THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE

AND THE SECOND PART

THE CONFESSION OF THE NEW MARRIED COUPLE

Contents

Transcriber’s Note : Title and Contents above were not part of the original
book, but are provided for the convenience of the reader.

THE TEN PLEASURES OF MARRIAGE
Printed at London 1682.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

THE TEN PLEASURES OF
MARRIAGE

AND THE SECOND PART

THE CONFESSION OF THE
NEW MARRIED COUPLE

ATTRIBUTED TO

APHRA BEHN

REPRINTED WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

JOHN HARVEY

AND THE ORIGINAL TWENTY PLATES

AND TWO ENGRAVED TITLES

RE-ENGRAVED

LONDON: MCMXXII

PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE NAVARRE SOCIETY LIMITED

Printed in Great Britain

INTRODUCTION

he Restoration brought back to
England something more than a king and the theatre. It renewed in English life the
robust vitality of humour which had been repressed under the
Commonwealth—though, in spite of repression, there were, even among the Puritan
divines, men like the author of Joanereidos, whose self-expression ran the
whole gamut from freedom to licentiousness.

It is a curious thing, that fundamental English humour. It can be vividly
concentrated into a single word, as when, for instance, the chronicler of The Ten
Pleasures of Marriage revives the opprobrious term for a
tailor—”pricklouse”: the whole history of the English woollen industry and of
the stuffy Tudor and Stuart domestic architecture is in the nickname. Or a single
phrase can light up an idea, as when, a few days before marriage, “the Bridegroom is
running up and down like a dog.” But, on the other hand, the spirit manifests itself
sometimes in exuberance, as when Urquhart and Motteux metagrobolized Rabelais into
something almost more tumescent and overwhelming than the original. In that vein of humour the present work frequently runs. The
author is as ready to pile up his epithets as Urquhart himself. Let the Nurse go, he
says, “for then you’ll have an Eater, a Stroy-good, a Stufgut, a Spoil-all, and
Prittle-pratler, less than you had before.”

It is, in fact, as an example of English humour—exaggerated, no doubt, by
the reaction from Puritanism—that The Ten Pleasures of Marriage should
be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it is of uncertain parentage and
must own to foreign kin. A well-known but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally
rare book is Antoine de la Salle’s Quinze Joies de Mariage. It seems possible
that this was translated into English. At any rate, in the year in which The Ten
Pleasures was published—1682-1683—the following work was registered
at Stationers’ Hall: The Woman’s Advocate, or fifteen real comforts of matrimony,
being in requital of the late fifteen sham comforts. Moreover, The Ten
Pleasures was in all probability printed abroad—Hazlitt thinks at The Hague
or Amsterdam. The very first page in the original edition contains one of several
hints of Batavian production—”younger” is printed “jounger.” The curious
allusion to the great French poet, Clément Marot, may also suggest a temporary
foreign sojourn for the author for though Marot was doubtless known to English readers in the seventeenth century, the
exact reference of the allusion is not at all obvious. It very possibly reflects on
the fact that in 1526 the Sorbonne condemned both Marot and his poem Colloque de
l’abbé et de la femme sçavante; and Marot certainly wrote about
women and marriage. He is not, however, a “stock” figure in English literary
allusion, either learned or popular, and the fact suggests at least familiarity with
the literature of other countries.

But there can be no doubt of the English character of the text both in general and
in detail. It is redolent of English middle-class life as it was in the days before
our grandfathers decided that the human body was an obscene thing and its functions
deplorable. It has the middle-class love of good food—Colchester oysters
(famous then as now), asparagus, peaches, apricots, candied ginger, China oranges,
comfits, pancakes—enough to make the mouth water. It has the solid English
furniture, with all its ritual of solemnity; “vallians” (valences), “daslles”
(tassels), big bedsteads, Chiny-ware, plush chairs, linen cupboards. It has all the
fuss of preparation for childbirth—the accumulations of wrappings, the
obstetric furniture, the nods and winks of the midwife and the gossips, authentic
ancestors of Mrs Sarah Gamp and Mrs Elizabeth Prig—why, the haste to fetch the
midwife at the crisis might almost be the foundation upon which Dickens built the visit of Seth Pecksniff,
Esq., to Kingsgate Street, High Holborn.

It has likewise many touches which show knowledge of the average fairly prosperous
English life—the merchant’s, the shopkeeper’s, the sea-captain’s. The author
clearly knew the routine of trade. He knew that at New Year’s Day the “day-book” had
to be fully written up for scrutiny and stock-taking and sending out of accounts.
(But the pleasures or torments of love are such that “the squire is so full of
business that he can’t spare half-an-hour to write it out.” The brief description of
his feelings which follows, conventional, perhaps, to some extent, has a certain life
in it, as if the writer, embittered, was recalling his own youthful experience.) He
knew, too, what to-day we only know in the mass through the newspapers, that a
merchant’s business depends not only upon watching the markets, but upon the actual
supply of material—”what commodities are arrived or expected,” and whether tea
is up ½d. or tin ¾d. down, or if hogs closed firm. The commercial world
changes only its methods of communication and expression.

