argent, but whatsoever they bear before, here they give only
sables. Whiles he lies by it, he is travelling over the Alps, and
the hearts of his creditors are the snows that lie unmelted in the
middle of summer. He is an almanac out of date; none of his
days speak of fair weather. Of all the files of men, he marcheth
in the last, and comes limping, for he is shot, and is no man of
this world. He hath lost his way, and being benighted, strayed
into a wood full of wolves, and nothing so hard as to get away
without being devoured. He that walks from six to six in Paul's
goes still but a quoit's cast before this man.

A CREDITOR

He is

Is a fellow that torments men for their good conditions.
one of Deucalion's sons, begotten of a stone. The marble images
in the Temple Church that lie cross-legged do much resemble him,
saving that this is a little more cross. He wears a forfeited bond
under that part of his girdle where his thumb sticks, with as much
pride as a Welshman does a leek on St. David's Day, and quarrels
more and longer about it. He is a catchpole's morning's draught,
for the news that such a gallant has come yesternight to town,
draws out of him both muscadel and money too. He says the
Lord's Prayer backwards, or, to speak better of him, he hath a
Paternoster by himself, and that particle, Forgive us our debts, as
we forgive others, &c., he either quite leaves out, or else leaps
over it. It is a dangerous rub in the alley of his conscience. He
is the bloodhound of the law, and hunts counter, very swiftly and
with great judgment. He hath a quick scent to smell out his
game, and a good deep mouth to pursue it, yet never opens till
he bites, and bites not till he kills, or at least draws blood, and
then he pincheth most doggedly. He is a lawyer's mule, and the
only beast upon which he ambles so often to Westminster. And
a lawyer is his God Almighty, in him only he trusts. To him he
flies in all his troubles; from him he seeks succour. To him he
prays, that he may by his means overcome his enemies. Him

does he worship both in the temple and abroad, and hopes by him and good angels to prosper in all his actions. A scrivener is his farrier, and helps to recover all his diseased and maimed obligations. Every term he sets up a tenters in Westminster Hall, upon which he racks and stretches gentlemen like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack, and that causeth them with the least wet to shrink, and presently to wear bars. Marry, he handles a citizen (at least if himself be one) like a piece of Spanish cloth, gives him only a twitch, and strains him not too hard, knowing how apt he is to break of himself, and then he can cut nothing out of him but threads. To the one he comes like Tamburlain, with his black and bloody flag; but to the other his white one hangs out, and, upon the parley, rather than fail, he takes ten groats in the pound for his ransom, and so lets him march away with bag and baggage. From the beginning of Hilary to the end of Michaelmas his purse is full of quicksilver, and that sets him running from sunrise to sunset up Fleet Street, and so to the Chancery, from thence to Westminster, then back to one court, after that to another. Then to an attorney, then to a councillor, and in every of these places he melts some of his fat (his money). In the vacation he goes to grass, and gets up his flesh again, which he baits as you heard. If he were to be hanged unless he could be saved by his book, he cannot for his heart call for a psalm of mercy. He is a law-trap

baited with parchment and wax. The fearful mice he catches are debtors, with whom scratching attorneys, like cats, play a good while, and then mouse them. The belly is an insatiable creditor, but man worse.

A SERGEANT

mian.

Was once taken, when he bare office in his parish, for an honest The spawn of a decayed shopkeeper begets this fry; out of that dunghill is this serpent's egg hatched. It is a devil made sometime out of one of the twelve companies, and does but study the part and rehearse it on earth, to be perfect when he comes to

