# Hudibras/Part 3/Canto 2

PART III. CANTO II.
ARGUMENT.
The Saints engage in fierce contests About their carnal interests, To share their sacrilegious preys According to their rates of grace; Their various frenzies to reform, When Cromwell left them in a storm; Till, in th' effige of Rumps, the rabble Burn all their grandees of the cabal.
The two last conversations have unfolded the views of the confederate sects, and prepared the way for the business of the subsequent canto. Their differences will there be agitated by characters of higher consequence; and their mutual reproaches will again enable the poet to expose the knavery and hypocrisy of each. This was the principal intent of the work. The fable was considered by him only as the vehicle of his satire. And perhaps when he published the First Part, he had no more determined what was to follow in the Second, than Tristram Shandy had on a like occasion. The fable itself, the bare outlines of which I conceive to be borrowed, mutatis mutandis, from Cervantes, seems here to be brought to a period. The next canto has the form of an episode. The last consists chiefly of two dialogues and two letters. Neither Knight nor Squire has any further adventures. Nash.
PART III. CANTO II.
HE learned write, an insect breeze Is but a mongrel prince of bees, That falls before a storm on cows, And stings the founders of his house; From whose corrupted flesh that breed 5 Of vermin did at first proceed. So, ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawn'd a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts, 10
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
JOHN OF LEYDEN.
From a scarce Print.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
GENERAL CHARLES FLEETWOOD.
From a Picture by Walker.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
GENERAL JOHN LAMBERT.
From a Picture by Walker.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
GENERAL JOHN DESBOROUGH.
From a Picture by Dobson.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER.
Earl of Shaftesbury.
From an Original Picture in the Collection of the Dutchess of Dorset at Knowle.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
COLONEL JOHN LILBURNE.
From a Print prefaced to his Trial, 1649.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA.
From a Picture by Titian.
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EDMUND CALAMY.
From a Print by White.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
JOHN OWEN.
From a Print by Vertue.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
WILLIAM LENTHALL.
Speaker of the House of Commons.
From a Miniature by Cooper.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
SIR THOMAS LUNSFORD.
From an Unique Print in the British Museum.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
THOMAS LORD FAIRFAX.
From a Picture by Walker.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
ALEXANDER HENDERSON.
From a scare Print by Hollar.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
COLONEL JOHN HEWSON.
From a Print by Vandergucht.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
CHRISTOPHER LOVE.
From a Print by Cross.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
JOHN COOKE, SOLICITOR GENERAL.
From a rare Print.
R. Cooper sculp$^t$.
ATHANASIUS KIRCHER.
From a Print prefixed to his Mundus Subterraneus, 1664.
Reliev'd 'em with a fresh supply
Of rallied force, enough to fly,
And beat a Tuscan running horse,
Whose jockey-rider is all spurs.
* ↑ This canto being wholly unconnected with the story of Hudibras, would, in Mr Nash's opinion, have been better placed at the end; indeed this arrangement has been adopted by Mr Towneley in his French translation. Its different character, and its want of connexion with the foregone, may be accounted for, by supposing it written on the spur of the occasion, and with a view to recommend the author to his friends at court, by an attack on the opposite faction, at a time when it was daily gaining ground and the secret views of Charles II. were more and more suspected and dreaded. A short time before the third part of this poem was published, Shaftesbury had ceased to be a minister, and had become a furious demagogue. But the canto describes the spirit of parties not long before the Restoration. One object of satire here is to refute and ridicule the plea of the Presbyterians, after the Restoration, of having been the principal instruments in bringing back the king.
* ↑ The classical theory of the generation of bees is here applied to the breese, or gadfly, which is said by Pliny (Nat. Hist. xi. 16) to be "a bee of larger size which chases the others:" hence it may fairly be styled a prince of bees, yet but a mongrel prince, because not truly a bee
* ↑ Assuming that they deposit their larvæ in the flesh of cows.
* ↑ Case, in his thanksgiving sermon for the taking of Chester, told the Parliament, that no less than 180 errors and heresies were propagated in the city of London.
* ↑ The Independents, and sometimes the Presbyterians, have been charged with altering a text of Scripture, in order to authorize them to appoint their own ministers, substituting ye for we in Acts vi. 3. "Therefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom ye may appoint over this business." Mr Field is said to have printed ye instead of we in several editions, and particularly in his beautiful folio edition of 1659, as well as his octavo of 1661; and, according to Grey, he was "the first printer of the forgery, and received £1500 for it." But this error had previously occurred in the Bible printed at Cambridge by Buck and Daniel, 1638. See Lowndes' Bibliographical Manual, by Bohn, page 187.
* ↑ It was about 521 years before Christ, that they first had the name of Magians, which signifies crop-eared; it was given them by way of nickname and contempt, because of the impostor (Smerdis) who was then cropt. Prideaux's Connection. Hence, perhaps, might come the proverb, "Who made you a conjurer and did not crop your ears."
* ↑ The poet cannot mean the Persian empire, which was only in the hands of the Magi for a few months, but the presidency of the Magi. Zoroaster, the first institutor of the sect, allowed of incestuous marriages to preserve the line without intermixture. He maintained the doctrine of a good and bad principle; the former was worshipped under the emblem of fire, which they kept constantly burning.
* ↑ The Presbyterians first broke down the pale of order and discipline, and so made way for the Independents and every other sect.
* ↑ This is not the first time we have heard of the devil's mother. In Wolfii Memorabilia, is a quotation from Erasmus: "If you are the devil, I am his mother." And in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, Cassandra, after loading Clytemnestra with every opprobrious name she can think of, calls her "mother of the devil." Larcher, the editor of the French Hudibras, remarks in a note, that this passage alludes to the description of Sin and Death in the second book of Milton's Paradise Lost.
* ↑ When the Presbyterians prevailed, Calamy, being asked what he would do with the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and others, replied, that he would not meddle with their consciences, but only with their bodies and estates.
* ↑ That is, never agreed or united, from gefegen, Sax. See Wright's Provincial Dictionary.
* ↑ Butler here implies that while the Dissenters were struggling for the upper hand and had nothing to lose, they were united, but the moment they succeeded, the dominant party jealously excluded their former allies.
* ↑ Although the Ordinance which removed obstructions in the sale of the Royal Lands, was passed so early as 1649, it was not till 1659 that Whitehall, Somerset House, and Hampton Court, were ordered to be sold.
* ↑ Cudgels across one another denote a challenge: to cross the cudgels to the laws, is to offer to fight in defence of them.
* ↑ Meaning a plantation of hemp, which being a thick cover, a rogue may lie concealed therein. "Thus," says Butler, "he shelters himself under the cover of the law, like a thief in a hemp-plat, and makes that secure him which was intended for his destruction." Remains, vol. ii. p. 384.
* ↑ When the estates of the king and Church were ordered to be sold in 1749, great arrears were due to the army: for the discharge of which some of the lands were allotted, and whole regiments joined together in the manner of a corporation. The distribution afterwards was productive of many law-suits, the person whose name was put in trust often claiming the whole, or a larger share than he was entitled to. See note at page 7.
* ↑ William Prynne, already mentioned at page 30, was born at Swanswick, in Somersetshire. The poet calls him hot and brain-sick, because he was a restless and turbulent man. He is called the utter (or outer) barrister by the court of Star-chamber, in the sentence ordering him to be discarded; and afterwards he was voted again by the House of Commons to be restored to his place and practice as an utter barrister; which signifies a pleader without the bar, or one who is not king's counsel or Serjeant.
* ↑ Bishop Warburton says: "When the combat was demanded in a legal way by knights and gentlemen, it was fought with sword and lance; and when by yeomen, with sand-bags fastened to the end of a truncheon." When tilts and tournaments were in fashion for men of knightly degree, men of low degree amused themselves with running at the Quintain, which was a beam with a wooden board at one end, and a sand-bag at the other, so fixed on a post, that when the board was smartly struck, it swung round rapidly, and if the striker was not very nimble the sand-bag struck him a heavy blow. Judicial combats between common people were also fought with sand-bags fixed on shafts. See Henry VI., Part II. Act ii., where Horner and Peter are so equipped for their combat.
* ↑ The lawyers got more fees from the Presbyterians, or saints, who in general were trustees for the sequestered lands, than from all other trustees, who were unsanctified. Nash.
* ↑ When Oliver Cromwell, with the army and the Independents, had got the upper hand, they retaliated on the Presbyterians by depriving them of all power and authority; and before the king was brought to trial, the Presbyterian members were "purged" from the House.
