now so empty that boys may peep over them; the surly tipstaff and messenger, whom your best oratory, and money to boot, would hardly persuade to admit you within the bench-room, stands looking over the door as it were through a pillory, to ask you, sir, shall I open; and for the teaster you give him kisses his hand and scrapes you a leg, as fawningly, as a hungry spaniel takes a bone from his master, the lawyers, instead of perusing the breviates, and reducing the matter in question to cases, now buying up all the pamphlets, and dispersing themselves into corners to read them, thereby to keep their tongues in use, lest the faculties of brawling should be dried up with unwilling silence.

The prime court, the chancery (wherein the clerks had wont to dash their clients out of countenance with long dashes; the examiners to take the depositions in hyperboles, and round about Robinhood circumstances, with saids and aforesaids, to inlarge the number of sheets; the registers, to whom you used to come, in the same equipage as if you had a suit to the council-board, and had this ready answer, well you must wait till the latter end of the term) now as silent as a puritan conventicle when the fights are out; no waiting, no hyperboles, no dashes, nor any employment, towards maintenance of taffata, sack, wenches, and other the usual prodigalities, and luxuries, whereunto the gentlemen that practise there are addicted. That court, that hath been known to decree pro, review, and decree con, hath the bar now empty of pro's, and con's, no wrangling, no noise, but the lamentation of my lord's escape.

The court of requests, to whom so many thousand of loyal, faithful, and obedient subjects have come humbly complaining, and shewing, can shew you at this present no subject, but its own humble complaint; you that knew it, when the necessity of over great employment caused it to double the number of its clerks, and they to treble theirs, when it was sollicited by petitions as numberless as hops, or ants, which all her Welch kindred had brought two-hundred and twelve and twenty miles, to get admitted in Forma pauperis, and thereby enabled to do more mischief than the best pursed clients in England, would wonder how it should tumble from such a throng, to such a vacation of employment; that that court, that hath made two-hundred orders in one cause, should be in danger not to have one cause to order; it is methinks a lamentable change.

The ministers of the court of wards do all wear mourning liveries in their faces, as if fate had granted out writs in the nature of a Diem clausit extremum, after the death of Feoda multa, to find their offices for Vacua plurima; and of all courts else the Chequers must needs come within the limitation of this calamity, because they stand so much for the King, and in that predicament is the King's-Bench; marry, if any thrive, it must needs be the Common-pleas, for, as the times go, nothing stands stiff, but what pertains to the commons, and yet they meet with revolts too, as well as the rest.

On both sides of the hall they complain: At heaven they say there is not a lawyer nor a clerk comes near them; and at hell, where they were wont to flock like swallows to a reed-bush, they come dropping

in but now and then one, as opportunity of business makes them able. The coaches, which had wont to rumble up and down as they would challenge heaven to thunder for a wager, and did use to lie in the palaceyard, and before the inns of court gates, like so many basses, or fleets of fisher-boats in harbour, pearing over the haven-keys, now seem like western barges on the Thames at a high tide, here and there one.

And you are no sooner out of the hall-yard, but, entering into Kingstreet, you find the cooks leaning against door-posts, ruminating upon those Halcyon terms, when whole herds of clerks, sollicitors, and their clients, had wont to come with their sharp-set noses and stomachs from the hall, and devour the puddings and minced pyes by dozens, as swiftly as a kennel of hounds would worry up a dead horse, and now the courts are risen before they are hungry; the taverns, where an iron mill would hardly have drowned the noise of the yawling boys, the bar-bell, the fiddling and roaring above stairs, are now so silent you may rock a child asleep: The spruce mistress, that had wont to sit in the bar, domineering over the drawers, and not to be spoken withal, if you would kiss her arse to speak with her, now so familiar, bids you so heartily welcome, and will come and join her half pint with you, and let you salute her, and thank you, and think it very well, if all that courtesy will invite you to mount the reckoning to a pottle; the alehouses and tobacco-shops are grown sweet for want of takings, you may walk by them without danger of being choaked.

All along the Strand (lodgings being empty) you shall find the housekeepers generally projecting where to borrow, and what to pawn towards payment of their quarter's rents, thereby to preserve their leases from forfeiture, and themselves from the tyranny of their stern landlords, who are very infidels in trusting, and will not forbear a minute; nay, the mischief on it is, there are no courtiers nor bad paymasters to curse and rail at for want of money, and that is the heaviest torment of all.