The first chapter, indeed, is of genuine historical and literary interest. From
the literary point of view, it is a near descendant—collateral, if not direct,
and anyhow based on the same English empirical
humour of life—of Thomas Overbury’s A Wife (1614—only one unique
copy of this is known to exist), John Earle’s Microcosmographie (1628), in
prose, and Thomas Bastard’s Chrestoleros* (1598), in verse. It is an early
instance of the stringing together, in a connected narrative, of the material
previously used only in short sketches or “characters”; and so it is directly in the
succession which in the end produced what is perhaps the most enduring and individual
phenomenon in our literature—the English novel.

Of course the book says things we do not say now openly—though the
traditional corpus scriptorum nondum scriptorum which almost all men and even
some women know is handed on, a rather noisome torch, from generation to generation,
solely by word of mouth, and flickers now and again in The Ten Pleasures. But
they were said openly then, and by great writers. There is nothing here so
nauseatingly indecent as the viler poems of the Rev. Robert Herrick and the Very Rev.
the Dean of Dublin, Jonathan Swift, D.D. There are salacious hints, there are bawdy
words, but no more than Falstaff or the wife of Bath or the Summoner or Tom Jones
might have used—less, on the whole. There is no need, to borrow a phrase from
the book’s sequel, to “make use of the gesture of
casting up the whites of the eyes.” “True-hearted souls will solace their spirits
with a little laughter, and never busy their brains with the subversion of Church and
State government.”

Certainly the writer favoured the jovial life. Food and wine flow in his pages
like milk and honey in Canaan. There is no room in his house for the Puritans, not
even, apparently, in the bringing up of his child. “Those that frequent Mr Baxter’s
Puritanical Holding-forth” must be merry when they come to his feast. He will have no
Catechizing of Families—a discourse published by Richard Baxter in this
very year 1683; and the only Compassionate Counsel—a Baxter pamphlet of
1681—he is likely to offer to young men is to take life lightly, as his hero
does, and above all, not to marry.

For that is the true point of this lively piece of irony (the irony is less well
sustained in the sequel, The Confession of the New Married Couple, and dropped
altogether in the bitter Letter at the end of The Ten Pleasures). It is
a savage attack upon women—upon (to quote a Rabelaisian sentence) “the
quarrelsome, crabbed, lavish, proud, opinionated, domineering and unbridled nature of
the female sex.” Women, he says, “are in effect of less value than old Iron, Boots
and Shoes, etc., for we find both Merchants and
money ready always to buy those commodities.” The analogy is an unfortunate one, for
one of his implications is that women can easily be bought. But he—if it is a
“he”—is in deadly earnest. Love, marriage, he asks scornfully—what are
they? A romance, are they? The true happiness of life? Very well: here are the
pleasures of them. You will be in love and make a match—and look at all the
worry of the settlement, in which, by the way, you may often be defrauded. You will
get married—a fine ceremony, with a fine feast; and all the nasty old women of
the neighbourhood will come and tell bawdy stories to enliven the occasion. You get
married, and thereafter you are at the mercy of your wife, who will indulge your
wishes or not as suits her mood. Your house will be all awry if she has but a slight
headache. When the baby comes, the place will be filled with old women and baby-linen
and medical apparatus, and you will have all the anxieties of a father added to the
discomforts of a neglected husband. For the rest, your wife will know how “to
cuckold, jilt, and sham” as well as any gay lady of Covent Garden. And so on.

Much of the satire is acute and well-turned, often novel in expression if not in
thought. But it is, as has been suggested, in the picture of English middle-class
life under James II. that the importance of the book lies. Here is the domestic side of what the great diarists and the
great poets hint at, and the excess of which municipal records, those treasuries of
private appearances in public, chronicle with the severity of judgment. You have the
young couple going (alas that the river for this purpose has, so to speak, been moved
farther up its own course!) for a row on the Thames, with Lambeth, Bankside and
Southwark echoing to their laughter. They might visit the New Spring Gardens at
Vauxhall; but they would probably avoid the old (second) Globe Theatre on Bankside,
for it was a meeting-house at which the formidable Baxter preached. Or they might go
into Kent and pick fruit, even as “beanfeasters” do to this day; or to Hereford for
its cider and perry, the drinking of which is a custom not yet extinct. Or maybe only
for an outing to the pleasant village of Hackney. They would see the streets gay with
signs which (outside Lombard Street) few houses but taverns wear to-day—the
sign of the Silkworm or the Sheep, or that fantastic schoolmaster’s
emblem, the Troubled Pate with a crown upon it. And when they stopped for rest
at the sign of a bush upon a pole, how they would fall to upon the Martinmas beef,
the neats-tongues, the cheesecakes! It is true they might find prices high and crops
poor; but such things must be…. “This is the use, custom, and fruits of war. If the
impositions and taxes run high, the country
farmer can’t help that; you know that the war costs money, and it must be given, or
else we should lose all.” Had they learnt that as long ago as 1682?

