ABSTRACT
Roger Rippon, of Southwark, was a prisoner in Newgate, where he died on Friday, February 16, 1592/1593. His body was carried in a coffin on February 17 from Newgate to Cheapside and to the home of Justice Richard Young. A special inscription on the coffin described the Archbishop of Canterbury as that “great ennemye of God” and that “great ennemy of the saints.” It characterized Young as one who had “abused his power for the upholding of the Romishe Antichriste, prelacy, and preisthood.” Since Rippon was the sixteenth or seventeenth prisoner to die in the malodorous Newgate, 1587– 1592, the Separatists called the High Commissioners murderers —including Whitgift and Young. The authorities were deeply incensed and made diligent search for those implicated in any way with the coffin, label, and macabre trek through London.
