{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2022
The Damned Crew, or Cursed Crew, was a group of young gentlemen in late 16th and early 17th century
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
noted for habitually swaggering drunk through the streets, assaulting passers-by and
watchmen
''Watchmen'' is a comic book Limited series (comics), limited series by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 19 ...
. The earliest certain reference to such a group appears in a sermon preached by
Stephen Gosson
Stephen Gosson (April 1554 – 13 February 1624) was an English satirist.
Biography
Gosson was baptized at St George's Church, Canterbury, on 17 April 1554. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1572, and on leaving the university in 1576 ...
at
St Paul's Cross
Paul's Cross (alternatively "Powles Crosse") was a preaching cross and open-air pulpit in St Paul's Churchyard, the grounds of Old St Paul's Cathedral, City of London. It was the most important public pulpit in Tudor and early Stuart Englan ...
on 7 May 1598, when he claimed that a gang of roisterers of that name – "menne without feare, or feeling, eyther of Hell or Heauen, delighting in that title" – had all been drowned together when the boat in which they were sailing down the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...
had been upset near
Gravesend
Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, situated 21 miles (35 km) east-southeast of Charing Cross (central London) on the Bank (geography), south bank of the River Thames, opposite Tilbury in Essex. Located in the diocese of Roche ...
. Another, possibly earlier reference, is in the work of the pamphleteer
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe (also Nash; baptised 30 November 1567 – c. 1601) was an English Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel '' The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including '' Pierce P ...
, who in 1592 described a vain young man attempting to give himself an air of singularity by wearing his hat pulled low over his eyes “like one of the cursed crue”.
By 1600 a leading member of the Damned Crew was Sir Edmund Baynham (1577 - 1642?), a disaffected
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
later implicated in the
Essex
Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...
rebellion and the
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against James VI and I, King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English ...
. Baynham had originally been admitted to the
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...
in 1595 to study law but soon switched to adventuring. He followed the
Earl of Essex
Earl of Essex is a title in the Peerage of England which was first created in the 12th century by King Stephen of England. The title has been recreated eight times from its original inception, beginning with a new first Earl upon each new cre ...
on his ill-fated expedition to
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
and was knighted there by him "on the sands" just before Essex returned to England. Thereafter, Baynham was among Essex's most loyal supporters.
On the night of Tuesday March 18, 1600 Baynham and some others left the
Mermaid Tavern
The Mermaid Tavern was a tavern on Cheapside in London during the Elizabethan era, located east of St. Paul's Cathedral on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street. It was the site of the so-called "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen", a dri ...
at midnight and set off apparently looking for trouble. They "cast off their cloaks and upper garments, drew rapiers and daggers, marched through the streets" and when challenged by the watch they attacked. After a scuffle they were overpowered, disarmed and marched to the Counter prison, Baynham shouting that "he cared not a fart for the lord mayor or any magistrate in London." Instead of being tried by the ordinary London authorities however they were remitted to
Star Chamber
The court of Star Chamber () was an English court that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster, from the late to the mid-17th century (), and was composed of privy counsellors and common-law judges, to supplement the judicial activities of the ...
on the personal intervention of the Queen, "for the more exemplar punishment of so great and outrageous disorder." Having at first denied the charges they changed their plea to guilty, "confessed their faults and submitted themselves to the court, and proved that all was done in drink and heat." They were fined £200 and imprisoned.''The House of Commons 1558 - 1603'', ed. P. W. Hasler (H.M.S.O. 1981), I, p.408
A contemporary satirical poem, ''The letting of humors blood in the head-veine'' by
Samuel Rowlands
Samuel Rowlands (c. 1573–1630) was an English writer of pamphlets in prose and verse which reflect the follies and humours of lower middle-class life in his day. He seems to have had no literary reputation at the time, but his work throws much ...
, describes the triumph of the watch and the discomfiture of the Damned Crew.