THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER. Or, The life of jacke Wilton.  
Qui audiunt audita dicunt.  
Tho. Nashe.  
LONDON, ●●inted by T. Scarlet for C. Burby, & are to be sold at his shop adjoining to the Exchange. 1594.   

To the right Honourable Lord Henry Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfeeld.  
INgenuous honourable Lord, I know not what blind custom methodical antiquity hath thrust upon us, to dedicate such books as we publish, to one great man or other; In which respect, lest any man should challenge these my papers as goods unaccustomed, and so extend upon them as forfeit to contempt, to the seal of your excellent censure lo here I present them to be seen and allowed. Prise them as high or as low as you list: if you set any price on them, I hold my labour well satisfied. Long have I desired to approve my wit unto you. My reverent dutiful thoughts (even from their infancy) have been retainers to your glory. Now at last I have enforced an opportunity to plead my devoted mind. All that in this fantastical Treatise I can promise, is some reasonable conveyance of history, & variety of mirth. By divers of my good friends have I been dealt with to employ my dulpen in this kind, it being a clean different vain from other my former courses of writing. How well or ill I have done in it, I am ignorant: (the eye that sees round about itself, sees not into itself): only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit. Vnrepriveably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper, which on the diamond rock of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be shipwrecked. A dear lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English: that small brain I have, to no further use I convert, save to be kind to my friends, and fatal to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, a new style, a new soul will I get me, to canonize your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I be not taxed of presumption. Of your gracious favour I despair not, for I am not altogether Fames outcast. This handful of leaves I offer to your view, to the leaves on trees I compare, which as they cannot grow of themselves except they have some branches or boughs to cleave too, & with whose juice and sap they be evermore recreated & nourished: so except these unpolished leaves of mine have some branch of Nobility whereon to depend and cleave, and with the vigorous nutriment of whose authorized commendation they may be contivally fostered and refreshed, never will they grow to the world's good liking, but forthwith fade and die on the first hour of their birth. Your Lordship is the large spreading branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaves seek to derive their whole nourishing: it resteth you either scornfully shake them off, as wormeaten & worthless, or in pity preserve them and cherish them, for some little summer fruit you hope to find amongst them.  
Your Honours in all humble service: Tho: Nashe.   

To the Gentlemen Readers.  
GEntlemen, in my absence (through the Printers oversight and my bad writing) in the leaves of C. and D. these errors are ouer-slipt:  
C. pag. 2. lin. 35. for sweeting read sneaking. Pag. 3. li. 1. for hogs read bars. lin. 7. for Calipsus, read Rhaesus. Pag. 4 lin. 34. for Live read I live. Pag. 5. li. 14. for upon his read upon him his. Pag. 7. lin 13. for drilled read dyued. lin. 22. for colour) read collar nor his hatband).  
D. Pag 1 lin. 2. for black read cape. lin. 5 for fastens read thirleth. lin 7. for badge read budge. lin. 8. for shin read chin. lin. ●1 for in this begun read thinking in. Pag. 3. lin 33. for increased then, read enclosed them. Pag. ● lin. 8. for thread button, read breast like a thread bottom. Pag. 8 lin. 3. for Esla read Ossa. lin 4. for dissolution read desolation lin 13 between also, and but read If you know Christianity, you know the Fathers of the Church also. lin. 18. for quocunque read qua gente.  
Other literal faults there are which I omit.  
Yours T. N.   

The Induction to the dapper monsieur Pages of the Court.  
GAllant squires, have amongst you. at mumchance I mean not, for so I might chance come to short commons, but at nows, nova, nowm, which is in English, news of the maker. A proper fellow Page of yours called jacke Wilton, by me commends him unto you, and hath bequeathed forwast paper here amongst you certain pages of his misfortunes. In any case keep them preciously as a Privy token of his good will towards you. If there be some better than other, he craves you would honour them in their death so much, as to dry and kindle Tobacco with them: for a need he permits you to wrap velvet pantofles in them also, so they be not woe begone at the heels, or weatherbeaten like a black head with grey hairs, or mangy at the toes like an ape about the mouth. But as you love good fellowship and ames ace, rather turn them to stop mustard-pots, than the Grocers should have one patch of them to wrap mace in: a strong hot costly spice it is, which above all things he hates. To any use about meat or drink put them too and spare not, for they cannot do their Country better service. Printers are mad whoresons, allow them some of them for napkins. jost a little nearer to the matter and the purpose. Memorandum, every one of you after the perusing of this Pamphlet, is to provide him a case of poniards, that if you come in company with any man which shall dispraise it or speak against it, you may strait cry Sicr●●pondeo, and give him the stockado. It stands not with your honours (I assure ye) to have a Gentleman and a Page abused in his absence. Secondly, whereas you were wont to swear men on a pantosle to be true to your puissant order, you shall sweeare them on nothing but this Chronicle of the King of Pages hence forward. Thirdly, it shallbe lawful for any whatsoever to play with false dice in a corner on the cover of this foresaid Acts and monuments. None of the fraternity of the minorites shall refuse it for a pawn in the times of famine and necessity. Every Stationer's stall they pass by whether by day or by night they shall put off their hats too, and make a low leg, in regard their grand printed Capitano is there entoombd. It shallbe flat treason for any of this forementioned catalogue of the point trussers, once to name him within forty foot of an alehouse. Marry the tavern is honourable. Many special grave articles more had I to give you in charge, which your wisdoms waiting together at the bottom of the great Chamber stairs, or sitting in a porch (your parliament house) may better consider of than I can deliver: only let this suffice for a taste to the text & a bit to pull on a good wit with, as a rasher on the coals is to pull on a cup of wine. Heigh pass, come aloft: every man of you take your places, and hear jacke Wilton tell his own tale.   

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER.  
ABout that time that the terror of the world, and fever quartan of the French, Henry the eight, (the only true subject of Chronicles) advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Turney and Turwin, and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland, and Brabant as mercenary attendants on his ful-saild fortune, I jacke Wilton, (a Gentleman at least) was a certain kind of an appendix or page, belonging or appertaining in or unto the confines of the English court, where wrat my credit was, a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify, Caelum petimus stultitia, which of us all is not a sinner. Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peru●● my story, that I followed the camp or the court, or the court & the camp, when Turwin lost her maidenhead, & opened her gat●● to more than jane Trosse did. There did I (soft let me drink before I go any further) reign sole king of the cans and black jacks, prince of the pygmies, county pallaine of clean straw and provant, and to conclude, Lord high regent of rashers of the coals and red herring cobs. Paulô maiora canamus: well, to the purpose. What stratagemicall acts and monuments do you think an ingenious infant of my age might enact? you will say, it were sufficient if he slur a die, pawn his master to the utmost penny, & minister the oath on the pantoffle arteficially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of In grace and verive to proceed. Oh but Aliquid later quod non patet, there's a farther path I must trace: examples confirm, list Lordings to my proceed. Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp, understands that in it be many quarters, & yet not so many as on London bridge. In those quarters are many companies: Much company, much knavery, as true as that old adage, Much courtesy, much subtlety. Those companies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff, the corn, are cormorants, the chaff are good fellows, which are quickly blown to nothing, with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily, and by my troth so I did: the prince could but command men spend their blood in his service, I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends, though I was prince of their purses, and exacted of my unthrift subjects, as much liquid allegiance as any keisar in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had the king must lose his right, want cannot be withstood, men can do no more than they can do, what remained then, but the fox's case must help, when the lions skin is out at the elbows.  
There was a Lord in the camp, let him be a Lord of misrule, if you will, for he kept a plain alehouse without welt or guard of any juibush, and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came, (at that very name of cider, I can but sigh, there is so much of it in rhenish wine now a days.) Well, Tendit ad sydera virtus, there's great virtue belongs (I can tell you) to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea, it is Aqua coelestis, but that's neither here nor there, if it had no other patrons but this peer of quart pots to authorize it, it were sufficient. This great Lord, this worthy Lord, this noble Lord, thought no scorn (Lord have mercy upon us) to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor, & yet he was an old servitor, a cavelier of an ancient house, as it might appear by the arms of his ancestry, drawn very amiably in chalk, on the in side of his tent door.  
He and no other was the man, I chose out to damn with a lewd monylesse device: for coming to him on a day, as he was counting his barrels, & setting the price in chalk on the head of every one of them, I did my duty very devoutly, and told his alley honour, I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him, if it pleased him to grant me private audience. With me young Wilton, quoth he, marry and shalt: bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into the three cups here, wash the pot, so into a back room he lead me, where after he had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three moats of his old moth eaten velvet cap, and sponged and wrong all the rumatike drivel from his ill favoured goats beard, he bad me declare my mind, and there upon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance, alias, a cunning shift of the seventéenes, & discourt unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out of mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, & partly for the tender care and provident respect he had of poor soldiers, that whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply of drink or of victuals) might humble them to some extremity, and so weaken their hands, he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp (a rare example of magnificence & honourable courtesy) and diligently provided, that without far travel, every man might for his money have side: and cheese his bellyful, nor did he sell his cheese by the way only, or his cider by the great, but abast himself with his own hands, to take a shoemakers knife, (a homely instrument for such a high parsonage to touch) and cut it out equally like a true justiciary, in little penny worths, that it would do a man good for to look upon. So likewise of his cider, the poor man might have his moderate draft of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat, as the rich man for his half soul or his ●enier. Not so much, quoth I, but this tapster's linen apron, which you wear before you, to protect your apparel from the im●●●fections of the spigot, most amply 〈◊〉 is your lowly mind. I speak it with tears, too few such humble spirited noble men have we, that will draw drink in linen aprons. Why you are every child's fellow, any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good fellow, you will sit and bear company to the last pot, yea, and you take in as good part the homely phrase of mine host here's to you, as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of carelessness, have moved me in ardent zeal of your welfare, to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you & your barrels. At the name of dangers he start up, and bounced with his fist on the board so hard, that his Tapster overhearing him, cried, anon anon sir, by and by, and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have stricken his Tapster, for interrupting him in attention of this his so much desired relation, but for sear of displeasing me he moderated his fury, and only sending him for the other fresh pint, willed him look to the bar, and come when he is called with a devils name. Well, at his earnest importunity, after I had moistened my lips, to make my lie run glib to his journeys end, forward I went as followeth. It chanced me the other night, amongst other pages, to attend where the king with his Lords, and many chief leaders sat in counsel, there amongst sundry serious matters that were debated, and intelligences from the every given up, it was privily informed (no villains to these 〈◊〉 informers) that you, even you that I now speak to, had (O would I had no tongue to tell the rest, by this drink it grieves me so I am not able to repeat it.) Now was my drunken Lord ready to hang himself for the end of the full point, and over my neck he throws himself very ●ubberly, and entreated me as I was aproper young Gentleman, and ever looked for pleasure at his hands, soon to rid him out of this hell of suspense, & resolve him of the rest, than fell he on his knees, wrong his hands, and I think on my conscience, wept out all the cider that he had drunk in a week before, to move me to have pity on him, he rose and put his rusty ring on my finger, gave me his greasy purse with that single money that was in it, promised to make me his heir, & a thousand more favours, if I would expire the misery of his unspeakable tormenting uncertainty. I being by nature inclined to Mercy (for in deed I knew two or three good wenches of that name) bade him harden his ears, & not make his eyes abortive before their time, and he should have the inside of my breast turned outward, hear such a tale as would tempt the utmost strength of life to attend it, and not die in the midst of it. Why (quoth I) myself, that am but a poor childish well-willer of yours, with the very thought, that a man of your desert and state, by a number of peasants and varlets should be so injuriously abused in bugger mugger, have wept all my urine upward. The wheel under our City bridge, carries not so much water over the city, as my brain hath welled forth gushing streams of sorrow, I have wept so immoderately and lavishly, that I thought verily my palate had been turned to pissing conduit in London. My eyes have been drunk, outrageously drunk, with giving but ordinary intercourse through their sea-circled islands to my distilling dreariment. What shall I say? ●hat which malice hath said is the mere overthrow & murder of your days. Change not your colour, none can s●ander a clear conscience to itself, receive all your fraught of misfortune in at once.  
It is buzzed in the king's head that you are a secret friend to the enemy, ● under pretence of getting a licence to furnish the camp with cider and such like provant, you have furnished the enemy, and in empty barrels sent letters of discovery, and corn innumerable.  
I might well have left here, for by this time his white liver had mix itself with the white of his eye, & both were turned upwards, as if they had offered themselves a fair white for death to shoot at. The troth was, I was very loath mine host and I should part to heaven with dry lips, wherefore the best means that I could imagine to wake him out of his trance, was to cry loud in his ear, hough host, what's to pay, will no man look to the reckoning here, and in plain verity, it took expected effect, for with the noise he started and bustled, like a man that had been scared with fire out of his sleep, and ran hastily to his Tapster, and all so belaboured him about the ears, for letting Gentlemen call so long and not look in to them. Presently be remembered himself, and had like to have fallen into his memento again, but that I met him half ways, and asked his Lordship what he meant to slip his neck out of the collar so suddenly, and being revived, strike his tapster so rashly.  
Oh, quoth he, I am bought & sold for doing my Country such good service as I have done. They are afraid of me, because my good deeds have brought me into such estimation with the communality, I see, I see it is not for the lamb to live with the wolf.  
The world is well amended, thought I, with your Sidership, such another forty years nap together as Epemenides had, would make you a perfect wise man. Answer me, quoth he, my wise young Wilton, is it true that I am thus underhand dead and buried by these bad tongues?  
Nay, quoth I, you shall pardon me, for I have spoken too much already, no definitive sentence of death shall march out of my well meaning lips, they have but lately sucked milk, and shall they so suddenly change their food and seek after blood?  
Oh but, quoth he, a man's friend is his friend, fill the other pint Tapster, what said the king, did he believe it when he heard it, I pray thee say, I swear to thee by my nobility, none in the world shall ever be made privy, that I received any light of this matter from thee.  
That firm affiance, quoth I, had I in you before, or else I would never have gone so far over the shoes, to pluck you out of the mire. Not to make many words (since you will needs know) the kings lays flatly, you are a miser & a snudge, and he never hoped better of you. Nay then (quoth he) questionless some planet that loves not cider hath conspired against me. Moreover, which is worse, the king hath vowed to give Turwin one hot breakfast, only with the bungs that he will pluck out of your barrels. I cannot stay at this time to report each circumstance that passed, but the only counsel that my long cherished kind inclination can possibly contrive, is now in your old days to be liberal, such victuals or provision as you have, presently distribute it frankly amongst poor soldiers, I would let them burst their bellies with cider, and bathe in it, before I would run into my Princes ill opinion for a whole sea of it. The hunter pursuing the beaver for his stones, he bites them off, and leaves them behind for him to gather up, whereby he lives quiet. If greedy hunters and hungry tell-tales pursue you, it is for a little pelf which you have, cast it behind you, neglect it, let them have it, lest it breed a further inconvenience. Credit my advice, you shall find it prophetical, and thus I have discharged the part of a poor friend. With some few like phrases of ceremony, your honours suppliant, & so forth, and farewell my good youth, I thank thee and will remember thee, we parted.  
But the next day I think we had a dole of cider, cider in howls, in scuppets, in helmets, & to conclude, if a man would have filled his boots full, there he might have had it, provant thrust itself into poor soldiers pockets whether they would or no. We made five peals of shot into the town together, of nothing but spiggots and faucets of discarded empty barrels: every underfoot soldier had a distenanted tun, as Diogenes had his tub to sleep in. I myself got as many confiscated Tapsters aprons, as made me a Tent, as big as any ordinary commanders in the field. But in conclusion, my well-beloved Baron of double beer got him humbly on his marrowbones to the king, and complained he was old and stricken in years, and had near an heir to cast at a dog, wherefore if it might please his majesty to take his lands into his hands, and allow him some reasonable pension to live on, he should be marvelous well pleased: as for the wars, he was weary of them, and yet as long as highness should venture his own person, he would not flinch a foot, but make his withered body a buckler, to bear off any blow that should be advanced against him.  
The king marveling at this strange alteration of his great merchant of cider, (for so he would often pleasantly term him,) with a little further talk bolted out the whole complotment. Then was I pitifully whipped for my holy day lie, although they made themselves merry with it many a fair winter's evening after.  
Yet notwithstanding his good ass-headed honour mine host, persevered in his former simple request to the king to accept of the surrender of his lands, and allow him a beadsmanry or out-brothership of brachet, which at length, through his vehement instancy took effect, and the king is iea●●ingly fayd, since he would needs have it so, he would distrain on part of his land for impost of cider, which he was behind hand with him, and never paid.  
This was one of my famous achievements, insomuch as I never light upon the like famous fool, but I have done a thousand better jests if they had been booked in order as they were begotten. It is pity posterity should be deprived of such precious records, and yet there is no remedy, and yet there is to, for when all fails, welfare a good memory. Gentle readers (look you be gentle now since I have called you so) as freely as my knavery was mine own, it shall be yours to use in the way of honesty.  
Even in this expedition of Turwin (for the king stood not long thrumming of buttons there) it happened me fall out (I would it had fallen out otherwise for his sake) with an ugly mechanical Captain. You must think in an army, where tronchions are in their state house, it is a flat stab once to name a Captain without cap in hand. Well, suppose he was a Captain, & had near a good cap of his own, but I was feign to lend him one of my Lords cast velvet caps, and a weatherbeaten feather, wherewith he threatened his soldiers a far off, as jupiter is said, with the shaking of his hair to make heaven and earth to quake: suppose out of the parings of a pair of false dice, I appareled both him and myself many a time and oft: and surely not to slander the devil, if any man ever deserved the golden dice, the king of the Parthians sent to Demetrius it was I, I had the right vain of sucking up a die twixt the dints of my fingers, not a crevice in my hand but could swallow a quater trey for a need: in the line of life many a dead lift did there lurk, but it was nothing towards the maintenance of a family. This Monsieur Capitano eat up the cream of my earnings, and Cred emihi res est ingeniosa dare, any man is a fine fellow as long as he hath any money in his purse. That money is like the marigold, which opens and shuts with the Sun, if fortune smileth, or one be in favour, it sloweth: if the evening of age comes on, or he falleth into disgrace, it fadeth and is not to be found. I was my craft's master though I was but young, and could as soon decline Nominativo hic asinus, as a greater clerk, wherefore I thought it not convenient my sol●a●● should have my purse any longer for his drum to play upon, but I would give him jacke drums entertainment, and send him packing. This was my plot, I knew a piece of service of intelligence, which was presently to be done, that required a man with all his five senses to effect it, and would overthrow any fool that should undertake it, to this service did I animate and egg my foresaid costs and charges, alias, signior veluet-cappe, whose head was not encumbered with too much forecast, and coming to him in his ca●●in about dinner time, where I found him very devoutly paring of his nails for want of other repast, I entertained him with this solemn oration.  
Captain, you perceive how near both of us are driven, the dice of late are grown as melancholy as a dog, high men and low men both prosper alike, langrets, fullams, and all the whole fellowship of them will not afford a man his dinner, some other means must be invented to prevent imminent extremity. My state, you are not ignorant, depends on trencher service, your advancement must be derived from the valour of your arm. In the delays of siege, desert hardly gets a day of hearing, 'tis gowns must direct and guns enact all the wars that is to be made against walls. Roasteth no way for you to climb suddenly, but by doing some strange stratagem, that the like hath not been heard of heretofore, and fitly at this instant occasion is ministered.  
There is a seat the king is desirous to have wrought on some great man of the enemy's side, marry it requireth not so much resolution as discretion to bring it to pass, and yet resolution enough shallbe shown in it to, being so full of hazardous jeopardy as it is, hark in your ear, thus it is. Without more drumbling or pausing, if you will undertake it, and work it through stitch (as you may ere the king hath datermined which way to go about it) I warrant you are made while you live you need not care which way your staff falls, if it prove not so, then cut off my head.  
Oh my auditors, had you seen him how be stretched out his limbs, scratched his sca●d elbows at this speech, how he set his cap over his eye brows like a politician, and then folded his arms one in another, & nodded with the head, as who should ●aie, let the French beware, for they shall find me a devil, if I ●ay, you had seen but half the actions that he used of shrucking up his shoulders, smiling scornfully, playing with his fingers on his buttons, and ●iting the lip, you would have laughed your face and your knees together. The iron being hot, I thought to lay on load, for in any case I would not have his humour cool. As before I laid open unto him the brief sum of the service, so now I began to urge the honourableness of it, and what a rare thing it was to be a right politician, how much esteemed of kings and princes, and how diverse of mean parentage have come to be monarchs by it. Then I discoursed of the qualities and properties of him in every respect, how like the wolf he must draw the breath from a man before he be seen, how like a hare he must sleep with his eyes open, how as the Eagle in flying casts dust in the eyes of crows & other souls, for to blind them, so he must cast dust in the eyes of his enemies, delude their sight by one means or other, that they dive not into his subtleties: how he must be familiar with all & trust none, drink carouse, and lecher with him out of whom he hopes to wring any matter, swear and forswear, rather than be suspected, and in a word, have the art of dissembling at his finger's ends as perfect as any courtier.  
