Chapter 16

Hei ho, my hony,My heart shall never rue,Four and twenty now for your Mony,And yet a hard penny worth too.(Rump, 1662 ii, 26.)

Hei ho, my hony,My heart shall never rue,Four and twenty now for your Mony,And yet a hard penny worth too.

Hei ho, my hony,

My heart shall never rue,

Four and twenty now for your Mony,

And yet a hard penny worth too.

(Rump, 1662 ii, 26.)

The music is in Playford’sEnglish Dancing Master, 1686.

Five years earlier, inWit and Drollery, 1656, p. 56; 1661, p. 58. With the original, inM. D., C., p. 300, compare the similar disappointment, by Cleveland, “The Myrtle-Grove” (Poems, p. 160, edit. 1661.)

This is the same, except a few variations, as “Will you please to hear a new ditty?” in ourWestminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 88; Appendix to ditto, pp. xxxvi-vii (compare the coarser verses,p. 368in present volume, and “Upon the biting of Fleas,” inMusarum Deliciæ, 1656; Reprint, p. 64.)

[We here close our Notes to the “Extra Songs” ofMerry Drollery, 1661. But we have still some Additional Notes, on what is common to the editions of 1661, 1670, and 1691 (as promised inM. D., C., p. 363).]

(Common to all editions, 1661, ’70, ’91, and 1875.)

“A pretty slight Drollery.”(Henry IV., pt. 2. Act ii. Sc. 1.)

“A pretty slight Drollery.”

(Henry IV., pt. 2. Act ii. Sc. 1.)

MERRYDROLLERY,Complete.OR,A COLLECTION

Intermixed with PleasantCatches.

The First Part.

Collected byW.N.C.B.R.S.J.G.LOVERS of WIT.

LONDON,Printed forSimon Miller, at the Star, atthe West End of St.Pauls, 1670.

We here give the title-page of the 1670 Edition ofMerry Drollery, Compleat, Part 1st. As mentioned on ourp. 231, the 1670 edition was reissued as a new edition in 1691, but with no alteration except the fresh title-page, with its date and statement of William Miller’s stock in trade.

Of the four “Lovers of Wit,” 1661, we believe we have unearthed one, viz. “R. S.,” inRalph Sleigh, who wrote a song beginning, “Cupid, Cupid, makes men stupid; I’ll no more of such boys’ play;” (Sportive Wit,)Jovial Drollery, 1656, p. 22.

Verse 6. “Mahomet’s pidgeon,” that was taught to pick seeds from out his ear, so that it might be thought to whisper to him. The “mad fellow clad alwaies in yellow,” i.e., in his military Buff-coat—“And somewhat his nose is blew, boys,” certainlyalludes to Oliver Cromwell: His being “King and no King,” to his refusing the Crown offered by the notables whom he had summoned in 1657. As the “New Peers,” his sons Henry and Richard among them, insulted and contemned by the later and mixed Parliament of January 20th, 1658, were “turned out” along with their foes the recalcitrant Commons, on Feb. 4th, we have the date of this ballad established closely.

Two other “Messes of Nonsense” may be found inRecreations for Ingenious Headpieces, 1645 (Reprint,Wit’s Recreations, pp. 400, 401); beginning “WhenNeptune’sblasts,” and “Like to the tone of unspoke speeches.” The latter we believe to have been written by Bishop Corbet. InWit’s Merriment(i.e.Sportive Wit), 1656, is the following: A FANCY:—

When Py crust first began to reign,Cheese parings went to warre.Red Herrings lookt both blew and wan,Green leeks and Puddings jarre.Blind Hugh went out to seeTwo Cripples run a race,The Ox fought with the Humble Bee,And claw’d him by the face.

When Py crust first began to reign,

Cheese parings went to warre.

Red Herrings lookt both blew and wan,

Green leeks and Puddings jarre.

Blind Hugh went out to see

Two Cripples run a race,

The Ox fought with the Humble Bee,

And claw’d him by the face.

These lines furnish a clue to the date of this ballad, (and its “Answer” quickly followed): “Honest Dick” being Richard Cromwell, whose Protectorate lasted only eight months, beginning in September, 1658. “The name with an L—” refers to his unscrupulous rival Lambert; with his spasmodic attempts at supremacy, urged on by his own ambition and that of his wife (accustomed too long to rule Oliver himself, during a close intimacy, not without exciting scandal, while she insisted on displacing Lady Dysart). For an account of Lambert’s twenty-oneyears of captivity, first at Guernsey and later at Plymouth, seeChoice Notes on History, from N. and Q., 1858, pp. 155-163. Lambert played a selfish game, lost it, and needs no pity for having had to pay the stakes. But for “Honest Dick,” “Tumble down Dick,” who had warmly pleaded with his father to save the king’s life in the fatal January of 1649, we keep a hearty liking. Carlyle stigmatizes him as “poor, idle, trivial,” &c., but let that pass. Had Richard been crafty or cruel, like those who removed him from power, his reign might have been prolonged. But “what a wounded name” he would have then left behind, compared with his now stainless character: and, in any case, his ultimate fall was certain.

