Chapter XVII: Epilogue: To the (1)

LAST SATIRE OF THE FIRST BOOK.[568]

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Thus may we see by folly of[t] the wise
Stumble and fall into fool’s paradise,
For jocund wit of force must jangling be;
Wit must have his will, and so had he:
Wit must have[569] his will, yet, parting of the fray,
Wit was enjoin’d to carry the fool away.

_Qui color[570] albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo._

_On the death[571] of that great master in his art and
quality, painting and playing_, R[ICHARD] BURBAGE.

Astronomers and star-gazers this year
Write but of four eclipses; five appear,
Death interposing Burbage; and their staying
Hath made a visible eclipse of playing.
THO. MIDDLETON.

_In the just worth[572] of that well-deserver, Master_
JOHN WEBSTER, _and upon this masterpiece of
tragedy_.

In this thou imitat’st one rich and wise,
That sees his good deeds done before he dies;
As he by works, thou by this work of fame
Hast well provided for thy living name.
To trust to others’ honourings is worth’s crime;
Thy monument is rais’d in thy life-time;
And ’tis most just, for every worthy man
Is his own marble, and his merit can
Cut him to any figure, and express
More art than death’s cathedral palaces,
Where royal ashes keep their court. Thy note
Be ever plainness, ’tis the richest coat:
Thy epitaph only the title be,—
Write _Duchess_, that will fetch a tear for thee;
For who e’er saw this duchess live and die,
That could get off under a bleeding eye?

_In Tragœdiam._

_Ut lux ex tenebris ictu percussa tonantis,
Illa, ruina malis, claris fit vita poetis._
THOMAS MIDDLETONUS,
_Poeta et Chron. Londinensis_.

THE BLACK BOOK.

_The Blacke Booke. London Printed by T. C. for Jeffrey
Chorlton._ 1604. 4to.

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER;

OR,
THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THIS BOOK.

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To all those that are truly virtuous, and can touch
pitch and yet never defile themselves; read the
mischievous lives and pernicious practices of villains,
and yet be never the worse at the end of the book, but
rather confirmed the more in their honest estates and
the uprightness of their virtues;—to such I dedicate
myself, the wholesome intent of my labours, the modesty
of my phrases, that even blush when they discover vices
and unmask the world’s shadowed villanies: and I account
him as a traitor to virtue, who, diving into the deep of
this cunning age, and finding there such monsters of
nature, such speckled lumps of poison as panders,
harlots, and ruffians do figure, if he rise up silent
again, and neither discover or publish them to the civil
rank of sober and continent livers, who thereby may shun
those two devouring gulfs, to wit, of deceit and
luxury,[573] which swallow up more mortals than Scylla
and Charybdis, those two cormorants and Woolners[574] of
the sea, one tearing, the other devouring. Wherefore I
freely persuade myself, no virtuous spirit or judicial
worthy but will approve my politic moral, where, under
the shadow of the devil’s legacies, or his bequeathing
to villains, I strip their villanies naked, and bare the
infectious bulks[575] of craft, cozenage, and panderism,
the three bloodhounds of a commonwealth. And thus far I
presume that none will or can except at this—which I
call the Black Book, because it doubly damns the devil—
but some tainted harlot, noseless bawd, obscene ruffian,
and such of the same black nature and filthy condition,
that poison the towardly spring of gentility, and
corrupt with the mud of mischiefs the pure and clear
streams of a kingdom. And to spurgall such, who reads me
shall know I dare; for I fear neither the ratsbane of a
harlot nor the poniard of a villain.

T. M.

A MORAL.

LUCIFER _ascending, as Prologue to his own Play_.

Now is hell landed here upon the earth,
When Lucifer, in limbs of burning gold,
Ascends this dusty theatre of the world,
To join his powers; and, were it number’d well,
There are more devils on earth than are in hell.
Hence springs my damnèd joy; my tortur’d spleen
Melts into mirthful humour at this fate,
That heaven is hung so high, drawn up so far,
And made so fast, nail’d up with many a star;
And hell the very shop-board of the earth,
Where, when I cut out souls, I throw the shreds
And the white linings of a new-soil’d spirit,
Pawn’d to luxurious[576] and adulterous merit.
Yea, that’s the sin, and now it takes her turn,
For which the world shall like a strumpet burn;
And for an instance to fire false embraces,
I make the world burn now in secret places:
I haunt invisible corners as a spy,
And in adulterous circles there rise I;
There am I conjur’d up through hot desire,
And where hell rises, there must needs be fire.
And now that I have vaulted up so high
Above the stage-rails of this earthen globe,
I must turn actor and join companies,
To share my comic sleek-ey’d villanies;
For I must weave a thousand ills in one,
To please my black and burnt affection.
Why, every term-time I come up to throw[577]
Dissension betwixt ploughmen that should sow
The field’s vast womb, and make the harvest grow:
So comes it oft to pass dear years befal,
When ploughmen leave the field to till the hall;
Thus famine and bleak dearth do greet the land,
When the plough’s held between a lawyer’s hand.
I fat with joy to see how the poor swains
Do box their country thighs, carrying their packets
Of writings, yet can neither read nor write:
They’re like to candles, if they had no light;
For they are dark within in sense and judgment
As is the Hole[578] at Newgate; and their thoughts
Are, like the men that lie there, without spirit.
This strikes my black soul into ravishing music,
To see swains plod and shake their ignorant skulls;
For they are nought but skull, their brain but burr,
Wanting wit’s marrow and the sap of judgment;
And how they grate with their hard naily soles
The stones in Fleet-street, and strike fire in Paul’s;
Nay, with their heavy trot and iron stalk,
They have worn off the brass in the Mid-walk.[579]
But let these pass for bubbles, and so die,
For I rise now to breathe my legacy,
And make my last will, which, I know, shall stand
As long as bawd or villain strides the land.
For which I’ll turn my shape quite out of verse,
Mov’d with the Supplication[580] of poor Pierce,
That writ so rarely villanous from hence
For spending-money to my excellence;
Gave me my titles freely;[581] for which giving,
I rise now to take order for his living.
The black Knight of the Post[582] shortly returns
From hell, where many a tobacconist burns,
With news to smoky gallants, riotous heirs,
Strumpets that follow theatres and fairs,
Gilded-nos’d usurers, base-metall’d panders,
To copper-captains and Pict-hatch[583] commanders,
To all infectious catchpolls through the town,
The very speckled vermin of a crown:
To these and those and every damnèd one
I’ll bequeath legacies to thrive upon;
Amongst the which I’ll give for his redress
A standing pension to Pierce Pennyless.