Perhaps (quoth I) you may have some few greasy cavelliers that will seek to dissuade you from it, and they will not stick to stand on their three half penny honour, swearing and staring that a man were better be an hangman than an intelligencer, and call him a sweeting eausdropper, a scraping hedge-creeper, and a piperly pickthank, but you must not be discouraged by their talk, for the most part of those beggarly contemners of wit, are huge burlybond butchers like Ajax, good for nothing but to strike right down blows on a wedge with a cleaning beetle, or stand hammering all days upon hogs of iron. The whelps of a Bear never grow but sleeping, and these bearwards having big limbs shall be pref●rd though they do nothing. You have read stories, (I'll be sworn he never looked in book in his life) how many of the Roman worthies were there that have gone as spies into their enemy's camp? Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, went as spies together in the night into the tents of Calipsus, and intercepted Dolon the spy of the Troyans': never any discredited the trade of intelligencers but judas, & he hanged himself. Danger will put wit into any man. Architas made a wooden dove to fly, by which proportion I see no reason that the veriest block in the world should despair of any thing. Though nature be contrary inclined, it may be altered, yet usually those whom she denies her ordinary gifts in one thing, she doubles them ●n another. That which the ass wants in wit, he hath in honesty, who ever saw him kick or winch, or use any jades tricks, though he live an hundred years you shall never hear that he breaks pasture. Amongst men, he that hath not a good wit, lightly hath a good iron memory, and he that hath neither of both, hath some bones to carry burdens. Blind men have better noses than other men: the bulls born● serve him as well as hands to fight withal: the lions paws are as good to him as a polaxe, to knock down any that resists him: so the Boar's tusks serve him in better stead than a sword and buckler, what need the snail care for eyes, when he feels the way with his two horns, as well as if he were as sharp sighted as a decypherer. There is a fish that having no wings, supports herself in the air with her fins. Admit that you had neither wit nor capacity, as sure in my judgement there is none equal unto you in idiotism, yet if you have simplicity and secrecy, serpents themselves will think you a serpent, for what serpent is there but hideth his sting: and yet whatsoever be wanting, a good plausible alluring tongue in such a man of employment can hardly be spared, which as the forenamed serpent, with his winding tail fetcheth in those that come near him: so with a ravishing tale, it gathers all men's hearts unto him, which if he have not, let him never look to engender by the mouth, as ravens and doves do, that is, mount or be great by undermining. Sir, I am ascertained that all these imperfections I speak off, in you have their natural rest●nce, I see in your face, that you were borne with the swallow, to feed flying, to get much treasure and honour by travel. None so fit as you for so important an enterprise, our vulgar reputed politicians are but flies swimming on the stream of subtlety superficially in comparison of your singularity their blind narrow eyes cannot pierce into the profundity of hypocrisy, you alone with Palamed, can pry into Ulysses' mad counterfeiting, you can discern Achilles from a chamber maid, though he be decked with his spindle and distaff: as jove dining with Lycaon could not be beguiled with human flesh dressed like meat, so no human brain may go beyond you, none beguile you, you gull all, all fear you, love you, stoop to you. Therefore good sir, be ruled by me, stoop your fortune so low, as to bequeath yourself wholly to this business.  
This silver sounding tale made such sugared harmony in his ears, that with the sweet meditation, what a more than miraculous politician he should be, and what kingly promotion should come tumbling on him thereby, he could have found in his heart to have packed up his pipes & to have gone to heaven without a bait, yea, he was more inflamed and ravishte with it▪ than a young man called Taurimontanus was with the Phrygian melody, who was so incensed and fired therewith, that he would needs run presently upon it, and set a courtesans house on fire that had angered him.  
No remedy there was but I must help to furnish him with money, I did so, as who will not make his enemy a bridge of gold to fly by. Very earnestly he conjured me to make no man living privy to his departure in regard of his place and charge, and on his honour assured me his return should be very short and successful, I, I, shorter by the neck, thought I, in the mean time let this be thy posy, Live in hope to scape the rope.  
Gone he is, God send him good shipping to Wapping, & by this time, if you will, let him be a pitiful poor fellow, and undone for ever, for mine own part, if he had been mine own brother, I could have done no more for him than I did, for strait after his back was turned, I went in all love & kindness to the Marshal general of the field, & certefide him that such a man was lately fled to the enemy, and got his place bedgd for another immediately. What because of him after you shall hear. To the enemy he went and offered his service, railing egregiously on the king of England, he swore, as he was a Gentleman and a soldier, he would be revenged on him, and let but the king of France follow his counsel, he would drive him from Turwin walls yet ere ten days to an end. All these were good humours, but the eragedie followeth. The French king hearing of such a prating fellow that was come, was desirous to see him, but yet he feared treason, wherefore he wild one of his minions to take upon his person, and he would stand by as a private man whilst he was txamined. Why should I use any idle delays? In was Captain Gogs wounds brought, after he was thoroughly searched, not a louse in his doublet was let pass, but was asked Quevela, and charged to stand in the king's name, the moulds of his buttons they turned out, to see if they were not bullets covered over with thread, the codpiece in his devils breeches (for they were then in fashion) they said plainly was a case for a pistol, if he had had ever a hounaile in his shoes it had hanged him, & he should never have known who had harmed him, but as luck was, he had not a mite of any metal about him, be took part with none of the four ages, neither the golden age, the silver age, the brazen nor the iron age, only his purse was aged in emptiness, and I think verily a puritan, for it kept itself from any pollution of crosses. Standing before the supposed king, he was asked what he was, and wherefore became. To the which in a glorious bragging humour be answered, that he was a gentleman, a captain commander, a chief leader, that came a way from the king of England upon discontentment. Questioned particular of the cause of his discontentment, he had not a word to bless himself with, yet feign he would have, patched out a polt-foot tale, but (God he knows) it had not one true leg to stand on. Then began he to smell on the villain so rammishly, that none there but was ready to rend him in pieces, yet the minion king kept in his choler, and propounded unto him farther, what of the king of England's secrets (so advantageable) he was privy to, as might remove him from the flag of Turwin in three days. He said diverse, diverse matters, which asked longer conference, but in good honesty they were lies, which he had not yet stamped. hereat the true king stepped forth, and commanded to lay hands on the lozel, and that he should be tortured to confess the truth, for he was aspie and nothing else.  
He no sooner saw the wheel and the torments set before him, but he cried out like a rascal, and said he was a poor Captain in the English camp, suborned by one jacke Wilton (a noble man's page) and no other, to come and kill the French king in a bravery and return, and that he had no other intention in the world.  
This confession could not choose but move them all to laughter, in that he made it as light a matter to kill their king and come back, as to go to Islington and eat a mess of cream, and come home again, nay, and beside he protested that he had no other intention, as if that were not enough to hang him.  
Adam never fell till God made fools, all this could not keep his joints from ransacking on the wheel, for they vowed either to make him a confessor or a martyr in a trice, when still he sung all one song, they told the king he was a fool, and some shrewd head had knavishly wrought on him, wherefore it should stand with his honour to whip him out of the camp and send him home. That persuasion took place, and sound was he lashed out of their liberties, and sent home by a Herald with this message, that so the king his master hoped to whip home all the English fools very shortly: answer was returned, that that shortly, was a long lie, and they were shrewd fools that should drive the French man out of his kingdom, and make him glad with Corinthian Dionysius to play the schoolmaster.  
The Herald being dismissed, our afflicted intelligencer was called coram nobis, how he sped, judge you, but something he● was adjudged to. The sparrow for his lechery liveth but a year, ●e for his treachery was turned on the toe, Plura dolor prohibet.  
Here let me triumph a while, and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit, but I will not breath neither till I have diffraughted all my knavery.  
Another Swizer Captain that was far gone for want of the wench, I lead astray most notoriously, for he being a monstrous unthrift of battle axes (as one that cared not in his anger to bid fly out scuttels to fl●e score of them) and a notable emboweller of quart pots, I came disguised unto him in the form of a half a crown wench my gown and attire according to the custom than in request. I wis I had my cur●esses in cue or in quart pot rather, for they drilled into the very entrails of the dust, and I simpered with my countenance like a porridge pot on the fire when it first gins to seeth. The sobriety of the circumstance is, that after he had courted me and all, and given me the earnest penny of impiety, some six crowns at the least for an antipast to iniquity, I feigned an impregnable excuse to be gone, and never came at him after.  
Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutcherie. A company of coistrel clerks (who were in hand with sathan, and not of any soldiers colour) pinched a number of good minds to Godward of their pronant. They would not let a dram of dead pay overslip them, they would not lend a groat of the week to come, to him that had spent his money before this week was done. They outfaced the greatest and most magnanimous servitors in their sincere and ●inigraphicall clean shirts and cuffe●. A louse that was any Gentleman's companion they thought scorn of, their near bitten beards must in a devils name be dewed every day with rose water, hogs could have near a hair on their backs, for making them rubbing brushes to rouse their crab louse. They would in no wise permit that the moats in the Sunbeams should be full mouthed beholders of they clean phini●i●e apparel, their shoes shined as bright as a slike-stone, their hands troubled and foiled more water with washing, than the carvel doth, that near drinks till the whole stream be troubled. Summarily, never any were so fantastical the one half as they. My masters you may conceive of me what you list, but I think confidently I was ordained God's scourge from above for their dainty finicalitie. The hour of their punishment could no longer be prorogued, but vengeance must have at them at all a ventures. So it was, that the most of these above named goose-quill braccahadocheos were mere cowards and cravens, and durst not so much as throw a penfull of ink into the enemies face, if proof were made, wherefore on the experience of their pusellanimitie I thought to raise the foundation of my roguery. What did I now but one day made a false alarm in the quarter where they lay, to try how they would stand to their tackling, and with a pitiful outcry warned them to fly, for there was treason a foot, they were environed and beset. Upon the first watch word of treason that was given, I think they betook them to their heels very stoutly, left their pen and inkhorns and papers behind them for spoil, resigned their desks, with the money that was in them to the mercy of the vanquisher, and in fine, left me & my fellows (their foole-catchers) Lords of the field: how we dealt with them, their disburdened desks can best tell, but this I am assured, we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting days after. I must not place a volume in the precincts of a pamphlet, sleep an hour or two, and dream that Turney and Turwin is won, that the king is shipped again into England, and that I am close at hard meat at Windsor or at Hampton court. What will you in your indifferent opinions allow me for my travel, no more signiory over the Pages than I had before? yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no, I'll have it in spite of your hearts. For your instruction and godly consolation, be informed, that at that time I was no common squire, no undertroden torchbearer, I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the foretop, my French doublet gelte in the belly as though (like a pig ready to be spitted) all my guts had been plucked out, a pair of side paned hose that hung down like two scales filled with Holland chéeses, my long stock that sat close to my dock, and smothered not a scab or a lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of my leg, my rapier pendant like a round stick fastened in the tackle for skippers the better to climb by, my black cloak of black cloth, overspreading my back like a thorubacke, or an elephants ear, that hangs on his shoulders like a country housewives banskin, which she fastens her spindle on, and in consummation of my curiosity, my hands without gloves, all a more French, and a black badge edging of a beard on the upper lip, & the like sable auglet of excrements in the first rising of the ankle of my shin. I was the first that brought in the order of passing into the court which I derived from the common word Qui passa, and the herald's phrase of arms Passant, in this begun sincerity, he was not a Gentleman, nor his arms currant, who was not first passed by the pages. If any prentice or other came into the court that was not a Gentleman, I thought it was an indignity to the pre-eminence of the court to include such a one, and could not be salved except we gave him arms Passant, to make him a Gentleman. Besides, in Spain, none compass any far way but he must be examined what he is, & give three pence for his pass. In which regard it was considered of by the common table of the cupbearers, what a perilsome thing it was to let any stranger or out-dweller approach so near the precincts of the Prince, as the great chamber, without examining what he was, and giving him his pass, whereupon we established the like order, but took no money of them as they did, only for a sign that he had not past our hands unexamined, we set a red mark on either of his ears, and so let him walk as authentical. I must not discover what ungodly dealing we had with the black jacks, or how oft I was crowned king of the drunkards with a court cup, let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweeting sickness, that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England.  
This sweeting sickness, was a disease that a man then might catch and never go to a hothouse. Many masters desire to have such servants as would work till they sweat again, but in those days he that sweat never wrought again. That Scripture than was not thought so necessary, which says, Earn thy living with the sweat of thy brows, for than they earned their dying with the sweat of their brows. It was enough if a fat man did but truss his points, to turn him over the perch: mother Cornelius tub why it was like hell, he that came into it, never came out of it. Cooks that stand continually basting their faces before the fire, were now all cashiered with this sweat into kitchen-stuff: their hall fell in to the king's hands for want of one of the trade to uphold it. Feltmakers and furriers, what the one with the hot steam of their w●ell new taken out of the pan, and the other with the contagious heat of their slaughter budge and connyskins, died more thick than of the pestilence: I have seen an old woman at that season having three chins, wipe them all away one after another, as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap. Look how in May or the heat of Summer we lay butter in water for fear it should melt away, so than were men feign to wet their clothes in water as Dyer's do, and hide themselves in wells from the heat of the Sun.  
Then happy was he that was an ass, for nothing will kill an ass but cold, and none died but with extreme heat, The fishes called Sea-starres, that burn one another by excessive heat, were not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another. Masons paid nothing for hair to mix their lime, nor glovers to stuff their balls with, for than they had it for nothing, it dropped off men's heads and beards faster than any Barber could shave it. O if hair breeches had then been in fashion, what a fine world had it been for Tailors, and so it was a fine world for Tailors nevertheless, for he that could make a garment slightest and thinnest, carried it away, Cutters I can tell you, than stood upon it, to have their trade one of the twelve Companies, for who was it then that would not have his doublet cut to the skin, and his shirt cut into it to, to make it more cold, It was as much as a man's life was worth, once to name a freeze jerkin, it was treason for a fat gross man to come within five miles of the court, I heard where they died up all in one family, and not a mother's child escaped, insomuch as they had but an Irish rug locked up in a press, and not laid upon any bed neither, if those that were sick of this malady slept on it▪ they never waked more. Physicians with their simples, in this case wax simple fellows, and knew not which way to bestir them. Galen might go shoe the gander for any good he could do, his secretaryes had s● long called him divine, that now he had lost all his virtue upon earth. Hypocrates might well help Almanac makers, but here he had not a word to say, a man might sooner catch the sweat with plodding over him to no end, than cure the sweat with any of his impotent principles. Paracelsus with his spirit of the buttery, and his spirits of minerals, could not so much as say, God amend him, to the matter. Plus erat in artisice quam arte, there was more infection in the physician himself than his art could cure. This mortality first began amongst old men, for they taking a pride to have their breasts lose basted with tedious beards, kept their houses so hot with these hairy excrements, that not so much but their very walls sweat out salt Peter, with the smothering perplexity, nay a number of them had marvelous hot breaths, which sticking in the briars of their bushy beards, could not choose, but (as close air long imprisoned) engender corruption. Wiser was our brother Banks of these latter days, who made his juggling horse a cut, for fear if at any time he should foist, the stink sticking in his thick bushy tail might be noisome to his au●ditors. Should I tell you how many pursuivants with red noses, and sergeant with precious faces shrunk away in this sweat, you would not believe me. Even as the Salamander with his very sight blasteth apples on the trees, so a pursuivant or a sergeant at this present, with the very reflex of his fiery facias, was able to spoil a man a far of. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sun, Diebus illis if it had been so in England, the generation of Brute had died all and some. To knit up this description in a pursnet, so fervent and scorching was the burning air which increased then, that the most blessed man then alive, would have thought that God had done fairly by him if he had turned him to a goat, for goats take breath not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also.  
Take breath how they would, I vowed to tarry no longer amongst them. As at Turwin I was a d●mie soldier in jest, so now I became a martialist in earnest. Over sea with my implements I got me, where hearing the king of France and the Switzers were together by the ears, I made towards them as fast as I could, thinking to thrust myself into that faction that was strongest. It was my good luck or my ill, I know not which, to come just to the fight of the battle, where I saw a wonderful spectacle of blood shed on both sides, here the unwieldy swizzers wallowing in their gore, like an ox in his dung, there the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass, like a roach new taken out of the stream, all the ground was strewed as thick with battle axes, as the carpenters yard with chips. The plain appeared like a quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you behold a heap of dead murdered men overwhelmed with a falling steed, in stead of a tomb stone, in another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their own bowels, and as the tyrant Roman Emperors used to tie condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corpses, so were the half living here mixed with squeazed carcases long putrefied. Any man might give arms that was an actor in that battle, for there were more arms and legs scattered in the field that day, than will be gathered up till doom's day, the French king himself in this conflict was much disstressed, the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face, thrice was his courser slain under him, and thrice was he struck on the breast with a spear, but in the end, by the help of the venetians, the Heluesians or Switzers were subdued, and he crowned victor, a peace concluded, and the city of Milan surrendered unto him, as a pledge of reconciliation. That war thus blown over, and the several bands dissolved, like a ccow that still follows aloof where there is carrion, I flew me over to Munster in Germany, which an anabaptistical brother named john Leiden kept at that instant against the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony. Here I was in good hope to set up my staff for some reasonable time, deeming that no City would drive it to a slege except they were able to hold out, and prettily well had these Munsterians held out, for they kept the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony sound play for the space of a year, and longer would have done, but that dame famine came amongst them, whereupon they were forced by messengers to agree upon a day of fight, when according to their anabaptistical error they might be all new christened in their own blood.  
That day come, flourishing entered john Leiden the betcher into the field, with a scarf made of lists, like a bow-case, a cross on his thread button, a round twisted Tailors cushion buckled like a tancard bearers device to his shoulders for a target, the pike whereof was a pack needle, a tough prentices club for his spear, & great brewer's cow on his back for a corselet, and on his head for a helmet a huge high shoe with the bottom turned upward, embossed as full of bobnailes as ever it might stick, his men were all base handy crafts, as cobblers, and curriers, and tinkers, whereof some had bars of iron, some hatchets, some cool staves, some dung forks some spades some mattocks, some wood knives, some addises for their weapons, he that was best provided, had but a piece of a rusty brown bill bravely fringed with cob webs to fight for him: perchance here and there you might see a fellow that had a canker eaten skull on his head, which served him and his ancestors for a chamber pot two hundred years, and another that had bend a couple of iron dripping pans armour-wise, to fence his back and his belly, another that had thrust a pair of dry old boots as a breast plate before his belly of his doublet, because he would not be dangerously hurt: another that had twilted all his trosse full of counters, thinking if the enemy should take him, he would mistake them for gold, and so save his life for his money. Very devout asses they were, for all they were so duns●ically set forth, & such as thought they knew as much of God's mind as richer men, why inspiration was their ordinary familiar, and buzde in their ears like a be in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell, and the land of whipper guinea, displease them who durst, he should have his mittimus to damnation ex tempore, they would vaunt there was not a pease difference twixt them and the Apostles, they were as poor as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons, only herein may seem some little diversity to lurk, that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hell fire for any man to wear a dagger, nay so grounded and graveled were they in this opinion, that now when they should come to battle, there's near a one of them would bring a blade (no not an onion blade) about him, to die for it. It was not lawful said they, for any man to draw the sword but the magistrate, and in fidelity, (which I had well-nigh forgot) jacke Leiden their magistrate had the image or likeness of a piece of a rusty sword like a lusty lad by his side, now I remember me, it was but a foil neither, and he wore it, to show that he should have the foil of his enemies, which might have been an oracle for his two-hande interpretation. Quid plura, his battle is pitched, by pitched, I do not mean set in order, for that was far from their order, only as sailors do pitch their apparel, to make it storme-proofe, so had most of them pitched their patched clothes, to make them impearceable. A nearer way than to be at the charges of armour by half: and in another sort he might be said to have pitched the field, for he had pitched or set up his rest whither to fly if they were discomfited. Peace, peace there in the belfry, service gins, upon their knees before they join, falls john Leiden and his fraternity very devoutly, they pray, they howl, they expostulate with God to grant them victory, and use such unspeakable vehemence, a man would think them the only well bend men under heaven, wherein let me dilate a little more gravely than the nature of this history requires, or will be expected of so young a practitioner in divinity: that not those that intermissively cry, Lord open unto us, Lord open unto us, enter first into the kingdom of heaven, that not the greatest professors have the greatest portion in grace, that all is not gold that glisters. When Christ said, the kingdom of heaven must suffer violence, he meant hot the violence of long babbling prayers to no purpose, nor the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit, but the violence of faith, the violence of good works, the violence of patiented suffering. The ignorant arise and snatch the kingdom of heaven to themselves with greediness, when we with all our learning sink down into hell. Where did Peter and john in the third of the Acts, find the lame cripple but in the gate of the temple called beautiful, in the beautifullest gates of our temple, in the forefront of professors, are many lame cripples, lame in life, lame in good works, lame in every thing, yet will they always sit at the gates of the temple, none be more forward than they to enter into matters of reformation, yet none more behind hand to entee into the true temple of the Lord by the gates of good life. You may object, that those which I speak against, are more diligent in reading the scriptures, more careful to resort unto sermons, more sober in their looks and modest in their attire than any else: but I pray you let me answer you. Doth not Christ say, that before the latter day the Sun shall be turned into darkness, & the Moon into blood, where of what may the meaning be, but that the glorious sun of the gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of dissimulation, that that which is the brightest planet of salvation, shall be a means of error and darkness: and the moon shall be turned into blood, those that shine fairest, make the simplest show, seem most to favour religion, shall rend out the bowels of the Church, be turned into blood, and all this shall come to pass, before the notable day of the Lord, whereof this age is the eve. Let me use a more familiar example since the heat of a great number hath outraged so excessively. Did not the devil lead Christ to the pinnacle or highest part of the temple to tempt him, if he lead Christ, he will lead a whole army of hypocrites to the top or highest part of the temple, the highest step of religion and holiness, to seduce them and subvert them. I say unto you that which this our tempted saviour with many other words besought his disciples, save yourselves from this froward generation. verily, verily the servant is not greater than his master: verily, verily, sinful men are not holier than holy jesus their maker. That holy jesus again repeats this holy sentence, Remember the words I said unto you, the servant is not holier or greater than his master, as if he should say, remember then, imprint in your memory your pride and singularity will make you forget them, the effects of them many years hence will come to pass. Whosoever will seek to save his soul shall lose it, whosoever sakes by headlong means to enter into heaven, & disannul God's ordinance, shall with the giants that thought to scale heaven in contempt of jupiter, be overwhelmed with mount Essa & Pe●ion, & dwell with the devil in eternal dissolution. Though the high priests office was expired, when Paul said unto one of them, God rebuke thee thou painted sepulchre, yet when a slander by reproved him saying, Revilest thou the high priest? he repent & asked forgiveness. That which I suppose I do not grant, the lawfulness of the authority they oppose themselves against, is sufficiently proved, far be it my underage arguments should intrude themselves as a green weak prop to support so high a building, let it suffice, if you know Christ, you know his father also, but a great number of you with Philip have been long with Christ, and have not known him, have long professed yourselves Christians, and not known his true ministers, you follow the French and Scotitsh fashion and faction, and in all points are like the Switzers, Qui quaerunt cum quocunque cadunt, that seek with what nation they may first miscarry.  
