Act 5 — THE BLACK BOOK.

507The Blacke Booke. London Printed by T. C. for Jeffrey Chorlton. 1604. 4to.

508

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER; OR, THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THIS BOOK.

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 509devouring. 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.

510

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:

511So 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.

512The 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.

513THE 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 514standing 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 515at 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 516of 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 517honest 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 518humours, 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 519and 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, 520and 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 521money 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, 522that 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 523down 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 524all 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 525like 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.

526This 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 527such 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 528turn 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 529and 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 530myself 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 531bade 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 532the 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); 533and 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 534apparel 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 535in 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 536more, 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 537Kindness,^[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 538to 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 539their 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 540down 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. 541Nay, 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 542him 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 543alley, 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 544ordinaries, 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 545with 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.

And now, kinsmen and friends, wind about me; my breath begins to cool, and all my powers to freeze; and I can say no more to you, nephews, than I have said,—only this, I leave you all, like ratsbane, to poison the realm. And, I pray, be all of you as arrant villains as you can be; and so farewell: be all hanged, and come down to me as soon as you can.

This said, he departed to his molten kingdom: 546the wind risse,^[700] the bottom of the chair flew out, the scrivener fell flat upon his nose; and here is the end of a harmless moral.

Now, sir, what is your censure^[701] now? you have read me, I am sure; am I black enough, think you, dressed up in a lasting suit of ink? do I deserve my dark and pitchy title? stick I close enough to a villain’s ribs? is not Lucifer liberal to his nephews in this his last will and testament? Methinks I hear you say nothing; and therefore I know you are pleased and agree to all, for qui tacet, consentire videtur; and I allow you wise and truly judicious, because you keep your censure to yourself.

547