THE BLACK BOOK.

No sooner was _Pierce Pennyless_ breathed forth, but I,
the light-burning sergeant, Lucifer, quenched my fiery
shape, and whipt into a constable’s night-gown, the
cunningest habit that could be, to search tipsy taverns,
roosting inns, and frothy alehouses; when calling
together my worshipful bench of bill-men,[584] I
proceeded toward Pict-hatch, intending to begin there
first, which (as I may fitly name it) is the very skirts
of all brothel-houses. The watchmen, poor night-crows,
followed, and thought still they had had the constable
by the hand, when they had the devil by the gown-sleeve.
At last, I looking up to the casements of every
suspected mansion, and spying a light twinkling between
hope and desperation, guessed it to be some sleepy
snuff, ever and anon winking and nodding in the socket
of a candlestick, as if the flame had been a-departing
from the greasy body of Simon Snuff the stinkard.
Whereupon I, the black constable, commanded my white
guard not only to assist my office with their brown
bills, but to raise up the house extempory: with that,
the dreadful watchmen, having authority standing
by them, thundered at the door, whilst the candle
lightened in the chamber; and so between thundering and
lightening, the bawd risse,[585] first putting the snuff
to an untimely death, a cruel and a lamentable murder,
and then, with her fat-sagg chin[586] hanging down like
a cow’s udder, lay reeking out at the window, demanding
the reason why they did summon a parley. I told her in
plain terms that I had a warrant to search from the
sheriff of Limbo.[587] How? from the sheriff of
Lime-street? replied mistress wimble-chin (for so she
understood the word Limbo, as if Limbo had been Latin
for Lime-street); why then all the doors of my house
shall fly open and receive you, master constable. With
that, as being the watchword, two or three vaulted out
of their beds at once, one swearing, stocks and stones,
he could not find his stockings, other that they could
not hit upon their false bodies, when to speak troth and
shame myself, they were then as close to their flesh as
they could, and never put them off since they were
twelve year old. At last they shuffled up, and were shut
out at the back part, as I came in at the north part. Up
the stairs I went to examine the feather-beds, and carry
the sheets before the justice, for there was none
else then to carry; only the floor was strewed with
busk-points,[588] silk garters, and shoe-strings,
scattered here and there for haste to make away from me,
and the farther such run, the nearer they come to me.
Then another door opening rearward, there came puffing
out of the next room a villanous lieutenant without a
band, as if he had been new cut down, like one at
Wapping, with his cruel garters[589] about his neck,
which fitly resembled two of Derrick’s necklaces.[590]
He had a head of hair like one of my devils in _Doctor
Faustus_,[591] when the old theatre cracked and frighted
the audience: his brow was made of coarse bran, as if
all the flour had been bolted out to make honester men,
so ruggedly moulded with chaps and crevices, that I
wonder how it held together, had it not been pasted with
villany: his eyebrows jetted out like the round casement
of an alderman’s dining-room, which made his eyes look
as if they had been both dammed in his head; for if so
be two souls had been so far sunk into hell-pits, they
would never have walked abroad again: his nostrils were
cousin-germans to coral, though of a softer condition
and of a more relenting humour: his crow-black
muchatoes[592] were almost half an ell from one end to
the other, as though they would whisper him in the ear
about a cheat or a murder; and his whole face in general
was more detestable ugly than the visage of my grim
porter Cerberus, which shewed that all his body besides
was made of filthy dust and sea-coal ashes: a down
countenance he had, as if he would have looked thirty
mile into hell, and seen Sisyphus rolling, and Ixion
spinning and reeling. Thus in a pair of hoary slippers,
his stockings dangling about his wrists, and his red
buttons like foxes out of their holes, he began, like
the true champion of a vaulting-house,[593] first to
fray me with the bugbears of his rough-cast beard, and
then to sound base in mine ears like the bear-garden
drum; and this was the humour he put on, and the very
apparel of his phrases: Why, master constable, dare you
balk us in our own mansion, ha? What! is not our house
our Cole-harbour,[594] our castle of come-down and
lie-down? Must my honest wedded punk here, my glory-fat
Audrey,[595] be taken napping, and raised up by the
thunder of bill-men?[596] Are we disannulled of our
first sleep, and cheated of our dreams and fantasies? Is
there not law too for stealing away a man’s slumbers, as
well as for sheets off from hedges? Come you to search
an honest bawdy-house, this seven and twenty years in