In the days of Nero there was an odd fellow that had found out an exquisite way to make glass as hammer proof as gold: shall I say, that the like experiment he made upon glass, we have practised on the Gospeil? I, confidently will I, we have found out a slight to hammer it to any heresy whatsoever, but those furnaces of falsehood and hammer heads of heresy must be dissolved and broken as his was, or else I fear me the false glittering glass of innovation will be better esteemed of than the ancient gold of the gospel. The fault of faults is this, that your dead borne faith is begotten by to too infant fathers. Cato one of the wisest men Roman histories canonised, was not borne till his father was four score years old, none can be a perfect father of faith and beget men aright unto God, but those that are aged in experience, have many years imprinted in their mild conversation, and have with Zacheus sold all their possessions of vanities, to enjoy the sweet fellowship, not of the human but spiritual messias, Ministers and pastors sell away your sects and schisms to the decrepit Churches in contention beyond sea, they have been so long enured to war both about matters of religion and regiment, that now they have no peace of mind, but in troubling all other men's peace. Because the poverty of their provinces will allow them no proportionable maintenance for higher callings of ecclesiastical magistrates, they would reduce us to the precedent of their rebellious persecuted beggary: much like the sect of philosophers called cinikes, who when they saw they ware borne to no lands or possessions, nor had any possible means to support their desperate estates, but they must live despised and in misery do what they could, they plotted and consulted with themselves how to make their poverty better esteemed of than rich dominion and sovereignty. The upshot of their plotting and consultation was this, that they would live to themselves, scorning the very breath or company of all men, they professed (according to the rate of their lands) voluntary poverty, thin fare and lying hard, contemning and inveighing against all those as brute beasts whatsoever whom the world had given any reputation for riches or prosperity. Diogenes was one of the first and foremost of the ringleaders of this rusty morosity, and he for all his nice dogged disposition, and blunt deriding of worldly dross, and the gross felicity of fools, was taken notwithstanding a little after very fairly coining money in his cell: so fares it up and down with our cynical reformed foreign Churches, they will digest no grapes of great bishoprics forsooth, because they cannot tell how to come by them, they must shape their coats good men adding to their cloth, and do as they may, not as they would, yet they must give us leave here in England that are their honest neighbours, if we have more cloth than they, to make our garment some what larger. What was the foundation or groundwork of this dismal declining of Munster, but the banishing of their Bishop, their confiscating and casting lots for Church livings, as the soldiers cast lots for Christ's garments, and in short terms, their making the house of God a den of thieves. The house of God a number of hungry church robbers in these days have made a den of thieves. thieves spend loosely what they have got lightly, sacrilege is no sure inheritance, Dionysius was near the richer for robbing jupiter of his golden coat, he was driven in the end to play the schoolmaster at Corinth. The name of religion, be it good or bad that is ruinated, God never suffers unrevenged, I'll say of it as Ovid said of Eunuches: 

Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit  
Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pati.   

Who first deprived young boys of their b●st part,  
With self same wounds he gave he ought to smart.    
So would he that first gelded religion or Church-livings had been first gelt himself or never lived, Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at, Qui in suas poenas ingeniosus erat, first gave others a light to his own overthrow. How it prospered with him and his instruments that after wrought for themselves. Chronicles largely report, though not apply, and some parcel of their punishment yet unpaid, I do not doubt but will be required of their posterity.  
To go forward with my story of the overthrow of that usurper john Leiden, he and all his army (as I said before) falling prostrate on their faces, and fervently given over to prayer, determined never to cease, or leave soliciting of God, till he had showed them from heaven some manifest miracle of success. Note that it was a general received tradition both with I. Leiden and all the crew of Cnipperdolings and Muncers, if God at any time at their vehement outcries and clamours did not condescend to their requests, to rail on him and curse him to his face, to dispute with him, and argue him of injustice, for not being so good as his word with them, and to urge his many promises in the scripture against him: so that they did not serve God simply, but that he should serve their turns, and after that tenure are many content to serve as bondmen to save the danger of hanging: but he that serves God aright, whose upright conscience hath for his mot, Amor est mihi causa sequendi, I serve because I love: he says, Ego te potius domine quam tua dona sequar, I'll rather follow thee O Lord, for thine own sake, than for any covetous respect of that thou canst do for me, Christ would have no followers, but such as forsook all and follow him, such as forsake all their own desires, such as abandon all expectations of reward in this world, such as neglected and contemned their lives, their wives and children in comparison of him, and were content to take up their cross and follow him. These Anabaptists had not yet forsook all and followed Christ, they had not forsook their own desires of revenge and innovation, they had not abandoned their expectation of the spoil of their enemies, they regarded their lives, they looked after their wives & children, they took not up their cross of humility and followed him, but would cross him, vp●raid him, and set him at nought, if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications. Deteriora sequuntur, they followed God as daring him. God heard their prayers, Quod petitur poena est, It was their speedy punishment that they prayed for. Lo according to the sum of their impudent supplications, a sign in the heavens appeared the glorious sign of the rainbow, which agreed just with the sign of their ensign that was a rainbow likewise. Whereupon assuring themselves of victory, (Miseri quod volunt, facile credunt) that which wretches would have they easily believe. With shouts and clamours they presently ran headlong on their well deserved confusion. Pitiful and lamentable was their unpitied and well performed slaughter. To see even a Bear, (which is the most cruelest of all beasts) to too bloodily ouermatcht, and deformedly rend in pieces by an unconscionable number of curs, it would move compassion against kind, and make those that beholding him at the stake yet uncoayte with, wished him a suitable death to his ugly shape, now to recall their hard hearted wishes, and mean him suffering as a mild beast, in comparison of the foul mouthed mastiffs his butchers: even such compassion did those ouermatcht ungracious M●nsterians obtain of many indifferent eyes, who now thought them suffering, to be as sheep brought innocent to the shambles, when as before they deemed them as a number of wolves up in arms against the shepherds. The Emperyalles themselves that were their executioners (like a Father that weeps when he beats his child, yet still weeps and still beats) not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre, yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears, made them so eager, that their hands had no leafure to ask counsel of their effeminate eyes, their swords, their pikes, their bills, their bows, their caléevers slew, empierced, knocked down, shot through, and overthrew as many men every minute of the battle, as there false ears of corn before the scythe at one blow, yet all their weapons so slaying, empiercing, knocking down, shooting through, overthrowing, dissoule joined not half so many, as the hailing thunder of their great ordinance: so ordinary at every footstep was the imbrument of iron in blood, that one could hardly discern heads from bullets, or clottered hair from mangled flesh hung with gore.  
This tale must at one time or other give up the ghost, and as good now as stay longer, I would gladly rid my hands of it cleanly if I could tell how, for what with talking of cobblers, & tinkers, & r●apemakers, and butchers, and durtdaubers, the mark is clean gone out of my muse's mouth, and I am as it were more than dunsified twixt divinity and poetry. What is there more as touching this tragedy that you would be resolved of? say quickly, for now my pen is got upon his feet again: how I. Leiden died, is that it? he died like a dog, he was hanged and the halter paid for. For his companions, do they trouble you? I can tell you they troubled some men before, for they were all killed, and none escaped, no not so much as one to tell the tale of the rainbow. Hear what it is to be Anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains, you may be counted illuminate butchers for a while, but your end will be Good people pray for me.  
With the tragical catastrophe of this munsterian conflict, did I cashier the new vocation of my cavaliership. There was no more honourable wars in christendom then towards, wherefore after I had learned to be half an hour in bidding a man boniure in german sunonimas, I traveled along the country towards England as fast as I could. What with wagons & bare tentoes having attained to Middleborough (good Lord see the changing chances of us knight arrant infants) I met with the right honourable Lord Henry Howard Earl of Surrey my late master, jesus I was yerswaded I should not be more glad to see heaven than I was to see him, O it was a right noble Lord, liberality itself. (if in this iron age there were any such creature as liberality left on the earth) a prince in content because a Poet without peer. Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die: if there be any spark of Adam's paradised perfection yet emberd up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that his perfectest image on poets. None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world, vatis avarus non temere est animus, saith Horace, versus amat, hoc studet unum, Seldom have you seen any Poet possessed with avarice, only verses he loves, nothing else he delights in: and as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of the world, because they are not of the world: their thoughts are exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits.  
As sweet angelical choristers they are continually conversant in the heaven of arts, heaven itself is but the highest height of knowledge, he that knows himself & all things else, knows the means to be happy: happy, thrice happy are they whom God hath doubled his spirit upon, and given a double soul unto to be Poets. My heroical master exceeded in this supernatural kind of wit, he entertained no gross earthly spirit of avarice, nor weak womanly spirit of pusillanimity and fear that are feigned to be of the water, but admirable, airy, and fiery spirits, full of freedom, magnanimity and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his accomplishments, for fear I spend all my spirits in praising him and leave myself no vigour of wit, or effects of a soul to go forward with my history. Having thus met him I so much adored, no interpleading was there of opposite occasions, but back I must return and bear half stakes with him in the lottery of travel. I was not altogether unwilling to walk along with such a good purse-bearer, yet musing what changeable humour had so suddenly seduced him from his native soil to seek out needless perils in these parts beyond sea, one night very boldly I demanded of him the reason that moved him thereto.  
Ah quoth he, my little Page, full little canst thou perceive how fa●re metamorphozed I am from myself, since I last saw thee. There is a little God called Love, that will not be worshipped of any leaden brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and Emperor of piercing eyes, and chief sovereign of soft hearts, he it is that exercising his empire in my eyes, hath exorcized and clean conjured me from my content. Thou knowest stately Geraldine, too stately I fear for me to do homage to her statue or shrine, she it is that is come out of Italy to bewitch all the wise men of England, upon Queen Katherine Dowager she waits, that hath a dowry of beauty sufficient to make her wooed of the greatest kings in christendom. Her high exalted sun beams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire, and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises, to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly. Those who were condemned to be smothered to death by sinking down into the soft bottom of an high built bed of roses, never died so sweet a death as I should die, if her rose coloured disdain were my deathsman. Oh thrice imperial Hampton court, Cupid's enchanted castle, the place where I first saw the perfect omnipotence of the Almighty expressed in mortality, 'tis thou alone, that tithing all other men solace in thy pleasant situation, affoordest me nothing but an excellent begotten sorrow out of the chief treasury of all thy recreations.  
Dear Wilton, understand that there it was where I first set eye on my more than celestial Geraldine. Seeing her I admired her, all the whole receptacle of my sight was unhabited with her rare worth. Long suit and uncessant protestations got me the grace to be entertained. Did never unloving servant so prentice like obey his never pleased mistress, as I did her. My life, my wealth, my friends, had all their destiny depending on her command. Upon a time I was determined to travel, the fame of Italy, and an especial affection I had unto Poetry my second mistress, for which Italy was so famous, had wholly ravished me unto it. There was no dehortment from it, but needs tother I would, wherefore coming to my mistress as she was then walking with other Ladies of estate in paradise at Hampton court, I most humbly besought her of favour, that she would give me so much gracious leave to absent myself from her service, as to travel a year or two into Italy. She very discreetly answered me, that if my love were so hot as I had often avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it, for absence, as they say, causeth forgetfulness, yet nevertheless since it is Italy my native Country you are so desirous to see, I am the more willing to make my will yours. I pete Italiam, go and seek Italy with Aenaeas, but he more true than Aenaeas, I hope that kind wit-cherishing climate will work no change in so witty a breast. No country of mine shall it be more, if it conspire with thee, in any new love against me. One charge I will give thee, and let it be rather a request than a charge: When thou comest to Florence (the fair City from whence I fetched the pride of my birth) by an open challenge defend my beauty against all comers.  
Thou hast that honourable carriage in arms, that it shall be no discredit for me to bequeath all the glory of my beauty to thy well governed arm. Feign would I be known where I was borne, fain would I have thee known where fame sits in her chiefest theatre. Farewell, forget me not, continued deserts will eternize me unto thee, thy full wishes shall be expired when thy travel shall be once ended.  
Hear did tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my kind conceived speech, even as wind is allayed with rain: with heart s●alding sighs I confirmed her parting request, and vowed myself hers, while living heat allowed me to be mine own, Hinc illae lachrimae, here hence proceedeth the whole cause of my peregrination.  
Not a little was I delighted with this unexpected love story, especially from a mouth out of which was nought wont to march but stern precepts of gravity and modesty. I swear unto you I thought his company the better by a thousand● rrownes, because he had discarded those nice terms of chastity and continency. Now I beseech God love me so well as I love a plain dealing man, earth is earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh, frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation.  
Dismissing this fruitless annotation pro et contra, towards Venice we progressed, & took Rotterdam in our way, that was clean out of our way, there we met with aged learn chief ornament, that abundant and superingenious clerk Erasmus, as also with merry sir Thomas Moor our Countryman, who was come purposely over a little before us, to visit the said grave father Erasmus: what talk, what conference we had then, it were here superfluous to rehearse, but this I can assure you, Erasmus in all his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion of princes in preferring of parasites & fools, that he decreed with himself to swim with the stream, and write a book forthwith in commendation of folly. Quick witted sir Thomas Moor traveled in a clean contrary province, for he seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custom, & that principalities were nothing but great piracies, which gotten by violence and murder, were maintained by private undermining and bloodshed, that in the chiefest flourishing kingdoms there was no equal or well divided weal one with another, but a manifest conspiracy of rich men against poor men, procuring their own unlawful commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth: he concluded with himself to lay down a perfect plot of a commonwealth or government, which he would entitle his Utopia. So left we them to prosecute their discontented studies, & made our next journey to Wittenberg.  
At the very point of our entrance ●uto Wittenberg, we were spectators of a very solemn scholastical entertainment of the Duke of Saxony thither. Whom because he was the chief patron of their university, and had took Luther's part in banishing the mass and all like papal jurisdiction out of their town, they crouched unto extremely. The chief ceremonies of their entertainment were these: first, the heads of their university, (they were great heads of certainty) met him in their hooded hypocrisy and doctorly accoutrements, secundum formam statuti, where by the Orator of the university, whose pickerdevant was very plentifully be sprinkled with rose water, a very learned or rather ruthful Oration was delivered (for it rained all the while) signifying thus much, that it was all by patch and by piece meal stolen out of Tully, & he must pardon them, though in emptying their phrase books, the air emptied his entrails, for they did it not in any ostentation of wit (which they had not) but to show the extraordinary good will they bore the Duke, (to have him stand in the rain till he was through wet) a thousand quemadmodums and quapropters he came over him with, every sentence he concluded with Esse posse videatur: through all the nine worthies he ran with praising and comparing him, Nestor's years he assured him off under the broad seal of their supplications, and with that crow trodden verse in Virgil, Dum iuga montis aper, he packed up his pipes, and cried dixi.  
That pageant overpast, there rushed upon him a miserable rabblement of junior graduates, that all crid out upon him mightily in their gibrige like a company of beggars, God save your grace, God save your grace, jesus preserve your highness, though it be but for an hour.  
Some three half penny worth of Latin here also had he thrown at his face, but it was choice stuff I can tell you, as there is a choice even amongst rags gathered up from the dunghill. At the towns end met him the burghers and dunstical incorporationers of Wittenberg in their distinguished liveries, their distinguished livery faces I mean, for they were most of them hot liuered drunkards, and had all the coat colours of sanguine, purple, crimson, copper, carnation that were to be had in their countenances. Filthy knaves, no cost had they bestowed on the town for his welcome, saving new painted their houghs & bousing houses, which commonly are built fairer than their Churches, and over their gates set the town arms, which sounded gulping after this sort, Vanhotten, slotten, irk bloshen glotten gelderlike: what ever the words were, the sense was this, Good drink is a medicine for all diseases.  
A bursten belly inkhorn orator called Vanderhulke, they picked out to present him with an oration, one that had a sulphuroous big swollen large face, like a Saracen, eyes like two kentish oysters, a month that opened as wide every time he spoke, as one of those old knit trap doors, a beard as though it had been made of a birds nest plucked in pieces, which consisteth of straw, hair, and dirt mixed together. He was appareled in black leather new licourd, and a short gown without any gathering in the back, faced before and behind with a boisterous Bear skin, and a red nightcap on his head. To this purport and effect was this bro●cing double beer Oration.  
Right noble Duke (ideo nobilis quasi no bilis) for you have no bile or choler in you, know that our present incorporation of Wittenberg, by me the tounge-man of their thankfulness, a townsman by birth, a free German by nature, an orator by art, and a scrivener by education, in all obedience & chastity, most bountifully bid you welcome to Wittenberg: welcome said I? O orificiall rhetoric wipe thy everlasting mouth, and afford me a more Indian metaphor than that, for the brave princely blood of a Saxon. Oratory uncaske the bard hutch of thy compliments, and with the triumphantest troop in thy treasury do trewage unto him. What impotent speech with his eight parts may not specify this unestimable gift holding his peace, shall as it were (with tears I speak it) do whereby as it may seem or appear, to manifest or declare & yet it is, & yet it is not, & yet it may be a diminutive oblation meritorious to your high pusillanimity & indignity. Why should I go gadding and filgigging after firking flantado Amphibologies, wit is wit, and good will is good will. With all the wit I have, I here according to the premises, offer up unto you the Cities general good will, which is a guilded Can, in manner and form following, for you and the heirs of your body lawfully begotten, to drink healths in. The scholastical squitter books clout you up cannopies & foot-cloths of verses. We that are good fellows, and live as merry as cup and can, will not verse upon you as they do, but must do as we can, and entertain you if it be but with a plain empty Can. He hath learning enough that hath learned to drink to his first man.  
Gentle Duke, without paradox be it spoken, thy horses at our own proper costs and charges shall knéed up to the knees all the while thou art here in spruce beer & lubeck liquor. Not a dog thou bringst with thee but shall be banqueted with rhenish wine and sturgeon. On our shoulders we wear no lamb skin or miniver like these academikes, yet we can drink to the confusion of all thy enemies. Good lambswool have we for their lamb skins, and for their miniver, large minerals in our coffers. Mechanical men they call us, and not amiss, for most of us being Maechi, that is, cuckolds & whooremasters, fetch our antiquity from the temple of Maecha, where Mahomet is hung up. Three parts of the world, America, Africa and Asia, are of this our mechanike religion. Nero when he crid O quantus artifex pereo, professed himself of our freedom. Insomuch as Artifex is a citizen or craftsman, as well as Carnifex a scholar or hangman. Pass on by leave into the precincts of our abomination. Beny Duke, frolic in our bower, and persuade thyself that even as garlic hath three properties, to make a man wink, drink, and stink, so we will wink on thy imperfections, drink to thy favourites, & all thy foes shall stink before us. So be it. Farewell.  
The Duke laughed not a little at this ridiculous oration, but that very night, as great an ironical occasion was ministered, for he was bidden to one of the chief schools to a Comedy handled by scholars. Acolastus the prodigal child was the name of it, which was so filthily acted, so leathernly set forth, as would have moved laughter in Heraclitus. One as if he had been plaining a clay floor stampingly trod the stage so hard with his feet, that I thought verily he had resolved to do the Carpenter that set it up some utter shame. Another floung his arms like cudgelles at a pear tree, in so much as it was mightily dreaded that he would strike the candles that hung above their heads out of their sockets, and leave them all dark. Another did nothing but wink and make faces. There was a parasite, & he with clapping his hands and thripping his fingers seemed to dance an antic to and fro. The only thing they did well, was the prodigal child's hunger, most of their scholars being hungerly kept, and surely you would have said they had been brought up in hog's academi● to learn to eat acorns, if you had seen how sedulously they fell to them. Not a jest had they to keep their auditors from sleep but of swill and draff, yes now and then the servant put his hand into the dish before his master, and almost choked himself, eating slovenly and ravenously to cause sport.  
The next day they had solemn disputations, where Luther and Carolostadius scolded level coil. A mass of words I wots well they heaped up against the mast and the Pope, but farther particulars of their disputations I remember not. I thought verily they would have worried one another with words, they were so earnest and vehement. Luther had the louder voice, Carolostadius went beyond him in beating and bouncing with his fists, Quae supra nos nihil ad nos. They uttered nothing to make a man laugh, therefore I will leave them. Marry their outward gestures now and then would afford a man a morsel of mirth: of those two I mean not so much, as of all the other train of opponents and respondents. One peckte like a crane with his forefinger at every half syllable he brought forth, and nodded with his nose like an old singing man, teaching a young chorister to keep time. Another would be sure to wipe his mouth with his handkerchief at the end of every full point. And ever when he thought he had cast a figure so curiously, as he diu'de over head and ears into his auditor's admiration, he would take occasion to stroke up his hair, and twine up his mustachioes twice or thrice over while they might have leisure to applaud him. A third waverd and wagled ●is head, like a proud horse playing with his bridle, or as I have seen some fantastical swimmer, at every stroke, train his chin sidelong over his left shoulder. A fourth sweat and foamed at the mouth, for very anger his adversary had denied that part of his syllogism which he was not prepared to answer. A fifth spread his arms like an usher that goes before to make room, and thript with his finger & his thumb when he thought he had tickled it with a conclusion. A sixth hung down his countenance like a sheep, and stutted and slavered very pitifully when his invention was slept aside out of the way. A seventh gasped and gaped for wind, and grened in his pronunciation as if he were hard bound with some bad argument. Gross plodders they were all, that had some learning and reading, but no wit to make use of it. They imagined the Duke took the greatest pleasure and contentment under heaven to hear them speak Latin, and as long as they talked nothing but Tully he was bound to attend them. A most vain thing it is in many universities at this day, that they count him excellent eloquent, who stealeth not whole phrases but whole pages out of Tully. If of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world he carries it away, although in truth it be no more than a fools coat of many colours. No invention or matter have they of their own, but tack up a style of his stolen galimafries. The leaden headed Germans first began this, and we Englishmen have surfeited of their absurd imitation. I pity Nizolius that had nothing to do, but pick thirds ends out of an old overworn garment.  
