by Thomas Nashe
Then began he to smell on the villain so rammishly56 that none there but was ready to rent him in pieces, yet the minion-king kept in his choler, and propounded unto him further what of the King of England’s secrets (so advantage-able) he was privy to, as might remove him from the siege of Turwin in three days. He said divers, divers matters which asked longer conference, but in good honesty they were lies which he had not yet stamped.57 Hereat the true King stepped forth and commanded to lay hands on the lozel,58 and that he should be tortured to confess the truth, for he was a spy and nothing else.
He no sooner saw the wheel and the torments set before him, but he cried out like a rascal and said he was a poor Captain in the English camp, suborned by one Jack Wilton, a nobleman’s page, and no other, to come and kill the French King in a bravery59 and return, and that he had no other intention in the world.
This confession could not choose but move them all to laughter, in that he made it as light a matter to kill their King and come back, as to go to Islington and eat a mess of cream and come home again; nay, and besides he protested that he had no other intention, as if that were not enough to hang him.
Adam never fell till God made fools. All this could not keep his joints from ransacking on the wheel, for they vowed either to make him a confessor or a martyr with a trice. When still he sung all one song, they told the King he was a fool, and that some shrewd head had knavishly wrought on him. Wherefore it should stand with his honour to whip him out of the camp and send him home. That persuasion took place, and soundly was he lashed out of their liberties and sent home by a herald with this message: that so the King his Master hoped to whip home all the English fools very shortly. Answer was returned that that shortly was a long lie, and they were shrewd fools that should drive the Frenchman out of his kingdom, and make him glad, with Corinthian Dionysius,60 to play the schoolmaster.
The herald being dismissed, our afflicted intelligencer was called coram nobis.61 How he sped, judge you; but something he was adjudged too. The sparrow for his lechery liveth but a year; he for his treachery was turned on the toe,62 Plura dolor prohibet.63
Here let me triumph awhile and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit; but I will not breathe neither till I have disfraughted all my knavery.
Another Switzer Captain that was far gone for want of the wench, I led astray most notoriously, for he being a monstrous unthrift of battle-axes (as one that cared not in his anger to bid fly out scuttles to five score of them) and a notable emboweller of quart pots, I came disguised unto him in the form of a half-crown wench, my gown and attire according to the custom then in request. Iwis I had my courtsies in cue, or in quart pot rather, for they dived into the very entrails of the dust, and I simpered with my countenance like a porridge pot on the fire when it first begins to seethe. The sobriety of the circumstance is that after he had courted me and all, and given me in the earnest-penny of impiety some six crowns at the least for an antipast64 to iniquity, I feigned an impregnable excuse to be gone, and never came at him after.
Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutchery.65 A company of coistral66 clerks (who were in band with Satan, and not of any soldier’s collar nor hat-band) pinched a number of good minds to God-ward of their provant.67 They would not let a dram of dead-pay68 over-slip them; they would not lend a groat of the week to come to him that had spent his money before this week was done. They outfaced the greatest and most magnanimous servitors in their sincere and finigraphical69 clean shirts and cuffs. A louse, that was any gentleman’s companion, they thought scorn of. Their near-bitten beards must in a devil’s name be dewed every day with rose-water. Hogs could have ne’er a hair on their backs for making them rubbing brushes to rouse their crab-lice. They would in no wise permit that the motes in the sunbeams should be full-mouthed beholders of their clean finified70 apparel. Their shoes shined as bright as a slike-stone;71 their hands troubled and foiled72 more water with washing than the camel doth, that never drinks till the whole stream be troubled. Summarily, never any were so fantastical the one half as they.
My masters, you may conceive of me what you list, but I think confidently I was ordained God’s scourge from above for their dainty finicality. The hour of their punishment could no longer be prorogued,73 but vengeance must have at them at all aventures.74 So it was, that the most of these above-named goose-quill braggadoches75 were mere cowards and cravens, and durst not so much as throw a penful of ink into the enemy’s face, if proof were made. Wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimity, I thought to raise the foundation of my roguery.
What did I now, but one day made a false alarum in the quarter where they lay, to try how they would stand to their tackling, and with a pitiful outcry warned them to fly, for there was treason afoot, they were environed and beset. Upon the first watchword of treason that was given, I think they betook them to their heels very stoutly, left their pen and inkhorns and paper behind them for spoil, resigned their desks, with the money that was in them, to the mercy of the vanquisher, and in fine left me and my fellows (their fool-catchers) lords of the field. How we dealt with them, their disburdened desks can best tell; but this I am assured, we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting-days after.