An allusion to Middleton’s Comedy, “Blurt, Master Constable,” 1602.

The important event here described took place April 20th, 1653, and the ballad immediately followed. (Compare “Cheer up, kind country men,” by S. S., “Rebellion hath broken up house,” and “This Christmas time,” in the Percy Soc. Pol. Bds., iii. 126; 180Loyal Songs, 149, 1694;Rump, ii. 52.) At this date the strife between the fag-end of the Rump and Oliver, who was supported by his council of officers, came to open violence. Fearing his increased power, it was proposed to strengthen the Parliamentarians by admitting a body of “neutrals,” Presbyterians, to act in direct opposition against the army-leaders. With a pretence of dissolving themselves there would have ensued a virtual extension of rule. Anxious and lengthy meetings had been held by Cromwell’s adherents at Whitehall, one notably on the 19th, and continued throughout the night. Despite a promise, or half promise, of delay made to him, the Rump was meantime hurrying onward the objectionable measure, clearly with intention of limiting his influence: amongthe leaders being Sir Hy. Vane, Harry Marten, and Algernon Sidney. They knew it to be a struggle for life or death. From the beginning, this Long Parliament cherished the mistaken idea that they were everything supreme: providence, strength, virtue, and wisdom, etc., etc. If mere empty talk could be all this, such representative wind-bags might deserve some credit. Their doom was sealed; not alone for their incompetence, but also for proved malignity, and the attempt to perpetuate their own mischief, destroying the only power that seemed able to bring order out of chaos.

Cromwell received intelligence, from his adherents within the house, of the efforts being made to hurry the measure for settling the new representation, and then to dissolve for re-election. Major Harrison talked against time; until Cromwell could arrive after breaking up the Whitehall meeting. Ingoldsby, as the second or third messenger, had shown to him the urgent need of action. Followed by Lambert and some half-dozen officers, the General took with him a party of soldiers, reached the house, and found himself not too soon. Surrounding the chamber, and guarding the doors, the troopers remained outside. Clad in plain black, unattended and resolute, Oliver entered, stood looking on his discomfitted foes, and then sat down, speaking to no one except “dusky tough St. John, whose abstruse fanaticisms, crabbed logics, and dark ambitions issue all, as was natural, in decided avarice” (Carlyle’sCromwell, iii. 168, 1671 edit.). Vane must have felt the peril, but held on unflinchingly, imploring the house to dispense with everything that might delay the measure, such as engrossing. The Speaker had risen at last to put the question, before the General started up, uncovered, and began his address. Something of stately commendation for past work he gave them. Perhaps at first his words were uttered solely to obtain a momentary pause, the whilst he gathered up his strength, and measured all the chances, before he broke with them for ever. Soon the tone changed into that of anger and contempt. He heaped reproaches on them: Ludlow says: “He spoke with so much passion and discomposureof mind, as if he had been distracted.” “Your time is come!” he told them: “The Lord has done with you. He has chosen other instruments for the carrying on his work, that are more worthy.”

Vane, Marten, and Sir Peter Wentworth tried to interrupt him, but it was almost beyond their power. Wentworth could but irritate him by indignant censure. He crushed his hat on, sprang from his place, shouting that he would put an end to their prating, and, while he strode noisily along the room, railed at them to their face, not naming them, but with gestures giving point to his invectives. He told them to begone: “I say you are no Parliament! I’ll put an end to your sitting. Begone! Give way to honester men.” A stamp of his foot followed, as a signal; the door flies open, “five or six files of musqueteers” are seen with weapons ready. Resistance (so prompt, with less provocation, in 1642) is felt to be useless, and, except mere feminine scolding, none is attempted. Not one dares to struggle. Afraid of violence, their swords hang idly at their side. As they pass out in turn, they meet the scathing of Oliver’s rebuke. His control of himself is gone. Their crimes are not forgotten. He denounces Challoner as a drunkard, Wentworth for his adultery, Alderman Allen for his embezzlement of public military money, and Bulstrode Whitelock of injustice. Harry Marten is asked whether a whore-master is fit to sit and govern. Vane is unable to resist a feeble protest, availing nothing—“This is not honest: Yea! it is against morality and honesty.” In the absence of such crimes or flagrant sins of his companions, as his own frozen nature made him incapable of committing, there are remembered against him his interminable harangues, his hair-splitting, his self-sufficiency; and all that early deliberate treachery in ransacking his father’s papers, which he employed to cause the death of Strafford. To all posterity recorded, came the ejaculation of Cromwell: “Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane—the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” And, excepting a few dissentient voices, the said posterity echoes the words approvingly. The “bauble” mace had beenborne off ignominiously, the documents were seized, including that of the unpassed measure, the room was cleared, the doors were locked, and all was over. The Long Parliament thus fell, unlamented.