* ↑ That is, a voluntary saint without pay or commission.
* ↑ Amongst the schemes of the day was the appointment of itinerant preachers, who were to be supported out of the lands of Deans and Chapters. Walker's Hist. of Independency, Part ii. p. 156.
* ↑ Poor Presbyter, i. e. the Presbyterians were glad to teach down the Independents, whom as brethren and friends (v. 55) they had indiscriminately taught up; the unhinging doctrines of the Presbyterians having set up the Independents in direct opposition to themselves. Nash.
* ↑ The sermons of these times were divided into Doctrine and Use: and in the margin of them is often printed Use the first, Use the second, &c.
* ↑ The Presbyterians endeavoured to preach down the Independents by the very same doctrines these had used in preaching down the Bishops; that is, by objecting to Ordination and Church government.
* ↑ This was the designation of the party purpose of those who first got up the Covenant and Protestation.
* ↑ Many of the Independent officers, such as Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, &c., used to pray and preach publicly. Cleveland uses the same term, "Kirk dragoons," in his Hue and Cry after Sir John Presbyter.
* ↑ The Templars were at first so poor that two knights rode on one horse; Butler says the new order of Military Saints did so, but that one rider was a Saracen and the other a saint. Grey says in quoting Walker, that the Independents were a compound of Jew, Christian, and saint.
* ↑ To preach, has a reference to the Dominicans; to fight, to the knights of Malta: to pray, to the fathers of Oratory; to murther, to the Jesuits. But the Independents assumed to themselves the privilege of every order: they preached, fought, prayed, and murdered.
* ↑ That is, to swallow up, see Skinner and Junius. A lurcher is a glutton. See Wright's Provincial Dictionary.
* ↑ That is, the laws of the land, and hatred of the people.
* ↑ A reflection upon the Dutch women, for their use of portable stoves, which they carry by a string, and on seating themselves generally put it under their petticoats; whence they are humorously said to engender sooterkins with their children. Howel, in his letters, describes them as "likest a bat of any creature," and Cleveland says, "not unlike a rat."
* ↑ That is, both parties were intimately united together.
* ↑ For as when two cheats, equally masters of the very same tricks, are by that circumstance mutually defeated of their aim, namely, to impose upon each other, so those well matched tricksters, who play with state affairs, and only cavil at one another's schemes, ever counteract each other.
* ↑ This encomium on the Royalists, their prudence, and suffering fidelity, has been generally admired.
* ↑ As the dial is invariable, and always true to the sun whenever its rays emerge, however its lustre may be sometimes obscured by passing clouds; so true loyalty is always ready to serve its king and country, though often under the pressure of affliction and distress.
* ↑ The poet, to serve his metre, sometimes lengthens and sometimes contracts his words, thus bretheren, lightening, oppugne, sarcasmous, affairs, bungleing. spiinkleing, bcnigne.
* ↑ Recruits, that is, Irish volunteers ready to serve the king's cause.
* ↑ The succession of Loyalists was so quick, that they seemed to be perishing, and others supplying their places, before the periods usual in nature; all which is expressed by an allusion to equivocal generation.
* ↑ That is, all of them together, namely, the several factions, their adversaries, and the devil. See v. 178.
* ↑ The Monday before the death of Oliver, August 30th, 1658, was the most windy day that had happened for twenty years. Dennis Bond, a member of the Long Parliament, and one of the king's judges, died on this day; wherefore, when Oliver likewise went away in a storm the Friday following, it was said, the devil came in the first wind to fetch him, but finding him not quite ready, took Bond for his appearance. Dryden, Waller, and other poets have verses on the subject: In storms as loud as his immortal fame; and Godolphin: In storms as loud as was his crying sin.
* ↑ Some editions read mortal, but not with so much meaning or wit. The Independents called themselves the saints: the Cavaliers and the Church of England were distinguished into two sorts; the immoral and wicked they called miscreants; those that were of sober and of good conversation, they called moral men; yet, because these last did not maintain the doctrine of absolute predestination and justification by faith only, but insisted upon the necessity of good works, they accounted them no better than moral heathens. By this opposition in terms between moral men and saints, the poet seems to insinuate, that the pretended saints were not men of morals.
* ↑ The king's party of course maintained that Oliver Cromwell was gone to the devil; but Sterry, one of Oliver's chaplains, assured the world of his ascent into heaven, and that he would be of more use to them there than he had been in his life-time.
* ↑ Sterry dreamed that Oliver was to be placed in heaven, which he foolishly imagined to be the true and real heaven above; but it happened to be the false carnal heaven at the end of Westminster Hall, where his head was fixed after the Restoration. There were, at that time, three taverns abutting on Westminster Hall, one called Heaven, another Hell, and the third Purgatory, near to the former of which Oliver's head was fixed.
* ↑ "Romulus, the first Roman king, being suddenly missed, and the people in trouble for the loss of him, Julius Proculus made a speech, wherein he told them that he saw Romulus that morning come down from heaven; that he gave him certain things in charge to tell them, and then he saw him mount up to heaven again." Livy's Roman Hist. vol. i. b. i.
* ↑ Richard Cromwell, the eldest son of Oliver, succeeded him in the protectorship; but had neither capacity nor courage sufficient for his position.
* ↑ See Part i. Canto i. l. 925, where he rides the state; but here the state rides him.
* ↑ A sneer at the Committee of Safety. See Clarendon, vol. iii. b. xvi. p. 544, and Baxter's Life, p. 74.
* ↑ They founded their hopes on Revelation i. 6, and v. 10.
* ↑ Some sectaries thought that all law proceedings should be abolished, all law books burnt, and that the law of the Lord Jesus should be received alone.
* ↑ Alluding to the republics of Switzerland, and the German Hans-Towns, Hamburgh, Altona, &c.
* ↑ John of Leyden, a tailor, who proclaimed himself a prophet and king of the universe, was the ringleader of the Anabaptists of Munster, where they proclaimed a community both of goods and women. This New Jerusalem, as they had named it, was retaken, after a long siege, by its bishop and sovereign, Count Waldeck; and John of Leyden and two of his associates (Knipperdollinck and Krechting) were enclosed in iron cages and carried throughout Germany for six months, after which they were suspended in an iron cage, and starved to death, on the highest tower of the city. This happened about the year 1536. See Menzel's History of Germany, vol. ii. p. 256.
* ↑ "The Fifth Monarchy Men," as Bishop Burnet says, "seemed daily to expect the appearance of Christ." Carew, one of the king's judges, would not plead to his indictment when brought to trial, till he had entered a salvo for the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ: "saving to our Lord Jesus Christ his right to the government of these kingdoms."
* ↑ Fleetwood was son-in-law to Cromwell, having married Ireton's widow. He was made lord deputy of Ireland, and lieutenant-general of the army. Desborough married one of Cromwell's sisters, and became a colonel, and general at sea. Lambert was the person who, according to Ludlow, was always kept in expectation by Cromwell of succeeding him, and was indeed the best qualified for it.
* ↑ In May, 1659, the Council of Officers, with Fleetwood as their president, resolved upon restoring the Long Parliament, which having, by deaths, exclusions, and expulsions, been reduced to a small remnant, was called the Rump. In 1647, when the Parliament began to talk of disbanding the army, a military council was set up, consisting of the chief officers and deputies from the inferior officers and common soldiers, to consult on the interests of the army. These were called Adjutators, and the chief management of affairs seemed to be for some time in their hands. The Committee of Safety, consisting of the officers of the army and some of the members of the Rump Parliament, was formed in 1659, to provide for the safety of the kingdom.
* ↑ Some were for abolishing all laws but what were expressed in the words of the Gospel; for destroying all magistracy and government, and for extirpating those who should endeavour to uphold it; and of these Whitelock alleges that he acted as a member of the Committee of Safety, because so many were for abolishing all order that the nation was like to run into the utmost confusion. The Adjutators wished to destroy all records, and the courts of justice.
* ↑ They wished to see an end of the Presbyterian hierarchy.
* ↑ That is, perhaps, for taking arms against the Pope, or Spain, as the headquarters of Popery.
* ↑ The festivals or holy days of the Church had been abolished in 1647. The taxes imposed by the Parliament were numerous and heavy: poundage was a rate levied, according to assessment, on all personal property.
* ↑ That is, for destroying the churches, which they regarded as built originally for purposes of idolatry and superstition. It is well known that groves were anciently made use of as places of worship. The rows of clustered pillars in our Gothic cathedrals, branching out and meeting at top in long drawn arches, are supposed to have been suggested by the venerable groves of our ancestors.