If you step aside into Covent-Garden, Long-Acre, and Drury-Lane, where those doves of Venus, those birds of youth and beauty (the wanton ladies) do build their nests, you shall find them in such a dump of amazement, to see the hopes of their trading frustrate, their beauties decayed for want of means to procure Pomatum and Fucus: Their eyes, which like glistering comets had wont to dazzle their idolaters, now shadowed with clouds of grief; their golden tresses, which had wont to flag about their shoulders, like so many ensigns in Cupid's regiment, and every hair thereof had a servant or visitant, which did superstitiously dote on it, now for want of curling and ordering, grown to the fashion of an Irish rug; and what a misery it is to see the velvets, sattins, and taffaties, nay the curious smocks sent to the brokers, and the whole wardrobe, that was purchased with so large a proportion of free favours and communities, now reduced to one poor tufted Holland suit? Is it not pity to see them, poor souls, who had wont to shine like so many constellations in the firmament of the suburbs, and be hurried in coaches to the taverns, and asparagus-gardens, where ten or twenty pounds suppers were but trifles with them, should now go to the chandlers and herb-wives in slip-shoes, for cheese and onions to dinner? Well, content yourselves (you attractive loadstones,

of delicious, and smooth damnation) and doubtless the arch-angel, my successor, will bring your angels to redeem all; and your champions and cavaliers will return with pockets doubly furnished, for you are as sure of them, as they are of your diseases; they are now but only purchasing, and laying up for you against their coming home; this dearth of traffick is but a preparation to a large mart to follow, and this devouring winter of penury doth but presage a lively spring in the hot blood of the young gallantry, which when it comes, you shall again enjoy those blessings of wine, musk, good cloaths, money and dainty fare; be enabled to pay your railing landladies, and defy the beadle with as much impudence, as ever you did.

Well, from you, I must follow the steps of many an old leacherous citizen, and walk into London, where, at the exchange, the only question that is asked is, what news? Not from Aleppo, Constantinople, the Streights, or Indies, but from York, Ireland, and the parliament; the answer is, why the King is still obstinate, we shall have all our throats cut, those Epicurean throats of ours are doomed to be cut, for swallowing so many luxurious cates; we had need to prick up our ears, and elevate our broad overgrown horns for the safety of ourselves, estates, and children; marry; as for our wives, they know well enough already the dangers of courtiers and cavaliers, and therefore dare meet the roughest gamester of them all in any posture whatsoever.

From hence I travel to Guildhall, where I find the lawyers complaining of infinite numbers of bankrupts, men so far decayed in estate, that they will compound to pay more than half, confess judgments, render their bodies to prison, prostitute their wives, or any thing rather than stand out the prosecution of a suit at law.

Then at the halls of every several company, where, in former ages, all the elements would scarce afford variety, to please the ingenious gluttony of one single feast, now you shall hear the meaner sort of tradesmen cursing those devouring foxes, the masters and wardens, for the infinite charge their insatiate stomachs do put them to; from hence go to their particular shops, where there is nothing amongst the tradesmen, but condoling the want of the courtiers money, and their wives and daughters almost distracted for want of their company; there are no upstart gallants to draw into their books, no young heirs to exchange shop-ware for lordships withal, nor any trading one with another, in which they are so familiarly acquainted with each others knaverics, that, alas! their gaines are as good as nothing: And amongst them all that quintessence of unquestionable simplicity, the very spirit of villany, extracted out of all compounded villanies; that master-piece or idea of dissimulation, which nature made her example to protraicture a rogue by, the Roundhead, who had wont to eat and pray, for the propagation of the brethren and sisters of the seditious faction, now is invoking of curses upon the malignant party (the Ahitophels, as he calls them, of the King's council) he sneaks into the corners of the city, and, after a licking of his lips, a spitting, and a casting up his ugly eyes towards the place he is not worthy to look at, he whispers a tale through his rotten nose, of a great danger that is fallen upon the kingdom; and strange discoveries of imminent mischiefs, which had