Written and published in 1659; as we see by the references to “Dick(Oliver’sHeir) that pitiful slow-thing, Who was once invested with purple clothing,”—his retirement being in April, 1659. Bradshaw, the bitter Regicide (whose harsh vindictiveness to Charles I. during the trial has left his memory exceptionally hateful), died 22nd November, 1659. Hewson the Cobbler was one of Oliver’s new peers, summoned in January, 1658.

The music to this, by Dr. John Wilson, is in hisChearfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 126.

Gule is misprint for “Goal,” and refers to the Bishops who, having been molested and hindered from attending to vote among the peers, were, on 30th December, 1642, committed to the Tower for publishing their protest against Acts passed during their unwilling absence. Finch, Lord Keeper; who, to save his life, fled beyond sea, and did not return until after the Restoration.

To avoid a too-long interruption, our Additional Note to the “Sessions of the Poets” is slightly displaced from here, and follows later asSection Third.

We have traced this burlesque narrative of the Fire on London Bridge ten years earlier thanMerry Drollery, 1661, p. 81. It appeared (probably for the first time inprint) on April 28th, 1651, at the end of a volume offacetiæ, entitledThe Loves of Hero and Leander(in the 1677 edition, followingOvid de Arte Amandi, it is on p. 142). The event referred to, we suspect, was a destructive fire which broke out on London Bridge, 13th Feb. 1632-3. It is thus described:—“At the latter end of the year 1632, viz., on the 13th Feb., between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a needle-maker, near St. Magnus Church, at the north end of the bridge, by the carelessness of a maid-servant, setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the north end of the bridge, to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses;water being then very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over. Beneath, in the vaults and cellars, the fire remained burning and glowing a whole week after. After which fire, the north end of the bridge lay unbuilt for many years; only deal boards were set up on both sides, to prevent people’s falling into the Thames, many of which deals were, by high winds, blown down, which made it very dangerous in the nights, although there were lanthorns and candles hung upon all the cross-beams that held the pales together.” (Tho. Allen’sHist. and Antiq. of London, vol. ii. p. 468, 1828.) Details and list of houses burnt are given (as inGent. Mag.Nov. 1824), from the MS.Record of the Mercies of God; or, a Thankfull Remembrance, 1618-1635 (since printed), kept by the Puritan Nehemiah Wallington, citizen and turner, of London, a friend of Prynn and Bastwick. He gives the date as Monday, 11th February, 1633. Our ballad mentions the river being frozen over, and “all on the tenth of January;” but nothing is more common than a traditional blunder of the month, so long as the rhythm is kept. (CompareChoyce Drollery,p. 78, and Appendixp. 297).

Another Fire-ballad (in addition to the coarse squib in present vol.,pp. 33-7,) is “Zeal over-heated;” telling of a fire at Oxford, 1642; tune, Chivey Chace; and beginning, “Attend, you brethren every one.” It is notimprobably by Thomas Weaver, being in hisLove and Drollery, 1654, p. 21.

Of this song, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” bef. 1625, the music set by Dr. John Wilson is in hisCheerfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 22.

“Mahomet’s Pigeon,” a frequent allusion: compareM. D. C., pp. 11, 192; and present appendix,p. 356.

See Additional Note in this vol.§ 3,post, for a few words on D’Avenant. Since printingM. D. C., we have been enabled (thanks to W. F. Fowle, Esq., possessor of) to consult the very rare Second Satire, 1655, mentioned on p. 371. It is entitled, “The Incomparable PoemGondibert Vindicatedfrom the Wit-Combats of FourEsquires,Clinias,Dametas,Sancho, andJack Pudding.” [With this three-fold motto:—]

Χοτέει καὶ ἀοίδ τω ἀοίδω.Vatum quoque gratia rara est.Anglicè,One Wit-Brother||Envies another.

Χοτέει καὶ ἀοίδ τω ἀοίδω.

Vatum quoque gratia rara est.

Anglicè,

One Wit-Brother||Envies another.

Printed in the year 1655.” It begins on p. 3, with a poetical address to Sir Willm. Davenant, asking pardon beforehand in case his “yet-unhurt Reputation” should suffer more through the champion than from the attack made by the four “Cyclops, or Wit-Centaurs,” two of whom he unhesitatingly names as “Denham and Jack Donne,” or “Jack Straw.” But even thus early we notice the sarcasm against D’Avenant himself: when in reference to the never-forgotten “flaws” in his face, the Defender writes:—

Willshew thy face(be’t what it will),We’l push ’um yet a quill for quill.

Willshew thy face(be’t what it will),

We’l push ’um yet a quill for quill.