* ↑ Some petitioned for the continuance and maintenance of the regular clergy ministry; and others thought that laymen, and even soldiers, who were nicknamed "Church dragoons," might preach the word, as some of them did, particularly Cromwell and Ireton.
* ↑ "The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Ephesians vi. 17.
* ↑ Some sectaries had a violent aversion to the surplice, which they called a rag of Popery. Camisado is an expedition by night, in which the soldiers sometimes wear their shirts, called a camisade (from the Greek καμισιον, Latin camisia, a surplice), over their clothes, that they may be distinguished by their comrades.
* ↑ Transferred the purity which should remain in the heart to the vestment on the back.
* ↑ Persons contracting matrimony were to publish their intentions in the next town, on three market days, and afterwards the contract was to be certified by a justice of the peace: no ring was used, as in the new Marriage Law.
* ↑ The word thumb is used for the sake of rhyme, the ring being put by the bridegroom upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand: and something more may be meant than meets the ear, as the following extract from No. 614 of the Spectator seems to intimate: "Before I speak of widows, I cannot but observe one thing, which I do not know how to account for; a widow is always more sought after than an old maid of the same age. It is common enough among ordinary people for a stale virgin to set up a shop in a place where she is not known; where the large thumb ring, supposed to be given her by her husband, quickly recommends her to some wealthy neighbour, who takes a liking to the jolly widow that would have overlooked the venerable spinster." Falstaff says:"I could have crept into any alderman's thumb ring." I. Henry IV., Act ii, sc. 4.
* ↑ Mr Warburton thinks this an equivoque, alluding to the response which the bride makes in the marriage ceremony-"I will." But the poet may imply that a woman binds herself to nothing but her own will, for he elsewhere says:The souls of women are so small, That some believe th' have none at all; Or, if they have, like cripples, still, They've but one faculty, the will. Genuine Remains, vol. i. p. 246.
* ↑ Were for Judaizing. The Jewish law forbids the use of a garment made of linen and woollen. Lev. xix. 19.
* ↑ The Presbyterians thought it superstitious and Popish to use the sign of the cross in baptism; Butler satirizes that notion by representing them as regarding it idolatrous for tradesmen to make a cross in their books, as a sign of payment.
* ↑ Streets, parishes, churches, public foundations, and even the apostles themselves, were unsainted for some years preceding the Restoration, so that St Paul's was necessarily called Paul's, St Ann's, Ann's, &c. See the Spectator, No. 125.
* ↑ The first line may allude to the doctrine of the intermediate state, in which some supposed the soul to continue from the time of its leaving the body to the resurrection; or else it may allude to the Popish doctrine of purgatory. The former subject was warmly discussed about this time. The exorbitant price of coals was then loudly complained of. Sir Arthur Hazelrigg laid a tax of four shillings a chaldron upon Newcastle coals, when he was governor there. Many petitions were presented against the tax; and various schemes proposed for reducing the price of them. Shakspeare says:A pair of tribunes that have sack'd fair Rome To make coals cheap.Coriolanus, Act v. sc. 1.
* ↑ The Judaizing sect, who were for introducing Jewish customs.
* ↑ Clarendon mentions a set of levellers, who were called root and branch men, in opposition to others who were of more moderate principles. To abrogate, that is, that they might utterly abrogate or renounce everything that had blood, while others were for eating haunches, alluding to Revelation xi. 18, "That ye might eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great."
* ↑ Ridiculing the practice, so common in those days, of expressing every sentiment in terms of Scripture. He alludes perhaps to Psalm ii. 9, Isaiah xli. 15, and Revelation xix. 15.
* ↑ The 83rd Psalm and 3rd verse is thus translated in their favourite Genevan text: "And taken counsel against thy secret ones." See this expression used v. 681, 697, and 706 of this canto.
* ↑ A sneer at the cant of the Fifth Monarchy Men, for their misapplication of the text Isaiah xli. 15.
* ↑ Zachariah xiv. 20.
* ↑ Things which the Scriptures never intended, but which the wicked, that is, the warriors, kings, and mighty men, were afraid of.
* ↑ These were Hollis, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Grimstone, Annesley, Manchester, Roberts, and others; who perceiving that Richard Cromwell was unable to conduct the government, and that the various schemers, who daily started up, would divide the party, and facilitate the restoration of the royal family, thought it prudent to take care of themselves, and secure their own interests with as much haste as possible.
* ↑ Alluding to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, mentioned in the last note. From an absurd defamation that he had the vanity to expect to be chosen king of Poland, he was by many called Tapsky, and by others, on account of his general conduct, he was nicknamed Shiftesbury. But whatever the shafts levelled at him by the wits of the time, it must never be forgotten that he carried the Habeas Corpus Act through Parliament.
* ↑ Lord Shaftesbury had weak eyes, and squinted.
* ↑ Those of the King, the Parliament, and the Protector. First he was high sheriff of Dorsetshire, governor of Weymouth, and raised some forces for the king's service. Next he joined the Parliament, took the Covenant, and was made colonel of a regiment of horse. Afterwards ho was a very busy person in setting up Cromwell to be lord protector; and then again was quite as active in deposing Richard, and restoring the Rump. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he was not ashamed to reckon up the many turns he had made, and valued himself upon effecting them at the properist season, and in the best manner. But the most powerful picture of him is that drawn by Dryden, in his Absalom and Achitophel.For close designs and crooked counsels fit, Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfix'd in principles and place, In power uupleas'd, impatient of disgrace; In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
* ↑ Grey says, "for the shameless duplicity of Shaftesbury, see the interesting memoirs of Col. Hutchinson, by his widow."
* ↑ The camelion is said to assume the colour of the nearest object.
* ↑ That is, passed himself upon the government.
* ↑ It was in clandestine designs, such as house-breaking and the like, that rope-ladders were chiefly used in our poet's time.
* ↑ Fast and loose, called also Pricking at the belt, or girdle, or garter, a cheating game still in vogue among gypsies and trampers at fairs. A leathern belt or garter is coiled up in intricate folds, but with all the appearance of having an ordinary centre, and then placed upon a table. The object of the player is to prick the centre fold with a skewer, so as to hold fast the belt, but the trickster takes hold of the ends, which are double, and draws the whole away. The game is now commonly played with a piece of list, and called Pricking at the garter. Shakspeare alludes to it in Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. sc. 10, and in Love's Labour Lost, Act iii. sc. I.
* ↑ The poet probably means earthworms, which are still more impotent and blind than moles.
* ↑ See "Napier's bones" explained at page 257.
* ↑ It is supposed that this character is intended for Colonel John Lilburn, whose repugnance to all, especially regal, authority, manifested itself in whatever shape it appeared, whether Monarchy or Protectorate. He had been severely censured in the Star-chamber for dispersing seditious pamphlets, and on that account was afterwards rewarded by the Parliament, and preferred by Cromwell. But when Cromwell was made Protector, Lilburn forsook him, and afterwards writing and speaking vehemently was arraigned of treason. He was an uncompromising leveller, and strong opponent of all that was uppermost; a man of such an inveterate spirit of contradiction, that it was commonly said of him, if the world were emptied of all but himself, John would be against Lilburn, and Lilburn against John; which part of his character gave occasion to the following lines at his death:Is John departed, and is Lilburn gone? Farewell to both, to Lilburn and to John. Yet being dead, take this advice from me, Let them not both in one grave buried be; Lay John here, and Liburn thereabout, For if they both should meet they would fall out.
* ↑ Lilburn had been bred a tradesman: Clarendon says a bookbinder, but Wood makes him a packer.
* ↑ Achithophel was one of David's counsellors who joined the rebellious Absalom, and assisted him with very artful advice; but hanged himself when it was not implicitly followed. 2 Samuel xvii. 23.
* ↑ When criminals were executed at Tyburn, they were generally conveyed in carts, by the sheriff and his attendants on horseback, from Newgate, along Holborn, and Oxford-street.
* ↑ A military term, which signifies to skirmish.
* ↑ When Lilburn was arraigned for treason against Cromwell, he pleaded at his trial that no treason could be committed against such a government, and what he had done was in defence of the liberties of his country.
* ↑ A pun upon the word stiffer.
* ↑ That is, swayed and governed him.
* ↑ Alluding to the words in the office of matrimony: "With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow."
* ↑ Alluding to the stratagem of the Wooden Horse at the siege of Troy. See Virgil's Æneid, Book II.
* ↑ A prostitute in Ben Jonson's play of The Alchymist.