happened, if by some providence towards the brethren of the selected sedition, and for their sakes only, it had not been prevented; and then at length he tells you, that, if the prince were but at St. James's, there would be something done that St. Hilary dares not repeat after him: This thin jawed, ill-looking, hungry rascal; this beetle browed, holloweyed, long-nosed, wide-mouthed cur: This carrion that stinks worsé than the corrupted river of Egypt; this cockatrice that hath hatched more serpentine distempers, than all the grave wisdom of a pregnant kingdom can pacify, hath been the sole cause of poor St. Hilary's tears; who would think this ideot, this fathomless-bellied, thin-gutted snake should begin to hiss, and shew his sting, before the glorious splendor of those excellent worthies of our hopeful parliament could have leisure to disperse itself upon this starved kingdom; that this owl, this buzzard, should be the instrument to bring clouds upon all their proceedings, and yet, without doubt, will be the first that will oppose, and curse them, when they shall please to declare that, in the title of Puritan, they never intended blue apron preachers, Brownist or Anabaptist: And yet this secure, confident, impudent, malignant, twenty times damned Heretick dares attribute all their favour to himself: well may St. Hilary's curse pursue him: Nay the unquenchable zeal of his next prayer prolong the nonsense and foolery thereof to so large a measure of time, that all the roast-meat be burnt off the spit, before he has done; the white broth boiled dry, and the stewed and baked meat scorched to cinders, which in his opinion is one of the greatest earthly curses that can befall him. May his wife be catched in the spiritual act of her next carnal copulation, that all the world may discover what yet they carry so closely; may the fervency of his hot zeal to the younger sisters burn his reins and kidnies to ashes; and, instead of an hospital, let him be cast into the saw-pit he so often defiled under pretence of edification; let him be buried amongst the dunghills, as not worthy to come near the church he so abused, where none may find his grave but dogs to piss against it; may the ashes of his loathed carcase be collected from the pestiferous urn, by murderers and mountebanks, to mix with their killing potions; and may no poison ever hereafter be operative, but what is compounded with that infernal dust, that, as he lived to the confusion of all goodness and virtue, so he may after death be known or mentioned by no other notion, than some fate boading character, that brings with it the dreadful summons of a woeful horrour to ensue, till which end be fallen upon him we shall never see day of good trading again; but, when it is accomplished, St. Hilary will make holiday, and, instead of his tears, will send you hymns and madrigals for joy of the Roundheads confusion, and your more full employment.

EXAMPLES FOR KINGS;

OR,

RULES FOR PRINCES TO GOVERN BY.

WHEREIN IS CONTAINED THESE ENSUING PARTICULARS:

1. A discourse touching regal and politick government. 2. A prince must be just in his sentence. 3. What man is fit to be a governor, and to bear rule. 4. That a prince ought to be true to his word. 5. That a prince ought to be religious. 6. That a prince ought not to shed innocent blood. 7. That a prince ought to be circumspect in giving credit to evil reports. 8. That a prince ought to beware of parasites. 9. What kind of men ought to be of the king's council. 10. That it is dangerous for a prince to take aid of a stranger. 11. How a prince may get and keep the love of his subjects. 12. That a prince ought to be well advised how he begin a war.

London, printed for Henry Hutton, 1642. Quarto, containing one sheet.

AS in natural things, the head being cut off, the rest cannot be call

ed a body; no more can in politick things a multitude, or com monalty, without a head, be incorporate: Therefore a people desiring to live in society, and willing to erect either a politick body or a kingdom, must, of necessity, chuse one to govern that body, who, in a kingdom, of Regendo, is called Rex; and so by the people is established a kingdom, which government is absolutely the best. And as the head of the physical body cannot change the reins and sinews thereof, nor deny the members their proper strength and necessary nutriture; no more can a king, who is head of the politick body, alter or change the laws of that body, or take from the people their goods or substance against their wills; for a king is chosen (and bound) to maintain the laws of his subjects, and to defend their bodies and goods. So Brute, arriving in this island with his Trojans, erected here a regal and politick government which hath for the most part continued ever since: For, though we have had many changes, as first the Romans, then the Saxons, then the Danes, and lastly the Normans, yet, in the time of all these nations, and during their reigns, the kingdom was for the most part governed in the same manner as it is now. Plutarch saith, that all at first that governed were called Tyrants, but afterwards the good governors called