As a genre work the book is not unique; rather is it typical. The gradual
social settlement after the Civil War, destined to develop into stagnation under the
first Georges, caused didactic works, guides to manners, housewifery and sport,
society handbooks, to proliferate. The Ten Pleasures mentions some standard
works, which every good housewife would probably possess—Nicholas Culpepper’s
medical handbooks, for instance, and The Complete Cook, which indeed, as part
of The Queen’s Closet Opened, had reappeared in its natal year 1682-1683. The
same year saw the birth of such works as The Complete Courtier, The
Complete Compting House, The Gentleman Jockey, The Accomplished Ladies’
Delight. Life was being scheduled, tabulated, in readiness for the complacent
century about to open. It was also being explored, not only in such works as The
Ten Pleasures and The Woman’s Advocate, but in others (entered as
published, but in many cases not known to be now extant) like The Wonders of the
Female World, The Swaggering Damsel, or Several New Curtain
Lectures, and Venus in ye smoake, or, the nunn in her smock, in curious
dialogues addressed to the lady abbesse of love’s parradice—all produced in that same annus mirabilis of outspoken
domesticity.

The Ten Pleasures, apart from its intrinsic interest, is exceptionally
important from a book-collector’s point of view. It is of the utmost rarity. There is
no copy in the British Museum and none in the Cambridge University Library. In fact,
there are only two copies known of the whole work—one in the Bodleian (wanting
one plate), and that from which the present text is taken. The Huth Collection had a
copy of the first part only. Both the fuller copies contain the second
part—The Confession—and evidently the two parts, though they have
separate title pages, and were published at different times, were intended to form a
complete work.

Who wrote the book? “A. Marsh, Typogr. [apher],” says the title page. A. Marsh
cannot be traced, nor is the work included in the Stationers’ Registers for the
period. It may be that Marsh thought it too licentious for registration (an
improbable supposition), and so, as Hazlitt suggests, printed it abroad.

But the initials A.B. at the end of the Letter in the first part may be a
clue, though a perplexing one. It is a plausible guess that they are those of Aphra
or Aphara Behn, the dramatist and poet, the first woman to earn her living by her
pen. It is true that she was, so to speak, a
feminist: the preface and epilogue to her Sir Patient Fancy speak bitterly of
those who would not go to her plays because they were by a woman. On the other hand,
she had a free pen, to say the least of it, and often a witty one. And she had Dutch
associations. Her husband was a Dutch merchant living in London. She had herself been
on secret service in the Netherlands. She translated a Dutch book on oracles. If the
book was printed in Holland, she of all people could get the work done. And she knew
the city of London intimately.

There are, too, some odd details in her plays, especially in Sir Patient
Fancy, which recall touches in The Ten Pleasures. She introduces a Padua
doctor on the stage. She shows, in several of her plays, a curious interest in
medicine, especially quack medicine. Sir Patient, a hypochondriac, thinks he is
swelling up like the “pipsy” husband. Isabella, in the same play, says “keeping
begins to be as ridiculous as matrimony…. The insolence and expense of their
mistresses has almost tired out all but the old and doting part of mankind.” It is
not inconceivable that in a freakish or embittered moment this singular woman threw
herself with malicious joy into an attack on her own sex.

“Love in fantastic triumph sat….” Aphra Behn’s great lyric deservedly lives. If
she wrote The Ten Pleasures, the sort of love she describes in it still lives, but hardly in fantastic triumph. Yet if we
want to know our fellow-men, we must know something of it. Apart from the curious
interest of its rarity, The Ten Pleasures is a sturdy piece of human
nature.

JOHN HARVEY.

Publisher’s Preface

“Of the making of many books there is no end,” nor is there an end to the Romance
of books, as the little volume here, privately reprinted by the Navarre Society, is
surely proof most positive. The original is a small thick volume; it bears the
imprint “London, Printed in the year 1683,” and but one perfect copy is known; that
copy lay unappreciated in the heart of London in an antiquarian bookseller’s
shop.

Fortunately, however, for our literature and for students of the manners of the
commonality of the period it was seen by a colleague, who wondered why he did not
know it. After purchasing it he found the reason why—the Bodleian Library alone
possessed a copy of the work (imperfect); later a copy of the first part (only)
appeared in the last portion of the sale of the great Huth Collection. The present
text is taken from the perfect copy mentioned above.

The curious title rather damns the literary interest of the book, which presents
pictures of the cit and his wife at work and play which Fielding, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might have
written. It is thought that the book was printed in Holland, and if so, it may well
be that the ship carrying the printed sheets to England foundered in the North Sea,
or was sunk by enemy craft. There can be no doubt that such a work would not have
escaped the wits of the time; if it had survived for ordinary circulation, mention
would have been made of it, however small an edition had been sold. No other so
likely reason for its extreme rarity presents itself.