* ↑ Allay and alloy were in Butler's time used indifferently, although now employed in an opposite sense. The more copper a silver coin contains, the harder it is; gold coins contain two parts, in every twenty-four, of alloy.
* ↑ The same sentiment is differently expressed in the Remains, vol. i. page 181:For as implicit faith is far more stiff, Than that which understands its own belief; So those that think, and do but think they know, Are far more obstinate than those that do: And more averse, than if they'd ne'er been taught A wrong way, to a right one to be brought.
* ↑ A cabal met at Whitehall, at the same time that General Monk dined with the city of London.
* ↑ Outgoings and workings-out are among the cant terms used by Sectaries, referred to in a note at page 3. "The Nonconformist" (says Butler, in his Remains) "does not care to have anything founded on right, but left at large to the dispensation and outgoings of Providence."
* ↑ Not feigned and pretended as formerly, in the beginning of the Parliament, when they stirred up the people against the king, by forging letters, suborning witnesses, and making an outcry of strange plots being carried on, and horrible dangers being at hand. For instance, the people were incensed by reports that the Papists were about to fire their houses, and cut their throats while they were at church; that troops of soldiers were kept under-ground to do execution upon them; and even that the Thames was to be blown up with gunpowder. Bates's Elench. Motuum.
* ↑ These were the words used in the Solemn League and Covenant: "our true and unfeigned purpose is, each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation."
* ↑ The lectures and exercises delivered on days of public devotion were called expedients. Besides twenty-five days of solemn fasting and humiliation on extraordinary occasions, there was a fast kept every month for about eight years together. The Commons attended divine service in St Margaret's church, Westminster. The reader will observe that the orator does not say Saint Margaret's, but Margaret's fast. Some of the sectaries, instead of Saint Peter or Saint Paul, would, in derision, say Sir Peter and Sir Paul. See note at page 54. The Parliament petitioned the king for fasts, while he had power; and the appointing them afterwards themselves, was an expedient they made use of to alarm and deceive the people, who, upon such an occasion, could not but conclude there was some more than ordinary impending danger, or some important business carrying on.
* ↑ These sectaries pretended a great familiarity with Heaven; and when any villany was to be transacted, they would seem in their prayers to propose their doubts and scruples to God Almighty, and after having debated the matter some time with him, they would turn their discourse, and bring forth an answer suitable to their designs, which the people were to look upon as suggested from heaven. See note at page 66.
* ↑ Apprentices armed with occasional weapons. Ainsworth, in his Dictionary, translates sparum, a brown-bill. Bishop Warburton says, to fight with rusty or poisoned weapons (see Shakspeare's Hamlet) was against the law of arms. So when the citizens used the former, they chalked the edges. Samuel Johnson, in the octavo edition of his Dictionary, says, "brown-bill was the ancient weapon of the English foot," so called, perhaps, because sanguined to prevent the rust. The common epithet for a sword, or other offensive weapon, in the old metrical romances, is brown: as brown brand, or brown sword, brown-bill, &c. Shakspeare says:So with a band of bowmen and of pikes, Brown-bills and targeteers 400 strong, I come.Edward II. Act ii. In the ballad of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, printed in Percy's Reliques, line 1508, we have With new chalk'd bills and rusty arms. Butler, in his MS. Common-place book, says, "the confident man's wit is like a watchman's bill with a chalked edge, that pretends to sharpness, only to conceal its dull bluntness from the public view."
* ↑ Zealots armed with old clubs and gleaves, or swords.
* ↑ Rochets and white sleeves are used figuratively for the bishops, who were the objects of many violent popular demonstrations, and often assaulted by armed mobs, in the beginning of the troubles.
* ↑ Some of the ancients were of opinion that thunder stupefied before it killed, and there is a well-known proverb to this effect. Quem Deus vult perdire, prius dementat: He whom God would ruin he first deprives of his senses. See Ammian. Marcellin., and Pliny's Natural History, II. 54.
* ↑ Some editions read, the more there were to bear.
* ↑ Sneering at Sir Kenelm Digby, and others, who asserted that the sting of a scorpion was curable by its own oil. See v. 1029 of this canto.
* ↑ Dispensing, in particular instances, with the covenant and obligations. In the early editions, exempts is printed exauns, according to the old French pronunciation.
* ↑ Persons who are nominated to an office, and pay the accustomed fine, are considered to have performed the service. Thus, some of the sectaries, if they paid handsomely, were deemed saints, and full of grace, though, from the tenor of their lives, they merited no such distinction; compounding for their want of real grace, that they might be excused the drudgery of good works; for spiritual men are too transcendent to grovel in good works, namely, those spiritual men that mount their banks for independent. Efficace signifies actual performance.
* ↑ Etre sur les bancs is to hold a dispute, to assert a claim, to contest a right or an honour; to be a competitor.
* ↑ They need no such support as the body of Mahomet; which legends averred was suspended in the air, by being placed in a steel coffin, between two magnets of equal power.
* ↑ Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. An old soldier: at the siege of Pampeluna by the French he had both his legs wounded, the left by a stone, the right broken by a bullet. His fervours in devotion were so strong that, according to the legend, they sometimes raised him two cubits from the ground, and sustained him for a considerable time together.
* ↑ That is, they did not suffer their consciences to be controlled by the letter of Scripture, but rather interpreted Scripture by their consciences.
* ↑ Every one knows the legend of Dick Whittington, who, having run away from his master as far as Highgate, beard the bells of Bow ringingTurn again Whittington Thrice Mayor of London. An augury which he obeyed, and in time realized, being Lord Mayor in the years 1397, 1406, and 1419; he also amassed a fortune of £350,000. See Tatler, No. 78.
* ↑ Learn'd, that is, taught, in which sense it is used by the old poets. Apocryphal bigots, not genuine ones, some suppose to be a kind of second-rate Independent divines, that availed themselves of the genuine bigot's or Presbyterian minister's discourse, by taking down the heads of it in shorthand, and then retailing it at private meetings. The accent is laid upon the last syllable of bigot.
* ↑ Calamy was minister of Aldermanbury, London, a zealous Presbyterian and Covenanter, and frequent preacher before the Parliament. He was one of the first who whispered in the conventicles, what afterward he proclaimed openly, that for the cause of religion it was lawful for the subjects to take up arms against the king. Case, also, a Presbyterian, upon the deprivation of a loyalist, became minister of Saint Mary-Magdalen church, Milk-street; where it was usual with him thus to invite his people to the communion: "You that have freely and liberally contributed to the Parliament, for the defence of God's cause and the gospel, draw near," &c., instead of the words, "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins." He was one of the Assembly of Divines, preached for the Covenant, and printed his sermon; preached often before the Parliament, was a bitter enemy to Independents, and concerned with Love in his plot.
* ↑ Philip Nye was an Independent preacher, zealous against the king and bishops beyond most of his brethren. He went on purpose into Scotland to expedite the Covenant, and preached before both Houses in England, when that obligation was taken by them. He was at first a Presbyterian, and one of the Assembly; but afterwards left them. At the Restoration, it was debated by the Healing Parliament, for several hours, whether he should not be excepted from life. Doctor Owen was the most eminent divine of the Independents, and in great credit with Cromwell. He was promoted by them to the deanery of Christchurch, of Oxford. In 1654, being vice-chancellor, he offered to represent the university in Parliament; and, to remove the objection of his being a divine, renounced his orders, and pleaded that he was a layman. He was returned; but his election being questioned in the committee, he sat only a short time.
* ↑ Byfield, originally an apothecary, was a noted Presbyterian, chaplain to Colonel Cholmondely's regiment, in the Earl of Essex's army, and one of the scribes to the Assembly of Divines. Afterwards he became minister of Collingborn, in Wilts, and assistant to the commissioners in ejecting scandalous ministers.
* ↑ Had not the divines, on the Presbyterian side, fomented the differences, the Independents would never have come into play, or been taken notice of.
* ↑ That is, if they have not the power and opportunity of committing sacrilege, by plundering the church lands.