fame and shame? Go to, then, you shall search, nay, my
very boots too; are you well now? the least hole in my
house[597] too; are you pleased now? Can we not take our
ease in our inn,[598] but we must come out so quickly?
Naud,[599] go to bed, sweet Naud; thou wilt cool thy
grease anon, and make thy fat cake. This said, by the
virtue and vice of my office I commanded my bill-men
down stairs; when in a twinkling discovering myself a
little, as much as might serve to relish me, and shew
what stuff I was made of, I came and kissed the bawd,
hugged her excellent villanies and cunning rare
conveyances;[600] then turning myself, I threw mine
arms, like a scarf or bandileer,[601] cross the
lieutenant’s melancholy bosom, embraced his resolute
phrases and his dissolute humours, highly commending the
damnable trade and detestable course of their living, so
excellent-filthy and so admirable-villanous. Whereupon
this lieutenant of Pict-hatch[602] fell into deeper
league and farther acquaintance with the blackness of
my bosom, sometimes calling me master Lucifer the
head-borough, sometimes master Devillin the little black
constable. Then telling me he heard from Limbo[603] the
second of the last month, and that he had the letter to
shew, where they were all very merry; marry, as he told
me, there were some of his friends in Phlegethon
troubled with the heart-burning; yea, and with the
soul-burning too, thought I, though thou little dreamest
of the torment: then complaining to me of their bad
takings all the last plaguy summer,[604] that there was
no stirrings, and therefore undone for want of doings:
whereupon, after many such inductions to bring the scene
of his poverty upon the stage, he desired, in cool
terms, to borrow some forty pence of me. I, stuft with
anger at that base and lazy petition, knowing that a
right true villain and an absolute practised pander
could not want silver damnation, but, living upon the
revenues of his wits, might purchase the devil and all,
half-conquered with rage, thus I replied to his
baseness: Why, for shame! a bawd and poor? why, then,
let usurers go a-begging, or, like an old Greek, stand
in Paul’s with a porringer; let brokers become whole
honest then, and remove to heaven out of Houndsditch;
lawyers turn feeless, and take ten of a poor widow’s
tears for ten shillings; merchants never forswear
themselves, whose great perjured oaths a’ land turn to
great winds and cast away their ships at sea, which
false perfidious tempest splits their ships abroad and
their souls at home, making the one take salt water and
the other salt fire; let mercers then have conscionable
thumbs when they measure out that smooth glittering
devil, satin, and that old reveller, velvet, in the days
of Monsieur,[605] both which have devoured many an
honest field of wheat and barley, that hath been
metamorphosed and changed into white money. Pooh, these
are but little wonders, and may be easily possible in
the working. A usurer to cry bread and meat is not a
thing impossible; for indeed your greatest usurer is
your greatest beggar, wanting as well that which he hath
as that which he hath not; then who can be a greater
beggar? He will not have his house smell like a cook’s
shop, and therefore takes an order no meat shall be
dressed in it: and because there was an house upon
Fish-street-hill burnt to the ground once, he can abide
by no means to have a fire in his chimney ever since. To
the confirming of which I will insert here a pretty
conceit[606] of a nimble-witted gentlewoman, that was
worthy to be ladified for the jest; who, entering into
a usurer’s house in London to take up money upon
unmerciful interest for the space of a twelvemonth, was
conducted through two or three hungry rooms into a fair
dining-room by a lenten-faced fellow, the usurer’s man,
whose nose shewed as if it had been made of hollow
pasteboard, and his cheeks like two thin pancakes clapt
together; a pitiful knave he was, and looked for all the
world as if meal had been at twenty shillings a bushel.
The gentlewoman being placed in this fair room to await
the usurer’s leisure, who was casting up ditches of gold
in his counting-house, and being almost frozen with
standing—for it was before Candlemas’ frost-bitten term—
ever and anon turning about to the chimney, where she
saw a pair of corpulent, gigantical andirons, that stood
like two burgomasters, at both corners, a hearth briskly
dressed up, and a great cluster of charcoal piled up
together like black puddings, which lay for a dead fire,
and in the dining-room too: the gentlewoman, wondering
it was so long a-kindling, at last she caught the
miserable conceit of it, and calling her man to her,
bade him seek out for a piece of chalk, or some peeling
of a white wall, whilst in the meantime she conceited
the device; when, taking up the six former[607] coals,
one after another, she chalked upon each of them a
satirical letter; which six were these,