It is reprinted, as faithfully as the altered manners of our time permit, with a
Preface by John Harvey, who attributes the work to the industrious and sometimes
brilliant Mrs Aphra Behn, a discovery which the Navarre Society believe to be well
grounded. They hope that the issue of the book to their subscribers may help to
confirm or refute that lady’s responsibility for so graceless an attack upon her sex.
Whether she did or did not write it, the fact remains that a work so vividly
representative of Restoration life and literature is rescued from the obscurity to
which its scarceness has hitherto condemned it and worthily preserved for scholars
and amateurs of the future.

THE TEN

PLEASURES

OF

MARRIAGE,

Relating

All the delights and contentments that are mask’d under the bands of
Matrimony.

Written by A. MARSH, Typogr.

LONDON,

Printed in the Year, 1682.

To the READER.

Courteous Reader,

This small Treatise which I here present unto thee is the fruit of some spare
hours, that my cogitations, after they had been for a small time, between whiles,
hovering to and fro in the Air, came fluttring down again, still pitching upon the
subject of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage, in each of which I hope thou wilt find
somthing worthy of thy acceptance, because I am sure ’tis matter of such nature as
hath never before been extant, and especially in such a method; neither canst thou
well expect it to be drest up in any thing of nice and neat words, as other subjects
may be, but only to be clad in plain habit most fit for the humour of the Fancy. If I
perceive that it please thee, and is not roughly or unkindly dealt withall; nor
brain’d in the Nativity, to spoil its generation of a further product, it will
incourage me to proceed upon a second part, some say of the same Tune, but I
mean to the same Purpose, and apparelled very near the same dress: In the mean
time, with hopes that thou wilt be kind to this, and give it a gentle reception, from
him who is thine. Farewell.

The Ten
PLEASURES
Of
MARRIAGE.

he Nuptial estate trailing
along with it so many cares, troubles & calamities, it is one of the greatest
admirations, that people should be so earnest and desirous to enter themselves into
it. In the younger sort who by their sulphurous instinct, are subject to the tickling
desires of nature, and look upon that thing called Love through a multiplying glass,
it is somewhat pardonable: But that those who are once come to the years of knowledge
and true understanding should be drawn into it, methinks is most vilely foolish, and
morrice fooles caps were much fitter for them, then wreaths of Lawrel. Yet stranger
it is, that those who have been for the first time in that horrible estate, do, by a
decease, cast themselves in again to a second and third time. Truly, if for once any
one be through contrary imaginations misled, he may
expect some hopes of compassion, and alledge some reasons to excuse himself: but what
comfort, or compassion can they look for, that have thrown themselves in a second and
third time? they were happy, if they could keep their lips from speaking, and ty
their tongues from complaining, that their miseries might not be more and more
burdened with scoffings which they truly merit.

And tho not only the real truth of this, but ten times more, is as well known to
every one, as the Sun shine at noon day; nevertheless we see them run into it with
such an earnestness, that they are not to be counselled, or kept back from it, with
the strength of Hercules; despising their golden liberty, for chains of horrid
slavery.

But we see the bravest sparks, in the very blossoming of their youth, how they
decay? First, Gentleman-like, they take pleasure in all manner of noble exercises, as
in keeping time all dancing, singing of musick, playing upon instruments, speaking of
several languages, studying at the best Universities, and conversing with the
learnedst Doctors, &c. or else we see them, before they are half perfect in any
exercise, like carl-cats in March run mewing and yawling at the doors of young
Gentlewomen; and if any of those have but a small matter of more then ordinary
beauty, (which perhaps is gotten by the help of a damn’d bewitched pot of paint) she
is immediately ador’d like a Saint upon an Altar:
And in an instant there is as much beauty and perfection to be seen in her, as ever
Juno, Venus and Pallas possessed all together.

And herewith those Gentile Pleasures, that have cost their Parents so much money,
and them so much labour and time are kickt away, and totally abandoned that they may
keep company with a painted Jezebel. They are then hardly arrived at this intitled
happiness, but they must begin to chaw upon the bitter shell of that nut, the kernel
whereof, without sighing, they cannot tast; having no sooner obtained access to the
Lady, but are as suddenly possest with thousands of thoughts what they shall do to
please the Sweet object. Being therewith so tosticated, that all their other business
is dispersed, and totally laid aside. This is observable not only in youth of the
first degree, but also in persons that have received promotion.

For if he be a Theologue, his books drop out of his hands, and ly stragling about
his study, even as his sences do, one among another. And if you hear him preach, his
whole Sermon is nothing but of Love, which he then turns & winds to Divinity as
far as possible it can be fitted.

If it be a Doctor of Physick, oh! he has so much work with his own sicknes, that
he absolutely forgets all his Patients, though some of them were lying at deaths
dore; and lets the Chyrurgian, whom he had appointed certainly to meet there, tarry to no purpose, taking no more notice of his
Patients misery, and the peril of his wounds, then if it did not concern him. But if
at last he doth come, it is when the wound’s festered, the Ague in the blood, or that
the body is incurable. So far was he concern’d in looking after that Love-apple, or
Night-shadow, for the cure of his own burning distemper.