* ↑ This was a common notion with the early Naturalists, and is among the figured wonders in Olaus Magnus de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, 1555, Gerald's Herbal, Gotofredi Archontologia Cosmica, and several other old folios. But the poet is probably hitting at the Royal Society, who, in their twelfth volume of the Philosophical Transactions, No. 137, p. 925 give Sir Robert Moray's account of Barnacles hanging upon trees, each containing a little bird, so completely formed, that nothing appeared wanting, as to the external parts, for making up a perfect sea-fowl: the little bill, like that of a goose; the eyes marked; the head, neck, breast and wings, tail, and feet formed; the feathers every way perfectly shaped, and blackish coloured; and the feet like those of other water fowls. Pennant explains this by observing that the Barnacle (Lepas anatifera) is furnished with a feathered beard, which, in a credulous age, was believed to be part of a young bird; it is often found adhering to the bottoms of ships. Sir John Mandeville, in his Voyages, says, "In my country there are trees that do bear fruit that become birds flying, and they are good to eat, and that which falls in the water lives, and that which falls on the earth dies." Hector Boetius, in his History of Scotland, tells us of a goose-bearing tree, as it is called in the Orcades: that is, one whose leaves falling into the water, are turned to those geese which are called Soland geese, and found in prodigious numbers in those parts. In Moore's Travels into the inland parts of Africa, p. 54, we read: "This evening, December 18, 1730, I supped upon oysters which grew upon trees. Down the river (Gambia) where the water is salt, and near the sea, the river is bounded with trees called mangroves, whose leaves being long and heavy weigh the boughs into the water. To these leaves the young oysters fasten in great quantities, where they grow till they are very large; and then you cannot separate them from the tree, but are obliged to cut off the boughs: the oysters hanging on them resemble a rope of onions."
* ↑ The pope claims the power of the keys, and the tiara or triple crown is a badge of papal dignity.
* ↑ Persons are said to have a broiling in their gizzards when they stomach anything very much.
* ↑ This was an old medical superstition. Varro, ii. 3, 5, &c.
* ↑ Rome was identified with the whore of Babylon mentioned in the Revelations: and the Romanists are said to have attempted the conversion of infidels by means of fire and faggots, as men made crooked sticks straight by fire and steam.
* ↑ "I am called an Independent," said one, when asked by a Magistrate (before whom he went to make his declarations and obtain his license), "because I depend upon my Bible."
* ↑ The early editions read thus, but Grey reads "secret sneaking ones."
* ↑ These names of distinction were first made use of at Pistoia, where, when the magistrates expelled the Panzatichi, there chanced to be two brothers, Germans, one of whom, named Guelph, was for the pope, the other, Gibel, for the emperor. The spirit of these parties raged with great violence in Italy and Germany during the middle ages. Dr Heylin says some are of opinion that the fiction of Elfs and Goblins, by which we used to frighten children, was derived from Guelphs and Ghibellmes. Butler wrote these lines before the Guelphs had become the ancestors of our own royal line. See the genealogy in Burke's Royal Pedigrees.
* ↑ That is, not having granted liberty of conscience.
* ↑ A sneer upon the abuse of Scripture phrases, alluding to Psalm ii. 9; the same may be said of lines 326, 328, and 700.
* ↑ O shame to men! devil with devil damn'd Firm concord holds——— Paradise Lost, ii. 496.
* ↑ They, that is, the saints, see v. 689, 697.
* ↑ Atone, that is, reconcile, see v. 717.
* ↑ That is, and saints, whose all is at stake, as they will be hanged if things do not take a friendly turn.
* ↑ We alone could doubt that the fear of the gallows might reconcile their animosities, &c.
* ↑ Given up to such a state of reprobation and the guidance of their own folly, that nothing, not even miraculous power, can restore them.
* ↑ The Independents got rid of the Presbyterian leaders by the Self-denying Ordinance.
* ↑ That played the cheat.
* ↑ That is, without allowing us the gains which were the motives to such actions.
* ↑ The value of thirteen pence halfpenny, in a coin called a thirteener, which the State had to defray, when the Puritans' ears were cropped.
* ↑ Tallies are corresponding notches made by small traders on sticks, which are cut down as the accompts are settled. The meaning seems to be: the State made us suffer for keeping true accounts, or for being true, cutting our ears like tallies, and branding the vessels of our bodies like a measure with the mark fresh upon it. There was a seal put upon true and just measures and weights.
* ↑ The term cant is derived from Mr Andrew Cant, and his son Alexander, whose seditious preaching and praying was in Scotland called canting. Grey.
* ↑ A Syrian idol. See 2 Kings v. 18. And Paradise Lost, i. 467:Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. The meaning is, that in the opinion of both, church communion with each other was a like case with that of Naaman's bowing himself in the house of Rimmon, equally laying both under the necessity of a petition for pardon: the Independents knew that their tenets were so opposite to those of the Presbyterians that they could not coalesce, and therefore concealed them till they were strong enough to declare them.
* ↑ The Presbyterians entered into several plots to restore the king. For it was but justice, said they, to repair the injuries we had received from the Independents; and when monarchy was offered to be restored in our own sense, and with all the limitations we desired, it had been ungrateful not to consent. Nash.
* ↑ Many of the Presbyterians, says Lord Clarendon, when ousted from their preferment, or excluded from the House of Commons by the Independents, pretended to make a merit of it, in respect of their loyalty. And some of them had the confidence to present themselves to King Charles the Second, both before and after his Restoration, as sufferers for the crown; this behaviour is ridiculed in many parts of this canto.
* ↑ Pique, or pica, is a depraved appetite, or desire of improper food, to which sickly females arc more especially subject. For an amusing account of these longings, see Spectator, No. 326.
* ↑ Men's heads are turned with the lies and nonsense poured into their ears. See v. 1008.
* ↑ By creating war, he means, finding pretences for it, stirring up and fomenting it. By making war, he means, waging and carrying it on.
* ↑ The taxes levied by Parliament in four years are said to have been £17,512,400.
* ↑ The schemes described in these lines are those which the presbyterians were charged with practising in the beginning of the civil commotions, to enrage the people against the king and the Church of England.
* ↑ Burton, Prynne, and Bastwick, who, before the civil war, were set in the pillory, and had their ears cropt. The severe sentence which was passed on these persons, and on Leighton, contributed much to inflame the minds of men, and to incense them against the bishops, the Star-chamber, and the government.
* ↑ The civil war lasted six years, from 1642, till the death of the king in 1648-9.
* ↑ Alluding to Revelations, ch. xiii. 18. "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six." The multiplication of three units by six, gives three sixes, and the juxtaposition of three sixes makes 666, or six hundred sixty-six, the number of the beast. This mysterious number and name excited the curiosity of mankind very early, and the conjectural solutions of it are numberless; every nation, sect, or person, finding by one means or other that the name of the hostile nation, sect, or person, involved the mystical 666.
* ↑ Supposed by Dr Grey to mean the tradesmen and their apprentices, who wore blue aprons, and took a very active part in the troubles, both by preaching and fighting. But it appears from the Rump Songs that preachers also wore blue aprons.
* ↑ Callêche, or calash, a light carriage. Cornets were ornaments which servants wore upon their breeches.
* ↑ Ladies of this profession are generally described as coarse and fat. The orator means, that the leaders of the faction could fetch in parties of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest.
* ↑ The strength of the Presbyterian party lay in the citizens.
* ↑ Grey thinks this alludes to the subscription set on foot at the general court of the East India House, Oct. 19, 1657. Mercurius Politicus, No. 387.
* ↑ A lay preacher at Banbury said, "We know, Lord, that Abraham made a covenant, and Moses and David made a covenant, and our Saviour made a covenant, but the Parliament's covenant is the greatest of all covenants." The Marquis of Hamilton being sent into Scotland to appease the troubles there, demanded of the Scotch that they should renounce the covenant; they answered, that they would sooner renounce their baptism.
* ↑ Jasper Fisher, one of the six clerks in Chancery, a member of the goldsmith's company, and justice of the peace, spent his fortune in laying out magnificent gardens and building a fine house; which, therefore, was called Fisher's Folly. After having been the residence of the Earl of Oxford and Sir Roger Manning, it was used as a conventicle. See Fuller's Worthies, p. 197, and Stowe's Survey. The place where the house stood is now Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate. The word represent means either to stand in the place of others, or to resemble them. In the first sense, the members they should pack, would represent their constituents; but in the latter sense, only a meeting of enthusiastic sectaries.
* ↑ By these arts the leaders on the Parliament side defeated the purposes of the loyalists, and carried such points in the House as they were bent upon. Thus the Remonstrance was carried, as Lord Clarendon says, merely by the hour of the night; the debates being continued till two o'clock, and very many having withdrawn out of pure faintness and disability to attend the conclusion. The bill against Episcopacy, and other bills, were carried by out-fasting and out-sitting those who opposed them: which made Lord Falkland say, that they who hated bishops hated them worse than the devil, and they who loved them, loved them not so well as their own dinners.