This is but by the way, we must look back to our disputants. One amongst the rest thinking to be more conceited 〈◊〉 ●is fellows, seeing the Duke have a dog he loved well, 〈◊〉 sa●● by him on the terrace, converted all his oration to him 〈◊〉 not a hair of his tail but he combed out with comparisons. 〈◊〉 ●o have courted him if he were a hitch had been very suspicious. Another commented & descanted on the Duke's staff, new tipping it with many quaint epishites. Some cast his nativity, and promised him he should not die till the day of judgement. Omitting further superfluities of this stamp●, in this general assembly we found intermixed that abundant scholar Cornelius Agrippa. At that time he bore the fame to be the greatest conjuror in Christendom. Scoto that did the juggling tricks here before the Queen, never came near him one quarter in magic reputation. The Doctors of Wittenberg doting on the rumour that went of him, desired him before the Duke and them to do something extraordinary memorable.  
One requested to see pleasant Plautus, & that he would show them in what habit he went, and with what countenance he looked, when he ground corn in the mill. Another had half a months mind to Ovid and his hook nose. Erasmus who was not wanting to that honourable meeting, requested to see Tully in that same grace and majesty he pleaded his Oration pro Roscio Amerino. Affirming, that till in rerson he beheld his importunity of pleading, he would not be persuaded any man could carry away a manifest case with rhetoric, so strangely. To Erasmus petition he easily condescended, and willing the Doctors at such an hour to hold their convocation, and every one to keep him in his place without moving: at the time prefixed in entered Tully, ascended his pleading place, and declaimed verbatim the forenamed Oration, but with such astonishing amazement, with such fervent exaltation of spirit, with such soule-stirring gestures, that all his auditors were ready to install his guilty client for a God.  
Great was the concourse of glory Agrippa drew to him with this one feat. And in deed he was so cloyed with men which came to behold him, that he was fayne sooner than he would, to return to the emperors court from whence he came, and leave Wittenberg before he would. With him we traveled along, having purchased his acquaintance a little before. By the way as we went, my master and I agreed to change names. It was concluded betwixt us, that I should be the Earl of Surrie, and he my man, only because in his own person, which he would not have reproached, he meant to take more liberty of behaviour, As for my carriage he knew he was to tune it at a key, either high or low, or as he list.  
To the emperors Court we came, where our entertainment was every way plentiful, carouses we had in whole galons in stead of quart pots. Not a health was given us but contained well near a hogshead. The customs of the Country we were eager to be instructed in, but nothing we could learn but this, that ever at the emperors coronation there is an Ox roasted with a stag in the belly, and that stag in his belly hath a kid, and that kid is stuff full of birds. Some courtiers to weary out time would tell us further tales of Cornelius Agrippa, and how when sir Thomas Moor our country man was there, he showed him the whole destruction of Troy in a dream. How the Lord Cromwell being the king's Ambassador there, in like case, in a perspective glass he set before his eyes, King Henry the eight with all his Lords hunting in his forest at Windsor, and when he came into his study, and was very urgent to be partaker of some rare experiment, that he might report when he came into England, he wild him amongst two thousand great books to take down which he list, and begin to read one line in any place, and without book he would rehearse twenty leaves following. Cromwell did so, and in many books tried him, when in every thing he exceeded his promise and conquered his expectation. To Charles the fift than Emperor, they reported how he showed the nine worthies, David, Solomon, Gedeon, and the rest, in that similitude and likeness that they lived upon earth. My master and I having by the high way side gotten some reasonable familiarity with him, upon this access of miracles imputed to him, resolved to request him something in our own behalfs. I because I was his suborned Lord and master, desired him to see the lively image of Geraldine his love in the glass, and what at that instant she did, and with whom she was talking. He showed her us without more ado, sick weeping on her bed, and resolved all into devout religion for the absence of her Lord. At the sight thereof he could in no wise refrain, though he had took upon him the condition of a servant, but he must forthwith frame this extemporal Ditty. 

ALL soul, no earthly flesh, why dost thou fade,  
All gold, no worthless dross, why look'st thou pale,  
Sickness how darest thou one so fair invade,  
Too base infirmity to work her bale.  
Heaven be distempered since she grieved pines,  
Never be dry these my sad plaintive lines.   

Perch thou my spirit on her silver breasts,  
And with their pain redoubled music beat,  
Let them toss thee to world where all toil rests,  
Where bliss is subject to no fears defeating,  
Her praise I tune whose tongue doth tune the spheres,  
And gets new muses in her hearers ears.   

Stars fall to fetch fresh light from her rich eyes,  
Her bright brow drives the Sun to clouds beneath,  
Her hairs reflex with red strikes paints the skies,  
Sweet morn and evening dew flows from her breath:  
Phoebe rules tides, she my tears tides forth draws,  
In her sick bed love sits and maketh laws.   

Her dainty limbs tinsel her silk soft sheets,  
Her rose-crownd cheeks eclipse my dazzled sight,  
O glass with too much joy my thoughts thou greets,  
And yet thou showst me day but by twilight.  
I'll kiss thee for the kindness I have felt,  
Her lips one kiss would unto Nectar melt.    
Though the Emperor's court, and the extraordinary edifying company of Cornelius Agrippa might have been arguments of weight to have arrested us a little longer there, yet Italy still stuck as a great moat in my master's eye, he thought he had traveled no farther than Wales till he had took survey of that Country which was such a curious moulder of wits.  
To cut off blind ambages by the high way side, we made a long stride & got to Venice in short time, where having scarce looked about us, a precious supernatural pander, appareled in all points like a gentleman, and having half a dozen several languages in his purse, entertained us in our own tongue very paraphrastically and eloquently, and maugre all other pretended acquaintance, would have us in a violent kind of courtesy to be the guests of his appointment. His name was Petro de campo Frego, a notable practitioner in the policy of bawdry. The place whether be brought us, was a pernicious courtesans house named Tabytha the Temptresses, a wench that could set as civil a face on it, as chastities first martyr Lucretia. What will you conceit to be in any Saints house that was there to seek? Books, pictures, beads, crucifixes, why there was a haberdasher's shop of them in every chamber. I warrant you should not see one set of her neckercher perverted or turned a wry, not a piece of a hair displaced. On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found, her pillows bore out as smooth as a groaning wives belly, & yet she was a Turk and an infidel, and had more doings than all her neighbours beside. Us for our money they used like Emperors, I was master as you heard before, and my master the Earl was but as my chief man whom I made my companion. So it happened (as iniquity will out at one time or other) that she perceiving my expense had no more ventes than it should have, fell in with my supposed servant my man, and gave him half a promise of marriage, if he would help to make me a way, that she and he might enjoy the jewels and wealth that I had.  
The indifficultie of the condition thus she explaind unto him, her house stood upon vaults, which in two hundred years together were never searched, who came into her house none took notice of, his fellow servants that knew of his master's abode there, should be all dispatched by him as from his master, into sundry parts of the city about bu●●nes, and when they returned, answer should be made that he lay not there any more, but had removed to Padua since their departure, & thither they must follow him. Now (quoth she) if you be disposed into their hands, devised the means to make me immortal. I could drink for anger till my head ached, to think how I was abused. Shall I shame the devil and speak the truth, to prison was I sent as principal, and my master as accessary, nor was it to a prison neither, but to the master of the mints house who though partly our judge, and a most severe upright justice in his own nature, extremely seemed to condole our ignorant estate, and without all peradventure a present redress he had ministered, if certain of our country men hearing an English earl was apprehended for coining, had not come to visit us. An ill planet brought them thither, for at the first glance they knew the servant of my secrecies to be the Earl of Surrey, and I (not worthy to be named I) an outcast of his cup or his pantofles. Thence, thence sprung the full period of our infelicity. The master of the mint our whitsome refresher and consolation now took part against us, he thought we had a mint in our head of mischievous conspiracies against their state. heavens bare witness with us it was no so, (Heavens will not always come to witness when they are called.)  
To a straighter ward were we committed: that which we have imputatively transgressed must be answered. O the heathen heigh pass, and the intrinsical legerdemain of our special approved good pander Petro de Campo Frego. He although he dipped in the same dish with us every day, seeming to labour our cause very importunately, and had interpreted for us to the state from the beginning, yet was one of those treacherous brother Trulies', and abused us most clerkly. He interpreted to us with a pestilence, for whereas we stood obstinately upon it, we were wrongfully detained, and that it was nought but a malicious practice of sinful Tabytha our late hostess, he by a fine coney-catching corrupt translation, made us plainly to confess, and cry Miserere, ere we had need of our neck-verse.  
Detestable, detestable, that the flesh and the devil should deal by their factors. I'll stand to it, there is not a pander but hath vo●ed paganism. The devil himself is not such a devil as he, so be he perform his function aright. He must have the back of an ass, the snout of an elephant, the wit of a fox, and the teeth of a wolf, he must faun like a spaniel, crouch like a jew, li●re like a shéepbiter, If he be half a puritan, and have scripture continually in his mouth, he spé●ds the letter. I can tell you it is a trade of great promotion, and let none ever think to mount by service in sorain courts, or creep near to seem magnific Lords, if they be not seen in this science. O it is the art of arts, and ten thousand times goes beyond the intelligencer. None but a stayed grave civil man is capable of it, he must have exquisite courtship in him or else he is not old who, he wants the best point in his tables.  
God be merciful to our pander (and that were for God to work a miracle) he was seen in all the seven liberal deadly sciences, not a sin but he was as absolute in as sathan himself. Satan could never have supplanted us so as he did. I may say to you he planted in us the first Italianate wit that we had. During the time we lay close and took physic in this castle of contemplation, there was a Magnificos wife of good calling sent in to bear us company. Her husband's name was Castaldo, she hight Diamante, the cause of her committing was an ungrounded jealous suspicion which her doting husband had conceived of her chastity. One Isaac Medicus a bergomast was the man he chose to make him a monster, who being Turrian courtier and repairing to his house very often, neither for love of him nor his wife, but only with a drift to borrow money of a pawn of wax and parchment, when he saw his expectation deluded, and that Castaldo was too chary for him to close with, he privily with purpose of revenge, gave out amongst his copesmates, that he resorted to Castaldoes house for no other end but to cuckold him, & doubtfully he talked that he had and he had not obtained his suit. Rings which he borrowed of a light courtesan that he used to, he would feign to be taken from her fingers, and in sum, so handled the matter, that Castaldo exclaimed, Out whore, strumpet, six penny hackster, away with her to prison.  
As glad were he almost as if they had given us liberty, that fortune lent us such a sweet pew-fellow. A pretty round faced wench was it, with black eye brows, a high forehead, a little mouth, and a sharp nose, as fat and plum every part of her as a plover, a skin as slike and soft as the back of a swan, it doth me good when I remember her. Like a bird she tripped on the ground, and bare out her belly as majestical as an Ostrich. With a liquorous rolling eye fixed piercing on the earth, & sometimes scornfully darted on the tone side, she figured forth a high discontented disdain, much like a prince puffing and storming at the treason of some mighty subject fled lately out of his power. Her very countenance repiningly wrathful, and yet clear and unwrinkled, would have confirmed the clearness of her conscience to the austerest judge in the world. If in any thing she were culpable, it was in being too melancholy chaste, and showing herself as covetous of her beauty as her husband was of his bags. Many are honest because they know not how to be dishonest: she thought there was no pleasure in stolnebread, because there was no pleasure in an old man's bed. It is almost impossible that any woman should be excellently witty, and not make the utmost penny of her beauty. This age and this country of ours admits of some miraculous exceptions, but former times are my constant informers Those that have quick motions of wit, have quick motions in every thing: iron only needs many strokes, only iron wits are not won without a long siege of entreaty. Gold eastly bends, the most ingenious minds are easiest moved, Ingenium nobis molle Thalia dedit, saith Psapho to Phao. Who hath no merciful mild mistress, I will maintain, hath no witty but a clownish dull phlegmatic puppte to his mistress.  
This Magnificos wife was a good loving soul, that had metal enough in her to make a good wit of, but being never removed from under her mothers and her husband's wing, it was not moulded and fashioned as it ought. Causeless destruct is able to drive deceit into a simple woman's head. I durst pawn the credit of a page, which is worth ams ace at all times, that she was immaculate honest till she met with us in prison. Marry what temptations she had then when fire and flare were put together, conceit with yourselves, but hold my master excusable.  
A lack he was too virtuous to make her vicious, he stood upon religion and conscience, what a heinous thing it was to subvert God's ordinance. This was all the injury he would offer her, sometimes he would imagine her in a melancholy humour to be his Geraldine, and court her in terms correspondent, nay he would swear she was his Geraldine, & take her white hand and wipe his eyes with it, as though the very touch of her might staunch his anguish. Now would he kneel and kiss the ground as holy ground which she vouchsafed to bless from barrenness by her steps. Who would have learned to write an excellent passion, might have been a perfect tragic poet, had he but attended half the extremity of his lament. Passion upon passion would throng one on another's neck, he would praise her beyond the moon and stars, and that so swatly & ravishingly, as I persuade myself he was more in love with his own curious forming fancy than her face, and truth it is, many become passionate lovers, only to win praise to their wits.  
He praised, he prayed, he desired and besought her to pity him that perished for her. From this his intranced mistaking ecstasy could no man remove him. Who loveth resolutely, will include every thing under the name of his love. From prose he would leap into verse, and with these or such like rhymes assault her. 
If I must die; O let me choose my death,  
Suck out my soul with kisses cruel maid,  
In thy breasts crystal balls embalm my breath  
Dole it all out in sighs when I am laid.  
Thy lips on mine like cupping glasses clasp,  
Let our tongues meet and strive as they would sting,  
Crush out my wind with one straight girding grasp,  
Stabs on my heart keep time whilst thou dost sing.  
Thy ties like searing irons burn out mine,  
In thy fair tresses stifle me outright,  
Like Circe's change me to a loathsome swine,  
So I may live for ever in thy sight.  
Into heavens joys can none profoundly see,  
Except that first they meditate on thee.  over to an artless envy. Four universities honoured Aretine with these rich titles, Il flagello de principi, Il veritiero, Il devino, & L'vnico Aretino.  
The French king Frances the first, he kept in such awe, that to chain his tongue, he sent him a huge chain of gold, in the form of tongues fashioned. Singularly hath he commented of the humanity of Christ. Besides, as Moses set forth his Genesis, so hath he set forth his Genesis also, including the contents of the whole Bible. A notable treatise hath he compiled, called Ill set Psalm poenetentiarii. All the Thomasos have cause to love him, because he hath dilated so magnificently of the life of Saint Thomas. There is a good thing that he hath set forth Lafoy vita della virgine Maria, though it somewhat smell of superstition, with a number more, which here for tediousness I suppress. I flascivious he were, he may answer with Ovid, Vita verecunda est, musa iocosa mea est, My life is chaste though wanton be my verse. Tell me who is most traveled in histories, what good Poet is or ever was there, who hath not had a little spice of wantonness in days? Even Beza himself by your leave. Aretine as long as the world lives shalt thou live. Tully, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, were never such ornaments to Italy as thou hast been. I never thought of Italy more religiously than England till I heard of thee. Peace to the Ghost, and yet me thinks so indefinite a spirit should have no peace or intermission of pains, but be penning Ditties to the Archangels in another world. Puritans spew forth the venom of your dull inventions. A Toad swells with thick troubled poison, you swell with poisonous perturbations, your malice hath not a clear dram o● any inspired disposition.  
My principal subject plucks me by she elbow, Diamante Castaldoes the magnificos wife, after my enlargement proved to be with child, at which instant there grew an unsatiable famine in Venice, wherein, whether it were for mere nigardise, or that Castaldo still eat out his heart with jealousy, Saint Anne be our record, he turned up the heels very devoutly. To master Aretine after this, once more very dutifully I appealed, requested him of favour, acknowledged former gratuities, he made no more humming or halting, but in despite of her husbands kinsfolks, gave her her Nunc dimittis, and so established her free of my company.  
Being out, and fully possessed of her husbands goods, she invested me in the state of a Monarch. Because the time of childbirth drew nigh, and she could not remain in Venice but discredited, she decreed to travel whether so ever I would conduct her. To see Italy throughout was my proposed scope, and that way if she would travel, have with her, I had where withal to relieve her.  
From my master by her ful-hand provokement I parted without leave, the state of an Earl he had thrust upon me before, and now I would not bate him an inch of it. Through all the Cities past ● by no other name but the young Earl of Surrey, my pomp, my apparel, train, and expense, was nothing inferior to his, my looks were as lofty, my words as magnifical. Memorandum, that Florence being the principal scope of my master's course, missing me, he iourneied thither without interruption. By the way as he went, he heard of another Earl of Surrey besides himself, which caused him make more haste to fetch me in, whom he little dreamt of, had such art in my budget, to separate the shadow from the body. Overtake me at Florence he did, where sitting in my pontificalibus with my courtesan at supper, like Anthony and Cleopatra, when they quafte standing bowls of wine spiced with pearl together, he stole in ere we sent for him, and had much good it us, and asked us whether we wanted any guests. If he had asked me whether I would have hanged myself, his question had been more acceptable. He that had the● ungartered me, might have plucked out my heart at my hams.  
My soul which was made to soar upward, now sought for passage downward, my blood as the blushing Sabine maids surprised on the sudden by the soldiers of Romulus, ran to the noblest of blond amongst them for succour, that were in no less (if not greater danger) so did it run for refuge to the noblest of his blood about my heart assembled, that stood in more need itself of comfort and refuge. A trembling earthquake or shaking fever assailed either of us, and I think unfeignedly, if he seeing our faint heart agony, had not soon cheered and refreshed us, the dogs had gone together by the ears under the table for our feare-dropped limbs.  
In stead of menacing or affrighting me with his sword, or his frowns for my superlative presumption, he burst out into a laughter above Ela, to think how bravely napping he had took us, and how notably we were dampt & struck dead in the nest, with the unexpected view of his presence.  
A● quoth he, my noble Lord, (after his tongue had borrowed a little leave of his laughter) is it my luck to visit you thus unlooked for, I am sure you will bid me welcome, if it be but for the names sake. It is a wonder to see two English Earls of one house, at one time together in Italy. I hearing him so pleasant, began to gather up my spirits, and replied as boldly as I durst. Sir, you are welcome, your name which I have borrowed I have not abused. Some large sums of money this my sweet mistress Diamante hath made me master of, which I knew not how better to employ for the honour of my country, than by spending it manificently under your name. No Englishman would I have renowned for bounty, magnificence and courtesy but you, under your colours all my meritorious works I was desirous to shroud. Deem i● no insolence to add increase to your fame. Had I basely and beggarly, wanting ability to support any part of your royalty, undertook the estimation of this high calling, your alledgement of injury had been the greater, and my defence less authorized. It will be thought but a policy of yours thus to send one before you, who being a follower of yours, shall keep and uphold the estate and port of an Earl. I have known many Earls myself that in their own persons would go very plain, but delighted to have one that belonged to them (being laden with jewels, appareled in cloth of gold and all the rich embroidery that might be, to stand bare headed unto him, arguing thus much, that if that greatest men went not more sumptuous, how more great than the greatest was he that could command one going so sumptuous. A noble man's glory appeareth in nothing so much as in the pomp of his attendants. What is the glory of the Sun, but that the moon and so many millions of stars borrow their light from him? If you can reprehend me of any one illiberal licentious action I have disparaged your name with, heap shame on me prodigally, I beg no pardon or pity.  
Non veniunt in idem p●dor & amor, he was loath to detract from one that he loved so. Beholding with his eyes that I clipped not the wings of his honour, but rather increased them with additions of expense, he entreated me as if I had been an Ambassador, he gave me his hand and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should have half of it, in that I so enhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweet jacke I will entreat thee (it shallbe but one) that though I am well pleased thou shouldest be the ape of my birthright, (as what noble man hath not his ape & his fool) yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carry thy courtesan with thee. I told him that a king could do nothing without his treasury, this courtesan was my purs-bearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldom I would sooner resign than part with such a special benefactresse. Resign it I will how ever, since I am thus challenged of stoine goods by the true owner: Lo, into my former state I return again, poor jack Wilton and your servant am I, as I was at the beginning, and so will I persever to my lives ending.  
