Then prophane Nadab, that hates all sacred things, And on that score abominateth kings; With Mahomet wine he damneth, with intent To erect his Paschal-lamb’s-wool-Sacrament. A ballad on the Rye House Plot, entitled _The Conspiracy; or, The Discovery of the Fanatic Plot_, sings:-- Next valiant and noble Lord Howard, That formerly dealt in lamb’s wool; Who knowing what it is to be towered, By impeaching may fill the jails full. p. 100 _Brumighams_. Bromingham was a slang term of the day for a Whig. Roger North says that the Tories nicknamed the opposite party ’.Birmingham_ Protestants, alluding to the false groats struck at that place’. Birmingham was already noted for spurious coinage. cf. Dryden’s prologue to _The Spanish Friar_ (1681):-- What e’er base metal come You coin as fast as groats at Bromingam. A panegyric on the return of the Duke and Duchess of York from Scotland says of Shaftesbury’s medal that ‘Twas coined by stealth, like groats at Birmingham. For Birmingham = Whig we have _Old Jemmy, an Excellent New Ballad_: Let Whig and Bromingham repine, They show their teeth in vain; The glory of the British line, Old Jemmy’s come again. Also in Matthew Taubman’s _A Medley on the Plot_, this stanza occurs:-- Confound the hypocrites, Birminghams royal, Who think allegiance a transgression; Since to oppose the King is counted loyal, And to rail high at the succession. Dryden in his Preface to _Absalom and Achitophel_, I, speaks of ‘an Anti-Bromingham’, i.e. a Tory. p. 100 _dry bobs_. A bob was a sarcastic jest or jibe. cf. _Sir Giles Goosecappe_ (1606), Act. v, I. ‘Marry him, sweet Lady, to answere his bitter Bob,’ and Buckingham’s _The Rehearsal_ (1671), Act iii, I, where Bayes cries: ‘There’s a bob for the Court.’ A dry bob (literally = a blow or fillip that does not break the skin) is an intensely bitter taunt, cf. _Cotgrave_ (1611), _Ruade seiche_, a drie bob, jeast or nip. _Bailey_ (1731) has ‘_Dry Bob_. a Taunt or Scoff’. p. 100 _By Yea and Nay_. ‘Yea and Nay’ was often derisively applied to the Puritans, and hence to their lineal descendants the Whigs, in allusion to the Scriptural injunction, _S. Matthew_ v, 33-7, which they feigned exactly to follow. Timothy Thin-beard, a rascally Puritan, in Heywood’s _If you Know Not Me, You Know Nobody_, Part II (4to, 1606), is continually asseverating ‘By yea and nay’, cf. Fletcher’s _Monsieur Thomas_, Act ii, III, where Thomas says:-- Do not ye see me alter’d? ‘Yea and Nay,’ gentlemen; A much-converted man. In _Sir Patient Fancy_ (1678), Lady Knowell’s late husband, a rank Puritan, is said to have been ‘a great Ay and No Man i’th’ City, and a painful promoter of the good Cause.’ p. 109 _Twins_. Vide note (p. 319, _Amorous Twire_), Vol. II, p. 440, _The Feigned Courtezans_.