T. D. C. R. U. S.;

explained thus,

_These dead coals
Resemble usurers’ souls._

Then placing them in the same order again, turning the
chalked sides inward to try conclusions,[608] which, as
it happened, made up the jest the better: by that time
the usurer had done amongst his golden heaps, and
entertaining the gentlewoman with a cough a quarter of
an hour long, at last, after a rotten hawk and a hem, he
began to spit and speak to her. To conclude; she was
furnished of the money for a twelvemonth, but upon large
security and most tragical usury. When, keeping her day
the twelvemonth after, coming to repay both the money
and the breed of it—for interest may well be called the
usurer’s bastard—she found the hearth dressed up in the
same order, with a dead fire of charcoal again, and yet
the Thames was half-frozen at that time with the
bitterness of the season: when turning the foremost rank
of coals, determining again, as it seemed, to draw some
pretty knavery upon them too, she spied all those six
letters which she chalked upon them the twelvemonth
before, and never a one stirred or displaced; the
strange sight of which made her break into these words:—
Is it possible, quoth she, a usurer should burn so
little here, and so much in hell? or is it the cold
property of these coals to be above a twelvemonth
a-kindling? So much to shew the frozen charity of a
usurer’s chimney.

And then a broker to be an honest soul, that is, to
take but sixpence a-month, and threepence for the
bill-making; a devil of a very good conscience! Possible
too to have a lawyer bribeless and without fee, if his
clientess, or female client, please his eye well: a
merchant to wear a suit of perjury but once a quarter or
so,—mistake me not, I mean not four times an hour; that
shift were too short, he could not put it on so soon, I
think: and, lastly, not impossible for a mercer to have
a thumb in folio, like one of the biggest of the guard,
and so give good and very bountiful measure. But, which
is most impossible, to be a right bawd and poor—it
strikes my spleen into dulness, and turns all my blood
into cool lead. Wherefore was vice ordained but to be
rich, shining, and wealthy, seeing virtue, her opponent,
is poor, ragged, and needy? Those that are poor are
timorous-honest and foolish-harmless; as your carolling
shepherds, whistling ploughmen, and such of the same
innocent rank, that never relish the black juice of
villany, never taste the red food of murder, or the
damnable suckets of luxury:[609] whereas a pander is the
very oil of villains and the syrup of rogues; of
excellent rogues, I mean, such as have purchased five
hundreds a-year by the talent of their villany. How many
such gallants do I know, that live only upon the revenue
of their wits! some whose brains are above an hundred
mile about; and those are your geometrical thieves,
which may fitly be called so, because they measure the
highways with false gallops, and therefore are heirs of
more acres than five-and-fifty elder brothers: sometimes
they are clerks of Newmarket Heath, sometimes the
sheriffs of Salisbury Plain; and another time they
commit brothelry, when they make many a man stand at
Hockley-in-the-Hole. These are your great head landlords
indeed, which call the word _robbing_ the gathering
in of their rents, and name all passengers their
tenants-at-will.

Another set of delicate knaves there are, that dive into
deeds and writings of lands left to young gullfinches,
poisoning the true sense and intent of them with the
merciless antimony of the Common Law, [610] and so by
some crafty clau[s]e or two shove the true foolish
owners quite beside the saddle of their patrimonies, and
then they hang only by the stirrups, that is, by the
cold alms and frozen charity of the gentlemen-defeaters,
who—if they take after me, their great grandfather—will
rather stamp them down in the deep mire of poverty than
bolster up their heads with a poor wisp of charity. Such
as these corrupt the true meanings of last wills and
testaments, and turn legacies the wrong way, wresting
them quite awry, like Grantham steeple.[611]

The third rank, quainter than the former, presents us
with the race of lusty vaulting gallants, that, instead
of a French horse, practise upon their mistresses all
the nimble tricks of vaulting, and are worthy to be made
dukes for doing the somerset so lively. This nest of
gallants, for the natural parts that are in them,
are maintained by their drawn-work dames and their
embroidered mistresses, and can dispend their two
thousand a-year out of other men’s coffers; keep at
every heel a man, beside a French lacquey (a great boy
with a beard), and an English page, which fills up the
place of an ingle:[612] they have their city-horse,
which I may well term their stone-horse, or their horse
upon the stones; for indeed the city being the lusty
dame and mistress of the land, lays all her foundation
upon good stone-work, and somebody pays well for’t
where’er it lights, and might with less cost keep London
Bridge in reparations every fall than mistress Bridget
his wife; for women and bridges always lack mending, and
what the advantage of one tide performs comes another
tide presently and washes away. Those are your gentlemen
gallants that seeth uppermost, and never lin[613]
gallopping till they run over into the fire; so
gloriously accoutred that they ravish the eyes of all
wantons, and take them prisoners in their shops with a
brisk suit of apparel; they strangle and choke more
velvet in a deep-gathered hose[614] than would serve to
line through my lord What-call-ye-him’s coach.

What need I infer[615] more of their prodigal
glisterings and their spangled damnations, when these
are arguments sufficient to shew the wealth of sin,
and how rich the sons and heirs of Tartary[616] are?
And are these so glorious, so flourishing, so brimful
of golden Lucifers or light angels[617] and thou a
pander and poor? a bawd and empty, apparelled in
villanous packthread, in a wicked suit of coarse
hop-bags, the wings[618] and skirts faced with the
ruins of dishclouts? Fie, I shame to see thee dressed
up so abominable scurvy! Complainest thou of bad
doings, when there are harlots of all trades; and
knaves of all languages? Knowest thou not that sin may
be committed either in French, Dutch, Italian, or
Spanish, and all after the English fashion? But thou
excusest the negligence of thy practice by the last
summer’s pestilence: alas, poor shark-gull[619] that
put-off is idle! for sergeant Carbuncle, one of the
plague’s chief officers, dares not venture within
three yards of an harlot, because monsieur Drybone,
the Frenchman, is a leiger[620] before him. At which
speech the slave burst into a melancholy laugh, which
shewed for all the world like a sad tragedy with a
clown in’t; and thus began to reply:—I know not
whether it be [a] cross or a curse, noble Philip of
Phlegethon, or whether both, that I am forced to pink
four ells of bag to make me a summer-suit; but I
protest, what with this long vacation, and the fidging
of gallants to Norfolk and up and down countries,
Pierce was never so pennyless as poor lieutenant
Prigbeard.

With those words he put me in mind of him for whom I
chiefly changed myself into an officious constable, poor
Pierce Pennyless: when presently I demanded of this
lieutenant the place of his abode, and when he last
heard of him (though I knew well enough both where to
hear of him and find him); to which he made answer: Who,
Pierce? honest Pennyless? he that writ the madcap’s
_Supplication_? why, my very next neighbour, lying
within three lean houses of me, at old mistress
Silverpin’s, the only door-keeper[621] in Europe: why,
we meet one another every term-time, and shake hands
when the Exchequer opens; but when we open our hands,
the devil of penny we can see.

With that I cheered up the drooping slave with the
aqua-vitæ[622] of villany, and put him in excellent
comfort of my damnable legacy; saying I would stuff him
with so many wealthy instructions that he should excel
even Pandarus himself, and go nine mile beyond him in
pandarism, and from thenceforward he should never know a
true rascal go under his red velvet slops,[623] and a
gallant bawd indeed below her loose-bodied[624] satin.