If he be a Counsellor, his whole brain is so much puzzel’d how to begin and pursue
the Process for the obtaining his Mistress in Marriage; that all other suits tho they
be to the great detriment of poor Widows and Orphans are laid aside, and wholly
rejected. Then being desired by his Clients to meet them at anyplace, and to give his
advice concerning the cause, he hath had such earnest business with his Mistress,
that he comes an hour or two later then was appointed. But coming at last, one half
of the time that can be spent, is little enough to make Mr. Counsellor understand in
what state the cause stood at the last meeting. And then having heard what the
Plaintif and Defendant do say, he only tells them, I must have clearer evidences, the
accounts better adjusted, and your demand in writing, before I can make any decision
of this cause to both your satisfactions.

There they stand then, and look one upon another, not daring to say otherwise, but
’tis very well Sir, we will make them all ready against the next meeting; and are, with grief at heart, forced to see as
much and sometimes more expences made at the meeting, as the whole concern of their
debate amounted to. Then it is, come let’s now discourse of matters of state, and
drink a glass about to the health of the King & the prosperity of our Country and
all the inhabitants; which is done only to the purpose, that coming to his Mistress,
he may boastingly say, my dear, just now at a meeting we remembered you in a glass,
& I’l swear the least drop of it was so delicious to me, as ever Nectar
and Ambrose could be, that the Poets so highly commend.

If Counsellors, and other learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the
unlearned Notary’s do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up
a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so
much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it
clear contrary to the intent of the party concern’d: By that means making both Wills
and other Deeds in such a manner, that the end agrees not with the beginning, nor the
middle with either. Which occasions between friends, near relations, and neighbors,
great differences, and an implacable hatred; forcing thereby the monies of innocent
and self-necessitated people, into the Pockets of Counsellors and Attorneys.

And alas the diligent Merchant, when he has
gotten the least smatch of this frensie, his head runs so much upon wheels, that he
daily neglects his Change-time; forgets his Bils of exchange; and is alwaies a Post
or two behind hand with his Letters: So that he knows not what Merchandises rise or
fall, or what commodities are arrived or expected. And by this means buies in Wares,
at such rates, that in few daies he loses 20, yea sometimes 30 per cent. by them.
Nay, this distemper is so hot in his head, that thereby he Ships his goods in a
Vessel, where the Master and his Mate are for the most part drunk, and who hardly
thrice in ten times make a good voyage.

And who knows not how miserable that City and Country is, when a military person
happens to ly sick in this Hospital. If he be in Garison, he doth nothing but trick
up himself, walk along the streets, flatter his Mistress, and vaunt of his knowledge
and Warlike deeds; though he scarce understands the exercising of his Arms, I will
not mention encamping in a Field, Fortification, the forming of Batalions, and a
great deal more that belongs to him.

And coming into Campagne; alas this wicked Love-ague continues with him; and runs
so through his blood, that both the open air, and wide fields are too narrow for him.
Yea and tho he formerly had (especially by his Mistris) the name of behaving himself
like a second Mars; yet now he’l play the
sick-hearted, (I dare not say the faint-hearted) to the end he may, having put on his
fine knotted Scarf, and powdered Periwig, only go to shew himself to that adorable
Babe, his Lady Venus, Leaving oftentimes a desperate siege, and important State
affairs, to accompany a lame, squint-ey’d, and crook-back’d Jeronimo.

And if, by favour or recommandation, he happen to be intrusted with any strong
City or Fort that is besieged, he’s presently in fear of his own Bom, and practises
all sorts of waies and means how he shall best make a capitulation, that so leaving
the place, he may go again to his fair one.

And alas, what doth not the Master of a Ship, and his Mate hazard, when they are
sick of this malady? What terrible colds, and roaring seas doth he not undergo,
through an intemperate desire that he hath to be with his nittebritch’d Peggy? How
often doth he hazard his Owners Ship, the Merchants Goods, and his own life, for an
inconstant draggle-tail; that perhaps before he has been three daies at Sea, hath
drawn her affection from him, and given promise to another? Yet nevertheless, tho the
raging Waves run upon the Ship, and fly over his head, he withstands it all. Nor is
the main Ocean, or blustering Boreas, powerfull enough, to cool his raging
fire, and drive those damps out of his brain. The
tempestuousness of the weather, having driven him far out of his course; his only
wishes and prayer is, oh, that he might be so happy, but for a moment to see his
Beacon, those twinkling eys of his dearly beloved Margery Mussel! Then all things
would be well enough! Tho he and all that are with him, were immediately Shipwrackt,
and made a prey for the Fishes. And if, unexpectedly, fortune so favour him, that he
happens to see the Coast, oh, he cannot tarry for the Pilot! but tho it be misty
weather, and he hoodwink’d by Venus, still he sails forward, running all in danger,
that before was so far preserved.

