children at their heeles, which young brood of beggars are sometimes carryed-like so many greene geese alive to a market in paires of paniers, or in dossers like fresh fish from Rye that comes on horse-back—if they be but infants, but if they can straddle once, then as well she-rogues as he-rogues are horst, seven or eight upon one jade, strongly pineoned and strangely tied together.

'One shire alone, and no more, is sure still at one time to have these Egyptian vermin"-vermin is not exactly Dekker's word "swarming within it, for like flocks of wild geese they will evermore flye one after another; let them be scattered worse than the quarters of a traytor are after he's hanged, drawne, and quartered, yet they have a trick, like water cut with a sword, to come together instantly and easily againe; and this is their policie, which way soever the foremost ranks lead, they stick up small boughs in several places to every village where they passe, which serve as ensigns to wait on the rest.

"Their apparell is odd and fantastick, though it be never so full of rents. The men wear scarves of calico, or any other loose stuff, hanging [about] their bodies, like Morice dancers, with bells and other toys, to entice the country people to flock about them to wonder at their fooleries, or rather rank knaveries. The women as ridiculously attire themselves, and wear rags and patched filthy mantles uppermost when the undergarments are handsome and in fashion.

"The battles these outlaws make are many and very bloody. Whosoever falls into their hands never escapes alive, and so cruel they are in these murthers that nothing can satisfy them but the very heart-blood of those whom they kill. And who are they, think you, that thus go to the pot?-alas! innocent lambs, sheep, calves, pigs, &c. Poultry-ware are more churlishly handled by them

than poor prisoners are by keepers in the Counter in the Poultry. A goose coming amongst them learns to be wise, that he will never be goose any more. The bloody tragedies of all these are only acted by the women, who carrying long knives, or skeanes, under their manThe stage is some large

tles, do thus play their parts. heath or furze-bush common far from any houses, upon which, casting themselves into a ring, they enclose the murdered till the massacre be finished. If any passenger come by, and wondering to see such a conjuring circle kept by hell-hounds, and demand what spirits they raise there, one of the murderers steps to him, poisons him with sweet words, and shifts him off with this lie that one of the women are fallen in labour; but if any mad Hamlet, hearing this, smells villainy, and rush in by violence to see what the tawny divels are doing, then they excuse the fact, lay the blame upon those that are actors, and perhaps (if they see no remedy) deliver them to an officer to be had to punishment; but by the way a rescue is surely laid; and very valiantly, though very villainously, do they fetch them off and guard them.

"The cabins where these land-pirates lodge in the night are the outbarns of farmers and husbandmen, in some poor village or other, who dare not deny them for fear they should ere morning have their thatched houses burning about their ears; and these barns are both their cookrooms, their supping-parlours, and their bed-chambers, for there they dress after a beastly manner whatsoever they purchased after a thievish fashion. Sometimes they eat venison and have greyhounds that kill it for them, but if they had not, they are hounds themselves and are damnable hunters after flesh.

"Upon days of pastime and liberty they spread them* "Purchased," i. e. stole.

selves in small companies amongst the villages, and when young maids and bachelors-yea sometimes old doting fools that should be beaten to this world of villainies and forewarn others-do flock about them, they then profess skill in palmistry, and forsooth can tell fortunes, which for the most part are infallibly true, by reason that they work upon rules which are grounded upon certainty; for one of them will tell you that you shall shortly have some evil luck fall upon you, and within half an hour after you shall have your pocket picked, or your purse cut. These are those Egyptian grasshoppers that eat up the fruits of the earth and destroy the poor cornfields. To sweep these swarms out of this kingdom there are no other means but the sharpness of the most infamous and basest kinds of punishment; for if the ugly body of this monster be suffered to grow and fatten itself with mischiefs and disorders, it will have a neck so sinewy and so brawny that the arm of the law will have much ado to strike off the head, sithence every day the members of it encrease, and it gathers new joints and new forces by priggers,† anglers, cheaters, § yeomen's daughters-that have taken some by-blows, and to avoid shame, fall into their sin-and other servants, both men and maids, that have been pilferers, with all the rest of that damned regiment, marching together in the first army of the Belman, who running away from their own

*"Beaten," i. e. used, accustomed to.

† Thieves.

Pilferers, petty thieves.

§ Sharpers. || An allusion to another pamphlet of Dekker's, called the "Belman of London," in which, to use his own phraseology, he "brings to light the most notorious villanies that are now practiced in the kingdom." Indeed he seems to have taken a strange pleasure in diving into every gutter and fishing up thence all the filth possible. This may certainly have proceeded from a high moral sense and it is charitable to believe so, yet I can hardly help suspecting that there was at least as much love of the subject as love of morality

colours, which are bad enough, serve under these, being the worst. Lucifer's launceprisades,* that stand aloof to behold the musterings of these hell-hounds, took delight to see them double their files so nimbly, but held it no policy to come near them; for the divell himself durst scarce have done that. Away therefore he gallops, knowing that at one time or other they would all come to fetch their pay where it was due."—English Villanies, Eight Several Times Prest to Death by the Printers. Sig. E. 3.

in the selection. One is tempted, moreover, to put the same question in his case, as well as in that of Juvenal, that Mrs. Frail put to her sister, when reproached with her bodkin having been found a t the World's End, "Sister, sister, how came you to find it there ?"

*

Launcepesado, Launcepresado, or Launceprisade, is explained by Minshew to be "one that commands over ten soldiers, the lowest officer in a band of Footmen."

CROSSES.

THE use of Crosses was exceedingly various in the olden time; hence no little confusion has arisen, and there appears to be some reason for concluding that they were not always of the same form or of the same material, but that these varied according to the purpose for which they were designed. They were often employed to mark the spot where any singular instance of God's mercy had been shown; and yet more frequently as a memorial of the traveller murdered by robbers, or of any one who had met with a violent death, and who, from his rank in life or the peculiar circumstances of the case, excited a more than usual interest. They were also erected where the corpse of any great personage had rested when being carried to the grave, for in those days the dead were prodigious travellers, and we often find them removing more than once or twice from what in their case would be erroneously called the final resting place. One object of these rests was that the bystanders and attendants might pray for the soul of the departed. Occasionally Crosses were erected in churchyards, to remind the people of the benefit vouchsafed tous by the Cross of our Saviour; and in yet earlier