This said, the slave hugged himself, and bussed the bawd
for joy: when presently I left them in the midst of
their wicked smack, and descended to my bill-men[625]
that waited in the pernicious alley for me, their
master constable. And marching forward to the third
garden-house, there we knocked up the ghost of mistress
Silverpin, who suddenly risse[626] out of two white
sheets, and acted out of her tiring-house[627] window:
but having understood who we were, and the authority of
our office, she presently, even in her ghost’s apparel,
unfolded the doors and gave me my free entrance; when in
policy I charged the rest to stay and watch the house
below, whilst I stumbled up two pair of stairs in the
dark, but at last caught in mine eyes the sullen blaze
of a melancholy lamp that burnt very tragically upon the
narrow desk of a half bedstead, which descried[628] all
the pitiful ruins throughout the whole chamber. The bare
privities of the stone-walls were hid with two pieces of
painted cloth,[629] but so ragged and tottered,[630]
that one might have seen all nevertheless, hanging for
all the world like the two men in chains between
Mile-end and Hackney. The testern, or the shadow over
the bed, was made of four ells of cobwebs, and a number
of small spinner’s-ropes hung down for curtains: the
spindle-shank spiders, which shew like great lechers
with little legs, went stalking over his head as if they
had been conning of _Tamburlaine_.[631] To conclude,
there was many such sights to be seen, and all under a
penny, beside the lamentable prospect of his hose[632]
and doublet, which, being of old Kendal-green, fitly
resembled a pitched field, upon which trampled many a
lusty corporal. In this unfortunate tiring-house lay
poor Pierce upon a pillow stuffed with horse-meat; the
sheets smudged so dirtily, as if they had been stolen by
night out of Saint Pulcher’s[633] churchyard when the
sexton had left a grave open, and so laid the dead
bodies wool-ward:[634] the coverlet was made of pieces
a’ black cloth clapt together, such as was snatched off
the rails in King’s-street at the queen’s funeral. Upon
this miserable bed’s-head lay the old copy of his
_Supplication_, in foul-written hand, which my black
Knight of the Post conveyed to hell; which no sooner I
entertained in my hand, but with the rattling and
blabbing of the papers poor Pierce began to stretch and
grate his nose against the hard pillow; when after a
rouse or two, he muttered these reeling words between
drunk and sober, that is, between sleeping and waking:—I
should laugh, i’faith, if for all this I should prove a
usurer before I die, and have never a penny now to set
up withal. I would build a nunnery in Pict-hatch[635]
here, and turn the walk in Paul’s[636] into a bowling
alley: I would have the Thames leaded over, that they
might play at cony-holes with the arches under London
Bridge. Well (and with that he waked), the devil is mad
knave still.

How now, Pierce? quoth I, dost thou call me knave to my
face? Whereat the poor slave started up with his hair
a-tiptoe; to whom by easy degrees I gently discovered
myself; who, trembling like the treble of a lute under
the heavy finger of a farmer’s daughter, craved pardon
of my damnable excellence, and gave me my titles as
freely as if he had known where all my lordships lay,
and how many acres there were in Tartary.[637] But at
the length, having recovered to be bold again, he
unfolded all his bosom to me; told me that the Knight of
Perjury had lately brought him a singed letter sent from
a damned friend of his, which was thus directed as
followeth,

_From Styx to Wood’s-close,

or

The Walk of Pict-hatch._

After I saw poor Pennyless grow so well acquainted with
me, and so familiar with the villany of my humour, I
unlocked my determinations, and laid open my intents; in
particular[638] the cause of my uprising, being moved
both with his penetrable petition and his insufferable
poverty, and therefore changed my shape into a little
wapper-eyed[639] constable, to wink and blink at small
faults, and through the policy of searching, to find him
out the better in his cleanly tabernacle; and therefore
gave him encouragement now to be frolic, for the time
was at hand, like a pickpurse, that Pierce should be
called no more Pennyless, like the Mayor’s bench at
Oxford,[640] but rather Pierce Pennyfist, because his
palm shall be pawed with pence. This said, I bade him be
resolved and get up to breakfast, whilst I went to
gather my noise[641] of villains together, and made his
lodging my convocation-house. With that, in a resulting
humour, he called his hose[642] and doublet to him
(which could almost go alone, borne like a hearse upon
the legs of vermin), whilst I thumped down stairs with
my cow-heel, embraced mistress Silverpin, and betook me
to my bill-men;[643] when, in a twinkling, before them
all, I leapt out of master constable’s night-gown into
an usurer’s fusty furred jacket; whereat the watchmen
staggered, and all their bills fell down in a swoon;
when I walked close by them, laughing and coughing like
a rotten-lunged usurer, to see what Italian faces they
all made when they missed their constable, and saw the
black gown of his office lie full in a puddle.

Well, away I scudded in the musty moth-eaten habit; and
being upon Exchange-time, I crowded myself amongst
merchants, poisoned all the Burse[644] in a minute,
and turned their faiths and troths into curds and
whey, making them swear that things now which they
forswore when the quarters struck again; for I was
present at the clapping up of every bargain, which did
ne’er hold, no longer than they held hands together.
There I heard news out of all countries, in all
languages; how many villains[645] were in Spain, how
many luxurs[646] in Italy, how many perjurds in France,
and how many reel-pots in Germany. At last I met, at
half-turn, one whom I had spent mine eyes so long for,
an hoary money-master, that had been off and on some
six-and-fifty years damned in his counting-house, for
his only recreation was but to hop about the Burse
before twelve, to hear what news from the Bank, and how
many merchants were banqrout[647] the last change of the
moon. This rammish penny-father[648] I rounded[649] in
the left ear, winded in my intent, the place and hour;
which no sooner he sucked in, but smiled upon me in
French, and replied,—
O mounsieur Diabla,
I’ll be chief guest at your tabla!
With that we shook hands, and, as we parted, I bade him
bring master Cog-bill the scrivener along with him; and
so I vanished out of that dressing.

