To every musketeer[13] he brought to town, He gave the lands which never were his own. When first the English crown he did obtain, He did not send his Dutchmen back again. No reassumptions in his reign were known, D’Avenant might there ha’ let his book alone. No Parliament his army could disband; He raised no money, for he paid in land. He gave his legions their eternal station, And made them all freeholders of the nation. He cantoned out the country to his men, And every soldier was a denizen. The rascals thus enriched, he called them lords, To please their upstart pride with new-made words, And Doomsday Book his tyranny records. And here begins our ancient pedigree, That so exalts our poor nobility: ’Tis that from some French trooper they derive, Who with the Norman bastard did arrive; The trophies of the families appear, Some show the sword, the bow, and some the spear, Which their great ancestor, forsooth, did wear. These in the herald’s register remain, Their noble mean extraction to explain, Yet who the hero was, no man can tell, Whether a drummer or a colonel: The silent record blushes to reveal Their undescended dark original. But grant the best, how came the change to pass, A true-born Englishman of Norman race? A Turkish horse can show more history To prove his well-descended family. Conquest, as by the moderns[14] ’tis expressed, May give a title to the lands possessed: But that the longest sword should be so civil To make a Frenchman English, that’s the devil. These are the heroes that despise the Dutch, And rail at new-come foreigners so much, Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived; A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns, The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, By hunger, /theft, and rapine hither brought; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains, Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed. And lest by length of time it be pretended The climate may this modern breed ha’ mended, Wise Providence, to keep us where we are, Mixes us daily with exceeding care. We have been Europe’s sink, the jakes where she Voids all her offal outcast progeny. From the eighth Henry’s time, the strolling bands Of banished fugitives from neighbouring lands Have here a certain sanctuary found: The eternal refuge of the vagabond, Where, in but half a common age of time, Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn, And all their race are true-born Englishmen. Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots, Vaudois and Valtelins, and Hugonots, In good Queen Bess’s charitable reign, Supplied us with three hundred thousand men. Religion—God, we thank Thee!—sent them hither Priests, Protestants, the Devil and all together: Of all professions and of every trade, All that were persecuted or afraid;