Sir Thomas More | Page 4

hard when Englishmen's patience must be thus jetted
on by strangers, and they not dare to revenge their own wrongs.
GEORGE. Lincoln, let's beat them down, and bear no more of these
abuses.
LINCOLN. We may not, Betts: be patient, and hear more.
DOLL. How now, husband! what, one stranger take they food from
thee, and another thy wife! by our Lady, flesh and blood, I think, can
hardly brook that.
LINCOLN. Will this gear never be otherwise? must these wrongs be
thus endured?
GEORGE. Let us step in, and help to revenge their injury.

BARDE. What art thou that talkest of revenge? my lord ambassador
shall once more make your Major have a check, if he punish thee for
this saucy presumption.
WILLIAMSON. Indeed, my lord Mayor, on the ambassador's
complaint, sent me to Newgate one day, because (against my will) I
took the wall of a stranger: you may do any thing; the goldsmith's wife
and mine now must be at your commandment.
GEORGE. The more patient fools are ye both, to suffer it.
BARDE. Suffer it! mend it thou or he, if ye can or dare. I tell thee,
fellows, and she were the Mayor of London's wife, had I her once in
my possession, I would keep her in spite of him that durst say nay.
GEORGE. I tell thee, Lombard, these words should cost thy best cape,
were I not curbed by duty and obedience: the Mayor of London's wife!
Oh God, shall it be thus?
DOLL. Why, Betts, am not I as dear t m husband as my lord Mayor's
wife to him? and wilt thou so neglectly suffer thine own
shame?--Hands off, proud stranger! or, by him that bought me, if men's
milky hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women beat them down, ere
they bear these abuses.
BARDE. Mistress, I say you shall along with me.
DOLL. Touch not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee along on God's
dear earth.--And you, sir [To Caveler], that allow such coarse cates to
carpenters, whilst pigeons, which they pay for, must serve your dainty
appetite, deliver them back to my husband again, or I'll call so many
women to mine assistance as will not leave one inch untorn of thee: if
our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced to bear your wrongs,
their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat ye.
CAVELER. Come away, De Barde, and let us go complain to my lord
ambassador.
[Exeunt Ambo.]
DOLL. Aye, go, and send him among us, and we'll give him his
welcome too.--I am ashamed that freeborn Englishmen, having beaten
strangers within their own homes, should thus be braved and abused by
them at home.
SHERWIN. It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the strict
obedience that we are bound to. I am the goldsmith whose wrongs you
talked of; but how to redress yours or mine own is a matter beyond our

abilities.
LINCOLN. Not so, not so, my good friends: I, though a mean man, a
broker by profession, and named John Lincoln, have long time winked
at these wild enormities with mighty impatience, and, as these two
brethren here (Betts by name) can witness, with loss of mine own life
would gladly remedy them.
GEORGE. And he is in a good forwardness, I tell ye, if all hit right.
DOLL. As how, I prithee? tell it to Doll Williamson.
LINCOLN. You know the Spittle sermons begin the next week: I have
drawn a bill of our wrongs and the strangers' insolences.
GEORGE. Which he means the preachers shall there openly publish in
the pulpit.
WILLIAMSON. Oh, but that they would! yfaith, it would tickle our
strangers thoroughly.
DOLL. Aye, and if you men durst not undertake it, before God, we
women would. Take an honest woman from her husband! why, it is
intolerable.
SHERWIN. But how find ye the preachers affected to our proceeding?
LINCOLN. Master Doctor Standish hath answered that it becomes not
him to move any such thing in his sermon, and tells us we must move
the Mayor and aldermen to reform it, and doubts not but happy success
will ensue on statement of our wrongs. You shall perceive there's no
hurt in the bill: here's a couple of it; I pray ye, hear it.
ALL. With all our hearts; for God's sake, read it.
LINCOLN. [Reads.] To you all, the worshipful lords and masters of
this city, that will take compassion over the poor people your neighbors,
and also of the great importable hurts, losses, and hinderances, whereof
proceedeth extreme poverty to all the king's subjects that inhabit within
this city and suburbs of the same: for so it is that aliens and strangers
eat the bread from the fatherless children, and