And passing through Birchin-lane, amidst a camp-royal of
hose and doublets (master Snip’s backside being turned
where his face stood), I took excellent occasion to slip
into a captain’s suit, a valiant buff doublet, stuffed
with points[650] like a leg of mutton with parsley, and
a pair of velvet slops[651] scored thick with lace,
which ran round about the hose like ringworms, able to
make a man scratch where it itched not. And thus
accoutred, taking up my weapons a’ trust in the same
order at the next cutler’s I came to, I marched to
master Bezle’s ordinary, where I found a whole dozen of
my damned crew, sweating as much at dice as many poor
labourers do with the casting of ditches; when presently
I set in a stake amongst them: round it went; but the
crafty dice having peeped upon me once, knew who I was
well enough, and would never have their little black
eyes off a’ me all the while after. At last came my turn
about, the dice quaking in my fist before I threw them;
but when I yerked them forth, away they ran like Irish
lacqueys[652] as far as their bones would suffer them, I
sweeping up all the stakes that lay upon the table;
whereat some stamped, others swore, the rest cursed, and
all in general fretted to the gall that a new-comer, as
they termed me, should gather in so many fifteens at the
first vomit. Well, thus it passed on, the dice running
as false as the drabs in Whitefriars; and when any one
thought himself surest, in came I with a lurching cast,
and made them all swear round again; but such gunpowder
oaths they were, that I wonder how the ceiling held
together without spitting mortar upon them. Zounds,
captain, swore one to me, I think the devil be thy
good lord and master. True, thought I, and thou his
gentleman-usher. In conclusion, it fatted me better than
twenty eighteenpence ordinaries,[653] to hear them rage,
curse, and swear, like so many emperors of darkness. And
all these twelve were of twelve several companies. There
was your gallant extraordinary thief that keeps his
college of good-fellows,[654] and will not fear to rob a
lord in his coach for all his ten trencher-bearers on
horseback; your deep-conceited cutpurse, who by the
dexterity of his knife will draw out the money, and make
a flame-coloured purse shew like the bottomless pit, but
with never a soul in’t; your cheating bowler, that will
bank false of purpose, and lose a game of twelvepence to
purchase his partner twelve shillings in bets, and so
share it after the play; your cheveril-gutted catchpoll,
who like a horse-leech sucks gentlemen; and, in all,
your twelve tribes of villany; who no sooner understood
the quaint form of such an uncustomed legacy, but they
all pawned their vicious golls[655] to meet there at the
hour prefixed; and to confirm their resolution the more,
each slipped down his stocking, baring his right knee,
and so began to drink a health half as deep as mother
Hubburd’s cellar,—she that was called in[656] for
selling her working bottle-ale to bookbinders, and
spurting the froth upon courtiers’ noses. To conclude, I
was their only captain (for so they pleased to title
me); and so they all risse,[657] _poculis manibusque_
applauding my news; then the hour being more than once
and once reiterated, we were all at our hands again, and
so departed.[658]

I could tell now that I was in many a second house in
the city and suburbs afterward, where my entertainment
was not barren, nor my welcome cheap or ordinary; and
then how I walked in Paul’s[659] to see fashions, to
dive into villanous meetings, pernicious plots, black
humours, and a million of mischiefs, which are bred in
that cathedral womb and born within less than forty
weeks after. But some may object and say, What, doth the
devil walk in Paul’s then? Why not, sir, as well as a
sergeant, or a ruffian, or a murderer? May not the
devil, I pray you, walk in Paul’s, as well as the
horse[660] go a’ top of Paul’s? for I am sure I was not
far from his keeper. Pooh, I doubt, where there is no
doubt; for there is no true critic indeed that will carp
at the devil.

Now the hour posted onward to accomplish the effects of
my desire, to gorge every vice full of poison, that the
soul might burst at the last, and vomit out herself upon
blue cakes of brimstone. When returning home for the
purpose, in my captain’s apparel of buff and velvet, I
struck mine hostess into admiration at my proper[661]
appearance, for my polt-foot[662] was helped out with
bumbast; a property which many worldlings use whose toes
are dead and rotten, and therefore so stuff out their
shoes like the corners of woolpacks.

Well, into my tiring-house[663] I went, where I
had scarce shifted myself into the apparel of my
last will and testament, which was the habit of a
covetous barn-cracking farmer, but all my striplings of
perdition, my nephews of damnation, my kindred and
alliance of villany and sharking, were ready before the
hour to receive my bottomless blessing. When entering
into a country night-gown, with a cap of sickness about
my brows, I was led in between Pierce Pennyless and his
hostess, like a feeble farmer ready to depart England
and sail to the kingdom of Tartary;[664] who setting me
down in a wicked chair, all my pernicious kinsfolks
round about me, and the scrivener between my legs (for
he loves always to sit in the devil’s cot-house), thus
with a whey-countenance, short stops, and earthen
dampish voice, the true counterfeits of a dying
cullion,[665] I proceeded to the black order of my
legacies.

_The last will and testament of Lawrence Lucifer, the
old wealthy bachelor of Limbo,[666]

alias

Dick Devil-barn, the griping farmer of Kent._

In the name of Bezle-bub, Amen.

I, Lawrence Lucifer, alias Dick Devil-barn, sick in
soul, but not in body, being in perfect health to wicked
memory, do constitute and ordain this my last will and
testament irrevocable, as long as the world shall be
trampled on by villany.

_Imprimis_, I, Lawrence Lucifer, bequeath my soul to
hell, and my body to the earth: amongst you all divide
me, and share me equally, but with as much wrangling as
you can, I pray; and it will be the better if you go to
law for me.