That theme was quickly cut off, and other talk entered in place, of what I have forgot, but talk it was, and talk let it be, and talk it shall be, for I do not mean here to remember it. We supped, we got to bed, we rose in the morning, on my master I wai●ed, and the first thing he did after he was up, he went and visited the ho●se where his Geraldine was borne, at sight whereof he was so impassioned, that in the open street but for me, he would have made an oration in praise of it. Into it we were conducted, and showed each several room thereto appertaining. O but when he came to the chamber where his Geraldines clear Son-beams first thrust themselves into this cloud of flesh, and acquainted mortality with the purity of Angels, than did his mouth overflow with magnificate, his tongue thrust the stars out of heaven, and eclipsed the Sun and Moon with comparisons, Geraldine was the soul of heaven, sole daughter and heir to primus motor. The alchemy of his eloquence, out of the incomprehensible drossy matter of clouds and air, distilled no more quintessence than would make his Geraldine complete fair.  
In praise of the chamber that was so illuminatively honoured with her radiant conception, he penned this sonnet. 
Fair room the presence of sweet beauty's pride,  
The place the Sun upon the earth did hold,  
When Phaton his chariot did misguide,  
The tower where jove rained down himself in gold.  
Prostrate as holy ground I'll worship thee,  
Our Lady's chapel henceforth be thou named  
Hear first loves Queen put on mortality,  
And with her beauty all the world inflamed.  
heavens chambers harbouring fiery cherubins,  
Are not with thee in glory to compare,  
Lightning it is not light which in thee shines,  
None enter thee but strait intranced are.  
O if Elysium be above the ground,  
Then here it is where nought but joy is found.   
Many other Poems and Epigrams in that chambers patiented alabaster enclosure (which her melting eyes long sithence had softened) were curiously engraved. Diamonds thought themselves Dii mundi, if they might but carve her name on the naked glass. With them on it did he anatomize these bodiewanting mots, Dulce puella malum est. Quod fugit ipse sequor. Amor est mihi causa sequendi, O infoelixego. Cur vidi, cur perii. Non patienter amo. Tantum patiatur amari. After the view of these venerial monuments, he published a proud challenge in the Duke of Florence court against all comers, (whether Christians, Turks, Cannibals, jews, or Saracens, in defence of his Geraldine's beauty. More mildly was it accepted, in that she whom he defended, was a town borne child of that City, or else the pride of the Italian would have prevented him ere he should have come to perform it. The Duke of Florence nevertheless sent for him, and demanded him of his estate, and the reason that drew him thereto, which when he was advertised of to the full, he granted all Countries whatsoever, as well enemies and outlaws, as friends and confederates, free access and regress into his dominions unmolested, until that insolent trial were ended.  
The right honourable and ever renowned Lord Henry Howard Earl of Surrey my singular good Lord and master, entered the lists after this order. His armour was all intermixed with lilies and roses, and the bases thereof bordered with nettles and weeds, signifying stings, crosses, and overgrowing encumbrances in his love, his helmet round proportioned like a gardeners waterpot, from which seemed to issue forth small thirds of water, like citerne strings, that not only did moisten the lilles and roses, but did fructify as well the nettles and weeds, and made them overgrow their liege Lords. Whereby he did import thus much, that the tears that issued from his brain, as those artificial distillations issued from the well counterfeit waterpot on his head, watered and gave life as well to his mistress disdain (resembled to nettles and weeds) as increase of glory to her carecausing beauty, (comprehended under the lilies and roses.) The symbol thereto annexed was this, ex lachrimis lachrimae. The trappings of his horse were pounced and boulstered out with rough plumed silver plush, in full proportion and shape of an Ostrich. On the breast of the horse were the foreparts of this greedy bird advanced, whence as his manner is, he reached out his long neck to the rains of the bridle, thinking they had been iron, and still seemed to gape after the golden bit, and ever as the courser did raise or curvet, to have swallowed it half in. His wings, which he never useth but running, being spreaded full sail, made his lusty steed as proud under him as he had been some other Pegasus, and so quieveringly and tenderly were these his broad wings bound to either side of him, that as he paced up and down the tiltyard in his majesty ere the knights were entered, they seemed wanton to fan in his face and make a flickering sound, such as Eagles do, swiftly pursuing their pray in the air. On either of his wings, as the Ostrich hath a sharp goad or prick wherewith he spurreth himself forward in his saile-assisted race, so this artificial Ostrich, on the imbent knuchle of the pinion of either wing, had embossed crystal eyes affixed, wherein wheel wise were circularly engrafted sharp pointed diamonds, as rays from those eyes derived, that like the rowels of a spur ran deep into his horse sides, and made him more eager in his course.  
Such a fine dim shine died these crystal eyes and these round enranked diamonds make through their bolne swelling bowers of feathers, as if it had been a candle in a paper lantern, or a glow-worm in a bush by night, glistering through the leaves and briars. The tail of the Ostrich being short and thick, served very fitly as a plume to trick up his horse tail with, so that every part of him was as naturally coapted as might be. The word to this device was Aculeo alatus, I spread my wings only spurred with her eyes. The moral of the whole is this, that as the Ostrich, the most burning sighted bird of all others, insomuch as the female of them hatcheth not her eggs by covering them, but by the effectual rays of her eyes) as he, I say, out strippeth the nimblest trippers of his feathered condition in footmanshippe, only spurred on with the needle quickening goad under his side, so he no less burning sighted than the Ostrich, spurred on to the race of honour by the sweet rays of his mistress eyes, persuaded himself he should outstrip all other in running to the goal of glory only animated and incited by her excellence. And as the Ostrich will eat iron, swallow any hard metal whatsoever, so would he refuse no iron adventure, no hard task whatsoever, to sit in the grace of so fair a commander. The order of his shield was this, it was framed like a burning glass, beset round with flame coloured feathers, on the outside whereof was his mistress picture adorned as beautiful as art could portraiture, on the inside a naked sword tied in a true love knot, the mot, Militat omnis amans. Signifying that in a true love knot his sword was side to defend and maintain the high features of his mistress.  
Next him entered the black knight, whose beaver was pointed all torn & bloody, as though he had new come from combating with a Bear, his he●● piece seemed to be a little oven fraught full with smothering flames, for nothing but sulphur and smoke voided out at the clefts of his beaver. His bases were all embroidered with snakes & adders, engendered of the abundance of innocent blood that was shed. His horses trappings were throughout bespangled with honey spots, which are no blemishes, but ornaments. On his shield he bore the Sun full shining on a dial at his going down, the word sufficit tandem.  
After him followed the knight of the Owl, whose armour was a stubd tree overgrown with ivy, his helmet fashioned like an owl sitting on the top of this ivy, on his bases were wrought all kind of birds as on the ground wondering about him, the word, Ideo mirum quia monstrum, his horse's furniture was framed like a cart, scattering whole sheaves of corn amongst hogs, the word Liberalitas liberalitate perit. On his shield a be entangled in sheeps wool, the mot Frontis nulla fides. The fourth that succeeded was a well proportioned knight in an armour imitating rust, whose head piece was prefigured like flowers growing in a narrow pot, where they had not any space to spread their roots or disperse their flourishing. His bases embellished with open armed hands scattering gold amongst truncheons, the word Cura futuri est. His horse was harnished with leaden chains, having the outside guilt, or at least saffrond in stead of guilt, to decipher a holy or golden pretence of a covetous purpose, the sentence Cani capilli mei compedes, on his target he had a number of crawling worms kept under by a block, the faburthen, Speramus lucent. The fift was the forsaken knight, whose helmet was crowned with nothing but cypress and willow garlands, over his armour he had on Hymen's nuptial rob died in a dusky yellow, and all to be defaced and discoloured with spots & stains. The enigma Nos quoque florimus, as who should say, we have been in fashion, his stead was adorned with orange tawny eyes, such as those have that have the yellow iandies, that make all things yellow they look upon, with this brief, Qui invident egent, Those that envy are hungry. The sixth was the knight of the storms, whose helmet was round moulded like the Moon, and all his armour like waves, whereon the shine of the Moon slightly silvered, perfectly represented Moonshine in the water, his bases were the banks or shores that bounded in the streams. The spoke was this, Frustra pius, as much to say, as fruitless service. On his shield he set forth a lion driven from his pray by a dunghill cock. The word, Non vi sed voce, not by violence but by his voice.  
The seventh had like the giants that sought to scale heaven in despite of jupiter, a mount overwhelming his head and whole body. His bases out-layde with arms and legs which the skirts of that mountain left uncovered. Under this did he characterise a man desirous to climb to the heaven of honour, kept under with the mountain of his princes command, and yet had he arms and legs exempted from the suppression of that mountain. The word, Tu mihi criminis author (alluding to his Prince's command) thou art the occasion of my imputed cowardice. His horse was trapped in the earthy strings of tree roots, which though their increase was stubbed down to the ground, yet were they not utterly deadened, but hoped for an after resurrection. The word, Spe alor. I hope for spring. Upon his shield he bore a bal● stricken down with a man's hand hat it might mount. The word, Ferior ut efferar, I suffer myself to be contemned because I will climb. The eighth had all his armour tharoughout engrailed like a crabbed brierie hawthorn bush, ou● of which notwithstanding sprung (as a good Child of an ill Father) fragrant Blossoms of delightful may Flowers that made (according to the nature of may) a most odoriferous smell. In midst of this his snowy curled top, round wrapped together, on the ascending of his crest sat a solitary nightingale close encaged with a thorn at her breast, having this mot in her mouth, Luctus monumenta manebunt. At the foot of this bush represented on his bases, lay a number of black swollen Toads gasping for wind, and Summer lived grasshoppers gaping after dew, both which were choked with excessive drought, and for want of shade. The word, Non sine vulnere viresco, I spring not without impediments, alluding to the Toads and such like, that erst lay sucking at his roots, but now were turned out, and near choked with drought. His horse was suited in black sandy earth (as adjacent to this bush) which was here and there patched with short burnt grass, and as thick ink dropped with toiling ants & emmets as ever it might crawl, who in the full of the summer moon. (ruddy garnished on his horse's forehead) hoardward up their provision of grain against winter. The word Victrix fortunae sapientia, providence prevents misfortune. On his shield he set forth the picture of death doing alms deeds to a number of poor desolate children. The word, Nemo alius explicat. No other man takes pity upon us. What his meaning was herein I cannot imagine, except death had done him and his brethren some great good turn in ridding them of some untoward parent or kinsman that would have been their confusion, for else I cannot see how death should have been said to do alms deeds, except he had deprived them suddenly of their lives, to deliver them out of some further misery, which could not in any wise he because they were yet living.  
The ninth was the infant knight, who on his armour had ennameld a poor young infant, put into a ship without tackling, masts, furniture, or any thing. This weather beaten and ill appareled ship was shadowed on his bases, and the slender compass of his body set forth the right picture of an infant. The waves wherein the ship was tossed were fretted on his steads trappings so movingly, that ever as he offered to bound or stir, they seemed to bounce, and toss, and sparkle brine out of their hoary silver billows. Their mot, Inopem me copia fecit, as much to say, as the rich pray makes the thief.  
On his shield he expressed an old Goat that made a young tree to whither only with biting it. The word thereto Primo extinguor in aevo. I am frostbitten ere I come out of the blade.  
It were here too tedious to manifest all the discontented or amorous devices that were used in that tournament. The shields only of some few I will touch to make short work. One bare for his impress the eyes of young swallows coming again after they were plucked out, with this mot, Et addit et addimit, your beauty both bereaves and restores my sight. Another a siren s●●ling when the sea rageth and ships are overwhelmed, including a cruel woman, that laughs, singes and scorns at her lovers tears, and the tempests of his despair, the word Cuncta pereunt▪ all my labour is ill employed. A third being troubled with a cursed, a treacherous and wanton wanton wife, used this similitude. On his shield he caused to be limmed Pompey's ordinance for parricides, as namely a man put into a sack with a cock, a serpent and an ape, interpreting that his wife was a cock for her crowing, a serpent for her stinging, and an ape for her unconstant wantonness, with which ill qualities he was so beset, that thereby he was thrown into a sea of grief. The ●orde Extremum malonim mulier, The utmost of evils is a woman. A fourth, who being a person of suspected religion, was continually haunted with intelligencers and spies that thought to pray upon him for that he had, he could not devise which way to shake them off, but by making away that he had. To obscure this, he used no other fancy but a number of blind flies, whose eyes the cold had closed, the word Aurum reddit acutissimum. God is the only physic for the eyesight. A fifth, whose mistress was fallen into a consumption, and yet would condescend to no treaty of love, emblazond for his complaint, grapes that withered for want of pressing. The ditty to the mot, Quid regna fine usu. I will rehearse no more, but I have an hundred other, let this be the upshot of those shows, they were the admirablest that ever Florence yielded. To particularise their manner of encounter, were to describe the whole art of tilting. Some had like to have fallen over their horse neck and so break their necks in breaking their staves. Others ran at a back in stead of a button, & peradventure whetted their spears points, idly gliding on their enemy's sides, but did no other harm. Others ran a cross at their adversaries less elbow, yea, and by your leave sometimes let not the lists scape scotfree they were so eager. Others because they would be sure not to be unsaddled with the shocks, when they came to the spears utmost proof, they threw it over the right shoulder, and so tilted backward, for forward they durst not. Another had a menstruous spite at the pommel of his rivals saddle, and thought to have thrust is spear twixt his legs without rasing any skin, and carried him clean away on it as a coolest ass. Another held his spear to his nose, or his nose to his spear, as though he had been discharging a caliver, and ran at the right foot of his fellows stead. Only the earl of Surry my master observed the true measures of honour, and made all his encounterers new scour their armour in the dust. So great was his glory that day, as Geraldine was thereby eternally glorified. Never such a bountiful master came amongst the heralds (not that he did enrich them with any plentiful purse largesse) but that by his stern assaults he tithed them mo●e rich ●ffals of bases, of helmets, of armour, than the rent of their offices came to in ten years before.  
What would you have more, the trumpets proclaimed him mas●er of the stalled, the trumpets proclaimed Geraldine the exceptionlesse fairest of women. Every one strived to magnify him more than other. The Duke of Florence, whose name (as my memory serveth me) was Paschal the Medici's, offered him such large proffers to slay with him as it were uncredible to report. He would not, his desire was as he had done in Fl●rence, so to proceed throughout all the chief cities in Italy. If you ask why he began not this at Venice first. It was because he would let Florence his mistress native city have the maidenhead of his chivalry. As he came back again he thought to have enacted something there worthy the Annals of posterity, but he was debarred both of that and all his other determinations, for continuing in feasting and banqueting with the Duke of Florence and the Princes of Italy there assembled, post-half letters came to him from the king his master, to return as speedily as he could possible into England, whereby his fame was quite cut off by the shins, and there was no reprieve but Bazelus manus, he must into England, and I with my courtesan traveled forward in Italy.  
What adventures happened him after we parted, I am ignorant, but Florence we both forsook, and I having a wonderful ardent inclination to see Rome the Queen of the world, & metropolitan mistress of all other cities, made thither with my bag and baggage as fast as I could.  
Attained thither, I was lodged at the house of one johannes de Imola a Roman cavaliero. Who being acquainted with my courtesans deceased doting husband, for his sake vs● us with all the familiarity that might be. He showed us all the monuments that were to be seen, which are as many as there have been Emperors, Consuls, Orators, Conquerors, famous painters or players in Rome. Till this day not a Roman (if he be a right Roman in deed) will kill a rat, but he will have some registered remembrance of it. There was a poor fellow during my remainder there, that for a new trick he had invented of kill Cymesses & scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung up on a high pillar, with an inscription about it longer than the king of Spain's style. I thought these Cymesses like the Cimbrians had been some strange nation he had brought under, & they were no more but things like sheep louse, which alive have the venomost sting that may be, and being dead do stink out of measure. Saint Austen compareth heretics unto them. The chiefest thing that my eyes delighted in, was the church of the 7. Sibels, which is a most miraculous thing. All their prophestes and oracles being there enrolled, as also the beginning and ending of their whole catalogue of the heathen Gods, with their manner of worship. There are a number of other shrines and statues also dedicated to their Emperors, and withal some statues of idolatry reserved for detestation. I was at Pontius pilate's house and pissed against it. There is the prison yet packed up together (an old rotten thing) where the man that was condemned to death, and could have no body come to him and secure him but was searched, was kept alive a long space by sucking his daughter's breasts.  
These are but the shop dust of the sights that I saw, and in truth I did not behold with any care hereafter to report, but contented my eye for the present, and so let them pass. Should I memorise half the miracles which they there told me had been done about martyrs tombs, or the operations of the earth of the sepulchre, and other relics brought from jerusalem, I should be counted the monstrous liar that ever came in print.  
The ruins of Pompey's theatre, reputed one of the nine wonders of the world, Gregory the sixths' Tomb, Priscillas' Grate, or the thousands of Pillars arreared amongst the razed foundations of old Rome, it were here frivolous to specify: since he that hath but once drunk with a traveler talks of them. Let me be a Historiographer of my own misfortunes, and not meddle with the continued Trophies of so old a triumphing City.  
At my first coming to Rome, I being a youth of the English cut, ware my hair long, went appareled in light colours, and imitated four or five sundry Nations in my attire at once: which no sooner was noated, but I had all the boys of the City in a swarm wondering about me. I had not gone a little farther, but certain Officers crossed the way of me, and demanded to see my rapier: which when they found (as also my dagger) with his point unblunted, they would have haled me headlong to the Strappado, but that with money I appeased them: and my fault was more pardonable, in that I was a stranger, altogether ignorant of their customs.  
Note by the way, that it is the use in Rome, for all men whatsoever to wear their hair short: which they do not so much for conscience sake, or any religion they place in it, but because the extremity of the heat is such there, that if they should not do so, they should not have a hair left on their heads to stand upright, when they were scared with sprights. And he is counted no Gentleman amongst them that goes not in black: they dress their jesters and fools only in fresh colours, and say variable garments do argue unstayednes and unconstancy of affections.  
The reason of their strait ordinance for carrying weapons without points is this. The Bandettos, which are certain out laws that lie betwixt Rome ● Naples, and besiege the passage that none can travel that way without robbing: Now and then hired for some few crowns, they will steal to Rome and do a murder, and be●ake them to their heels again, Disguised as they go, they are not known from strangers, sometimes they will shroud themselves under the habit of grave citizens. In this consideration neither citizen nor stranger, gentleman, knight, marquis, or any may wear any weapon endamageable upon pain of the strappado. I bought it out, let others buy experience of me better cheap.  
To tell you of the rare pleasures of their gardens, their baths, their vineyards, their galleries, were to write a second part of the gorgeous Gallery of gallant devices. Why, you should not come into any man's house of account, but he had fishponds and little orchards on the top of his leads. If by rain or any other means those ponds were so full they need to be ●●uste or let out, even of their superfluities they made melodious use, for they had great wind instruments in stead of leaden spouts, that went duly in consort, only with this waters rumbling descent. I saw a summer banqueting house belonging to a merchant, that was the marvel of the world, & could not be matched except God should make another paradise. It was built round of green marble, like a Theatre without, within there was a heaven and earth comprehended both under one roof, the heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal, wherein the Sun and Moon, and each visible Star had his true similitude, shine, situation, and motion, and by what enwrapped art I cannot conceive, these spheres in their proper orbs observed their circular wheelings and turnings, making a certain kind of soft angelical murmuring music in their often windings & going about, which music the philosophers say in the true heaven by reason of the grossness of our senses we are not capable of. For the earth it was counterfeited in that likeness that Adam lorded out it before his fall. A wide vast spacious room it was, such as we would conceit prince Arthur's hall to be, where he feasted all his knights of the round table together every pentecost. The floor was painted with the beautifullest flowers that ever man's eye admired, which so lineally were delineated, that he that viewed them a far off, and had not directly stood poaringly over them, would have sworn they had lived in deed. The walls round about were hedged with Olives and palm trees, and all other odoriferous fruit-bearing plants, which at any solemn entertainment dropped myrrh and frankincense. Other trees that bore no fruit, were set in just order one against another, and divided the room into a number of shady lanes, leaving but one overspreading pine tree arbour, where we sat and banqueted. On the well clothed boughs of this conspiracy of pine trees against the resembled Sun beams, were perched as many sorts of shrill breasted birds, as the Summer hath allowed for singing men in her sylvan chapels. Who though there were bodies without souls, & sweet resembled substances without sense, yet by the mathemeticall experiments of long silver pipes secretly inrinded in the entrails of the boughs whereon they sat, and undiscerneablie conveyed under their bellies into their small throats sloping, they whistled and freely carold their natural field note. Neither went those silver pipes strait, but by many edged unsundred writhings, & crankled wanderings aside strayed from bough to bough into an hundred throats. But into this silver pipe so writhed and wandering aside, if any demand how the wind was breathed. Forsooth the tail of the silver pipe stretched itself into the mouth of a great pair of bellows, where it was close soldered, and bailed about with iron, it could not stir or have any vent betwixt. Those bellows with the rising and falling of leaden plummets wound up on a wheel, did beat up and down uncessantly, and so gathered in wind, serving with one blast all the snarled pipes to and fro of one tree at once. But so closely were all those organizing implements obscured in the corpulent trunks of the trees, that every man there present renounst conjectures of art, and said it was done by enchantment.  
One tree for his fruit bore nothing but enchained chiriping birds, whose throats being conduit pipped with squared narrow shells, & charged siring-wise with searching sweet water, driven in by a little wheel for the nonce, that fed it a far of, made a spirting sound, such as chirping is, in bubbling upwards through the rough crannies of their closed bills.  
