Note 448 — ACT V.

Dekker, on the other hand, tells us in The Seven Deadly Sins of London, 1606, that orphans were nowhere more carefully guarded than in London. “For what city in the world,” he writes, “does more dry up the tears of the widow and gives more warmth to the fatherless than this ancient and reverend grandame of cities? Where hath the orphan (that is to receive great portions) less cause to mourn the loss of parents? He finds four and twenty grave senators to be his father instead of one; the city itself to be his mother; her officers to be his servants, who see that he want nothing; her laws to suffer none to do him wrong; and though he be never so simple in wit or so tender in years, she looks as warily to that wealth which is left him as to the apple of her own eye.”