I must not place a volume in the precincts of a pamphlet. Sleep an hour or two, and dream that Turney and Turwin is won, that the King is shipped again into England,76 and that I am close at hard meat77 at Windsor or at Hampton Court What, will you in your indifferent opinions allow me for my travel no more signory over the pages than I had before? Yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no, I’ll have it in spite of your hearts. For your instruction and godly consolation, be informed that at that time I was no common squire, no undertrodden torchbearer. I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top; my French doublet gelt78 in the belly as though (like a pig ready to be spitted) all my guts had been plucked out; a pair of side-paned hose79 that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses; my long stock that sat close to my dock80 and smothered not a scab or a lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of the leg; my rapier pendant like a round stick fastened in the tacklings, for skippers the better to climb by; my cape cloak of black cloth overspreading my back like a thornback or an elephant’s ear, that hangs on his shoulders like a country huswife’s banskin81 which she thirls her spindle on; and in consummation of my curiosity, my hands without gloves, all a more82 French, and a black budge edging of a beard on the upper lip, and the like sable auglet83 of excrements in the rising of the angle84 of my chin. I was the first that brought in the order of passing into the Court which I derived from the common word Qui passa? and the herald’s phrase of arms passant, thinking in sincerity he was not a gentleman, nor his arms current, who was not first passed by the pages. If any prentice or other came into the Court that was not a gentleman, I thought it was an indignity to the preeminence of the Court to include such a one, and could not be salved except we gave him Arms Passant to make him a gentleman.
Besides, in Spain none pass any far way but he must be examined what he is and give threepence for his pass.
In which regard, it was considered of by the common table of the cupbearers, what a perilsome thing it was to let any stranger or outdweller approach so near the precincts of the Prince as the Great Chamber, without examining what he was and giving him his pass. Whereupon we established the like order, but took no money of them as they did; only, for a sign that he had not passed our hands unexamined, we set a red mark on their ears, and so let them walk as authentical.
I must not discover what ungodly dealing we had with the black jacks,85 or how oft I was crowned King of the Drunkards with a court cup. Let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweating sickness86 that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England.
This sweating sickness was a disease that a man then might catch and never go to a hot-house. Many masters desire to have such servant
s as would work till they sweat again, but in those days he that sweat never wrought again. That scripture then was not thought so necessary which says ‘Earn thy living with the sweat of thy brows,’ for then they earned their dying with the sweat of their brows. It was enough if a fat man did but truss his points to turn him over the perch.87 Mother Cornelius’ tub,88 why, it was like hell; he that came into it never came out of it.
Cooks that stand continually basting their faces before the fire, were now all cashiered with this sweat into kitchen stuff. Their hall fell into the King’s hands for want of one of the trade to uphold it.
Felt-makers and furriers, what the one with the hot steam of their wool new taken out of the pan, and the other with the contagious heat of their slaughter budge89 and coney90 skins, died more thick than of the pestilence. I have seen an old woman at that season, having three chins, wipe them all away one after another, as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap. Look how in May or the heat of summer we lay butter in water for fear it should melt away, so then were men fain to wet their clothes in water as dyers do, and hid themselves in wells from the heat of the sun.
Then happy was he that was an ass, for nothing will kill an ass but cold, and none died but with extreme heat. The fishes called sea-stars, that burn one another by excessive heat, were not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another. Masons paid nothing for hair to mix their lime, nor glovers to stuff their balls with, for then they had it for nothing; it dropped off men’s heads and beards faster than any barber could shave it. Oh, if hair breeches had then been in fashion, what a fine world had it been for tailors; and so it was a fine world for tailors nevertheless, for he that could make a garment slightest and thinnest carried it away. Cutters, I can tell you, then stood upon it to have their trade one of the twelve companies, for who was it then that would not have his doublet cut to the skin and his shirt cut into it too, to make it more cold. It was as much as a man’s life was worth once to name a frieze jerkin; it was high treason for a fat gross man to come within five miles of the Court. I heard where they died up all in one family, and not a mother’s child escaped, insomuch as they had but an Irish rug locked up in a press, and not laid upon any bed neither. If those that were sick of this malady slept of it, they never waked more. Physicians with their simples91 in this case waxed simple fellows, and knew not which way to bestir them.
Galen92 might go shoe the gander93 for any good he could do; his secretaries had so long called him divine that now he had lost all his virtue upon earth. Hippocrates94 might well help almanack-makers, but here he had not a word to say: a man might sooner catch the sweat with plodding over him to no end, than cure the sweat with any of his impotent principles. Paracelsus,95 with his spirit of the buttery96 and his spirits of minerals, could not so much as say ‘God amend him’ to the matter. Plus erat in artifice quam arte:97 ‘there was more infection in the physician himself than his art could cure.’ This mortality first began amongst old men, for they, taking a pride to have their breasts loose basted with tedious beards, kept their houses so hot with their hairy excrements, that not so much but their very walls sweat out saltpeter with the smothering perplexity. Nay, a number of them had marvellous hot breaths, which sticking in the briars of their bushy beards could not choose but, as close air long imprisoned, engender corruption.