Under tuition of the shade of every tree that I have signified to be in this round hedge, on delightful levy cloisters, lay a wild tyrannous beast a sleep all prostrate: under some two together, as the Dog nusling his nose under the neck of the Dear, the Wolf glad to let the Lamb lie upon him to keep him warm, the Lion suffering the Ass to cast his leg over him: preferring one honest unmannerly friend, before a number of croutching picke-thankes. No poisonous beast there reposed, (poison was not before our parent Adam transgressed). There were no swéete-breathing Panthers, that would hide their terrifying heads to betray: no men imitating Hyaenaes', that changed their s●xe to seek after blood. Wolves as now when they are hungry eat earth, so than did they feed on earth only, and abstained from innocent flesh. The Unicorn did not put his horn into the stream to chase away venom before he drunk, for there was no such thing as venom extant in the water or on the earth. Serpents were as harmless to mankind, as they are still one to another: the rose had no cankers, the leaves n● caterpillars, the sea no Sirens, the earth no usurers. goats then bare wool, as it is recorded in Sicily they do yet. The torrid Zone was habitable: only jays loved to steal gold and silver to build their nests withal, and none cared for covetous clientrie, or running to the Indies. As the Elephant understands his country speech, so every beast understood what men spoke. The ant did not hoard up against winter, for there was no winter but a perpetual spring, as Ovid saith. No frosts to make the green almond ●rée counted rash and improvident, in budding soonest of all other: or the mulberry tree a strange politician, in blooming late and ripening early. The peach tree at the first planting was fruitful and wholesome, whereas now till it be transplanted, it is poisonous and hateful. Young plants for their sap had balm, for their yeolow gum glistering amber. The evening deawd not water on flowers, but honey. Such a golden age, such a good age, such an honest age was set forth in this banqueting house.  
O Rome, if thou hast in thee such soule-exalting objects: what a thing is heaven in comparison of thee, of which Mercators' globe is a perfecter model than thou art? Yet this I must say to the shame of us Protestants, if good works may merit heaven, they do them, we talk of them. Whether superstition or no makes them unprofitable servants, that let pulpits decide: but there, you shall have the bravest Ladies in gowns of beaten gold, washing pilgrims and poor soldiers feel, and doing nothing they and their waiting maids all the year long, but making shirts and bands for them against they come by in distress. Their hospitals are more like noblemen's houses than otherwise: so richly furnished, clean kept, and hot perfumed, that a soldier would think it a sufficient recompense for his travel and his wounds, to have such a heavenly retiring place. For the Pope and his pontificalibus I will not deal with, only I will dilate unto you what happened whiles I was in Rome.  
So it fell out, tha● it being a vehement hot summer when I was a sojourner there, there entered such a hotspurd plague as hath not been heard of: way it was but a word and a blow, Lord have mercy upon us, and he was gone. Within three quarters of a year in that one city there died of it a hundred thousand: Look in Lanquets Chronicle and you shall find it. To smell of a nosegay, that was poisoned: and turn your nose to a house, that had the plague, it was all one. The clouds like a number of cormorants, that keep their corn till it stink and is musty, kept in their stinking exhalations, till they had almost stifled all Rome's inhabitants. Physicians, greediness of gold made them greedy of their destiny. They would come to visit those, with whose infirmities their art had no affinity: and even as a man with a fee should be hired to hang himself, so would they quietly go home and die presently after they had been with their patients. All day and all night long carremen did nothing but go up and down the streets with their carts and cry. Have you any dead to bury, have you any dead to bury: and had many times out of one house their whole loading: one grave was the sepulchre of seuen-score, one bed was the altar whereon whole families were offered.  
The walls were hoard and furred with the moist scorching steam of their desolation. Even as before a gun is shot off, a stinking smoke funnels out, and prepares the way for him, so before any gave up the ghost death arrayed in a stinking smoke stopped his nostrils, and crammed itself full into his mouth, that closed up ●is fellows eyes, to give him warning to prepare for his funeral. Some died sitting at their meat, others as they were ask counsel of the physician for their friends. I saw at the house where I was hosted, a maid bring her master warm broth for to comfort him, and she sink down dead herself ere he had half eat it up.  
During this time of visitation, there was a Spaniard, one Esdras of Granado, a notable Bandit, authorized by the pope, because he assisted him in some murders. This villain colleagued with one Bartol a desperate Italian, practised to break into those rich men's houses in the night where the plague had most reigned, and if there were none but the mistress ●nd maid left alive, to ravish them both, and bring away all the wealth they could fasten on. In a hundred chief citizens houses where the hand of God had been, they put this outrage in ure. Though the women so ravished cried out, none dared come near them, for fear of catching their deaths by them, & some thought they cried out only with the tyranny of the malady. Amongst the rest the house where I lay he invaded, where all being snatched up by the sickness but the good wife of the house, a noble and chaste matron called Heraclide and her Zany, and I & my courtesan, he knocking at the door late in the night, ran u●to the matron, & left me and my love to the mercy of his companion. Who finding me in bed (as the time required) ran at me full with his rapier, thinking I would resist him, but as good luck was I escaped him & betook me to my pistol in the window uncharged. He fearing it had been charged, threatened to run her through if I once offered but to aim at him. forth the chamber he dragged her, holding his rapier at her heart, whilst I still crid out, Save her, kill me, & I'll ransom her with a thousand ducats: but lust prevailed, no prayers would be heard. Into my chamber I was locked, and watchmen charged (as he made semblance when there was none there) to knock me down with their halberdes, if I stirred but a foot down the stairs. So threw I myself pensive again on my palate, and dared all the devils in hell now I was alone to come and fight with me one after another in defence of that detestable rape. I beat my head against the walls and called them ba●ds, because they would see such a wrong committed, and not fall upon him. To return to Heraclide below, whom the ugliest of all blood suckers Esdras of Granado had under shrift. First he assailed her with rough means, and slew her Zany at her foot, that slept before her in rescue. Then when all armed resist was put to flight, he assayed her with honey speech, & promised her more jewels and gifts than he was able to pilfer in an hundred years after. He discoursed unto her how he was countenanced and borne out by the pope, and how many execrable murders with impunity he had executed on them that displeased him. This is the eight score house (quoth he) that hath done homage unto me, and here I will prevail, or I will be torn in pieces. Ah quoth Heraclide (with a heart renting sigh) art thou ordained to be a worse plague to me that the plague itself? Have I escaped the hands of God to fall into the hands of man? Hear me jehovah, & be merciful in ending my misery. Dispatch me incontinent dissolute homicide deaths usurper. Here lies my husband stone cold on the dewy floor. If thou be'st of more power than God, to strike me speedily, strike home, strike deep, send me to heaven with my husband. Aye me, it is the spoil of my honour thou seekest in my souls troubled departure, thou art seem devil sent to tempt me. Avoid from me sathan, my soul is my saviours, to him I have bequeathed it, from him can no man take it. jesus, jesus spare me undefiled for thy s●ouse, jesus, jesus never fail those that put their trust in thee. With that she fell in a sown, and her eyes in their closing seemed to spawn forth in their outward sharp corners new created séed pearl, which the world before never set eye on. Soon he rigorously revived her, & told her that he had a charter above scripture, she must yield, she should yield, see who durst remove her out of his hands. Twixt life and death thus she faintly replied. How thinkest thou, is there a power above thy power, if there be, he is here present in punishment, and on thee will take present punishment if thou persistest in thy enterprise. In the time of security every man sinneth, but when death substitutes one friend his special bailie to arrest another by infection, and disperseth his quiver into ten thousand hands at once, who is it but looks about him? A man that hath an unevitable huge stone hanging only by a hair over his head, which he looks every Pater noster while to fall and pash him in pieces, will not he be submissively sorrowful for his transgressions, refrain himself from the least thought of folly, and purify his spirit with contrition and penitence? God's hand like a huge stone hangs inevitably over thy head: what is the plague, but death playing the provost marshal, to execute all those that will not be called home by any other means. This my dear knight's body is a quiver of his arrows, which already are shot into thee invisible. Even as the age of goats is known by the knots on their horns, so think the anger of God apparently visioned or shown unto thee in the knitting of my brows. A hundred have I buried out of my house, at all whose departures I have been present: a hundreds infection is mixed with my breath, lo, now I breath upon thee, a hundred deaths come upon thee. Repent betimes, imagine there is a hell though not a heaven: that hell thy conscience is thoroughly acquainted with, if thou hast murdered half so many, as thou unblushingly braggest. As Moecenae in the latter end of his days was seven years without sleep, so these seven weeks have I took no slumber any eyes have kept continual watch against the devil my enemy: death I deemed my friend (friends fly from us in adversity), death, the devil & all the ministering spirits of temptation are watching about thee to entrap thy soul by my abuse to eternal damnation. It is thy soul only thou mayst save by saving mine honour. Death will have thy body infallibly for breaking into my house, that he had selected for his private habitation. If thou ever camest of a woman, or hop'st to be saved die the seed of a woman, spare a woman. Deares oppressed with dogs, when they cannot take soil, run to men for succour: to whom should women in their disconsolate and desperate estate run, but to men like the Dear for succour and sanctuary. If thou be a man thou wilt secure me, but if thou be a dog & a brute beast, thou wilt spoil me, defile me & tear me: either renounce God's image, or renounce the wicked mind that thou bearest.  
These words might have moved a compound heart of iron and adamant, but in his heart they obtained no impression: for he sitting in his chair of state against the door all the while that she pleaded, leaning his overhanging gloomy ey-browes on the pommel of his unsheathed sword, he never looked up or gave her a word: but when he perceived she expected his answer of grace or utter perdition, he start up and took her currishly by the neck, and asked her how long he should stay for her Ladyship. Thou tellest me (quoth he) of the plague, and the heavy hand of God, and thy hundred infected breaths in one: I tell thee I have cast the dice an hundred times for the galleys in Spain, and yet still missed the ill chance. Our order of casting is this, If there be a general or captain new come home from the wars, & hath some four or five hundred crowns overplus of the kings in his hand, & his soldiers all paid, he makes proclamation, that whatsoever two resolute men will go to dice for it, and win the bridle or lose the saddle, to such a place let them repair, and it shall be ready for them. Thither go I & find another such needy squire resident. The dice run, I win, he is undone. I winning have the crowns, he losing is carried to the galleys. This is our custom, which a hundred times and more hath paid me custom of crowns, when the poor fellows have gone to Gehenna, had course bread and whipping there all their life after. Now thinkest thou that I who so oft have escapd such a number of hellish dangers, only depending on the turning of a few pricks, can be scare-bugd with the plague? what plague canst thou name worse than I have hat? whether diseases, imprisonment, poverty, banishment, I have passed through them all. My own mother gave I a box of the care to, and broke her neck down a pair of stairs, because she would not go in to a gentleman, when I had her: my sister I sold to an old Leno, to make his best of her: any kinswoman that I have, knew I she were not a whore, myself would make her one: thou art a whore, thou shalt be a whore in spite of religion or precise ceremonies.  
Therewith he flew upon her, and threatened her with his sword, but it was not that he meant to wound her with. He grasped her by the ivory throat, and shook her as a mastiff would shake a young bear, swearing & staring he would tear out her we● and if she refused. Not content with that savage constraint, he slipped his sacrilegious hand from her lily lawn skinned neck, and inscarfte it in her long silver locks, which with struggling were unrould. Backward he dragged her, even as a man backward would pluck a tree down by the twigs, and then like a traitor that is drawn to execution on a hurdle, he traileth her up and down the chamber by those tender untwisted braids, and setting his barbarous foot on her bare snowy breast, bade her yield or have her wind stamped out. She crid, stamp, stifle me in my hair, hang me up by it on a beam, and so let me die rather than I should go to heaven with a beam in my eye. No (quoth he) nor stamped, nor stifled, nor hanged, nor to heaven shalt thou go till I have had my will of thee, thy busy arms in these silken fetters I'll enfold. Dis●●issing her hair from his fingers, and pinnioning her elbows therewithal, she struggled, she wrested, but all was in vain. So struggling & so resisting, her jewels did sweat, signifying there was poison coming towards her. On the hard boards he threw her, and used his knee as an iron ram to beat open the two lewd gate of her chastity. Her husband's dead body he made a pillow to his abomination. Coviecture the rest, my words stick fast in the mire and are clean tired, would I had never undertook this tragical tale. Whatsoever is borne is borne to have end. Thus endeth my tale, his boorish lust was glutted, his beastly desire satisfied, what in the house of any worth was carriage-able, he put up and went his way.  
Let not your sorrow die, you that have read the poem and narration of this elegiacal history. Show you have quick wits in sharp conceit of compassion. A woman that hath viewed all her children sacrificed before her eyes, & after the first was slain wiped the sword with her apron to prepare it for the cleanly murder of the second, and so on forward till came to the empiercing of the seventeenth of her loins, will you not give her great allowance of anguish. This woman, this matron, this forsaken Heraclide, having buried fourteen children in five days, whose eyes she howlingly closed, and caught many wrinkles with funeral kisses: beside, having her husband within a day after laid forth as a comfortless corpse, a carrionly block, that could neither eat with her, speak with her, nor weep with her, is she not to be borne withal though her body swells with a tympany of tears, though her speech be as impatient as unhappy Hecuba's, though her head raves and her brain dotes? Devise with yourselves that you see a corpse rising from his heirce after he is carried to Church, and such another suppose Heraclide to be, rising from the couch of enforced adultery.  
Her eyes were dim, her cheeks bloodless, her breath smelled earthy, her countenance was ghastly. Up she rose after she was deflowered, but loath she arose, as a reprobate soul rising to the day of judgement. Looking on the tone side as she rose, she spied her husband's body lying under her head: Ah than she bewailed as Shafalus when he had killed Procris unwittingly, or Oedipus when ignorant he had slain his own father, and known his mother incestuously. This was her subdued reasons discourse.  
Have I lived to make my husband's body the beer to carry me to hell, had filthy pleasure no other pillow to lean upon but his spreaded limbs? On thy flesh my fault shall be imprinted at the day of resurrection. O beauty, the bait ordained to ensnare the irreligious: rich men are robbed for their wealth, women are dishonested for being too fair. No blessing is beauty but a curse: cursed be the time that ever I was begotten: cursed be the time that my mother brought me forth to tempt. The serpent in paradise did no more, the serpent in paradise is damned sempiternally: why should not I hold myself damned (if predestinations opinions be true) that am predestinate to this horrible abuse. The hog dieth presently if he loseth an eye: with the hog have I wallowed in the mire, I have lost my eye of honesty, it is clean plucked out with a strong hand of unchastity: what remaineth but I die? Die I will, though life be unwilling: no recompense is there for me to redeem my compelled offence, but with a rigorous compelled death. Husband, I'll be thy wife in heaven: let not thy pure deceasing spirit despise me when we meet, because I am tyrannously polluted. The devil, the belier of our frailty, and common accuser of mankind, cannot accuse me though he would of unconstrained submitting. If any guilt be mine, this is my fault, that I did not deform my face, ere it should so impiously allure. Having passioned thus a while, she hastily ran and looked herself in her glass to see if her sin were not written on her forehead: with looking she blushed though none looked upon her but her own reflected image.  
Then began she again. Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu; How hard is it not to bewray a man's fault by his forehead. Myself do but behold myself, and yet I blush: then God beholding me, shall not I be ten t●●es more ashamed? The Angels shall hiss at me, the Saints and Martyrs fly from me: yea, God himself shall add to the devils damnation, because he suffered such a wicked creature to come before him. Agamemnon thou wert an infidel, yet when thou went'st to the Trojan war, thou leftest a physician at home with thy wife, who by playing the foot Spondaeus till thy return, might keep her in chastity. My husband going to war with the devil and his enticements when he surrendered, left no musician with me but mourning and melancholy: had he left any, as Aegistus killed Agamemnon's musician ere he could be successful, so surely would he have been killed ere this Aegistus surceased. My distressed heart as the heart when he looseth his horns is astonished, and sorrowfully runneth to hide himself, so be thou afflicted and distressed, hide thyself under the Almighty's wings of mercy: sue, plead, entreat, grace is never denied to them that ask. It may be denied, I may be a vessel ordained to dishonour. The only repeal we have from God's undefinite chastisement, is to chastise ourselves in this world: and so I will, nought but death be my penance, gracious and acceptable may it be: my hand and my knife shall manumit me out of the horror of mind I endure. Farewell life that hast lent me nothing but sorrow: farewell sin sowed fl●sh, that hast more weeds than flowers, more woes than joys.  
Point pierce, edge enwyden, I patiently afford thee a sheath: spur forth my soul to mount post to heaven. jesus forgive me, jesus receive me.  
So thoroughly stabbed fell she down, and knocked her head against her husband's body: wherewith, he not having been aired his full four and twenty hours, start as out of a dream: whiles I through a cranny of my upper chamber unséeled, had beheld all this sad spectacle. Awaking, he rubbed his head too and fro, and wiping his eyes with his hand began to look about him. Feeling some thing lie heavy on his breast, he turned it off, and getting upon his legs lighted a candle.  
Hear beginneth my purgatory. For he good man coming into the hall with the candle, and spying his wife with her hair about her ears defiled and massacred, and his simple Zany Capestrano run through, took a halberd in his hand, and running from chamber to chamber to search who in his house was likely to do it, at length found me lying on my bed, the door locked to me on the outside, and my rapier unsheathed on the window: where with he strait conjectured it was I. And calling the neighbours hard by, said I had caused myself to be locked into my chamber after that sort, sent away my curtizane whom I called my wife, and made clean my rapier, because I would not be suspected. Upon this was I laid in prison, should have been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had made a ballet for my farewell in a readiness called Wiltons' wantonness, and yet for all that scaped dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through many perils and returned safe from them, makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot under my ear, there was fair play, the hangman had one halter, and another about my neck, which was fastened to the gallows, the riding device was almost thrust home, and his foot on my shoulder to press me down, when I made my saintlike confession as you have heard before, that such & such men at such an hour broke into the house, slew the Zany, took my courtesan, locked me into my chamber, ravished Heraclide, and finally how she flew herself.  
Present at the execution was there a banished English Earl, who hearing that a countryman of his was to suffer for such a notable murder, came to hear his confession, and see if he knew him. He had not heard me tell half of that I have recited, but he craved audience, and desired the execution might be stayed.  
Not two days since it is Gentlemen and noble Romans (said he) since going to be let blood in a barbers shop against the infection, all on a sudden in a great tumult and uproar was there brought in one bartol an Italian grievously wounded and bloody. I seeming to commiserate his harms, courteously questioned him with what ill debtor he had met, or how or by what casualty he came to be so arrayed. O quoth he long I have lived sworn brothers in sensuality with one Esdras of Granado, five hundred rapes and murders have we committed betwixt us. When our iniquities were grown to the height, and God had determined to counterchecke our amity, we came to the house of johannes de Imola (whom this young gentleman hath named) there did he justify all those rapes in manner and form as the prisoner here hath confessed. But lo an accident after, which neither he nor this audience is privy too. Esdras of Granado not content to have ravished the matron Heraclide and robbed her, after he had betook him from thence to his heels, light on his companion Bartol with his courtesan: whose pleasing face he had scarce winkingly glanced ●n, but he picked a quarrel with bartol to have her from him. On this quarrel they ●ought, Bartoll was wounded to the death, Esdras fled, and the fair dame left to go whither she would. This bartol in the barbers shop freely acknowledged, as both the barber and his man, and other here present can amply depose. Deposed they were, their oaths went for currant, I was quit by proclamation, to the banished Earl I came to render thanks: when thus he examined me and schooled me.  
Countryman, tell me what is the occasion of thy straying so far out of England to visit this strange Nation. If it be languages, thou mayst learn them at home, nought but lasciviousness is to be learned here. Perhaps to be better accounted of than other of thy condition, thou ambitiously undertakest this voyage: these insolent fancies are but Icarus feathers, whose wanton wax melted against the sun, will betray thee into a sea of confusion. The first traveler was cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travail like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them, is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under. God had no greater curse to lay upon the Israelites, than by leading them out of their own country to live as slaves in a strange land. That which was their curse, we Englishmen count our chief blessedness; he is no body that hath not traveled: we had rather live as slaves in another land, crouch and cap, and be servile to every jealous Italians and proud Spaniards humour, where we may neither speak look nor do any thing, but what pleaseth them: than live as fréemen and Lords in our own country. He that is a traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing: and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom. It is but a mild kind of subjection to be the servant of one master at once, but when thou hast a thousand thousand masters, as the veriest butcher, tinker or cobbler fréeborne will domineer over a foreigner, & think to be his better or master in company: then shalt thou find there's no such hell, as to leave thy father's house (thy natural habitation) to live in the land of bondage. If thou dost but lend half a look to a Romans or Italians wife, thy porridge shall be prepared for thee, and cost thee nothing but thy life. Chance some of them break a bitter jest on thee, and thou retortst i● severely, or seemest discontented: go to thy chamber, & provide a great banquet, for thou shalt be sure to be visited with guests in a mask the next night, when in kindness and courtship thy throat shallbe cut, and the doers return undiscovered. Nothing so long of memory as a dog, these Italians are old dogs, and will carry an injury a whole age in memory: I have heard of a box on the ear that hath been revenged thirty year after, The Neopolitan carrieth the bloodiest wreakful mind, and is the most secret flearing murderer. Whereupon it is grown to a common proverb, I'll give him the Neapolitan shrug, when one means to play the villain, and makes no boast of it.  
The only precept that a traveler hath most use of, and shall find most ease in, is that of Epicharchus, Vigila & memor sis ne quid credas; Believe nothing, trust no man: yet seem thou as thou swallowedst all, suspectedst none, but wert easy to be gulled by every one. Multi fallere docuerunt (as Seneca saith) dum timent falli; Many by showing their jealous suspect of deceit, have made men seek more subtle means to deceive them. Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest dealing souls that ever God put life in: they are greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours and hear themselves flattered the best that may be. Even as Philemon a Comic Poet died with extreme laughter at the conceit of seeing an Ass eat sygges: so have the Italians no such sport, as to see poor English asses how soberly they swallow Spanish figs devour any hook baited for them. He is not fit to travel, that cannot with the Candians live on serpents, make nourishing food even of poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one another, he must lick, he must crouch, he must cog, lie and prate, that either in the Court or a foreign Country will engender and come to preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair spoken he winneth friends: Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses; Ulysses the long traveler was not amiable, but eloquent. Some allege, they travel to learn wit, but I am of this opinion, that as it is not possible for any man to learn the Art of Memory, whereof Tully, Quintilian, Seneca, and Hermannus Buschius have written so many books, except he have a natural memory before: so is not possible for any man to attain any great wit by travel, except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before. That wit which is thereby to be perfected or made stayed, is nothing but Experientia longa malorum; The experience of many evils the experience that such a man lost his life by this folly, another by that: such a young Gallant consumed his substance on such a Courtesan: these courses of revenge a Merchant of Venice took against a Merchant of Ferrara: and this point of justice was showed by the Duke upon the murderer. What is here but we may read in books and a great deal more too, without stirring our feet out of a warm study. 