And if the Shop-keeper once sets foot into this destructive Wilderness, he doth
nothing less then look to his shop, and wait upon his Customers. Spending most part
of his time in finical dressing himself, to accompany his Mistriss, and with a Coach
or Pair of Oars to do her all manner of caresses. Then his whole discourse is, with
what good custom he is blest above others; but seldom saies, that with waiting upon
his Lady, and by indeavouring to please her above all things, how miserably he
neglects it, by which means, shop’s not only found without a Master, but the servants
without government. And at New-year, the day-book is not written fair over; and if
any body desires their reckoning, the squire is so full of business, that he can’t
spare half an hour to write it out: For where he
goes, where he stands, what he thinks, what he does, all his cogitations are imploi’d
to think how delicious it is to press those soft lips of his beloved, and then out of
an unfeigned heart to be lov’d again, sometimes receiving a kiss. Thus he idles away
all his time, and all his business with his sences runs a wool-gathering.

To be short, let it be what sort of person it will, they no sooner touch the shell
of this Marriage-nut, but before they can come to tast the kernel they look for; they
feel nothing else then thorns and briars of sorrow and misery. If there be any one
that thinks he is gotten a footstep further then another, in the favour of his
Mistriss, and that in time he questions not th’ obtaining his desired happiness;
immediately, that imagined joy, is crush’d with an insuing despair; being presently
molested with a fear, that Father, Mother, Uncle, or Tutor will not like his person,
or that he has not means enough; or else either they, or the Gentlewoman, will make
choice of another in his place. Or, if he sees another have access to the Lady as
well as himself, at the same moment he’s possessed with jealousie, and falls a
pondering how he shall make this Rival odious in the eys of her. And if the other get
any advantage of him; then he challenges him to fight; hazarding in that manner his
precious life, for the getting of her, who when he had her, would perhaps, occasion him a thousand torments of death and
misery. Pray observe what pleasures this introduction imparts unto us; alas, what may
we then expect from the marriage it self?

Really, those that will take this into due consideration, who would not but curse
the Gentlewoman that draws him into such a raging madness? yet Lovers go forward, and
please your selves with this imagined happiness; but know, that if according to your
hope, you obtain her for a Bride, that at the least you must expect a sence and
feeling of the Ten insuing Pleasures.

Folio 10.
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

THE FIRST PLEASURE.

The Consent is given, the Match concluded, and the Wedding kept.

ow, O Lover, till this time
you have been indeavouring, slaving, turmoiling, sighing, groaning, hoping and
begging to get from those slow and tardy lips, that long-wish’d for word of Consent;
you have also sent many messengers to your Mistriss, to her Parents and Tutors, who
were as able to express themselves as the best Orators, but could obtain nothing; yet
at last that long desired Word, is once descended by the Draw-bridge of her lips,
like a rich cordial upon your languishing heart. You have vanquish’d all your Rivals.
Oh who can imagine your joy! What you think, or what you do, still your thoughts
glance upon your happiness! your Mistriss now will be willing; denials are laid
aside: only ther’s a little shame and fear, which canot of a sudden be so totally forgotten, because the marriage is not yet concluded.
Well, O Lover, who could desire a greater happiness then you now possess! For what
you will, she will also: and what she desires, is all your pleasure. You may now
tumble in a bed of Lillies and Roses; for all sour looks, are turn’d to sweet smiles,
and she that used to thrust you from her, pulls you now every foot to her. Yea, those
snow-white breasts, which before you durst scarce touch with your little finger; you
may now, without asking leave, grasp by whole handfuls. Certainly, they that at full
view, consider all this rightly; who can doubt but that you are the happiest man in
the World? O unspeakable pleasure!

But, O triumphant Lover, let not however your joyfull mind run too much upon these
glistering things: be a little moderate in your desired pleasures, if it might happen
that there come some cross-grain’d obstructions; for I have oftentimes seen, that all
those suspected roses, come forth with many pricking thorns; insomuch that the mouth
which at first was saluted with so many thousand kisses, and appear’d as if it had
been cover’d with the dew of heaven; was compared to be the jaws of Cerberus.
And those breasts, which before were the curded Nacter-hills, and called the
Banket of the Gods, I have seen despised to be like stinking Cows-Udders, I, and
call’d worse names to boot. Be therefore, (I say)
somewhat moderate and prudent, for fear it might happen that the prices of this
market might fall very suddenly, though perhaps not so horribly.

Nevertheless you have great reason to be merry, for this week, ’tis hop’d there’l
be a meeting to close up the match; and it is requisite, that you should go unto all
the friends, that must be present at the meeting, to hear when their occasions will
permit them, and what day and hour they will appoint to set upon the business,
herewith you have work to traverse the City, and who knows whether you’l find half of
them at home. And then those that you do find, one is ready to day, another to
morrow, a third next day, or in the next week. So that by this first Pleasure, you
have also a little feeling of the first trouble. Which, if you rightly consider, is
to your advantage, because you may the better use your self to the following. And of
how greater State and Quality the person is whom you have chosen, so accordingly this
trouble generally happens to be more.

But the mirth increases abundantly; when, after your indeavours, troubles and
turmoils, you finally see all the friends met together, and you doubt not but the
match will be closed and agreed upon. But be here also a little moderate in your
mirth, because oftentimes the friends handle this
matter like a bargaining; and will lay the mony bags of each side in a balance, as
you may see by the Plate.

