# Hudibras/Part 3/The Lady's Answer to the Knight

THE LADY'S ANSWER
TO
THE KNIGHT.
HAT you 're a beast and turn'd to grass Is no strange news, nor ever was; At least to me, who once, you know, Did from the pound replevin you, When both your sword and spurs were won 5 In combat by an Amazon: That sword that did, like fate, determine Th' inevitable death of vermin, And never dealt its furious blows. But cut the threads of pigs and cows, 10 By Trulla was, in single fight, Disarm'd and wrested from its Knight,
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
JOAN OF ARC.
From a Print by Marcenay.
* ↑ A replevin is a 're'-deliverance of the thing distrained, to remain with the first possessor on surety to answer the distrainer's suit.
* ↑ In England, when a knight was degraded, his gilt spurs were beaten from his heels, and his sword taken from him and broken. See a previous note.
* ↑ The widow, to keep up her dignity and importance, speaks of herself in the plural number.
* ↑ Their property.
* ↑ That is, counterfeit rubies. The manufacturers and venders of glass beads, and other counterfeit jewels, established themselves on the site of the old collegiate church of St Martin's-le-Grand (demolished upon the dissolution of the monasteries), where they carried on a considerable trade. The articles fabricated at this place were called by its name, as we now say, "Brommagem ware."
* ↑ Female savages in many parts of the globe wear ornaments of fish-bone, stones, or coloured glass when they can get it, on their lips and noses.
* ↑ In the History of Don Fenise, a romance translated from the Spanish of Francisco de las Coveras, and printed 1656, p. 269, is the following passage: "My covetousness exceeding my love, counselled me that it was better to have gold in money than in threads of hair; and to possess pearls that resemble teeth, than teeth that were like pearls."In praising Chloris, moons, and stars, and skies, Are quickly made to match her face and eyes; And gold and rubies, with as little care, To fit the colour of her lips and hair; And mixing suns, and flow'rs, and pearl, and stones, Make them serve all complexions at once: With these fine fancies at hap-hazard writ, I could make verses without art or wit. And shifting fifty times the verb and noun, With stol'n impertinence patch up my own. Butler's Remains, v. i. p. 88.
* ↑ Statute is a short writing called Statute Marchant, or Statute Staple, in the nature of a bond, &c., made according to the form expressly provided in certain statutes, 5th Hen. IV. c. 12, and others.
* ↑ That is, will never swear for you, or vow to take you for a husband.
* ↑ Any moving thing which occasions the death of a man is forfeited to the lord of the manor. It was originally intended that he should dispose of it in acts of charity: hence the name deodand, meaning a thing given, or rather forfeited, to God, for the pacification of his wrath, in case of misadventure, whereby a Christian man cometh to a violent end, without the fault of any reasonable creature. The crown frequently granted this right to individuals, within certain limits, or annexed it to lands, by which it became vested in the lord of the manor.
* ↑ Farquhar has this thought in his dialogue between Archer and Cherry. See the Beaux Stratagem.
* ↑ Out of which love makes a philter.
* ↑ The Burial Office, observes Dr Grey, was scandalously ridiculed. One Brooke, a London lecturer, at the burial of Mr John Gough, used the following profanity:—Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Here's the pit, and in thou must. Mercurius Rusticus, No. 9. But Mr Cheynell (the Nonconformist) behaved still more irreverently at the funeral of that eminent divine Chillingworth. After a reflecting speech on the deceased, in which he declaimed against the use of reason in religious matters, he threw his book, 'The Religion of Protestants, or a safe way to Salvation,' into the grave, saying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls; get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book, earth to earth, dust to dust: get thee into the place of rotteuness, that thou mayst rot with thy author, and see corruption." See Neal's Puritans, vol. iii. p. 102.
* ↑ In Ovid Cupid employs two arrows, one of gold, and the other of lead: the former causing love, the latter aversion.
* ↑ Though thus in all editions, claim and name would be better readings: for claim is the nominative case to is in verse 143.
* ↑ Setter, a term frequent in the comedies of the last century: sometimes it seems to be a pimp, sometimes a spy, but most usually an attendant on a cheating gamester, who introduces unpractised youths to be pillaged, by him; what a setting dog is to a sportsman. Butler here seems to say that those who tell the cards in another's hand, cannot always tell how they will be played.
