London (England) -- History; London (England) -- Social life and customs
I could fill a whole uolume, and call it the second part of the
hundred mery tales, onely with such ridiculous stuffe as this of the
Justice; but _Dii meliora_; I haue better matters to set my wits
about: neither shall you wring out of my pen (though you lay it on
the racke) the villainies of that damnd Keeper, who killd all she
kept; it had bene good to haue made her Keeper of the common Jayle,
and the holes of both Counters; for a number lye there that wish to
be rid out of this motley world; shee would haue tickled them and
turned them ouer the thumbs. I will likewise let the Church-warden
in _Thames-street_ sleep (for hees now past waking) who being
requested by one of his neighbors to suffer his wife or child (that
was then dead) to lye in the Church-yard, answered in a mocking
sort, he keept that lodging for himselfe and his household: and
within three days after was driuen to hide his head in a hole
himself. Neither will I speake a word of a poore boy (seruant to a
Chandler) dwelling thereabouts, who being struck to the heart by
sicknes, was first caryed away by water, to be left anywhere; but
landing being denyed by an army of brownebill men, that kept the
shore, back againe was he brought, and left in an out-celler, where
lying groueling and groaning on his face, among fagots (but not one
of them set on fire to comfort him), there continued all night, and
dyed miserably for want of succor. Nor of another poore wretch, in
the Parish of St. _Mary Oueryes_, who being in the morning throwne,
as the fashion is, into a graue vpon a heap of carcases, that kayd
for their complement, was found in the after-noone gasping and
gaping for life: but by these tricks, imagining that many thousand
haue bene turned wrongfully off the ladder of life, and praying that
_Derick_ or his executors, may liue to do those a good turne, that
haue done so to others: _Hic finis Priami_; heeres an end of an old
song.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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