* ↑ The Platonic year, or time required for a complete revolution of the entire machine of the world, has by some been made to consist of 4000 common years: others have thought it must extend to 26,000, or still more.
* ↑ The ordinances published by the House of Commons were signed by Lenthall, the speaker: and are therefore familiarly called the Bulls of Lenthall. They were fundamental, because on them the new order in church and state was reared. Afterwards, when the Parliament became the Rump, the fundamentals acquired a new meaning.
* ↑ Or, in the bowler's phrase, by giving ground.
* ↑ The old members of the Rump were excluded from Cromwell's Parliaments. When they presented themselves with Prynne at their head, they were met at the door by Colonel Pride, and refused admittance.
* ↑ Crook and Hutton were the only judges who dissented from their brethren, when the case of Ship-money was argued in the Exchequer: which occasioned the wags to say, punningly, that the king carried it by Hook, but not by Crook.
* ↑ From the time of the Self-denying ordinance, 1644, when the Presbyterians were turned out from all places of profit and power, till Pride's Purge, on December 7, 1648.
* ↑ Incendiaries.
* ↑ The poet probably alludes to the ministers of Charles the Second, the initials of whose names were satirically so arranged as to make up the word cabal. See note, page 25.
* ↑ Prisoners in Newgate, and other gaols, have often sham-examinations, to prepare them with answers for their real trials.
* ↑ Padders, or highwaymen, usually covered their faces with a mask or piece of crape.
* ↑ Charlatan is a quack doctor, whom punishment makes more widely known, and so benefits instead of injures.
* ↑ Alluding again to Burton, Prynne, and Bastwick, who having been pilloried, fined, and banished to different parts of the kingdoms, by the sentence of the Star-chamber, were by the Parliament afterward recalled, and rewarded out of the estates of those who had punished them. In their way back to London they were honoured with loud acclamations, and received many presents.———silenc'd ministers, That get estates by being undone For tender conscience, and have none: Like those that with their credit drive A trade without a stock, and thrive. Butler's Remains, vol. i. 63.
* ↑ Powdering-tubs, which were tubs for salting beef in, may here signify either prisons or hospitals. The term powdering was a synonyme for sprinkling with salt, and so came to be applied to the places where infected persons were cured. When any one gets into a scrape, he is said to be in a pretty pickle. Ancient Pistol throws some light upon this passage when he bids Nym"to the spital go, And from the powdering-tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid's kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse." Hen. V. Act i. Butler may mean that some of the tub-holders-forth kept houses of ill fame, from whence the transit to the powdering-tub was frequent. See also Measure for Measure, Act iii. sc. 2.
* ↑ Round the Casa Santa of Loretto, the marble is worn into a deep channel, by the knees and kisses of devout pilgrims. Many statues of saints are in like manner worn by the adoration of their votaries.
* ↑ Grey illustrates what he calls the beastly habit of snuff-taking by a story from Chardin's Travels, quoted by Montaigne, Essay 22, which is: that at Bootan, in the East Indies, the prince is held in such esteem and reverence, that the courtiers collect his ordure in a linen cloth, and after drying and preparing it, not only use it as snuff, but strew it over their meals as a great delicacy.
* ↑ As the former orator had harangued on the side of the Presbyterians, his antagonist, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, now smartly inveighs against them, and justifies the principles and conduct of the Independents.
* ↑ The early editions read "soul."
* ↑ That is, thick-head, or blockhead. See Wright's Glossary
* ↑ This alludes to Rolf, a shoemaker, who was indicted for entertaining a design to kill the king when imprisoned in the Isle of Wight, in evidence of which Osborne and Doucet swore positively. Serjeant Wild, who was sent to Winchester to try the case, and is said to have been bribed to get Rolf off, gave an unfair charge to the jury, by saying: "There was a time indeed when intentions and words were made treason; but God forbid it should be so now: how did anybody know but that those two men, Osborne and Doucet (the evidence), would have made away with the king, and that Rolf charged his pistol to preserve him." Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 180.
* ↑ This is Pliny's statement, Natural History, xxix. 29. Similar stories are extant respecting the fat of the viper.
* ↑ A sneer at Sir Kenelm Digby's doctrine of sympathy.
* ↑ Though the Presbyterians began the war, yet they pretended they had no thoughts of occasioning the bloodshed and devastation which were consequent upon it. They intended to bring the king to reason, not to murder him. It happened to them, however, as to the would-be conjurer, who, by certain words he had overheard, sent a broomstick to fetch water; but not recollecting the words to make it stop, it went and fetched water without ceasing, till it filled the house, and drowned him.
* ↑ Grey compares this to the joke of two countrymen who having bought a barn in partnership, one threatened to set his own half on fire.
* ↑ Meaning, with pains, laboriously. Walker says, "that by an impudent fallacy, called Translatio Criminis, the Independents laid their brats at other men's doors."
* ↑ Baptizing members into their churches in opposition to the practice of the Anabaptists.
* ↑ The war was begun and carried on by the Presbyterians in the name of religion, and in defence of the gospel.
* ↑ Meaning, to commit robbery, rebellion, and murder, with a view of keeping out Arminianism, Popery, &c.
* ↑ That is, finding the king was likely to get the better of you, and that we were all in danger of being hanged as traitors, we took the war out of your hands into our own management.
* ↑ By-bets are bets made by spectators of a game, or standers-by: the Presbyterians, from being principals in the cause, were reduced to a secondary position; and from being principal players of the game, became mere lookers-on.
* ↑ The heads of traitors were set up on poles at Temple-bar or London Bridge.
* ↑ Alligators were frequently hung up in the shops of druggists and apothecaries.
* ↑ The Dissenters, when in power, were no enemies to persecution, and showed themselves as hearty persecutors as ever the Church had been. They maintained that "A toleration of different ways of churches and church government will be to this kingdom very mischievous, pernicious, and destructive;" and Calamy, being asked what he would do with those who differed from him in opinion, said, "He would not meddle with their consciences, but only with their persons and estates."
* ↑ He tells the Presbyterians that their jealousy of the Independents caused their treachery to them, not any scruple of conscience.
* ↑ The change was produced in them merely by the course of their nature. The edition of 1710 reads: Than maggots when they turn to flies.
* ↑ The Presbyterians, he says, finding no countenance for their purposes in the New Testament, took their measures of obedience from some instances of rebellion in the Old. Among the corrupted texts to which Butler alludes is probably that printed at Cambridge, by Buck and Daniel, in 1638, where Acts vi. 3, reads ye instead of "we may appoint over this business," a corruption attributed by some to the Independents, by others to the Presbyterians. But several of the Bibles printed either during or immediately preceding the Commonwealth contain gross blunders. In the so-called Wicked Bible, printed by Bates and Lucas, 1632, the seventh commandment is printed, "Thou shalt commit adultery." In another Bible, printed in the Reign of Charles I., and immediately suppressed, Psalm xiv. reads, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God." One printed during the Commonwealth (1653) by Field, reads at Rom. vi. 13, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin;" and at 1 Cor. vi. 9, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God." Many other Bibles, some of much later date, present typographical errors, the most remarkable of which is perhaps that printed at Belfast, by James Blood, 1716 (the first Bible printed in Ireland), which at John viii. 11, reads sin on more, instead of "sin no more."
* ↑ In his Pindaric Ode upon an hypocritical nonconformist, Remains, vol. i. p. 135, Mr Butler says:For the Turks' patriarch, Mahomet, Was the first great reformer, and the chief Of th' ancient Christian belief, That mix'd it with new light and cheat, With revelations, dreams, and visions, And apostolic superstitions, To be held forth, and carry'd on by war And his successor was a presbyter.
* ↑ Pigs are said to be very sagacious in foretelling wind and weather. Thus, in a poem entitled Hudibras at Court, we read:And now, as hogs can see the wind, And storms at distance coming find.
* ↑ At this village, near London, was a lazar-house, to which the poet alludes.
* ↑ That is, frightened children as much by your preaching, as if you had threatened them with Rawhead and Bloodybones. Sir Thomas Lunsford, who was represented by his enemies as devouring children out of mere bloodthirstiness, was lieutenant of the Tower a little before the beginning of the war; but afterwards removed by desire of the Parliament. He is represented by Lord Clarendon as a man of desperate character and dissolute habits.
* ↑ If the husband sided not with the Presbyterians, his wife was represented as insidious and a betrayer of her country's interests, such as Dalilah was to Samson and the Israelites. Judges xvi.
