p. 202 _Guinea for--no Feast_. This and the following verses refer to a circumstance much talked of and well laughed at by the Tories. The Duke of York having been invited to dine with the Artillery Company at Merchant-Tailors’-Hall, on 21 April, 1682; an opposition dinner was impudently projected by the Shaftesbury party, to be held at Haberdashers’ Hall, and tickets were forthwith issued at one guinea each; for the purpose, as it was declared, of commemorating the providential escape of the nation from the hellish designs of the papists, etc. The King, however, issued a salutary order forbidding the meeting as an illegal one. This supplied the loyal party with new matter for ridicule and satire against the Whigs, who were considerably dejected by their disappointment. p. 206 _overtaken_--with liquor. cf. Steele, _Spectator_, No. 420, Wednesday, 6 August, 1712. ‘I do not remember I was ever o’ertaken in drink.’ p. 206 _wholesom Act_. see _supra_. Vol. I, _The Roundheads_, Act v, II, p. 457, note: ‘p. 414, an act, 24 June.’ p. 207 _Forty one_. The year of the Grand Remonstrance and agitation for the suppression of Episcopacy. p. 207 _guttle_. To flatter, to toady. The word is rare in this sense, generally meaning to guzzle. cf. parasitus. p. 210 _Porridge_. A contemptuous nickname given by Dissenters to the _Book of Common Prayer_. On 24 August, 1662, Pepys hears that there has been ‘a disturbance in a church in Friday St.; a great many young [people] knotting together and crying out _Porridge_ often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away.’ There is a four leaved pamphlet, 4to 1642, by Gyles Calsine, entitled ‘A Messe of Pottage, very well seasoned and crumb’d with bread of life, and easie to be digested against the contumelious slanderers of the Divine Service, terming it Poridge.’ p. 214. _Opinion_. Reputation, cf. Shirley, _The Gamester_ (1637), Act i:--’_Barnacle_. Patience; I mean you have the opinion of a valiant gentleman.’ p. 218 _watch her like a Witch_. _vide_ Vol I, p. 448, note: _Women must be watcht as Witches are_. p. 228 _i’ th’ Pit, behind the Scenes_. The foremost benches of the pit were a recognized rendezvous for fops and beaux. The tiring rooms of the actors and actresses were also a favourite resort of wits and gallants. Pepys frequently mentions the visits he paid behind the scenes. The Epilogue to _The Gentleman Dancing Master_ (1671) even invites cits behind the scenes:-- You good men o’ th’ Exchange, on whom alone We must depend when Sparks to sea are gone; Into the pit already you are come, ‘Tis but a step more to our tiring-room Where none of us but will be wondrous sweet Upon an able love of Lombard-Street. p. 228 _flamm’d off_. Cheated, cf. Ford and Dekker’s _The Witch of Edmonton_, ii, II (1621):--’_Susan_. And then flam me off With an old witch.’