Vobis alii ventorum praelia narrent, (saith Ovid)  
Quasque Scilla infestat, quasue Charybdis aquas.  
Let others tell you wonders of the wind,  
How Scylla or Charybdis is inclined.  
- vos quod quisque loquetur  
Credit- Believe you what they say, but never try.  So let others tell you strange accidents, treasons, poisonings, close parkings in France, Spain and Italy: it is no harm for you to hear of them, but come not near them. What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenrie, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear Ah parla mort Dieu when a man's hams are scabbed. For the idle traveler, (I mean not for the Soldier). I have known some that have continued there by the space of half a dozen year, and when they come home, they have hid a little wéerish lean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, save learned to distinguish of the true Bordeaux Grape, and know a cup of n●a●● Gascoigne wine, from wine of Orleans: yea and peradventure this also, to esteem of the pe●e as a pimple, to wear a vel●et patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded.  
From Spain what bringeth our traveler? a skull ●round hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer, a diminutive Alderman's ruff 〈◊〉 short strings like the droppings of a mane nose, a close-bellied doublet coming down with a peake behind as far as the crupper, and cut off before by the breast-boane like a partlet or neckercher, a wide pair of gascoynes which ungatherd would make a couple of women's riding kyrtles, huge hangers that have half a Cow hide in them, a Rapier that is lineally descended from half a dozen Dukes at the least. Let his cloak be as long or as short as you will: if long, it is faced with Turkey grogeran raveld: if short, it hath a cape like a calves tongue, and is not so deep in his whole length, nor hath so much cloth in it I will justify, as only the standing cape of a Dutchmans' cloak. I have not yet touched all, for he hath in either shoe as much taffeta for his tiings, as would serve for an ancient: which serveth him (if you will have the mystery of it) of the own accord for a shoo-rag. A soldier and a braggart he is (that's concluded) he jetteth strouding, dancing on his toes with his hands under his sides. If you talk with him, he makes a dish-cloath of his own Country in comparison of Spain; but if you urge him more particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance, but in Spain they have better bread than any we have: when (poor hungry slaves) they may crumble it into water well enough and make miso●s with it, for they have not a good morsel of meat except it be salt pilchers to eat with it all the year long: and which is more, they are poor beggars, and lie in foul straw every night.  
Italy the paradise of the earth, and the Epi●ures heaven, how doth it form our young master? It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at hey pass repass come aloft when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurising, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of Sodomitry. The only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it, is, that it maketh a man an excellent Courtier, a curious carpet knight: which is by interpretation, a fine close lecher, a glorious hypocrite. It is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villain, to say, he hath been in Italy.  
With the Dane and the Dutchman I will not encounter, for they are simple honest men, that with Danaus' daughters do nothing but fill bottomless tubs, & will be drunk & snort in the midst of dinner: he hurts himself only that goes thither, he cannot lightly be damned, for the vintners, the brewers, the maltmen and alewives pray for him. Pitch and pay. they will pray all day: score and borrow, they will wish him much sorrow. But lightly a man is near the better for their prayers, for they commit all deadly sin for the most part of them in mingling their drink, the vintners in the highest degree.  
Why jest I in such a necessary persuasive discourse? I am a banished exile from my country, though near linked in consanguinity to the best: an Earl borne by birth, but a beggar now as thou seest. These many years in Italy have I lived an outlaw. A while I had a liberal pension of the Pope, but that lasted not, for he continued not: one succeeded him in his chair, that cared neither for Englishmen nor his own countrymen. Then was I driven to pick up my crumbs amongst the Cardinals, to implore the benevolence & charity of all the Dukes of Italy whereby I have since made a poor shift to live, but so live, as I wish myself a thousand times dead. 
Cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato.  
When I was banished, think I caught my bane.  The sea is the native soil to fishes, take fishes from the sea, they take no joy nor thrive, but perish strait. So likewise the birds removed from the air (the abode whereto they were borne) the beasts from the earth, and I from England. Can a lamb take delight to be suckled at the breasts of a she-wolfe? I am a lamb nourished with the milk of wolves, one that with the Ethiopians inhabiting over against M●ro●, feed on nothing but scorpions: use is another nature, yet ten times more contentive, were nature restored to her kingdom from whence she is excluded. Believe me, no air, no bread, no fire, no water agree with a man, or doth him any good out of his own country. Cold fruits never prosper in a hot soil, nor hot in a cold. Let no man for any transitory pleasure sell away the inheritance of breathing he hath in the place where he was born. Get thee home my young lad, lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre of thy fathers, ware old in overlooking thy grounds, be at hand to close the eyes of thy kindred. The devil and I am desperate, he of being restored to heaven, I of being recalled home.  
Here he held his peace and wept. I glad of any opportunity of a full point to part from him, told him I took his counsel in worth, what lay in me to requite in love should not be lacking. Some business that concerned me highly called me away very hastily, but another time I hoped we should meet. Very hardly he let me go, but I earnestly overpleading my occasions, at length he dismissed me, told me where his lodging was, and charged me to visit him without excuse very often.  
Heeres a stir thought I to myself after I was set at liberty, that is worse than an upbraiding lesson after a britching: certainly if I had bethought me like a rascal as I was, he should have had an ave marry of me for his cynic exhortation. God plagued me for deriding such a grave fatherly advertiser. List the worst throw of ill l●ckes. Tracing up and down the City to seek my Courtesan till the evening began to grow well in age, it fortuned. the Element as if it had drunk too much in the afternoon, powered down so profoundly, that I was forced to creep like one afraid of the Watch close under the pen●ises, where the cellar door of a jews house called Zadoch (over which in my direct way I did pass) being unbard on the inside, over head and ears I fell into it as a man falls in a ship from the oreloope into the hold: or as in an earthquake the ground should open, and a blind man come feeling pad pad over the open Gulf with his staff, should stumble on sudden into hell. Having worn out the anguish of my fall a little with wallowing up and down, I cast up mine eyes to see under what Continent I was: and lo, (O destiny) I saw my Courtesans kissing very lovingly with a prentice. My back and my sides I had hurt with my fall, but now my head swelled & ached worse than both. I was even gathering wind to come upon her with a full blast of contumely, when the jew (awakde with the noise of my fall) came bustling down the stairs, and raising his other servants, attached both the Curtizane and me for breaking his house, and conspiring with his prentice to rob him.  
It was then the law in Rome, that if any man had a felon fallen into his hands, either by breaking into his house, or robbing him by the high way, he might choose whether he would make him his bondman, or hang him. Zadoch (as all jews are covetous) casting with himself he should have no benefit by casting me off the ladder, had another policy in his head: he went to one Doctor Zacharie the pope's physician, that was a jew and his Countryman likewise, and told him he had the finest bargain for him that might be. It is not concealed from me (saith he) that the time of your accustomed yearly Anatomy is at hand, which it behooves you under forfeiture of the foundation of your College very carefully to provide for. The infection is great, and hardly will you get a sound body to deal upon: you are my Countryman, therefore I come to you first. Be it known unto you, I have a young man at home feign to me for my bondman, of the age of eighteen, of stature tall, straight limned, of as clear a complexion as any painter's fancy can imagine: go too, you are an honest man, and one of the scattered Children of Abraham, you shall have him for five hundred crowns. Let me see him quoth Doctor Zacharie, and I will give you as much as another. Home he sent for me, pinioned and shackled I was transported alongst the street: where passing under julianaes' the Marquis of Mantua's wives window, that was a lusty Bona Roba one of the pope's concubines, as she had her casement half open, she looked out and spied me. At the first sight she was enamoured with my age and beardless face, that had in it no ill sign of physiognomy fatal to fetiers: after me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whether I was going? My conducts resolved them all. She having received this answer, with a lustful collachrimation lamenting my jewish Praemunire, that body and goods I should light into the hands of such a cursed generation, invented the moans of my release.  
But first I'll tell you what betided me after I was brought to Doctor Zacharies'. The purblind Doctor put on his spectacles and looked upon me: and when he had thoroughly viewed my face, he caused me to be stripped naked, to feel and grope whether each limb were sound, and my skin net infected. Then he pierced my arm to ses how my blood ran: which assays and search ended, he gave Zadoch his full price and sent him away, then locked me up in a dark chamber till the day of anatomy.  
O the cold sweeting cares which I conceived after I knew I should be cut like a French summer doublet. Me thought already the blood began to gush out at my nose: if a flea on the arm had but bit me, I deemed the instrument had pricked me. Well, well, I may scoff at a shroud turn, but there's no such ready way to make a man a true Christian, as to persuade himself he is taken up for an anatomy. I'll depose I prayed then more than I did in seven year before. Not a drop of sweat trickeled down my breast and my sides, but I dreamt it was a smooth edged razor tenderly slicing down my breast and my sides. If any knocked at door, I supposed it was the beadle of Surgeon's Hall come for me. In the night I dreamt of nothing but Phlebotomy, bloody fluxes, incarnatives, running ulcers. I durst not let out a wheal for fear through it I should bleed to death. For meat in this distance I had plum-porredge of purgations ministered me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie cloddered in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic, as to save charges. Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physicians house, Tantalus lives not so hungerstarud in hell, as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that fall from his table, but Zachary swéepes together, and of them moulds up a Man. Of the ashy parings of his bread, he would make conserve of chip. Out of bones after the meat was eaten off, be would alchumize an oil, that he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath put o●e: to his Apothecary for snow water. Any Spider he would temper to perect Mithridate. His rheumatic eyes when he went in the wind, or rose early in a morning, dropped as cool alum water as you would request. He was dame Niggardize sole heir and executor.  
A number of old books had he eaten with the moths and worms, now all day would not he study a dodkin, but pick those worms and moths out of his Library, and of their mixture make a preservative against the plague.  
The liquor out of his shoes he would wring● to make a sacred balsan●um against barrenness. Spare we him a line or two, & look back to juliana, who conflicted in her thoughts about me very debatefully, adventured to send a messenger to Doctor Zacharie in her name, very boldly to beg me of him, and if she might not beg me, to buy me with what sums of money so ever he would ask. Zacharie iewishly and churlishly withstood both her suits, and said if there were no more Christians on the earth, he would thrust his incision knife into his throate-boule immediately. Which reply she taking at his hands most despitefully, thought to cross him over the shins with as sor● an overwhart blow yet ere a month to an end. The pope (I know not whether at her entreaty or no) within two days after fell sick, Doctor Zacharie was sent for to minister unto him, who seeing a little danger in his water, gave him a gentle confortative for the stomach, and desired those near about him to persuade his holiness to take some rest, and he doubted not but he would be forthwith well. Who should receive this mild physic of him but the concubine juliana his utter enemy, she being not unprovided of strong poison at that instant, in the pope's outward chamber so mingled it, that when his grand sublimity taster came so relish it, he sunk down stark dead on the pavement. Herewith the pope called juliana, and asked her what strong concocted broth she had brought him. She kneeled down on her knees, and said it was such as Zacharie the jew had delivered her with his own hands, and therefore if it misliked his holiness she craved pardon. The Pope without further sifting into the matter, would have had Zacharie and all jews in Rome put to death, but she hung about his knees, & with crocodile tears desired him the sentence might be lenified, and they be all but banished at most. For doctor Zachary quoth she, your ten times ungrateful physician, since notwithstanding his treacherous intent, he hath much art, and many sovereign simples, oils, gargarisms and syrups in his closet and house that may stand your mightiness in stead, I beg all his goods only for your beatitudes' preservation and good. This request at the first was sealed with a kiss, and the pope's edict without delay proclaimed throughout Rome, namely, that all foreskin clippers whether male or female belonging to the old Iuri●, should departed and annoyed upon pain of hanging within twenty days after the date thereof.  
juliana two days before the proclamation came out, sent her servants to extend upon Zacharies' territories, his goods, his movables, his chattels and his servants: who performed their commission to the utmost title, and left him not so much as master of an urinal case or a candle box. It was about six a clock in the evening, when those boot-halers entered: into my chamber they rushed, when I sat leaning on my elbow, and my left hand under my side, devising what a kind of death it might be to be let blood till a man die. I cold to mind the assertion of some Philosophers, who said the soul was nothing but blood: then thought I, what a filthy thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break his neck into a basin. I had but a pimple rose with heat in that part of the vain where they use to prick, and I fearfully misdéemed it was my soul searching for passage. Fie upon it, a man's breath to be let out a backdoor, what a villainy it is? To die bleeding is all one as if a man should die pissing. Good drink makes good blood, so that, piss is nothing but blood under age. Seneca and Lucan were lobcockes to choose that death of all other: a pig or a hog or any edible brute beast a cook or a butcher deals upon, dies bleeding. To die with a prick, wherewith the faintest hearted woman under heaven would not be killed, O God it is infamous.  
In this meditation did they seize upon me, in my cloak they muffled me that no man might know me, nor I see which way I was carried. The first ground I touched after I was out of Zacharies' house, was the Countess julianaes' chamber: little did I surmise that fortune reserved me to so fair a death. I made no other reckoning all the while they had me on their shoulders, but that I was on horseback to heaven, and carried to Church on a a beer, excluded for ever for drinking any more ale or beer. juliana scornfully questioned them thus (as if I had fallen into her hands beyond expectation), what proper apple-squire is this you bring so suspiciously into my chamber? what hath he done? or where had you him? They answered likewise a far of, that in one of Zacharies' chambers they found him close prisoner, and thought themselves guilty of the breach of her ladyships commandment if they should have left him behind. O quoth she, ye love to be double diligent, or thought peradventure that I being a lone woman stood in need of a love. Bring you me a princocks beardless boy (I know not whence he is, nor whether he would) to call my name in suspense? I tell you, you have abused me, and I can hardly brook it at your hands. You should have lead him to the Magistrate, no commission received you of me but for his goods and his servants. They besought her to excuse their overweening error, it proceeded from a zealous care of their duty, and no negligent default. But why should not I conjecture the worst quoth she? I tell you troth. I am half in a jealousy he is some fantastical amorous yonckster, who to dishonour me hath hired you to this stratagem. It is a likely matter that such a man as Zacharie should make a prison of his house, and deal in matters of state. By your leave sir gallant● under lock and key shall you stay with me, till I have enquired further of you, you shall be sifted thoroughly ere you and I part. Go maid show him to the further chamber at the end of the gallery that looks into the garden: you my trim panders I pray guard him thither as you took pains to bring him hither. When you have so so done, see the doors be made fast, and come your way. Hear was a wily wench had her liripoop without ●ook, she was not to seek in her knacks and shifts: such are all women, not one of them but hath a cloak for the rain, and can blear her husband's eyes as she list. Not too much of this madam Marquis at once: we'll step a little back, and dilate what Zadoch the jew did with my courtesan, after he had sold me to Zacharie. Of an ill tree I hope you are not so ill ●●ghted in graffing to expect good fruit: he was a jew, & entreated her like a Iew. Under shadow of enforcing her to tell how much money she had of his apprentice so to be trained to his cellar, he stripped her, and scourged her from top to toe tantara. Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond delphinical dry leachour it was.  
The ballet of the whipper of late days here in England, was but a scoff in comparison of him. All the colliers of Romford, who hold their corporation by yarking the blind bear at Paris garden, were but bunglers to him, he had the right agility of the lash there were none of them could make the cord come aloft with a twang half like him. Mark the ending, mark the ending. The tribe of juda is adjudged from Rome to be trudging, they may no longer be lodged there, all the Albumazer's, Rabisacks, Gedeons', Tebiths, Benhadads', Benrodans Zedechiahs'. Halie's of them were bankrupts and turned out of house and home. Zacharie came running to Zadoches in sack cloth and ashes presently after his goods were confiscated and and told him how he was served, and what decree was coming out against them all. Descriptions stand by, here is to be expressed the fury of Lucifer when he was turned over heaven bar for a wrangler. There is a toad fish, which taken out of the water swells more than one would think his skin could hold, and bursts in his face that toucheth him. So swollen Zadoch, and was ready to burst out of his skin, and shoot his bowels like chain-shot full at Zacharies' face for bringing him such baleful tidings, his eyes glared and burnt bliewe like brinistone and aqua vitae set on fire in an eggshell, his very nose lightened glow-worms, his teeth crasht and grated together, like the joints of a high building cracking and rocking like a cradle, when as a tempest takes her full but against his broad side. He swore, he cursed, and said, these be they that worship that crucified God of Nazareth, here's the fruits of their newfound gospel, sulphur and gunpowder carry them all quick to Gehenna. I would spend my soul willingly, to have this triple headed Pope with all his sin-absolued whores, and oile-greased priests borne with a black saint on the devils backs in procession to the pit of perdition. Would I might sink presently into the earth, so I might blow up this Rome, this whore of Babylon into the air with my breath. If I must be banished, if those heathen dogs will needs rob me of my goods, I will poison their springs and conduit heads, whence they receive all their water round about the city, I'll tyre all the young children into my house that I c●n get, and cutting their throats barrel them up in powdering beef tub, and so send them to victual the pope's galleys. Ere the officers come to extend, I'll bestow a hundred pound on a dole of bread, which I'll cause to be kneaded with Scorpion's oil that may kill more than the plague. I'll hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods to minge them after the same sort, so in the zeal of their superstitious religion, shall they languish and droop like carrion. If there be ever a blasphemous conjuror, that can call the winds from their brazen caves, and make the clouds travel before their time, I'll give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome, and turn them to vinegar. As long as they have either oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinglingly upon them.  
Zadoch, Zadoch said Doctor Zacharie▪ (cutting him off) thou threatenest the air, while● we perish here on earth. It is the Countess juliana the marquess of Mantua's wife and no other, that hath complotted our confusion. Ask not how, but insist in my words, and assist in revenge.  
As how, as how, said Zadoch, shrugging and shrubbing. More happy than the patriarchs were I, if crushed to death with the greatest torments Rome's tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenst out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue, shall I cut it off, and from his fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpents? If thou wilt, I'll go to a house that is infected, where catching the plague, and having got a running sore upon me, I'll come and deliver her a supplication, and breath upon her. I know my breath stinks so already, that it is within half a degree of poison. I'll pay her home if I perfect it with any more putrefaction.  
No, no brother Zadoch answered Zacharie, that is not the way. Canst thou provide me ere a bond●maide, endued with singular & divine qualified beauty, whom as a present from our synagogue thou mayst commend unto her, desiring her to be good and gracious unto us.  
I have, I am for you quoth Zadoch: Diamante come forth. Heeres a wench (said he) of as clear a skin as Susanna, she hath not a wemme on her flesh from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head: how think you master doctor, will she not serve the turn?  
She will, said Zacharie: and therefore I'll tell you what charge I would have committed to her. But I care not if I disclose it only to her. Maid, (if thou be'st a maid) come hither to me, thou must be sent to the countess of Mantua's about a small piece of service, whereby being now a bond woman thou shalt purchase freedom, and gain a large dowry to thy marriage. I know thy master loves thee dearly though he will not let thee perceive so much, he intends after he is dead to make thee his heir, for he hath no children: please him in that I shall instruct thee, and thou art made for ever. So it is, that the pope is far out of liking with the countess of Mantua his concubine, and hath put his trust in me his physician to have her quietly and charitably made away. Now I cannot intend it, for I have many cures in hand which call upon me hourly: thou if thou be'st placed with her as her waiting maid or cupbearer, mayst temper poison with her broth, her meat, her drink, her oils, her syrups, and never be bewrayed. I will not say whether the pope hath heard of thee, and thou mayst come to be his leman in her place, if thou behave thyself wisely. What, hast thou the heart to go through with it or no? Diamante deliberating with herself in what hellish servitude she lived with the jew, and that she had no likelihood to be released of it, but fall from evil to worse if she omitted this opportunity, resigned herself over wholly to be disposed and employed as seemed best unto them. Thereupon, without further consultation, her wardrobe was richly rigged, her tongue smooth filled & new edged on the whetstone, her drugs delivered her, and presented she was by Zadoch her master to the countess, together with some other slight new-●angles, as from the whole congregation, desiring her to stand their merciful mistress, and solicit the Pope for them, that through one man's ignorant offence were all generally in disgrace with him, and had incurred the cruel sentence of loss of goods and of banishment.  
juliana liking well the pretty round face of my black browed Diamante, gave the jew better countenance than otherwise she would have done, and told him for her own part she was but a private woman, and could promise nothing confidently of his holiness: for though he had suffered himself to be overruled by her in some humours, yet in this that touched him so nearly, she knew not how he would be inclined: but what lay in her either to pacify or persuade him they should be sure of, and so craved his absence.  