In the mean while you may be kissing and slabbering of your Mistris in the next
room; or contriving what’s to be done about the marriage, and keeping of the Wedding;
but perhaps, through the discord of the friends, it will not be long before you are
disturb’d; the differences oft rising so high, that the sound thereof, clatters
through the Walls, into the ears of the Lovers. For many times the Portion of one is
too great, and what’s given with the other is too little; or that the Parents of the
Bridegroom, promise too little with their Son; and the Brides Parents will give too
little with their Daughter. Or else that by some subtle Contract of Matrimony, they
indeavour to make the goods of each side disinheritable, &c. So that it appears
among the friends, as if there could be nothing don in the matter.

And in plain truth, the Parents and friends, who know very well that it is not all
hony in the married estate; see oftentimes that it were better for these two to
remain unmarried, then to bring each other into misery; and can find no grounds or
reasons, but rather to disswade then perswade the young folks to a marriage.

But tho, on each side, they use never such powerfull arguments, to the young people, ’tis to no purpose; for
there’s fire in the flax, and go how it will, it must be quencht. For the maid
thinks, if this match should be broke, who knows but that all the freedom that we
have had with one another, might come to be spread abroad, and then I am ruined for
ever. And the young man, seeing that his Mistris is so constant to him, not hearkning
to the advice of her friends, is so struck to the heart with such fiery flames of
love, that he’s resolved never to leave her, tho he might feed upon bread and water,
or go a begging with her: So, that he saies, Bargain by the Contract of Matrimony for
what you will, nay tho you would write Hell and Damnation, I am contented, and
resolve to sign it: but thinking by himself, with a Will all this may be broken, and
new made again: hardly beleeving, that this fair weather, should be darkned with
black clouds; or that this splendent Serenissimo, would be obstructed by
Eclipses.

But finally, there comes an appearance of the desired pleasure; for the knot is
tied, and the Publick Notary doth at large and very circumstantially write the
Contract of Matrimony, which is signed by both parties. Oh Heavens! this is a burthen
from my heart, and a Milstone removed out of the way. Here’s now right matter for
more then ordinary mirth; all the friends wish the young couple much joy; about goes a health, the good success of the
marriage, and every one wishing them tubs full of blessings, and houses full of
prosperity,

If ev’ry one that wish, did half but give,
How richly this young couple, then might live.

Yet it e’en helps as much as it will; if they get nothing, they lose nothing by
it. And thinking by themselves, you’l in time see what it produces. Then if there be
but one among them who is talkative, and that by drinking merrily the good success of
the approaching marriage, his tongue begins to run; he relates what hapned to him at
the closing of his marriage, keeping of his wedding, and in his married estate; and
commonly the conclusion of his discourse is, that he thought at first he had the
World at will; but then there came this, and then that, and a thousand other
vexatious things, which continually, or for the most part of the time with great
grief and trouble had kept him so much backward, that it was long before he could get
forward in the World.

Well, M^r. Bridegroom, you may freely tickle your fancy to the top, and
rejoice superabundantly, that the Match is concluded; & you have now gotten your
legs into the stocks, and your arms into such desired for Fetters, that nothing but
death it self can unloosen them.

And you, M^rs. Bride, who look so prettily, with such a smirking
countenance; be you merry, you are the Bride; yea
the Bride that occasions all this tripping and dansing; now you shall have a husband
too, a Protector, who will hug and imbrace you, and somtimes tumble and rumble you,
and oftimes approach to you with a morning salutation, that will comfort the very
cockles of your heart. He will (if all falls out well) be your comforter, your
company-keeper, your care-taker, your Gentleman-Usher; nay all what your heart wish
for, or the Heavens grant unto you. He’l be your Doctor to cure your palefac’dness,
your pains in the reins of your back, and at your heart, and all other distempers
whatsoever. He will also wipe of all your tears with kisses; and you shall not dream
of that thing in the night, but he’l let it be made for you by day. And may not then
your Bride-maids ask, why should not you be merry?

But alas you harmless Dove, that think you are going into Paradice; pray tell me,
when you were going to sign the Contract of marriage, what was the reason that you
alter’d so mightily, & that your hand shook so? Verily, though I am no
Astronomer, or caster of Figures; yet nevertheless me-thought it was none of the best
signs; and that one might already begin to make a strange Prognostication from it;
the events whereof would be more certain then any thing that Lilly or any
other Almanack maker ever writ. But we’l let that alone, for in a short time it will
discover it self.

Therefore, Mistress Bride, make you merry, and
since you have gotten your desire to be the Bride before any of your Bridemaids; it
would be unreasonable that you should be troubled now with any other business. And
indeed here’s work enough for the ordering of things that you must trouble your head
with; for the Brides Apparel must be made, and the Stufs, laces, lining, cuffs, and
many other things are yet to be bought. Well, who can see an end of all your
business! There’s one piece of stuf is too light, and another too dark; the third
looks dull and hath no gloss. And see here’s three or four daies gon, and little or
nothing bought yet.