The third poem, p. 8, again to the Poet, mocks him as well as his assailants’ lines (ourM. D. C., p. 108) with twenty triplets:—

After so many poorer scrapsOf Playes which nere had the mishapsTo passe the stage without their claps, &c.

After so many poorer scraps

Of Playes which nere had the mishaps

To passe the stage without their claps, &c.

Next comes a poem “Upon the continuation of Gondibert,” “Ovid to Patmos pris’ner sent.” (Later, we extract the chief lines for the “Sessions” Add. Note.) He is told,

Wash thee inAvon, if thou flie,My waryDavenantso high,YetHypernasonow you shallOre fly this Goose so Capitall.(p. 14.)

Wash thee inAvon, if thou flie,

My waryDavenantso high,

YetHypernasonow you shall

Ore fly this Goose so Capitall.(p. 14.)

After five others, came one Upon the Author, beginning,

Daphne, secure of the buff,Prethee laugh,Yet at these four and their riff raff;Who can holdWhen so bold?And the trim wit ofCoopersgreen hill, ...

Daphne, secure of the buff,

Prethee laugh,

Yet at these four and their riff raff;

Who can hold

When so bold?

And the trim wit ofCoopersgreen hill, ...

Ending thus:—

Denham, thou’lt be shrewdly shentTo inventSuch Drawlery for merriment, &c....A DrawingDonneout of the mire.

Denham, thou’lt be shrewdly shent

To invent

Such Drawlery for merriment, &c....

A DrawingDonneout of the mire.

A burlesque of Gondibert on same p. 18, as “Canto the Second, or rather Cento the first;” begins “All in the Land ofBemboand ofBubb.” One stanza partly anticipates Sam. Butler:—

The Sun was sunk into the watery lapOf her commands the waves, and weary there,Of his long journey, took a pleasing napTo ease his each daies travels all the year.

The Sun was sunk into the watery lap

Of her commands the waves, and weary there,

Of his long journey, took a pleasing nap

To ease his each daies travels all the year.

P. 23 gives “ToDaphneon his incomparable (and by the Critick incomprehended) Poem,Gondibert,” this consolation:“Chear up, dear friend, aLaureatthou must be,” &c. Hobbes comes in for notice, on p. 24, and Denham with his Cooper’s Hill has another slap. The final poem, on p. 27, is “Upon the Author’s writing his name, as in the Title of his Booke, D’Avenant:”—

1.“Your Wits have further than you rode,You needed not to have gone abroad.D’avenantfromAvoncomes,Rivers are still the Muses Rooms.Dort, knows our name, no more Durt on’t;An’t be but for thatD’avenant.2.And when such people are restor’d(A thing belov’d by none that whor’d)My noches then may not appeare,The gift of healing will be near.Meane while Ile seeke somePanax(salve of clowns)Shall heal the wanton Issues and crackt Crowns.I will conclude, Farewell Wit SquirtyFegosAnd drolling gasmenWal-Den-De-Donne-Dego.(Finis.)”

“Your Wits have further than you rode,

You needed not to have gone abroad.

D’avenantfromAvoncomes,

Rivers are still the Muses Rooms.

Dort, knows our name, no more Durt on’t;

An’t be but for thatD’avenant.

2.And when such people are restor’d(A thing belov’d by none that whor’d)My noches then may not appeare,The gift of healing will be near.Meane while Ile seeke somePanax(salve of clowns)Shall heal the wanton Issues and crackt Crowns.I will conclude, Farewell Wit SquirtyFegosAnd drolling gasmenWal-Den-De-Donne-Dego.

And when such people are restor’d

(A thing belov’d by none that whor’d)

My noches then may not appeare,

The gift of healing will be near.

Meane while Ile seeke somePanax(salve of clowns)

Shall heal the wanton Issues and crackt Crowns.

I will conclude, Farewell Wit SquirtyFegos

And drolling gasmenWal-Den-De-Donne-Dego.

(Finis.)”

Here, finally, are Waller, Denham, [Bro]de[rick], and Donne clearly indicated. They receive harder measure, on the whole, than D’avenant himself; so that the Second Volume of Satires, 1655, is neither by the author of “Gondibert,” nor by those who penned the “Certain Verses” of 1653. Q. E. D.

As already mentioned, the popularity of Suckling’s “Ballad on a Wedding” (probably written in 1642) caused innumerable imitations. Some of these we have indicated. InFolly in Print, 1667, is another, “On a Friend’s Wedding,” to the same tune, beginning, “NowTom, ifSucklingwere alive, And knew whoHarrywere to wive.” In D’Urfey’sPills to Purge Melancholy, 1699, p. 81: ed. 1719, iii, 65, is a different “New Balladupon a Wedding” [at Lambeth], with the music, to same tune and model, beginning, “The sleepingThamesone morn I cross’d, By two contendingCharonstost.” Like Cleveland’s poem, as an imitation it possesses merit, each having some good verses.