Wiser was our Brother Bankes98 of these latter days, who made his juggling horse a cut, for fear if at any time he should foist,99 the stink sticking in his thick bushy tail might be noisome to his auditors. Should I tell you how many pursuivants with red noses, and sergeants with precious faces,100 shrunk away in this sweat, you would not believe me. Even as the salamander with his very sight blasteth apples on the trees, so a pursuivant or a sergeant at this present, with the very reflex of his fiery faces,101 was able to spoil a man afar off. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sun: Diebus illis102 if it had been so in England, the generation of Brute103 had died all and some. To knit up this description in a pursenet,104 so fervent and scorching was the burning air which enclosed them, that the most blessed man then alive would have thought that God had done fairly by him if He had turned him to a goat, for goats take breath, not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also.
Take breath how they would, I vowed to tarry no longer among them. As at Turwin I was a demi-soldier in jest, so now I became a martialist in earnest. Over sea with my implements I got me, where hearing the King of France and the Switzers were together by the ears, I made towards them as fast as I could, thinking to thrust myself into that faction that was strongest. It was my good luck or my ill, I know not which, to come just to the fighting of the battle, where I saw a wonderful spectacle of bloodshed on both sides. Here unwieldly Switzers wallowing in their gore like an oxe in his dung; there the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass like a roach new taken out of the stream. All the ground was strewed as thick with battle-axes as the carpenter’s yard with chips: the plain appeared like a quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you behold a heap of dead murthered men overwhelmed with a falling steed instead of a tombstone; in another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their own bowels. And as the tyrant Roman Emperor used to tie condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corpses, so were the half-living here mixed with squeezed carcases long putrefied. Any man might give arms that was an actor in that battle, for there were more arms and legs scattered in the field that day than will be gathered up till Doomsday. The French King himself in this conflict was much distressed; the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face; thrice was his courser slain under him, and thrice was he struck on the breast with a spear. But in the end, by the help of the Venetians, the Helvetians or Switzers were subdued, and he crowned a victor, a peace concluded, and the city of Millaine105 surrendered unto him as a pledge of reconciliation.
That war thus blown over, and the several bands dissolved, like a crow that still follows aloof where there is carrion, I flew me over to Münster106 in Germany, which an Anabaptistical brother named John Leiden kept at that instant against the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony. Here I was in good hope to set up my staff for some reasonable time, deeming that no city would drive it to a siege, except they were able to hold out. And prettily well had these Münsterians held out, for they kept the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony play for the space of a year, and longer would have done but that Dame Famine came amongst them, whereupon they were forced by messengers to agree upon a day of fight, when, according to their Anabaptistical error, they might all be new christened in their own blood.
That day come, flourishing entered John Leiden the botcher into the field, with a scarf made of lists like a bow-case, a cross on his breast like a thread-bottom, a round-twilted tailor’s cushion buckled like a tankard-bearer’s device to his shoulders for a target, the pyke whereof was a pack-needle, a tough prentice’s club for his spear, a great brewer’s cow107 on his back for a corslet,108 and on his head for a helmet a huge high shoe with the bottom turned upwards, embossed as full of hobnails as ever it might stick. His men were all base handicrafts, as cobblers and curriers109 and tinkers, whereof some had bars of iron, some hatchets, some coolstaves,110 some dung-forks, some spades, some mattocks, some wood-knives, some addises111 for their weapons. He that was best provided had but a piece of rusty brown bill bravely fringed with cobwebs to fight for him. Perchance here and there you might see a fellow that had a canker-eaten skull112 on his head, which served him and his ancestors for a chamber-pot two hundred years, and another that had bent a couple of iron dripping-pans armour-wise to fence his back and his belly; another that had thrust a pair of dry old boots as a breastplate before his belly of his doublet, because he would not be dangerously hurt; another that had twilted113 all his truss full of counters, thinking, if the enemy should take him, he would mistake them for gold and so save his life for his money. Very devout asses they were, for all t
hey were so dunstically114 set forth, and such as thought they knew as much of God’s mind as richer men. Why, inspiration was their ordinary familiar,115 and buzzed in their ears like a bee in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell and the land of whipper-ginnie.116 Displease them who durst, he should have his mittimus117 to damnation ex tempore.118 They would vaunt there was not a pea’s difference betwixt them and the apostles: they were as poor as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons. Only herein may seem some little diversity to lurk: that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hell-fire for any man to wear a dagger; nay, so grounded and gravelled119 were they in this opinion, that now, when they should come to battle, there’s never a one of them would bring a blade, no, not an onion blade, about him, to die for it. It was not lawful, said they, for any man to draw the sword but the magistrate; and in fidelity (which I had wellnigh forgot), Jack Leiden, their magistrate, had the image or likeness of a piece of a rusty sword, like a lusty lad, by his side. Now I remember me, it was but a foil neither, and he wore it to show that he should have the foil of his enemies, which might have been an oracle for his two-hand interpretation. Quid Plura?120 His battle is pitched. By pitched I do not mean set in order, for that was far from their order; only as sailors do pitch their apparel to make it storm-proof, so had most of them pitched their patched clothes to make them impierceable: a nearer way than to be at the charges of armour by half. And in another sort he might be said to have pitched the field, for he had pitched or rather set up his rest whether to fly if they were discomfited.
