I had seen as much already as I desired, for I had learned of old that he that keeps such company seldom comes off without a scratched face; but if he misses a mistress, he gets a wife, and stands condemned to a repentance during life, without redemption, unless one of the two dies. For women in the case are worse than pirates; a galley-slave may compound for his freedom, but there’s no thought of ransom in case of wedlock. I had a good mind to a little chat with some of them, but (thought I) they’ll fancy I’m in love with them. And so I e’en marched off into the married quarter, where there was such ranting, damning, and tearing, as if hell had been broke loose. And what was all this? but a number of women that had been locked up and shackled by their husbands, to keep them in obedience, and had now broken their prisons, and their chains, and were grown ten times madder than before. Some I saw caressing and coaxing their husbands, in the very moment they designed to betray them. Others were picking their husbands’ pockets to pay now and then for a by-blow. Some again were upon a religious point, and all upon the humour (forsooth) of pilgrimages and lectures; when alas! they had no other business with the altars or churches than a sacrifice to Venus, or a love meeting. Divers there were that went to the bath; but bathing was the least part of their errand. Others to confession, that mistook their martyr for their confessor: some to be revenged of jealous husbands were resolving to do the thing they feared, and pay them in their own coin. Others were for making sure aforehand by way of advance; for that’s the revenge, they say, that’s as sweet as muscadine and eggs. One was melancholy for a delay; another for a defeat; a third is preparing to make her market at a play. There was one among the rest was never out of her coach; and asking her the reason, she told me, she loved to be jolted. In this crowd of women, you must know that there were no wives of ambassadors, soldiers, or merchants that were abroad upon commission; for such were considered in effect as single women, and not allowed as members of this commonwealth.