Among the references herein to Cambridge Taverns is one (3rd verse) to the Myter: part of which fell down before 1635, and was celebrated in verse by that “darling of the Muses,” Thomas Randolph. His lines begin “Lament, lament, ye scholars all!” He mentions other Taverns and the Mitre-landlord, Sam:—

Let theRosewith theFalconmoult,WhileSamenjoys his wishes;TheDolphin, too, must cast her crown:Wine was not made for fishes.

Let theRosewith theFalconmoult,

WhileSamenjoys his wishes;

TheDolphin, too, must cast her crown:

Wine was not made for fishes.

The mention, on pp. 116, of “our bold Army” turning out the “black Synod,” refers less probably to Colonel “Pride’s Purge” of the Presbyterians, on 6th December, 1648, than to the events of April 20, 1653; and helps to fix the date to the same year. In 6th verse the blanks are to be thus filled, “Arms of theRumpor theKing;” “C. R., or O. P.;” the joke of “the breeches” being a supposed misunderstanding of the Commonwealth-Arms on current coin (viz., the joined shields of England and Ireland) for the impression made by Noll’s posteriors. Compare “Saw you the States-Money,” inRumpColl., i. 289. On one side they marked “God with us!”

“Common-wealthon the other, by which we may guessGodand theStateswere not both of a side.”

“Common-wealthon the other, by which we may guess

Godand theStateswere not both of a side.”

This song is almost certainly byThomas Jordan, the City-Poet. With many differences he reprints it laterin hisLondon in Luster, as sung at the Banquet given by the Drapers Company, October 29th, 1679; where it is entitled “The Coronation of Canary,” and thus begins (in place of our first verse):—

Drink your wine away,’Tis my Lord Mayor’s day,Let our Cups and Cash be free.Beer and Ale are both || But the sons of froth,Let us then in wine agree.To taste a Quart || Of every sort,The thinner and the thicker;That spight of Chance || We may advance,The Nobler and the Quicker.Who shall by Vote of every ThroatBe crown’d the King of Liquor.2.MuscadelAvant, BloodyAlicant,Shall have no free vote of mine;Claretis a Prince, And he did long sinceIn the Royal order shine.His face, &c., (as inM. D. C.p. 112.)

Drink your wine away,

’Tis my Lord Mayor’s day,

Let our Cups and Cash be free.

Beer and Ale are both || But the sons of froth,

Let us then in wine agree.

To taste a Quart || Of every sort,

The thinner and the thicker;

That spight of Chance || We may advance,

The Nobler and the Quicker.

Who shall by Vote of every Throat

Be crown’d the King of Liquor.

2.MuscadelAvant, BloodyAlicant,Shall have no free vote of mine;Claretis a Prince, And he did long sinceIn the Royal order shine.His face, &c., (as inM. D. C.p. 112.)

MuscadelAvant, BloodyAlicant,

Shall have no free vote of mine;

Claretis a Prince, And he did long since

In the Royal order shine.

His face, &c., (as inM. D. C.p. 112.)

In sixth verse, “If aCooperwe With a red nose see,” refers to Oliver Cromwell; and proves it to have been written before September, 1658.

The date of this ballad seems to have been 1656, rather than 1658. The despotism of the sword here so powerfully described, was under those persons who are on p. 254 ofM. D. C.designated “Oliver’s myrmidons,” meaning, probably, chiefly the major-generals of the military districts, into which the country was divided after Penruddock’s downfall in 1655. They were Desborough, Whalley, Goffe, Fleetwood, “downright” Skippon, Kelsey, Butler, Worseley, and Berry; to these ten were added Barkstead. Compare Hallam’s account:—“These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the royalist party, and insolent to all civil authority.They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of ten per cent., imposed by Cromwell’s arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with the King during the late wars, where their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among Thurloe’s papers, display a rapacity and oppression greater than their master’s. They complain that the number of those exempted is too great; they press for harsher measures; they incline to the unfavourable construction in every doubtful case; they dwell on the growth of malignancy and the general disaffection. It was not indeed likely to be mitigated by this unparalleled tyranny. All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was Ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and effaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the Star Chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court of justice [by which Gerard and Vowel in 1654, Slingsby and Dr. Hewit in 1658 fell]? A sense of present evils not only excited a burning desire to live again under the ancient monarchy, but obliterated, especially in the new generation, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the apprehension of its former abuses.” (Constitutional Hist. England, cap. x. vol. ii. p. 252, edit. 1872.) This from a writer unprejudiced and discriminating.