* ↑ Compared them to the ten horns, or ten kings, who gave their power and strength to the beast. Revelation xvii. 12. See also Daniel vii. 7. A cuckold is called a horned beast, and a notorious cuckold may be called a ten-horned beast, there being no beast described with more horns than the beast in vision.
* ↑ "Curse ye Meroz," said the angel of the Lord; "curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty." Judges v. 23. This was a favourite text with those who preached for the Parliament: and it assisted them much in raising recruits.
* ↑ Not far from Ledbury in Herefordshire, towards the conflux of the Lug and Wye, in the parish of Marcley, is a hill, which in the year 1575 moved to a considerable distance. Camden, in his Life of Queen Elizabeth, book ii. p. 20 thinks the motion was occasioned by an earthquake, which he calls brasmatia; though the cause of it more probably was a subterraneous current, as the motion continued for three days. Some houses and a chapel were overturned.
* ↑ Until Mammon and the Cause were as closely united and as dear friends as Damon and Pythias, the story of whose well-known friendship is celebrated by Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, and others.
* ↑ Acts xxii. 3.
* ↑ The preceding lines described precisely the relation of the Independents to the Presbyterians, during the Commonwealth.
* ↑ Hums and hahs were the ordinary expressions of approbation, uttered by hearers of sermons. And the "snuffle" was then, and long afterwards, "the nasal drawl heard in conventicles." Sir Roger L'Estrange distinguishes between the religion of the head and that of the nose. Apology, p. 40.
* ↑ The "red-coat" is thus specially mentioned because it was now, for the first time, made the soldier's peculiar dress; and the Independents formed the majority of the soldiery.
* ↑ That is, his musket.
* ↑ Thus Saint Paul to the Romans: "Shall we continue in sin, that may grace abound?"
* ↑ Called croysado general, because the Parliament pretended to engage in the war chiefly on account of religion: a term derived from the holy war against the Turks and Saracens, which obtained the name of Crusade, or Croisado, from the cross displayed on the banners. The Independents, finding that the Presbyterians, who held the principal places both in Parliament and in the army, instead of aiming at what had been proposed in the Covenant, were solely intent upon securing for themselves the position and authority of the Church of England, and that the Lord General Essex was plainly afraid of beating the king too well, proposed and carried the Self-denying Ordinance, by which all members of Parliament (except Fairfax and Cromwell) were prohibited from holding commissions in the army and seats in the legislature at the same time. Essex, being an "hereditary legislator," was forced to resign his command; the others had to choose between the Parliament and the army, and most of the Presbyterian leaders chose to retain their seats in the House, thinking so to keep the control of the army in their hands. But by the new-modelling of the army, instead of the riff-raff which had been pressed into the service at first, it was made to consist almost wholly of men who had (as Cromwell said) "a mind to the work," small householders and yeomen, whom the Parliament found, too late, it could not control.
* ↑ That is, letting your mouths water.
* ↑ By the Independents, whose popularity was much greater with the people than that of the Presbyterians.
* ↑ The plots of the royalists are here meant.
* ↑ The Independent here charges the Presbyterians with having no design of restoring the king, notwithstanding the merit they made of such intentions after the Restoration, until they were turned out of all profit by sale of the crown and church lands; and that it was not their loyalty, but their disappointment and resentment against the Independents, that made them think of treating with the king.
* ↑ In ridicule of the Presbyterians, many of whom, according to Dryden and others, had lost their ears in the pillory.
* ↑ That is, the other divines. Ministers in those days were called masters, as they are at the 854th line of this canto. One of this order would have been styled, not the reverend, but master, or master doctor such an one; and sometimes, for brevity's sake, and familiarly, mas, the plural of which, our poet makes masses. See Ben Jonson, and Spectator, No. 147. Butler is here guilty of anachronism; for the treaty at the Isle of Wight was two years after the death of Henderson. The divines employed there, were Marshal, Vines, Caryl, Seaman, Jenkyns, and Shurston. Henderson was present at the Uxbridge treaty, and disputed with the king at Newcastle when he was in the Scottish army; soon after which he died, as some said, of grief, because he could not convince the king, but, as others said, of remorse, for having opposed him.
* ↑ That is, although only contemptible dabblers in school logic. So in Burton's Melancholy, "A pack of Obs and Sollers." The polemic divines of that age and stamp filled the margins both of their tracts and sermons with the words Ob and Sol; the one standing for objection, the other for solution.
* ↑ Coursing is a term used in the university of Oxford for some exercises preparatory to a master's degree.
* ↑ Pride was said to have been a drayman, and to have been knighted by Cromwell with a stick, whence in derision he is called Sir Pride. Hughson, or Hewson, was at first a shoemaker or a cobbler, but afterwards one of Oliver's Upper House.
* ↑ The negotiation at the Isle of Wight was protracted in order to give Cromwell time to return from Scotland, by which artifice the settlement of the kingdom was effectually frustrated.
* ↑ Untimely here means unseasonable.
* ↑ Christopher Love, a violent Presbyterian, who preached a sermon at Uxbridge during the treaty held there, introducing many reflections upon his Majesty's person and government, and stirring up the people against the king's commissioners. He was afterwards executed (in 1651) for treason, by means of Cromwell and the Independents.
* ↑ The Scots, in their first expedition, 1640, had £300,000 given them for brotherly assistance, besides a contribution of £850 a day from the northern counties. In their second expedition, 1643, besides much free quarter, they had £19,700 monthly, and received £72,972 in one year by customs on coals. The Parliament agreed to give them £400,000 on the surrender of the king.—Dugdale.
* ↑ The Scots made a third expedition into England for the rescue of the king, in 1648, under the Duke of Hamilton. They entered a fourth time under Charles II., expecting the Presbyterians, their own brethren, to support them. But the latter joined Cromwell and the Independents; thus occasioning the portion of the true church to fall before the Independent army, whom they reckoned no better than Philistines.
* ↑ Nick is a winning throw. Hedge is to protect by a counteracting bet or set-off; a familiar betting term on the turf.
* ↑ When General Monk restored the excluded members, the Rump, perceiving they could not carry things their own way, and rule as they had done, quitted the House.
* ↑ Diodorus Siculus relates, that when the height of the walls of Amphipolis was pointed out to Philip, as rendering the town impregnable, he observed, they were not so high but that money could be thrown over them. Addison (in Spectator 239) says: "ready money is a way of reasoning which seldom fails."
* ↑ There is a list of above a hundred of the principal actors in this rebellion, among whom the plunder of the church, crown, and kingdom was divided; to some five, ten, and even twenty thousand pounds; to others, lands and offices of hundreds or thousands a year. At the end of the list, the author says, it was computed that they had shared among themselves near twenty millions.
* ↑ They allowed, by their own order, four pounds a week to each member of Parliament; members of the assembly of divines were each allowed four shillings a day.
* ↑ General Monk and his party, or the Committee of Safety: for we must understand the scene to be laid at the time when Monk bore the sway, or, as will appear by and by, at the roasting of the rumps, when Monk and the city of London united against the Rump Parliament.
* ↑ All the early editions have "of purpose."
* ↑ See Æsop's Fables, 171. Swift told this fable after the ancients, with exquisite humour, to reconcile Queen Anne's ministers.
* ↑ The Jews were not allowed to intermarry or mix familiarly with the nations around them.
* ↑ The accent is here laid upon the last syllable of commerce.
* ↑ This was the title given by the Jacobins of France to our William Pitt, whom they suspected of traversing their revolutionary schemes.
* ↑ That is, from the conclave of cardinals, or papists, down to the meeting house of nonconformists.
* ↑ From being too forward, or ready to take flight
* ↑ In addition to the four great monarchies which have appeared in the world, some of the enthusiasts thought that Christ was to reign temporally upon earth, and to establish a fifth monarchy. See Butler's "Character of a Fifth Monarchy man." The Book of Daniel speaks of four great earthly monarchies, and of one other, not earthly, to succeed them; hence the name "Fifth Monarchy." The Oxford divines have in recent days adopted this classification. Dr Lightfoot took a different view of the fifth monarchy, and declares in his sermon, preached Nov. 5th, 1669, that it means "the kingdom of the devil."
* ↑ The sectaries of those days talked more familiarly to Almighty God than they dared to do to a superior officer: they remonstrated with him, made him author of all their wicked machinations, and, if their projects failed, they said that Providence had revolted from them. See note at page 65.
* ↑ Turn'd here signifies "would turn."
* ↑ Acts xix. 28.
* ↑ Exactly the advice given in Aristophanes, Equites, v. 214.
