The Scholars Petition for play-days, in stead of holidays: Exhibited To the right worshipful, the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the right worshipful Company of Merchant-Tailors, by the Scholars of their School, in the Parish of Laurence Pountney LONDON, Martii 21. an. 1644. being the day of their public Examination.  
After divers other Exercises in Latin, Greek, and lastly in English, the Petitioner, in behalf of himself and his fellows, thus addressed himself to the Company: 
 
— yet one word more we crave, to show what grieves us,  
Wherein we pray your goodness to relieve us.   

SInce miscalled holidays, profanely spent,  
Are justly now cashiered by Parliament;  
For that the Scarlet garment which they wore,  
Was but a rubricked-badge o'th' Roman WHORE;  
Which therefore now must mourn in sable black,  
Changing her colour i'th' next almanac;  
Guilty before of scandalous abuses:  
Which notwithstanding yet the harmless Muses  
Used only for their sportful intermission  
Of toilsome Studies; not for Superstition.  
" For he that made all things, did not make Man  
" Of stone, or steel, or brass CORINTHIAN;  
" But lodged our souls in a frail earthen mass,  
" Thinner than water, brittler then the glass.  
" He knows our lives are by nought sooner spent,  
" Then having still our souls and Bodies bent.  
" A Field, left fallow some few years, will yield  
" The richer crop, when it again is tilled.  
" A River, stopped by a sluice, a space,  
" runs after rougher, and a swifter pace.  
" A Bow, a while unbent, will after cast  
" His shafts the farther▪ and them fix more fast.  
" A soldier, that a season still hath lain,  
" comes with more fury to the field again.  
" Even so our Body, while, to gather breath,  
" From pains sometimes at rest it sojourneth;  
" It recollect's its powers, and with more cheer  
" falls fresh again unto its first career.   

To you therefore we make our Common Prayer,  
That, weighing the premises, you would repair  
This doleful damage; and, in compensation  
Of this sad loss, appoint, for recreation,  
Some equipollent seasons, as will fit  
Seem to your wisdom's best for to permit.   

Thus your poor Orators devoutly pray,  

* 
— Graio Schola nomine dicta est,  
Justa laboriferis tribuantur ut otia Musis.   That you sequester would some times for Play.  
O let not then our Masters be our jailers!  
So shall we ever pray for MERCHANT-TAILORS.   

This our Petition is, which you shall see  
Subscribed with hands two hundred seventy three.   
Auson.