A Pleasant Funeral-Oration, AT THE INTERMENT OF THE Three( lately Deceased) TOWER-LYONS.  
HOw! the lions dead! 'Tis impossible— Why are lions Immortal?— Not as they are lions, but as they are Tower-Lyons they are. Why you don't hear of a Tower-Lyon that dies in an Age. Tower-Lyons! 'Tis as much the Keepers Interest to be careful and tender of them, as it is a younger Brothers to prolong the Life of an old Wife with a jointure. Tower-Lyons! You don't know what Tower-Lyons are. They are the Darlings, the delight of the People, and now they are gon, my Life for Yours we shall hear of the Death of some Body at one time or other. Now for as many guineas for a Purchase, as there have been Surmises, and Conjectures, and I pray God grants passionately whispered forth upon this fatal Accident. The Superstitious Papist sneers up his Nose, and cries it portends well o' their side, for cutting off the Lord Stafford's Head. Why what has the Lord Stafford's Head to do with the lions? Oh yes— For he carried a lions Heart to the Scaffold with him, and therefore they have to do with his Head. 'Twas well they did not deal by his Lordship as the Persians did by Daniel; for had these lions been his Executioners, their unexpected Deaths had been the effect of the Popes Curses upon Heretick's. But now it must be a judgement among Us. And truly 'twas a hard case that such a judgement should fall upon one that perhaps never deserved it. For 'tis a Hundred to One whither the Keeeper had any Hand in the Lord Stafford's Execution or no; and yet because he was Executed how many Pence and Two-pences must the Keeper loose? So that now there is no entertainment left for the country Maidens that come to Town a purpose, now the lions are dead, but only the Tombs themselves. And yet no such calamity neither; the place being easily supplied from the Bear-Garden; for one living Dog is better then three dead lions.  
But that's not the business: Here are three Tower-Lyon's dead, and therefore three great Sombody's must follow ' em. As if because Living-Lyons have their Jackals, therefore dead lions must be the Jackals of Death themselves to run before the Hearses of great Personages. The stars protect the famous Albion and Corineus, those Noble Guardians of the Hustings and Sheriffs Courts in Guild-Hall.  
But a lion is the King of Beasts, and 'twas never known that they ever died but upon some Emergent occasion; and therefore before the three Kings of Cullen died, there were three lions died just in this sullen froward, frompish manner. Hang 'em Weezels of Ill-omens, had they fallen by the hand of samson, David, or Hercules, they had died in the Bed of Honour, but to sneak out of the World with a Surfet of raw Carrion in their Guts, and forget to drink Brandy too! the common physic of the Times! was a death no way becoming three Lyon's that intended to foretell the death of Princes.  
But to die all three together; to die as it were by consent, there must be something more then Ordinary in the business. Either it was a Sham-plot of Mrs. Celliers Presbyterians to create fears and jealousies in the Nation; or else it was a Plot among themselves to make the World believe strange things. Well, fare 'em well they died like lions however.  
Thus you see what 'tis to be a Tower-Lyon; I'll warrant ye all the lions and Lyonesses in the Deserts of Lybia, might have died of a lion Pestilence, and not one word have been made of it. Here are only three lions die in the Tower, nay, 'tis but within the Precinct of the Tower neither, and presently they set three Presses a going in the Metropoils of the Nation.  
Some People reported that the great Guns were carried into the Tower, because three of its chief Guardians were deceased. But we believe no such thing: and therefore let 'em even go like Emblems of the Wicked as they are, 
— Whose Teeth.  
Like lions Whelps hang out.   
Others there are who say, That a certain person should report at a Coffee-house that these lions were poisoned. Truly 'twas pitty, that he had not been enjoined for his pains to preach their Funeral Sermon. We could have furnished him with matter and  told him how that lions were sacred to Vulcan; by reason of the heat and fury of their courage, how they were honoured to draw the Chariot of the Mother of the god's, to show that the fierceness and intemperancy of Youth is to be mollified and governed by the Discretion of Age, and as for their lives and conversations the Keeper could have given him an account, ever since he began to exercise their patience with his long Pole. We could have  told him of the courtesy of the lion that licked off the sweat from the forehead of Sandracottus as he lay asleep; and of the Gratitude of the lion to Androdus, for having formerly pulled a Thorn out of his foot. These had been rare Theames, for a young Pulpit Rhetorician.  
But must these lions then die forgot, among the common crowd of Vulgar lions? These lions that had been so long in England that they might have claimed naturalisation; these lions that were wont to be more visited then a Cardinal Padron, or a Popes Nephew? Truly 'tis great pitty they should. And if they do, 'tis only the fault of our Astrologers. It were an easy thing for them, and would cost 'em nothing neither, to remove the Nemean lion( hang him what should a Heathen lion do there, now the Zodiac has changed its Religion?) and place these three lions in his room. Questionless the Zodiac is broad enough to hold 'em all three. And who knows how propitious an English Constellation may be to the Kingdom? And then for the difficulty of their mounting the Sky, to perfect their design, they need never fear it; for the Vertuosi will lend 'em an Engine to fly, and a Crane with Ropes ready fixed.  
And thus much for the three deceased lions, and for them that think more Superstitiously then thus of their Omens and their Portendings, they would do well to go to the Bagnio, and sweat out their folly.  
FINIS.   

LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1681.