To gain thy Knight an op❜lent spouse,

Whose wealth his bowels yearn to purchase,
Merely for th' int'rest of the churches?

And when he has it in his claws,

Will not be hide-bound to the cause:
Nor shalt thou find him a curmudgin,*
If thou dispatch it without grudging:
If not, resolve, before we go,

490

495

That you and I must pull a crow.

500

Ye'ad best, quoth Ralpho, as the ancients

Say wisely, have a care o' th' main chance,

And look before you, ere you leap;

For as you sow, y'are like to reap:

And were y' as good as George-a-green,t
I should make bold to turn agen:
Nor am I doubtful of the issue

505

In a just quarrel, as mine is so.

Is't fitting for a man of honour

To whip the saints, like Bishop Bonner?

510

A knight t'usurp the beadle's office,

For which y' are like to raise brave trophies?

But I advise you, not for fear,

But for your own sake, to forbear;

And for the churches,§ which may chance

515

From hence, to spring a variance,

And raise among themselves new scruples,

Whom common danger hardly couples,
Remember how in arms and politics,

We still have worsted all your holy tricks ;||
Trepann'd your party with intrigue,

* Perhaps from the French cœur méchant.

520

† A valiant hero, perhaps an outlaw, in the time of Richard the First, who conquered Robin Hood and Little John. He is the same with the Pinder of Wakefield. See Echard's History of England, vol. i. 226. The Old Ballads; Ben Jonson's play of the Sad Shepherd; and Sir John Suckling's Poems.

Bishop of London in the reign of queen Mary: a man of profligate manners and of brutal character. He sometimes whipped the Protestants, who were in custody, with his own hands, till he was tired with the violence of the exercise. Hume's History of Mary, p. 378; Fox, Acts and Monuments, ed. 1576, p. 1937.

It was very common for the sectaries of those days, however attentive they might be to their own interest, to pretend that they had nothing in view but the welfare of the churches.

The Independents and Anabaptists got the army on their side, and overpowered the Presbyterians.

BISHOP EDMUND BONNER.