His back turned, she asked Diamante what country woman she was, what friends she had, and how she fell into the hands of that jew? She answered, that she was a Magnificoes daughter of Venice, stolen when she was young from her friends, and sold to this jew for a bondwoman, who (quoth she) hath used me so iewishly and tyrannously, that for ever I must celebrate the memory of this day, wherein I am delivered from his jurisdiction. Alas (quoth she deep sighing) why did I enter into any mention of my own misusage? It will be thought that that which I am now to reveals, proceeds of malice not truth. Madam, your life is sought by these jews that sue to you. Blush not, nor be troubled in your mind, for with warning I shall arm you against all their intentions. Thus and thus (quoth she) said doctor Zacharie unto me, this poison he delivered me. Before I was called in to them, such and such consultation through the crevice of the door fast locked did I hear betwixt them. Deny it if they can, I will justify it: only I beseech you to be favourable Lady unto me, and let me not fall again into the hands of those vipers.  
juliana said little but thought unhappily, only she thanked her for detecting it, and vowed though she were her bond woman to be a mother unto her. The poison she took of her, and set it up charily on a shelf in her closet, thinking to keep it for some good purposes: as for example, when I was consumed and worn to the bones through her abuse, she would give me but a dram too much, and pop me into a privy. So she had served some of her paramours ere that, and if God had not sen● Diamante to be my redeemer, undoubtedly I had drunk of the same cup.  
In a leaf or two before was I locked up: here in this page ●he foresaid goodwife Countess comes to me, she is no longer a judge but a client. How she came, in what manner of attire, with what immodest and uncomely words she courted me, if I should take upon me to enlarge, all modest ears would abhor me. Some inconvenience she brought me too by her ●a● loc-like behaviour, of which enough I can never repent ●e.  
Let that be forgiven and forgotten, fleshly delights could not make her slothful or slumbering in revenge against Zadoch She set men about him to incense and egg him on in courses of discontentment, and other superuising espials, to ply follow and spur forward those suborning incensers. Both which played their parts so, that Zadoch of his own nature violent, swore by the ark of jehova to set the whole city on fire ere he went out of it. Zacharie after he had furnished the wench with the poison, and given her instructions to go to the devil, durst not stay one hour for fear of disclosing, but fled to the Duke of Bourbon that after sacked Rome, & there practised with his bastardship all the mischief against the pope and Rome that envy could put into his mind. Zadoch was left behind for the hangman. According to his oath, he provided balls of wild fire in a readiness, and laid trains of gunpowder in a hundred several places of the city to blow it up, which he had set fire too, as also bandiet his balls abroad, if his attendant spies had not taken him with the manner. To the straightest prison in Rome he was dragged, where from top to toe he was clogged with ●etters and maracles. juliana informed the pope of Zacharies' and his practice, Zachary was sought for, but non est inventus, he was packing long before. Commandment was given, that Zadoch whom they had under hand and s●ale of lock and key, should be executed with all the fiery torments that could be found out.  
I'll make short work, for I am sure I have wearied all my readers. To the execution place was he brought, where first and foremost he was stripped, then on a sharp ●ron stake fastened in the ground, had he his fundament pitched, which stake ran up along into his body like a spit, under his arme-hoales two of like sort, a great bonfire they made round about him, where with his flesh roasted not burnt: and ever as with the heat his skin blistered, the fire was drawn aside, and they basted him with a mixture of Aqua fortis, allam water, and Mercury sublimatum, w●ich smarted to the very soul of him, and searched him ●o the marrow. Then did they scourge his back parts so blistered and basted, with burning whips of red hot wire: his head they nointed over with pitch and tar, and so inflamed it. To his privy members they tied streaming fireworks, the skin from the cr●st of his shoulder, as also from his elbows, his ●uckle bones, his knees, his ankles they plucked and gnawed off with sparkling pincers: his breast and his belly with seal skins they grated over, which as fast as they grated & rawed, one stood over and laved with smiths cindry water and aqua vitae: his nails they half raised up, and then under propped them with sharp pricks like a tailors shop window half open on a holiday: every one of his fingers they rend up to the wrist: his toes they broke off by the roots, and let them still hang by a little skin. In conclusion, they had a small oil fire, such as men blow light bubbles of glass with, and beginning at his feet, they let him lingeringly burn up limb by limb, till his heart was consumed, and then he died. Triumph women, this was the end of the whipping jew, contrived by a woman, in revenge of two women, herself and her maid.  
I have told you or should tell you in what credit Diamante grew with her mistress. juliana never dreamt but she was an authentical maid: she made her the chief of her bed chamber, she appointed none but her to look into me, and serve me of such necessaries as I lacked. You must suppose when we met there was no small rejoicing on either part, much like the three Brothers that went three several wa●es to seek their fortunes, and at the years end at those three cross ways met again, and told one another how they sped: so altar we had been long asunder seeking our fortunes, we commented one to another most kindly, what cross haps ●ad encountered us. Near a six hours but the Countess cloyed me with her company. It grew to this pass, that either I must find out some miraculous means of escape, or drop away in a consumption, as one pined for lack of meat: I was clean spent and done, there was no hope of me.  
The year held on his course to domes day, when Saint Peter's day dawned. That day is a day of supreme solemnity in in Rome, when the Ambassador of Spain comes and presents a milk white jennet to the pope, that knaeles down upon his own accord in token of obeisance and humility before him, and lets him stride on his back as east as one strides over a block: with this jennet is offered a rich purse of a yard length, full of peterpence. No music that hath the gift of utterance, but sounds all the while: copes and costly vestments deck the hoarsest and beggerliest singing man, not a clerk or sexton is absent, no nor a mule nor a foot-cloth belonging to any cardinal, but attends on the tail of the triumph. The pope himself is borne in his pontificalibus through the Burgo (which is the chief street in Rome) to the Ambassadors house to dinner, and thither resorts all the assembly: where if a Poet should spend all his life time in describing a banquet, he could not feast his auditors half so well with words, as he doth his guests with junkets.  
To this feast juliana addressed herself like an Angel: in a litter of green néedle-worke wrought like an arbour, and open on every side was she borne by four men, hidden under cloth rough plushed and woven like eglantine and wood-bine. At the four corners it was topped with four round crystal cages of Nightingales. For foot men, on either side of her went four virgins clad in lawn, with lutes in their hands playing. Next before her two and two in order, a hundred pages in suits of white cypress, and long horseman's coats of cloth of silver: who being all in white, advanced every one of them her picture, enclosed in a white round scréene of feathers, such as is carried over great Princesses heads when they ride in summer, to keep them from the heat of the sun. Before them went a fourscore head women she maintained in green gowns, scattering strowing herbs and flowers. After her followed the blind, the halt and the lame sumptuously appareled like Lords: and thus passed she on to Saint Peter.  
Interea quid agitur domi, how is't at home all this while. My courtesan is left my keeper, the keys are committed unto her, she is mistress fac totum. Against our countess we conspire, pack up all her jewels, plate, money that was extant, and to the water side send them: to conclude, courageously rob her, and run away. Quid non auri sacra fames? What defame will not gold salve. He mistook himself that invented the proverb, Dimicandum est pro aris & focis: for it should have been pro auro & fama: not for altars and fires we must contend, but for gold and fame.  
Oars nor wind could not stir nor blow faster, than we ●oyld out of Tiber; a number of ●ood fellows would give size are and the dice that with as little toil they could leave Tyburn behind them. Out of ken we were ere the Countess came from the feast. When she returned and found her house not so much pestered as it was wont, her chests her closerts and her cupboards broke open to take air, and that both I and my keeper was missing: O than she fared like a frantic Barchinall, she stamped, she stared, she beat her head against the walls, scratched her face, bitten her fingers, and strewed all the chamber with her hair. None of her servants durst stay in her ●●ght, but she beat them out in heaps, and bade them go seek search they knew not where, and hang themselves, and never look her in the face more, if they did not hunt us out. After her fury had reasonably spent itself, her breast began to swell with the mother, caused by her former fretting & chase, and she grew very ill at ease. Whereupon she knocked for one of her maids, and bade her run into her closet, and fetch her a little glass that stood on the upper shelf, wherein there was spiritus vini. The maid went, & mistaking took the glass of poison which Diamante had given her, and she kept in store for me. Coming with it as fast as her legs could carry her, her mistress at her return was in a ●wound, and lay for dead on the floor, whereat she shrieked out, and fell a rubbing & chafing her very busily. When that would not serve, she took a key and opened her mouth, and having heard that spiritus vini was a thing of mighty operation, able to call a man from death to life, she took the poison, and verily thinking it to be spiritus vini (such as she was sent for) powered a large quantity of it into her throat, and jogged on her back to digest it. It reviv'd her with a merry vengeance, for it killed her outright: only she awakend and lift up her hands, but spoke near a word. Then was the maid in her grandame's beans, and knew not what should become of her: I heard the Pope took pity on her, and because her trespass was not voluntary but chance-medley, he assigned her no other punishment but this, to drink out the rest of the poison in the glass that was left, and so go scotfree. We careless of these mischances, held on our flight, and saw no man come after us but we thought had pursued us. A thief they say mistakes every bush for a true man, the wind rattled not in any bush by the way as I road, but I strait drew my rapier. To Bolognia with a merry gale we posted, where we lodged ourselves in a blind street out of the way, and kept secret many days: but when we perceived we sailed in the haven, that the wind was laid, and no alarm made after us, we boldly came abroad: & one day hearing of a more desperate murderer than Cayn that was to be executed, we followed the multitude, and grudged not to lend him our eyes at his last parting.  
Who should it be but one Cutwolfe, a wearish dwarfish writhe faced cobbler, brother to bartol the Italian, that was confederate with Esdras of Granado, and at that time stole away my courtesan▪ when he ravished Heraclide.  
It is not so natural for me to epitomize his impiety, as to hear him in his own person speak upon the wheel where he was to suffer.  
Prepare your ears and your tears, for never till this thrust I any tragical matter upon you. Strange and wonderful are God's judgements, here shine they in their glory. chaste Heraclide, thy blood is laid up in heavens treasury, not one drop of it was lost, but lent out to usury: water powered forth sinks down quietly into the earth, but blood spilled on the ground sprinkles up to the firmament. Murder is wide-mouthd, and will not let God rest till he grant revenge. Not only the blood of the slaughtered innocent but the soul ascendeth to his throne, and there cries out & exclaims for justice and recompense. Guiltless souls that live every hour subject to violence, and with your despairing fears do much impair God's providence: fasten your eyes on this spectacle that will add to your faith. Refer all your oppressions afflictions and injuries to the even balanced eye of the Almighty, he it is, that when your patience sleepeth, will be most exceeding mindful of you.  
This is but a gloze upon the text: thus Cutwolfe gins his insulting oration.  
Men and people that have made holy-daie to behold my pained flesh toil on the wheel. Expect not of me a whining penitent slave, that shall do nothing but cry and say his prayers, and so be crushed in pieces. My body is little, but my mind is as great as a Giants: the soul which is in me, is the very soul of julius Caesar by reversion. My name is Cutwolfe, neither better nor worse by occupation, than a poor cobbler of Verona, cobblers are men and kings are no more. The occasion of my coming hither at this present, is to have a few of my bones broken (as we are all borne to die) for being the death of the Emperor of homicides Esdras of Granado. About two years since in the streets of Rome he slew the only and eldest brother I had named bartol, in quarreling about a courtesan. The news brought to me as I was sitting in my shop under a stall knocking in of tacks, I think I raised up my bristles, sold pritch-aule, sponge, blacking tub, and punching iron, bought me rapier and pistol, and to go I went. Twenty months together I pursued him, from Rome to Naples, from Naples to Caiete passing over the river, from Caiete to Syenna, from Syenna to Florence, from Florence to Parma, from Parma to Pavia, from Pavia to Zion, from Zion to Geneva, from Geneva back again towards Rome: where in the way it was my chance to meet him in the nick here at Bolognia, as I will tell you how. I saw a great fray in the streets as I passed along, and many swords walking, whereupon drawing nearer, and inquiring who they were, answer was returned me it was that notable Bandit Esdras of Granado, O so I was tickled in the spleen with that word, my heart hop● & danced, my elbows itched, my fingers friskt, I will not what should become of my feet, nor knew what I did for joy. The fray parted. I thought it not convenient to single him out (being a sturdy knave) in the street, but to stay till I had got him at more advantage. To his lodging I dogged him, lay at the door all night where he entered, for fear he should give me the slip any way. Betimes in the morning I rung the bell and craved to speak with him: up to his chamber door I was brought, where knocking, he rose in his shirt and let me in, and when he was entered, bade me lock the door and declare my arrant, and so he slipped to bed again.  
Marry this quoth I is my arrant. Thy name is Esdras of Granado, is it not? Most treacherously thou 〈◊〉 my brother bartol about two years ago in the streets of Rome: his death am I come to revenge. In quest of thee ever since above three thousand miles have I travailed. I have begged to maintain me the better part of the way, only because I would intermit no time from my pursuit in going back for money. Now have I got thee naked in my power, die thou shalt, though my mother and my grandmother dying did entreat for thee. I have promised the devil thy soul within this hour, break my word I will not, in thy breast I intent to bury a bullet. Stir not, quinch not, make no noise: for if thou dost it will be worse for thee.  
Quoth Esdras, what ever thou be at whose mercy I lie, spare me, and I will give thee as much gold as thou wilt ask. Put me to any pains my life reserved, and I willingly will sustain them: cut off my arms and legs, and leave me as a lazar to some loathsome spittle, where I may but live a year to pray and repent me. For thy brother's death the despair of mind that hath ever since haunted me, the guilty gnawing worm of conscience I feel may be sufficient penance. Thou canst not send me to such a hell, as already there is in my heart. To dispatch me presently is no revenge, it will soon be forgotten: let me die a lingering death, it will be remembered a great deal longer. A lingering death may avail my soul, but it is the illest of ills that can befortune my body. For my soul's health I beg my body's torment: be not thou a devil to torment my soul, and send me to eternal damnation. Thy over-hanging sword hides heaven from my sight, I dare not look up, lest I embrace my deaths-wound unwares: I cannot pray to God, and plead to thee both at once. Ay me, already I see my life buried in the wrinkles of thy brows: say but I shall live, though thou meanest to kill me. Nothing confounds like to sudden terror, it thrusts every sense out of office. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison: the fear of death's looks are more terrible than his stroke. The whilst I view death, my faith is deadened: where a man's fear is, there his heart is. Fear never engenders hope: how can I hope that heavens father will save me from the hell everlasting, when he gives me over to the hell of thy fury.  
Heraclide▪ now think I on thy fears sown in the dust, (thy tears, that my bloody mind made barren). In revenge of thee, God hardens this man's heart against me: yet I did not slaughter thee, though hundreds else my hand hath brought to the shambles. Gentle sir, learn of me what it is to clog your conscience with murder, to have your dreams, your sleeps, your solitary walks troubled and disquieted with murder. Your shadow by day will affright you, you will not see a weapon unsheathd, but immediately you will imagine it is predestinate for your destruction.  
This murder is a house divided within itself: it suborns a man's own soul to inform against him: his soul (being his accuser) brings forth his two eyes as witnesses against him: and the least eye witness is unrefutable. Pluck out my eyes if thou wilt, and deprive my traitorous soul of her two best witnesses. Dig out my blasphemous tongue with thy dagger, both tongue and eyes will I gladly forego, to have a little more time to think on my journey to heaven.  
Defer a while thy resolution. I am not at peace with the w●rld, for even but yesterday I sought, and in my fury threatened further vengeance: had I face to face ask forgiveness, I should think half my sins were forgiven. A hundred Devils haunt me daily for my horrible murders: the devils when I die will be loath to go to hell with me, for they desired of Christ he would not send them to hell before their time: if they go not to hell, into thee they will go, and hideously vex thee for turning them out of their habitation. Wounds I contemn, life I prise light, it is another world's tranquillity which makes me so timorous: everlasting damnation, everlasting howling and lamentation. It is not from death I request thee to deliver me, but from this terror of torments eternity. Thy brother's body only I pierced unadvisedly, his soul meant I no harm too at all: my body & soul both shalt thou cast away quite, if thou dost at this instant what thou mayst. Spare me, spare me I beseech thee: by thy own soul's salvation I desire thee, seek not my souls utter perdition: in destroying me, thou destroyest thyself and me. Eagerly I replied after his long suppliant oration; Though I knew God would never have mercy on me except I had mercy on thee, yet of thee no mercy would I have. Revenge in our tragedies continually is raised from hell: of hell do I esteem better than heaven, if it afford me revenge. There is no heaven but revenge. I tell thee, I would not have undertook so much toil to gain heaven, as I have done in pursuing thee for revenge. Divine revenge, of which (as of the joys above) there is no fullness or satiety. Look how my feet are blistered with following thee from place to place. I have riven my throat with overstraining it to curse thee. I have ground my teeth to powder with grating and grinding them together for anger, when any hath named thee. My tongue with vain threats is bolne, and waxed too big for my mouth. My eyes have broken their strings with staring and looking ghastly, as I stood devising how to frame or set my countenance when I met thee. I have near spent my strength in imaginary acting on stone walls, what I determined to execute on thee. Entreat not, a miracle may not reprieve thee: villain, thus march I with my blade into thy bowels.  
Stay, stay exclaimed Esdras▪ and hear me but one word further. Though neither for God nor man thou carest, but placest thy whole felicity in murder, yet of thy felicity learn how to make a greater felicity. Respite me a little from thy sword's point, and set me about some execrable enterprise, that may subvert the whole state of Christendom, and make all men's ears tingle that hear of it. Command me to cut all my kindred's throats, to burn men women and children in their beds in millions, by firing their Cities at midnight. Be it Pope, Emperor or Turk that displeaseth thee, he shall not breathe on the earth. For thy sake will I swear and forswear, renounce my baptism, and all the interest I have in any other sacrament. Only let me live how miserable soever, be it in a dungeon amongst toads, serpents and adders, or set up to the neck in dung. No pains I will refuse how ever prorogued, to have a little respite to purify my spirit: oh hear me, hear me, and thou canst not be hardened against me.  
At this his importunity I paused a little, not as retiring from my wreakful resolution, but going back to gather more forces of vengeance. With myself I devised how to plague him double for his base mind. My thoughts traveled in quest of some notable new Italionisme, whose murderous platform might not only extend on his body, but his soul also. The ground work of it was this. That whereas he had promised for my sake to swear and forswear, and commit julian-like violence on the highest seals of religion: if he would but thus far satisfy me he should be dismissed from my fury. First and foremost he should renounce God and his laws, and utterly disclaim the whole title or interest he had in any covenant of salvation. Next he should curse him to his face, as job was willed by his wife, and write an absolute firm obligation of his soul to the devil, without condition or exception. Thirdly and lastly (having done this), he should pray to God fervently never to have mercy upon him, or pardon him. Scarce had I propounded these articles unto him, but he was beginning his blasphemous abjurations. I wonder the earth opened not and swallowed us both, hearing the bold terms he blasted forth in contempt of Christianity: Heaven hath thundered when half less contumelies against it have been uttered. Able they were to raise Saints and Martyrs from their graves, and pluck Christ himself from the right hand of his father. My joints trembled & quaked with attending them, my hair stood upright, & my heart was turned wholly to fire. So affectionately and zealously did he give himself over to infidelity, as if sathan had gotten the upper hand of our high Maker. The vain in his left hand that is derived from his heart with no faint blow he pierced, & with the blood that flowed from it, writ a full obligation of his soul to the devil: yea, more earnestly he prayed unto God never to forgive it his soul, than many Christians do to save their souls. These fearful ceremonies brought to an end, I bade him open his mouth and gape wide. He did so (as what will not slaves do for fear). Therewith made I no more ado, but shot him full into the throat with my pistol: no more spoke he after, so did I shoot him that he might never speak after, or repent him. His body being dead looked as black as a toad: the devil presently branded it for his own. This is the fault that hath called me hither. No true Italian but will honour me for it. Revenge is the glory of Arms, and the highest performance of valour: revenge is whatsoever we call law or justice. The farther we wade in revenge, the nearer come we to the throne of the Almighty. To his sceptre it is properly ascribed, his sceptre he lends unto man, when he lets one man scourge another. All true Italians imitate me, in revenging constantly, and dying valiantly. Hangman to thy task, for I am ready for the utmost of thy rigour. Herewith all the people (outrageously incensed) with one conjoined outcrye yelled mainly, Away with him, away with him, Executioner torture him, tear him, or we will tear thee in pieces if thou spare him.  
The executioner needed no exhortation hereunto, for of his own nature was he hackster good enough: old excellent he was at a bone-ache. At the first chop with his woodknife would he fish for a man's heart, and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a porridge pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs: a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon, as he would turn a man of the ladder. Bravely did he drum on this Cutwolfes' bones, not breaking them outright, but like a sadler knocking in of tacks, taring on them quaveringly with his hammer a great while together. No joint about him but with a hatchet he had for the nonce, he dissoynted half, and then with boiling lead souldred up the wounds from bleeding. His tongue he pulled out, lest he should blaspheme in his torment: venomous slinging worms he thrust into his ears, to keep his head ravingly occupied: with cankers scruzed to pieces he rubbed his mouth and his gums. No l●m of his but was lingeringly splinterd in shivers. In this horror left they him on the wheel as in hell: where yet living, he might behold his flesh legacied amongst the souls of the air. Unsearchable is the book of our destinies. One murder begetteth another: was never yet bloodshed barren from the beginning of the world to this day. Mortifiedly abjected and daunted was I with this trunculent tragedy of Cutwolfe and Esdras. To such strait life did it thence forward incite me, that ere I went out of Bolognia I married my curtizane, periormed many alms deeds; and hasted so fast cut of the Sodom of Italy that within forty days I arrived at the King of England's Camp twixt Ardes and Guines in France: where he with great triumphs met and entertained the Emperor and the French King, and feasted many days. And so as my Story began with the King at Turnay and Turwin, I think meet here to end it with the King at Ardes & Guines. All the conclusive Epilogue I will make is this; that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind. Otherwise I will swear upon an English Chronicle, never to be outlandish Chronicler more while I live. Farewell as many as wish me well. june 27. 1593.  
FINIS.