subs. (old).—A prison: see CAGE. [Bridewell was once (NARES) a royal palace, rebuilt by Henry VIII. in 1522, for the reception of Charles V, and called Bridewell, from a famous well in the vicinity of St. Bride’s church. Cardinal Campeius had his first audience there. Edward VI gave it to the City for a house of correction, endowing it with lands and furniture from the Savoy. All this history is, by a curious licence, transferred to Milan, by Dekker, in the second part of the The Honest Whore, Old Plays, iii, 465. The account is very exact, compared with Entick’s The History and Survey of London, iv. 284].