As touching my worldly-wicked goods, I give and bequeath
them in most villanous order following:

First, I constitute and ordain Lieutenant Prigbeard,
archpander of England, my sole heir of all such lands,
closes, and gaps as lie within the bounds of my
gift; beside, I have certain houses, tenements, and
withdrawing-rooms in Shoreditch, Tunbold-street,[667]
Whitefriars, and Westminster, which I freely give and
bequeath to the aforesaid lieutenant and the base heirs
truly begot of his villanous body; with this proviso,
that he sell none of the land when he lacks money, nor
make away any of the houses, to impair and weaken the
stock, no, not so much as to alter the property of any
of them, which is, to make them honest against their
wills, but to train and muster his wits upon the
Mile-end of his mazzard,[668] rather to fortify the
territories of Tunbold-street and enrich the county of
Pict-hatch[669] with all his vicious endeavours, golden
enticements, and damnable practices. And, lieutenant,
thou must dive, as thou usest to do, into landed
novices, who have only wit to be lickerish and no more,
that so their tenants, trotting up to London with their
quartridges, they may pay them the rent, but thou and
thy college shall receive the money.

Let no young wriggle-eyed damosel, if her years have
struck twelve once, be left unassaulted, but it must be
thy office to lay hard siege to her honesty, and to try
if the walls of her maidenhead may be scaled with a
ladder of angels;[670] for one acre of such wenches will
bring in more at year’s end than a hundred acres of the
best harrowed land between Deptford and Dover. And take
this for a note by the way,—you must never walk without
your deuce or deuce-ace of drabs after your boot-heels;
for when you are abroad, you know not what use you may
have for them. And, lastly, if you be well-feed by some
riotous gallant, you must practise, as indeed you do, to
wind out a wanton velvet-cap and bodkin from the tangles
of her shop, teaching her—you know how—to cast a
cuckold’s mist before the eyes of her husband, which is,
telling him she must see her cousin new-come to town, or
that she goes to a woman’s labour,[671] when thou
knowest well enough she goes to none but her own. And
being set out of the shop, with her man afore her, to
quench the jealousy of her husband, she, by thy
instructions, shall turn the honest, simple fellow off
at the next turning, and give him leave to see _The
Merry Devil of Edmonton_,[672] or _A Woman killed with
Kindness_,[673] when his mistress is going herself to
the same murder. Thousand of such inventions, practices,
and devices, I stuff thy trade withal, beside the
luxurious[674] meetings at taverns, ten-pound suppers,
and fifteen-pound reckonings, made up afterwards with
riotous eggs and muscadine. All these female vomits and
adulterous surfeits I give and bequeath to thee, which I
hope thou wilt put in practice with all expedition after
my decease; and to that end I ordain thee wholly and
solely my only absolute, excellent, villanous heir.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, Gregory Gauntlet,
high thief on horseback, all such sums of money that are
nothing due to you, and to receive them in, whether the
parties be willing to pay you or no. You need not make
many words with them, but only these two, _Stand and
deliver!_ and therefore a true thief cannot choose but
be wise, because he is a man of so very few words.

I need not instruct you, I think, Gregory, about the
politic searching of crafty carriers’ packs, or ripping
up the bowels of wide boots and cloak-bags; I do not
doubt but you have already exercised them all. But one
thing I especially charge you of, the neglect of which
makes many of your religion tender their winepipes at
Tyburn at least three months before their day; that if
you chance to rob a virtuous townsman on horseback, with
his wife upon a pillion behind him, you presently speak
them fair to walk a turn or two at one side, where,
binding them both together, like man and wife, arm in
arm very lovingly, be sure you tie them hard enough, for
fear they break the bonds of matrimony, which, if it
should fall out so, the matter would lie sore upon your
necks the next sessions after, because your negligent
tying was the cause of that breach between them.

Now, as for your Welsh hue and cry—the only net to catch
thieves in—I know you avoid well enough, because you can
shift both your beards and your towns well; but for your
better disguising henceforward, I will fit you with a
beard-maker of mine own, one that makes all the false
hairs for my devils, and all the periwigs that are worn
by old courtiers, who take it for a pride in their bald
days to wear yellow curls on their foreheads, when one
may almost see the sun go to bed through the chinks of
their faces.

Moreover, Gregory, because I know thee toward enough,
and thy arms full of feats, I make thee keeper of
Combe Park,[675] sergeant of Salisbury Plain, warden
of the standing-places, and lastly, constable of all
heaths, holes, highways, and cony-groves, hoping that
thou wilt execute these places and offices as truly as
Derrick[676] will execute his place and office at
Tyburn.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to thee, Dick Dogman, grand
catchpoll—over and above thy barebone fees, that will
scarce hang wicked flesh on thy back—all such lurches,
gripes, and squeezes as may be wrung out by the fist of
extortion.

And because I take pity on thee, waiting so long as thou
usest to do, ere thou canst land one fare at the
Counter, watching sometimes ten hours together in an
ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth and sampling thy
nose with the red lattice;[677] let him whosoever that
falls into thy clutches at night pay well for thy
standing all day: and, cousin Richard, when thou hast
caught him in the mousetrap of thy liberty with the
cheese of thy office, the wire of thy hard fist being
clapt down upon his shoulders, and the back of his
estate almost broken to pieces, then call thy cluster of
fellow-vermins together, and sit in triumph with thy
prisoner at the upper end of a tavern-table, where,
under the colour of shewing him favour (as you term it)
in waiting for bail, thou and thy counter-leech may
swallow down six gallons of Charnico,[678] and then
begin to chafe that he makes you stay so long before
Peter Bail[679] comes. And here it will not be amiss if
you call in more wine-suckers, and damn as many gallons
again, for you know your prisoner’s ransom will pay for
all; this is, if the party be flush now, and would not
have his credit coppered with a scurvy counter.[680]

Another kind of rest you have, which is called
shoepenny—that is, when you will be paid for every
stride you take; and if the channel be dangerous and
rough, you will not step over under a noble:[681] a very
excellent lurch to get up the price of your legs between
Paul’s-chain and Ludgate.