Tower hill and Tyburn.The date of this ferocious ballad is not likely to have been long before the execution of the regicides Harrison, Hacker, Cook, and Hew Peters, in October, 1660; some on the 13th, others on the 16th. Probably, shortly before the trial of HarryMarten, on the 10th of the same month. The second verse indicates a considerable lapse of time since Monk’s arrival and the downfall of the Rump (burnt in effigy, Febr. 11, 1659-60); so we may be certain that it was written late, about September, if not actually at beginning of October.

Sir RobertTichbourne, Commissioner for sale of State-lands, Alderman, Regulator of Customs, and Lord Mayor in 1658, was named in the King’s Proclamation, 6th June, 1660, as one of those who had fled, and who were summoned to appear within fourteen days, on penalty of being exempted from any pardon. His name occurs again, among the exceptions to the Act of Indemnity; along with those of Thos. Harrison, Hy. Marten, John Hewson, Jn. Cook, Hew Peters, Francis Hacker, and other forty-five. Nineteen of these fifty-one surrendered themselves: Tichbourne and Marten among them. None of them were executed; although Scoop was, who also had yielded. The trial of the regicides commenced on 9th October, at Hick’s Hall, Clerkenwell.

Hugh Peterssuffered, along withJohn Cook(the Counsel against Charles I.) “that read the King’s charge,” on the 16th October. He was depressed in spirits at the last, but there was dignity in his reply to one who insulted him in passing—“Friend, you do not well to trample on a dying man;” and his sending a token to his daughter awakens pity. Physically he had failed in courage, and no wonder, to face all that was arrayed to terrify him: or he might have justified anticipations and “made a pulpit of the place.” His last sermon at Newgate is said to have been “incoherent.”

Harry Marten’sprivate life is so generally declared to have been licentious (dozens of ballads referring to his “harem,” “Marten’s girl that was neither sweet nor sound,” “Marten, back and leave your wench,” &c.), and his old friend Cromwell when become a foe openly taxing him as a “whoremaster,” that it is better for us to think of him with reference to his unswerving faithfulness in Republican opinions; his gay spirit (more resembling the reckless indifference of Cavaliers than his ownassociates can have esteemed befitting); his successful exertions on many occasions to save the shedding of blood; and his gallant bearing in the final hours of trial. The living death to which he was condemned, of his twenty years imprisonment at Chepstow Castle, has been recorded (mistakenly asthirty) by that devoted student Robert Southey,clarum et venerabilem nomen!in a poem which can never pass into oblivion, although cleverly mocked by Canning in the Anti-Jacobin, Nov. 20, 1797:—

For twenty years secluded from mankindHereMartenlingered. Often have these wallsEcho’d his footsteps, as with even treadHe paced around his prison; not to himDid Nature’s fair varieties exist:He never saw the sun’s delightful beamsSave when through yon high bars it pour’d a sadAnd broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?He had rebelled against his King, and satIn judgment on him:&c.

For twenty years secluded from mankind

HereMartenlingered. Often have these walls

Echo’d his footsteps, as with even tread

He paced around his prison; not to him

Did Nature’s fair varieties exist:

He never saw the sun’s delightful beams

Save when through yon high bars it pour’d a sad

And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?

He had rebelled against his King, and sat

In judgment on him:&c.

John Forster has written his memoir, and, in one of his best moments, Wallis painted him. Here are his own last words, sad yet firm, the old humour still apparent, if only in the choice of verse, it being the anagram of his name:—

Here, or elsewhere (all’s one to you—to me!)Earth, air, or water, gripes my ghostless dust,None knowing when brave fire shall set it free.Reader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust,You’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.My life was worn with serving you and you,And death is my reward, and welcome too:Revenge destroying but itself. While ITo birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.Examples preach to th’ eye—care, then, mine says,Not how you end, but how you spend your days.(Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 1243.)

Here, or elsewhere (all’s one to you—to me!)

Earth, air, or water, gripes my ghostless dust,

None knowing when brave fire shall set it free.

Reader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust,

You’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.

My life was worn with serving you and you,And death is my reward, and welcome too:Revenge destroying but itself. While ITo birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.Examples preach to th’ eye—care, then, mine says,Not how you end, but how you spend your days.

My life was worn with serving you and you,

And death is my reward, and welcome too:

Revenge destroying but itself. While I

To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.

Examples preach to th’ eye—care, then, mine says,

Not how you end, but how you spend your days.

(Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 1243.)

As to ThomasHarrison, fifth-monarchy enthusiast, firm to the end in his adversity, he who had been ruthless inprosperity, we have already briefly referred to his closing hours in our Introduction toMerry Drollery, Compleat, p. xxix.

