We know he bought it then and how much he paid for it because in 1715 his estranged wife brought