• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

GEORGE.

Lincoln, let's beat them down, and bear no more of these abuses.

LINCOLN.

We may not, Betts: be patient, and hear more.

DOLL.

How now, husband! what, one stranger take they food from thee, and another thy wife! by our Lady, flesh and blood, I think, can hardly brook that.

LINCOLN.

Will this gear never be otherwise? must these wrongs be thus endured?

GEORGE.

Let us step in, and help to revenge their injury.

BARDE.

What art thou that talkest of revenge? my lord ambassador shall once more make your Major have a check, if he punish thee for this saucy presumption.

WILLIAMSON.

Indeed, my lord Mayor, on the ambassador's complaint, sent me to Newgate one day, because (against my will) I took the wall of a stranger: you may do any thing; the goldsmith's wife and mine now must be at your commandment.

GEORGE.

The more patient fools are ye both, to suffer it.

BARDE.

Suffer it! mend it thou or he, if ye can or dare. I tell thee, fellows, and she were the Mayor of London's wife, had I her once in my possession, I would keep her in spite of him that durst say nay.

GEORGE.

I tell thee, Lombard, these words should cost thy best cape, were I

not curbed by duty and obedience: the Mayor of London's wife!

Oh God, shall it be thus?

DOLL.

Why, Betts, am not I as dear t m husband as my lord Mayor's wife to him? and wilt thou so neglectly suffer thine own shame?—Hands off, proud stranger! or, by him that bought me, if men's milky hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women beat them down, ere they bear these abuses.

BARDE.

Mistress, I say you shall along with me.

DOLL.

Touch not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee along on God's dear earth.—And you, sir [To Caveler], that allow such coarse cates to carpenters, whilst pigeons, which they pay for, must serve your dainty appetite, deliver them back to my husband again, or I'll call so many women to mine assistance as will not leave one inch untorn of thee: if our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced to bear your wrongs, their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat ye.

CAVELER.

Come away, De Barde, and let us go complain to my lord ambassador.

[Exeunt Ambo.]

DOLL.

Aye, go, and send him among us, and we'll give him his welcome too.—I am ashamed that freeborn Englishmen, having beaten strangers within their own homes, should thus be braved and abused by them at home.

SHERWIN.

It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the strict obedience that we are bound to. I am the goldsmith whose wrongs you talked of; but how to redress yours or mine own is a matter beyond our abilities.

LINCOLN.

Not so, not so, my good friends: I, though a mean man, a broker by profession, and named John Lincoln, have long time winked at these wild enormities with mighty impatience, and, as these two brethren here (Betts by name) can witness, with loss of mine own life would gladly remedy them.

GEORGE.

And he is in a good forwardness, I tell ye, if all hit right.

DOLL.

As how, I prithee? tell it to Doll Williamson.

LINCOLN.

You know the Spittle sermons begin the next week: I have drawn a bill of our wrongs and the strangers' insolences.

GEORGE.

Which he means the preachers shall there openly publish in the pulpit.

WILLIAMSON.

Oh, but that they would! yfaith, it would tickle our strangers thoroughly.

DOLL.

Aye, and if you men durst not undertake it, before God, we women would. Take an honest woman from her husband! why, it is intolerable.

SHERWIN.

But how find ye the preachers affected to our proceeding?

LINCOLN.

Master Doctor Standish hath answered that it becomes not him to move any such thing in his sermon, and tells us we must move the Mayor and aldermen to reform it, and doubts not but happy success will ensue on statement of our wrongs. You shall perceive there's no hurt in the bill: here's a couple of it; I pray ye, hear it.

ALL.

With all our hearts; for God's sake, read it.

LINCOLN.

[Reads.] To you all, the worshipful lords and masters of this