John Hewson, Cobbler and Colonel, who had sat in the illegal mockery of Judgment on King Charles, was for the after years ridiculed by ballad-singers as a one-eyed spoiler of good leather. He escaped the doom of Tyburn by flight to Amsterdam, where he died in 1662. In default of his person, his picture was hung on a gibbet in Cheapside, 25th January, 1660-61. (SeePepys’ Diaryof that date.) His appearance was not undignified. One ballad specially devoted to him, at his flight, is “A Hymne to the Gentle Craft; or,Hewson’sLamentation”:—

Listen a while to what I shall sayOf a blind cobbler that’s gone astrayOut of the Parliament’s High-way,Good people, pity the blind![verse 17.]And now he has gone to the Lord knows whether,He and this winter go together,If he be caught he will lose his leather,Good people, pity the blind!(Rump, Coll. 1662 edit., ii. 151-4.)

Listen a while to what I shall sayOf a blind cobbler that’s gone astrayOut of the Parliament’s High-way,Good people, pity the blind!

Listen a while to what I shall say

Of a blind cobbler that’s gone astray

Out of the Parliament’s High-way,

Good people, pity the blind!

[verse 17.]

And now he has gone to the Lord knows whether,He and this winter go together,If he be caught he will lose his leather,Good people, pity the blind!

And now he has gone to the Lord knows whether,

He and this winter go together,

If he be caught he will lose his leather,

Good people, pity the blind!

(Rump, Coll. 1662 edit., ii. 151-4.)

Verse 14. Dr. JohnHewitwith Sir Harry Slingsby had been executed for conspiracy against Cromwell, 8th June, 1658. The Earl of Strafford’s death was May 12th, 1641; and that of Laud, January 10th, 1644.

Verse 15.Dunwas the name of the Hangman at this time, frequently mentioned in theRumpballads. Jack Ketch was his successor: Gregory had been Hangman in 1652.

ThefirstRoyal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham’s Bourse, was opened by Queen Elizabeth, January 23rd, 1570, and destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Thesecondwas commenced on May 6th, 1667, and burnt on January 10th, 1838. The present building, thethird,was opened by Queen Victoria Oct., 28th, 1844. The “Old Exchange,” often referred to in ballads, was Gresham’s. But the “New Exchange” was one, erected where the stables of Durham House in the Strand had stood: opened April 11th, 1609, and removed in 1737. King James I. had named it “Britain’s Bourse.” Built on the model of the established Royal Exchange, it had “cellars, a walk, and a row of shops, filled with milliners, seamstresses, and those of similar occupations; and was a place of fashionable resort. What, however, was intended to rival the Royal Exchange, dwindled into frivolity and ruin, and the site is at present [1829] occupied by a range of handsome houses facing the Strand” (T. Allen’sHist. and Antiq. of London, iv. 254). In the ballad it is sung of as “Haberdashers’ Hall.” Cp. Roxb. Coll., ii., 230.

This is an imperfect version of “A Woman’s Birth,” merely the beginning, four stanzas. The whole fifteen (eleven following ours) are reprinted by Wm. Chappell, in the Ballad Society’sRoxburghe Bds., iii. 94, 1875, from a broadside in Roxb. Coll., i. 466, originally printed for Francis Grove [1620-55]. 2nd verse reads:—Her husbandHymen; 4th.Wandringeye; insatiate. The gifts of Juno, Flora, and Diana follow; with woman’s employment of them.

We find this in MS. Harleian, No. 6396, fol. 13. Also two printed copies, inParnassus Biceps, 1656, 124; and inSportive Wit, same year, p. 39. We gained the corrections, which we inserted asmarginalia, from the MS.; “CeresinhirGarland” having been corrupted into “Cealusinhis.” “Aglaura,” Sir John Suckling’s play, (printed originally in 4to. 1639, with a broad margin of blank, on which the wits made merry with epigrammes, “By this wide margent,” &c.), appeared on April 18th,1638, and is here referred to. Probably the date of the poem is nearly as early. On p. 175 the “Pilgrimage upHolbornHill” refers to a journey from Newgate to Tyburn. (See p. 365).

The Mad-Man’s Morrice; written byHumfrey Crouch: For the second part of the broad-sheet version we must refer readers to vol. ii. page 153, of the Ballad Society’s reprint of theRoxburghe Ballads(now happily arrived at completion of the first massive folio vol. of Major Pearson’s original pair; the bulky third and slim fourth vols. being afterwards added). We promised to give it, and gladly would have done so, if we had space: for it is a trustworthy picture of a Bedlamite’s sufferings, under the harsh treatment of former days. Date about 1635-42.

To our enumeration of mad songs (Westm. Droll.App. p. 9) we may add Thomas Jordan’s “I am the woefullest madman.”

“I’ll drink to thee a brace of quarts || Whose Anagram is calledTrue Hearts.” The Anagram of True Hearts gives us “Stuart here!” which, like drinking “to the King—over the water!” in later days by the Jacobites, would be well understood by suspected cavaliers.

In March 1659-60 appeared the anagram “Charles Stuart: Arts Chast Rule.” Later: Awld fool, Rob the Jews’ Shop.