But that which likes[682] me beyond measure is the
villanous nature of that arrest which I may fitly term
by the name of cog-shoulder, when you clap a’ both sides
like old Rowse[683] in Cornwall, and receive double fee
both from the creditor and the debtor, swearing by the
post of your office to shoulder-clap the party the first
time he lights upon the lime-twigs of your liberty; when
for a little usurer’s oil you allow him day by day free
passage to walk by the wicked precinct of your noses,
and yet you will pimple your souls with oaths, till you
make them as well-favoured as your faces, and swear he
never came within the verge of your eyelids. Nay, more,
if the creditor were present to see him arrested on the
one side, and the party you wot on over the way at the
other side, you have such quaint shifts, pretty
hinderances, and most lawyer-like delays, ere you will
set forward, that in the meantime he may make himself
away in some by-alley, or rush into the bowels of some
tavern or drinking-school; or if neither, you will find
talk with some shark-shift by the way, and give him the
marks of the party, who will presently start before you,
give the debtor intelligence, and so a rotten fig for
the catchpoll! A most witty, smooth, and damnable
conveyance![684] Many such cunning devices breed in the
reins of your offices beside. I leave to speak of your
unmerciful dragging a gentleman through Fleet-street,
to the utter confusion of his white feather, and
the lamentable spattering of his pearl-colour silk
stockings, especially when some six of your black dogs
of Newgate[685] are upon him at once. Therefore, sweet
cousin Richard (for you are the nearest kinsman I have),
I give and bequeath to you no more than you have
already; for you are so well gorged and stuffed with
that, that one spoonful of villany more would overlay
your stomach quite, and, I fear me, make you kick up all
the rest.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, Benedick Bottomless,
most deep cutpurse, all the benefit of pageant-days,
great market-days, ballat-places,[686] but especially
the sixpenny rooms in play-houses, to cut, dive, or nim,
with as much speed, art, and dexterity, as may be
handled by honest rogues of thy quality. Nay, you shall
not stick, Benedick, to give a shave of your office at
Paul’s-cross in the sermon-time: but thou holdest it
a thing thou mayest do by law, to cut a purse in
Westminster Hall; true, Benedick, if thou be sure the
law be on that side thou cuttest it on.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to you, old Bias, alias
Humfrey Hollowbank, true cheating bowler and lurcher,
the one half of all false bets, cunning hooks, subtle
ties, and cross-lays,[687] that are ventured upon the
landing of your bowl, and the safe arriving at the haven
of the mistress,[688] if it chance to pass all the
dangerous rocks and rubs of the alley, and be not choked
in the sand, like a merchant’s ship before it comes
half-way home, which is none of your fault (you’ll say
and swear), although in your own turned conscience you
know that you threw it above three yards short out of
hand, upon very set purpose.

Moreover, Humfrey, I give you the lurching of all young
novices, citizens’ sons, and country gentlemen, that are
hooked in by the winning of one twelvepenny game at
first, lost upon policy, to be cheated of twelve pounds’
worth a’ bets afterward. And, old Bias, because thou art
now and then smelt out for a cozener, I would have thee
sometimes go disguised (in honest apparel), and so
drawing in amongst bunglers and ketlers[689] under the
plain frieze of simplicity, thou mayest finely couch the
wrought-velvet of knavery.

_Item_, I give and bequeath to your cousin-german here,
Francis Fingerfalse, deputy of dicing-houses, all
cunning lifts, shifts, and couches, that ever were, are,
and shall be invented from this hour of eleven-clock
upon black Monday, until it smite twelve a’ clock at
doomsday. And this I know, Francis, if you do endeavour
to excel, as I know you do, and will truly practise
falsely, you may live more gallanter far upon three
dice, than many of your foolish heirs about London upon
thrice three hundred acres.

But turning my legacy to you-ward, Barnaby
Burning-glass, arch-tobacco-taker of England, in
ordinaries, upon stages[690] both common and private,
and lastly, in the lodging of your drab and mistress;
I am not a little proud, I can tell you, Barnaby, that
you dance after my pipe so long, and for all
counterblasts[691] and tobacco-Nashes[692] (which some
call railers), you are not blown away, nor your fiery
thirst quenched with the small penny-ale of their
contradictions, but still suck that dug of damnation
with a long nipple, still burning that rare Phœnix of
Phlegethon, tobacco, that from her ashes, burned and
knocked out, may arise another pipeful. Therefore I
give and bequeath unto thee a breath of all religions
save the true one, and tasting of all countries save
his[693] own; a brain well sooted, where the Muses
hang up in the smoke like red herrings; and look how
the narrow alley of thy pipe shews in the inside, so
shall all the pipes through thy body. Besides, I give
and bequeath to thee[694] lungs as smooth as jet, and
just of the same colour, that when thou art closed in
thy grave, the worms may be consumed with them, and
take them for black puddings.

Lastly, not least, I give and bequeath to thee, Pierce
Pennyless, exceeding poor scholar, that hath made
clean shoes in both universities, and been a pitiful
battler[695] all thy lifetime, full often heard
with this lamentable cry at the buttery-hatch, Ho,
Launcelot, a cue[696] of bread, and a cue of beer! never
passing beyond the confines of a farthing, nor once
munching commons but only upon gaudy-days;[697] to
thee, most miserable Pierce, or pierced through and
through with misery, I bequeath the tithe of all
vaulting-houses,[698] the tenth denier of each heigh,
pass, come aloft! beside the playing in and out of all
wenches at thy pleasure, which I know, as thou mayest
use it, will be such a fluent pension, that thou shalt
never have need to write _Supplication_ again.

Now, for the especial trust and confidence I have in
both you, Mihell[699] Moneygod, usurer, and Leonard
Lavender, broker or pawn-lender, I make you two my full
executors to the true disposing of all these my hellish
intents, wealthy villanies, and most pernicious damnable
legacies.