* ↑ That is, endeavours to shield himself from the punishment due to perjury, the loss of his ears, by a desperate perseverance in false swearing. A person is said to swear through a two-inch hoard, when he makes oath of anything which was concealed from him by a thick door or partition.
* ↑ Covin is a term of law, signifying a deceitful compact between two or more, to deceive or prejudice others.
* ↑ This and the following lines are full of poetry. Mr Nash supposes that Butler alludes to Milton, when he says,Though paradise were e'er so fair, It was not kept so without care.
* ↑ When man became subject to death by eating the forbidden fruit at the persuasion of woman.
* ↑ The name or title of Prester John has been given by travellers to the king of Tenduc in Asia, who, like the Abyssinian emperors, preserved great state, and did not condescend to be seen by his subjects more than three times a year, namely, Christmas day, Easter day, and Holyrood day in September. (See Purchas's Pilgrimes, vol. ii. p. 1082.) He is said to have had seventy kings for his vassals. Mandeville makes Prester John sovereign of an archipelago of isles in India beyond Bactria, and says that "a former emperor travelled into Egypt, where being present at divine service, he asked who those persons were that stood before the bishop? And being told they were prestres, or priests, he said he would no more be called king or emperor, but priest; and would take the name of him that came first out of the priests, and was called John; since which time all the emperors have been called Prester John."—Cap. 99.
* ↑ Joan of Arc, called also the Pucelle, or Maid of Orleans. She was born at the town of Domremi, on the Meuse, daughter of James de Arc and Isabelle Romée, and was bred up a shepherdess in the country. At the age of eighteen or twenty she asserted that she had received an express commission from God to go to the relief of Orleans, then besieged by the English, and defended by John Compte de Dennis, and almost reduced to the last extremity. She went to the coronation of Charles the Seventh, when he was almost ruined, and recognised that prince in the midst of his nobles, though meanly habited. The doctors of divinity and members of Parliament openly declared that there was something supernatural in her conduct. She sent for a sword, which lay in the tomb of a knight, behind the great altar of the church of St Katharine de Forbois, upon the blade of which the cross and fleur-de-lis's were engraven, which put the king in a very great surprise, as none beside himself was supposed to know of it. Upon this he sent her with the command of some troops, with which she relieved Orleans, and drove the English from it, defeated Talbot at the battle of Pattai, and recovered Champagne. At last she was unfortunately taken prisoner in a sally at Champagne in 1430, and tried for a witch or sorceress, condemned, and burnt in Rouen market-place in May, 1430. But her story is differently told by different historians; some denying the truth of the greater part of it, and some even of her existence. Anstis, in his Register of the Order of the Garter, says that for her valiant actions she was ennobled and had a grant of arms, dated January 16th, 1429. Her story is beautifully dramatised by Schiller in his "Maid of Orleans."
* ↑ As good vehicles at least as the cloak-bag, which was said to have conveyed the same from Rome to the Council of Trent.
* ↑ Much of what is here said on the political influence of women, was aimed at the court of Charles II., who was greatly governed by his mistresses, especially the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was in the interest of France. Some suppose that the wife of General Monk may be intended.
* ↑ Alluding probably to Sir William Waller.
* ↑ See note on line 598 at page 2S9.
* ↑ England, in every period of her history, has been thought more successful in war than in negotiation. Congreve, reflecting upon Queen Anne's last ministry, in his epistle to Lord Cobham, says:Be far that guilt, be never known that shame, That Britain should retract her rightful claim, Or stain with pen the triumphs of her sword!
* ↑ The Salique law bars the succession of females to some inheritances. Thus knights' foes were in some parts terræ salicæ: males only being allowed to inherit such lands, because females could not perform the services for which they were granted. In France this law regulates the inheritance of the crown itself. See Shakspeare, Henry V., Act i. sc. 2.
* ↑ Grey thinks this may be an allusion to the obsequiousness of the Muscovite women, recorded in Purchas's Pilgrimes (vol. ii. p. 230), a book with which our poet seems to have been very familiar. It is there said, "That if in Muscovy the woman is not beaten once a week she will not be good; and therefore they look for it weekly: and the women say, if their husbands did not beat them, they should not love them."