prison in Southwark being set on fire in 1381 by Wat Tyler during the Peasants' Revolt. John Cope, esquire, is described as marshal of the marshalsea hospice in 1412; William Bradwardyn was described as marshal in 1421. Similarly, Henry Langton, in 1452. Most of the first Marshalsea, as with the second, was taken up by debtors; in 1773 debtors within 12 miles of Westminster could be imprisoned there for a debt of 40 shillings. Jerry White writes that London's poorest debtors were housed in the Marshalsea. Wealthier debtors secured their removal from the Marshalsea by writ of habeas corpus, and arranged to be moved to the Fleet or King's Bench, both of which were more comfortable. The prison also held a small number of men being tried at the Old Bailey for crimes at sea. The Marshalsea was technically under the control of the Knight Marshal, but was let out to others who ran it for profit. For example, in 1727 the Knight Marshal, Philip Meadows, hired John Darby, a printer, as prison governor, who in turn leased it to William Acton, a butcher (who was later tried for murdering three of its prisoners). Acton had previously worked as one of the prison's turnkeys. He paid Darby £140 a year () for a seven-year lease, giving him the right to act as resident warden and chief turnkey, and an additional £260 for the right to collect rent from the rooms, and sell food and drink. Much of our information about the first Marshalsea is about the prison in the early 18th century, courtesy of three sources. John Baptist Grano (1692 – c. 1748), one of George Frederick Handel's trumpeters at the opera house in London's Haymarket, was jailed there for a debt of £99 (£ today), and kept a detailed diary, A Journal of My Life inside the Marshalsea, of his 458-day incarceration from 30 May 1728 until 23 September 1729. The other two key sources are a 1729 report by a parliamentary committee, led by James Oglethorpe MP, on the state of the Fleet and the Marshalsea, and the subsequent murder trial that year of William Acton, the Marshalsea's chief jailor. Master's side By the 18th century, the prison had separate areas for its two classes of prisoner: the master's side, which housed about 50 rooms for rent, and the common or poor side, consisting of nine small rooms,