* ↑ When anything was said in confidence, the speaker in conclusion generally used the word mum, or silence. Mum, in the first sense, means mask, whence in its secondary meaning comes secrecy or concealment. Sub rosâ (under the rose) had the same meaning; whence, in rooms designed for convivial meetings, it was customary to place a rose above the table, to signify that anything there spoken ought never to be divulged. A rose was frequently painted on ceilings, both in England and Germany. See Brand's Antiquities (Bohn's Edit.), vol. ii. p. 345, et seq.
* ↑ This was Sir Martin Noel, who, while the Cabal was sitting, brought the unpalatable news that the Rump Parliament was dismissed, the secluded members admitted into the House by Monk, and that the mob of London testified their approval of the measure by burning the Rump in effigy.
* ↑ Dun was at that time the common hangman, and succeeding executioners went by his name, till eclipsed by Jack Ketch. But the character here delineated was certainly intended for Sir Arthur Hazlerig, knight of the shire, in the Long Parliament, for the county of Leicester, and one of the five members of the House of Commons whom the king attempted to seize in the House. Ho brought in the bill of attainder against the Earl of Strafford, and the bill against Episcopacy; though the latter was delivered by Sir Edward Deering at his procurement. He also brought in the bill for the Militia. He was one of the Rump; and a little before this time, when the Committee of Safety had been set up, and the Rump excluded, he had seized Portsmouth for their use. It is probable that Butler might call Sir Arthur by the hangman's name, for his forwardness and zeal in Parliament in bringing the royalists and the king himself to execution. Before Monk's intentions were known, Hazlerig, in a conversation with him, said, "I see which way things are going; monarchy will be restored; and then I know what will become of me." "Pooh!" replied Monk, "I will secure you for two-pence." In no long time after, when the secret was out, Hazlerig sent Monk a letter, with two-pence enclosed. See Clarendon's State Papers, vol. iii. Sir Arthur enlisted many soldiers, and had a regiment called his Lobsters.
* ↑ Quint, that is, a quorum of five. After the death of Cromwell, and the deposition of Richard, the government of the army was put into the hands of seven commissioners, of whom Hazlerig was one. And in 1659, Monk, Hazlerig, Walton, Morley, and Alured, were appointed commissioners to govern the army.
* ↑ A hazel faggot, such as bakers heat their ovens with; a joke on the name Hazlerig.
* ↑ Pillory, and cropping the ears, was a punishment inflicted on bakers who made bad bread or gave short weight. Malignants was the name applied to the royalists.
* ↑ Cook was solicitor at the king's trial, and drew up the charges against him. Clarendon allows him to have been a man of abilities. His defence at his own trial was bold and manly, claiming exemption from responsibility on professional grounds; stating that he had merely acted as a lawyer, taken a fee, and pleaded from a brief. He was hanged at Tyburn. Pride and his "Purge" have been spoken of before.
* ↑ In the early editions, "Pride-m."
* ↑ Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesuits, was bred a soldier, and wounded at the siege of Pampeluna by the French, in 1521. See note on line 606, above.
* ↑ Alluding to the Gunpowder Plot, attributed to the Jesuits, the defeat of which is celebrated on Nov. 5, to this day; but the prayers and thanksgiving have just been abolished, and expunged from the liturgy, by Royal ordinance.
* ↑ Persons wearing the sambenito: a straight yellow coat without sleeves, having the picture of the devil painted upon it in black, wherein the officers of the Inquisition used to disguise and parade heretics after their condemnation.
* ↑ See A speech made at the Rota. Remains, vol. i. page 320.
* ↑ They were called the Rump Parliament, as being the end of a body.
* ↑ The early editions spell this name thus: Kirkerus.
* ↑ Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit, wrote many books on the antiquities of Egypt; one of them is called Œdipus Egyptiacus, for which he says he studied the Egyptian mysteries twenty years. The Copts were the primitive Christians of Egypt.
* ↑ The Egyptians anciently represented their kings under the emblem of a bee, which has the power of dispensing benefits and inflicting punishments by its honey and its sting; though the poet dwells most on the energy which it bears in its tail: so the citizens of London significantly represented this fag-end of a Parliament by the rumps, or tail-parts, of sheep and other animals. Some late editions read, ancient Ptolemies. See Butler's Remains, "A speech in the Rota."
* ↑ Alluding to the position flies take up, on walls.
* ↑ Eben Ezra, and Manasseh Ben Israel, taught that there is a bone in the rump of a man (that is, in the lower end of the back-bone) of the size and shape of half a pea; from which, as from an incorruptible seed, the whole man would be perfectly formed at the resurrection. Remains, vol. i. p. 320. The rabbins found their wild conjectures on Genesis xlviii. 2, 3. See Agrippa de occultâ philosophiâ, l. i. c. 20. Buxtorf, in his Chaldean Dictionary, under the word Luz, says, it is the name of a human bone, which the Jews look upon as incorruptible. In a hook called Breshith Rabboth, sect. 28, it is asserted that Adrian, reducing the bones to powder, asked the rabbin Jehoshuang (Jesuah the son of Hanniah) how God would raise man at the day of judgment: from the Luz, replied the rabbin: how do you know it? says Adrian: bring me one, and you shall see, says Jehoshuang: one was produced, and all methods, by fire, pounding, and other methods tried, but in vain. See Manasseh Ben-Israel de Resurrectione, lib. ii. cap. 15. See also Butler's Remains, "Speech in the Rota."
* ↑ The lowest of the vertebræ, or rather the bone below the vertebræ, is so called; not for the reason wittily assigned by our poet, but because it is much bigger than any of the vertebræ.
* ↑ The Rump, properly so called, began at Pride's Purge, a little before the king's death; and had the supreme authority for about five years; being turned out on April 23, 1653, by Cromwell. After his death, and the deposition of his son Richard, the Rump Parliament was restored by Lambert and other officers of the army, on May 7, 1659, in number about forty-two, the excluded members not being permitted to sit. On October 13, in the same year, they were dismissed by those who had summoned them, and the officers chose a Committee of Safety of twenty-three persons; who administered the affairs of government till December 20, when, finding themselves generally hated and slighted, and wanting money to pay the soldiers, Fleetwood and others desired the Rump to return to the exercise of their trust. At length, by means of General Monk, above eighty of the old secluded members resumed their places in the House; upon which most of the Rumpers quitted it. Butler, in his Genuine Remains, vol. i. p. 320, says, "Nothing can bear a nearer resemblance to the luz, or rump-bone of the ancient rabbins, than the present Parliament, that has been so many years dead, and rotten under ground, to any man's thinking, that the ghosts of some of the members thereof have transmigrated into other parliaments, and some into those parts from whence there is no redemption, should, nevertheless, at two several and respective resurrections start up, like the dragon's teeth that were sown, into living, natural, and carnal members. And hence it is, I suppose, that the physicians and anatomists call this bone os sacrum, or the holy bone."
* ↑ Alluding to the common punishments of high treason; noblemen being beheaded, and others hung, drawn, and quartered.
* ↑ This commutation was accepted by some of the Regicides at the Restoration.
* ↑ When Sir Martin came to the Cabal, he left the rabble at Temple-bar, but by the time he had concluded his discourse, they had reached Whitehall. This alarmed our Caballers and they made a precipitate retreat, apprehensive lest they should be hanged in reality, as they had been in effigy.
* ↑ The following very graphic account of this popular burning and roasting of the Rumps is given by Pepys, who happened to be going through the streets at the time. "In Cheapside there were a great many bonfires, and Bow-bells, and all the bells in all the churches, as we went home were aringing. Hence we went homewards, it being about ten at night. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonfires, there being fourteen between St Dunstan's and Temple-bar, and at Strand Bridge [a bridge which spanned the Strand close to the east end of Catherine-street, where a small stream ran down from the fields into the Thames near Somerset House] I could tell at one time thirty-one fires; in King-street seven or eight; and all along, burning, and roasting, and drinking of Rumps; there being rumps tied upon sticks, and carried up and down. The butchers at the maypoles in the Strand rang a peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate-hill there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied to it, and another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the other side." See Pepys' Memoirs, vol. i. p. 22 (Bohn's edition).
* ↑ Races of this kind are practised both on the Corso at Rome, and at Florence. At Rome, in the carnival, a number of horses arc trained on purpose for this diversion. They are drawn up a-breast in the Piazza del Popolo; and certain balls, with little sharp spikes, are hung along their rumps, which serve to spur them on as soon as they begin to run.