Like “How happy’s the prisoner,”Ibid.p. 107, we trace this so early as 1656. It is inSportive Wit, p. 12, as “When I go to revel in the night,” The Drunkard’s Song.

The Bow Goose.We have found this, (15 verses ofour 18,) five years earlier, inSportive Wit, 1656, p. 35. It there begins, “The best of Poets write of Hogs, And ofUlyssesbarking Dogs; Others of Sparrows, Flies, and Hogs.” Our text, though later, seems to be the better, and has three more verses: “Frogs,” in connection with “the Best of Poets,” referring to Homer and toBatrachomyomachia; supposed to be his, and translated by George Chapman, about 1623 (of whom A. C. Swinburne has recently written so glowing a eulogium, coupling with it the noblest praise of Marlowe).

Of course, the words displayed by dashes areCrown,Bishop,King. To this same tune are later songs (1659-60) in the Rump, ii. 193-200, “What a reprobate crew is here,” &c. Wilkins prints an inferior version of 7th line in 3rd verse, as “TakePrynneand his clubs, orSayand his tubs,” referring to William, Viscount “Say and Seal.” Ours reads “club, orSmecand his tub,” the allusion being toSmectymnuus, a name compounded, like the wordCabalin Charles II.’s time, of the initials of five personal names: Ste. Marshall, Edm. Calamy, Thos. Young, Matth. Newcomen, and Willm. Spurstow; all preachers, who united in a book against Episcopacy and the Liturgy. Milton, in 1641 published hisAnimadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and in 1642,An Apology for Smectymnuus. John Cleveland devotes a poem to “The Club Divines,” beginning “Smectymnuus! the Goblin makes me start.” (Poems, p. 38, 1661; also in theRumpColl., i. 57.)

Correction:—Instead of the words “Choyce Drollery, p. 31,” in first line of note (M. D., C., p. 382), read “Jovial Drollery(i.e.,Sportive Wit), p. 59.” The same date, viz. 1656.

The reference here is to the proposed expedition of disheartenedCavaliers (among whom was Wm. D’Avenant) from France and England to the Virginian plantations. It was defeated in 1650, the vessels having been intercepted in the channel by the Commonwealth’s fleet. By the way, the infamous sale into slavery of the royalist prisoners during the war in previous years by the intolerant Parliament, deserves the sternest reprobation.

An appropriate dower, as Sea-coal Lane in the Old Bailey bore a similar evil repute to Turnball Street, Drury Lane, and Kent Street, for thebona-robatribe: as “the suburbs” always did.

Written when Oliver rejected the title of King, 8th May, 1657. (See next note, on p. 254.)

After Cromwell’s designating the Battle of Worcester, 3rd September, 1651, his “crowning victory” many of his more uncompromising Republicans kept a stealthy eye upon him. Our ballad evidently refers itself to the date of the “purified” Parliament’s “Petition and Advice,” March 26, 1656, when Cromwell hesitated before accepting or declining the offered title of King; thinking (mistakenly, as we deem probable) that his position would become more unsafe, from the jealousy and prejudices of the army, than if he seemed contented with the name of Protector to the Commonwealth, while holding the actual power of sovereignty. His refusal was in April, 1657. Hallam thinks it was not until after Worcester fight that “he began to fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself,St. John, Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley met Cromwell, at his own request to consider the settlement of the nation,” &c. (Constit. Hist. England, cap. x. p. 237, edit. 1872.) “Twelve months after this time in a more confidential discourse with Whitelock alone, the general took occasion to complain both of the chief officers of the army and of the parliament,” &c. (Ibid.p. 238). The conference not being satisfactory to Cromwell, on each occasion ended abruptly; and Whitelock (if we may trust his own account, which perhaps is asking too much) was little consulted afterwards. When they had conferred the title of Lord Protector, the right of appointing his successor was added on 22nd May.

“With upsie freeze I line my head,” of our text, is in the play “Cromwell’s Coronation” printed “Withtipsyfrenzie.” But we often find the other phrase; sometimes, as in the ballad of “The Good Fellow’s Best Beloved” (i.e. strong drink) varied thus, “With goodipse he,” (about 1633). See Bd. Soc.Roxb. Bds.iii. 248, where is W. Chappell’s note, quoting Nares:—“It has been said thatop-zee, in Dutch, means ‘over sea,’ which cones near to another English phrase for drunkenness, being ‘half-seas over.’ Butop-zyn-friesmeans, ‘in the Dutch fashion,’ orà la mode de Frise, which perhaps is the best interpretation of the phrase.” In Massinger and Decker’s “Virgin Martyr,” 1622, Act ii. sc. 1, we find the vile Spungius saying, “Bacchus, the God of brewed wine and sugar, grand patron of rob-pots,upsie freesietipplers, andsuper-naculumtakers,” &c. Probably Badham’s conjecture is right, and in Hamlet, i. 4, we should read not “up-spring,” but

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