1

In

act it in hell; that is his stage. The hangman and he are twins;
only the hangman is the elder brother, and he dying without
issue, as commonly he does, for none but a ropemaker's widow
will marry him, this then inherits. His habit is a long gown,
made at first to cover his knavery, but that growing too monstrous,
he now goes in buff; his conscience and that being both cut
out of one hide, and are of one toughness. The Counter-gate is
his kennel, the whole city his Paris gardens; the misery of a poor
man, but especially a bad liver, is the offals on which he feeds.
The devil calls him his white son; he is so like him that he is
the worse for it, and he takes after his father, for the one torments
bodies as fast as the other tortures souls. Money is the crust he
leaps at ; cry," a duck! a duck!" and he plunges not so eagerly as
at this. The dog's chaps water to fetch nothing else; he hath his
name for the same quality. For sergeant is quasi See argent,
look you, rogue, here is money. He goes muffled like a thief,
and carries still the marks of one; for he steals upon man cowardly,
plucks him by the throat, makes him stand, and fleeces him.
this they differ, the thief is more valiant and more honest. His
walks in term times are up Fleet Street, at the end of the term
up Holborn, and so to Tyburn; the gallows are his purlieus, in
which the hangman and he are quarter rangers-the one turns off,
and the other cuts down. All the vacation he lies imbogued
behind the lattice of some blind drunken, bawdy ale-house, and
if he spy his prey, out he leaps like a freebooter, and rifles, or
like a ban-dog worries. No officer to the city keeps his oath so
uprightly; he never is forsworn, for he swears to be true varlet
to the city, and he continues so to his dying day. Mace, which
is so comfortable to the stomach in all kind of meats, turns in his
hand to mortal poison. This raven pecks not out men's eyes
as others do; all his spite is at their shoulders, and you were
better to have the nightmare ride you than this incubus. When
any of the furies of hell die, this Cacodæmon hath the reversion of
his place. The city is (by the custom) to feed him with good
meat, as they send dead horses to their hounds, only to keep
them both in good heart, for not only those curs at the dog-

house, but these within the walls, are to serve in their paces in their several huntings. He is a citizen's birdlime, and where he holds he hangs.

HIS YEOMAN

Is the hanger that a sergeant wears by his side; it is a false die of the same ball but not the same cut, for it runs somewhat higher and does more mischief. It is a tumbler to drive in the conies. He is yet but a bungler, and knows not how to cut up a man without tearing, but by a pattern. One term fleshes him, or a Fleet Street breakfast. The devil is but his father-in-law, and yet for the love he bears him will leave him as much as if he were his own child. And for that cause (instead of prayers) he does every morning at the Counter-gate ask him blessing, and thrives the better in his actions all the day after. This is the hook that hangs under water to choke the fish, and his sergeant is the quill above water, which pops down so soon as ever the bait is swallowed. It is indeed an otter, and the more terrible destroyer of the two. This counter-rat hath a tail as long as his fellows, but his teeth are more sharp and he more hungry, because he does but snap, and hath not his full half-share of the booty. The eye of this wolf is as quick in his head as a cutpurse's in a throng, and as nimble is he at his business as an hangman at an execution. His office is as the dogs do worry the sheep first, or drive him to the shambles; the butcher that cuts his throat steps out afterwards, and that's his sergeant. His living lies within the city, but his conscience lies bed-rid in one of the holes of a counter. This eel is bred too out of the mud of a bankrupt, and dies commonly with his guts ripped up, or else a sudden stab sends him of his last errand. He will very greedily take a cut with a sword, and suck more silver out of the wound than his surgeon shall. His beginning is detestable, his courses desperate, and his end damnable.

G

A COMMON CRUEL JAILOR

Is a creature mistaken in the making, for he should be a tiger; but the shape being thought too terrible, it is covered, and he wears the vizor of a man, yet retains the qualities of his former fierceness, currishness, and ravening. Of that red earth of which man was fashioned this piece was the basest, of the rubbish which was left and thrown by came this jailor; his descent is then more ancient, but more ignoble, for he comes of the race of those angels that fell with Lucifer from heaven, whither he never (or very hardly) returns. Of all his bunches of keys not one hath wards to open that door, for this jailor's soul stands not upon those two pillars that support heaven (justice and mercy), it rather sits upon those two footstools of hell, wrong and cruelty. He is a judge's slave, and a prisoner's his. In this they differ; he is a voluntary one, the other compelled. He is the hangman of the law with a lame hand and if the law gave him all his limbs perfect he would strike those on whom he is glad to fawn. In fighting against a debtor he is a creditor's second, but observes not the laws of the duel his play is foul, and on all base advantages. His conscience and his shackles hang up together, and are made very near of the same metal, saving that the one is harder than the other and hath one property above iron, for that never melts. He distils money out of the poor men's tears, and grows fat by their curses. No man coming to the practical part of hell can discharge it better, because here he does nothing but study the theory of it. His house is the picture of hell in little, and the original of the letters patent of his office stands exemplified there. A chamber of lousy beds is better worth to him than the best acre of corn-land in England. Two things are hard to him (nay, almost impossible), viz., to save all his prisoners that none ever escape, and to be saved himself. His ears are stopped to the cries of others, and God's to his; and good reason, for lay the life of a man in one scale and his fees on the other, he will lose the first to find the second. He must look for no mercy if he desires justice to be done to him, for he shows none;