And the worst of all is, that whil’st you are thus busie in contriving, ordering
and looking upon things, you are every moment hindered, & taken off from it, with
a continual knocking at the dore to sollicite one to deliver all sorts of Comfits,
another to deliver the ornaments for the Brides Garland, Flowers, &c, a third to
be Cook, & Pastryman, & so many more, which come one after another thundering
so at the door, that it is one bodies work to let them in, and carry their message to
the Bride.

Oh, call the Bride, time will deceive us! The Semstress, Gorget-maker, and
Starcher, must be sent for, and the linnen must be bought & ordered for the
Bridegrooms shirts, the Brides smocks, Cuffs, Bands; and handkerchifs; & do but
see, the day is at an end again: my brains are almost addle, and nothing goes
forward: For M^rs. Smug said she would
bring linnen, and M^rs. Smooth laces, but neither of them both are yet
come. Run now men and maids as if the Devil were in you; and comfort your selves,
that the Bride will reward you liberally for your pains.

Well, M^rs. Bride, how’s your head so out of order! might not you now do
(as once a Schoolmaster did) hang out the sign of a troubled pate with a Crown upon
it? How glad you’l be when this confusion is once over? could you ever have thought
that there was so much work to be found in it? But comfort your self therewith, that
for these few troublesom daies, you’l have many pleasant nights. And it is not your
case alone, to be in all this trouble, for the Bridegroom is running up and down like
a dog, in taking care that the Banns of Matrimony may be proclaim’d. And now he’s a
running to and again through the City, to see if he can get Bridemen to his mind,
that are capacitated to entertain the Bridemaids and Gentlewomen with pretty
discourses, waiting upon them, & to make mirth & pleasure for them and the
rest of the Company. Besides that he’s taking care for the getting of some good
Canary, Rhenish & French Wines, that those friends which
come to wish the Bride and Bridegroom much joy, may be presented with a delicate
glass of Wine. And principally, that those who are busie about the Brides adornments,
may tast the Brides tears.

But really friends, if you come to tast the
Brides tears now, ’tis a great while too soon: But if you’l have of the right and
unfeigned ones, you must come some months hence.

O Bridegroom, who can but pitty you, that you must thus toil, moil, and run up and
down, and the Jeweller and you have just now mist one another; he is doubtless
chatting with the Bride, and shewing of her some costly Jewels, which perhaps dislike
her ne’r a whit the worse; and what she has then a mind to, you’l find work enough to
disswade her from, let them cost what they will; for she’l let you take care for
that. And it is time enough to be considered on, when the weddings over. For now you
have as much work as you can turn your self to, in getting all your things in a
readiness from the Tailor, Semstress, and Haberdasher. And herewith, alas, you’l find
that oftentimes two or three weeks are consumed in this sort of business, with the
greatest slavery imaginable.

Yet, M^r. Bridegroom, for all these troubles, you may expect this
reward, to have the pleasure of the best place in the Chancel, with a golden Tapistry
laid before you, and for your honour the Organs playing. The going with a Coach to
marry at a Country Town, has not half so much grace, and will not at all please the
Bride: it is therefore requisite to consult with the friends on both sides, who shall
be invited to the wedding, and who not. For it seldom happens, but there is one broil or another about it; and that’s no sooner don,
but there arises a new quarrel, to consider, how richly or frugally the Guests shall
be treated; for they would come off with credit and little charge. To this is
required the advice of a steward, because it is their daily work. And he for favour
of the Cook, Pasterer, and Poulterer (reaping oftentimes his own benefit by it)
orders all things so liberally as he can make the people beleeve that is requisite.
And the Bride thinks, the nobler it is, the better I like it, for I am but once the
Bride. But this matter being dispatcht, there’s another consideration to be taken in
hand, to know how the Bride & Bridegrooms friends shall be plac’d at the Table,
the ordering whereof, many times causes such great disputes, that if they had known
it before, they would rather have kept no Wedding. In somuch that the Bridegroom and
the Bride, with sighing, say to one another, alas, what a thick shell this marriage
nut hath, before one can come to the kernel of it. But Bridegroom to drive these
damps out of your brain, there’s no better remedy then to go along with your Bridemen
to tast the Wedding wine; for there must be sure care taken that it may be of a
delicate tast and relish; Because that which was laid in before, was not so delicious
as is required for such a noble Wedding, where there will be so many curious tasters.
Ha! riva! Look to’t Bride and Bridemaids, you may now expect a jolly Bridegroom and Bridemen, for the Wine-Merchant is such a noble
blade, that none of them all shall escape him, before they have drunk as many
Glasses, as there are hoops upon the Wine-cask that they tasted of.

Adieu all care! the Wedding is at hand, who thinks now of any thing but
superfluity of mirth? Away with all these whining, pining Carpers, who are constantly
talking & prating that the married estate brings nothing but care and sorrow with
it; here, to the contrary, they may see how all minds & intentions are knit
together, to consume and pass away these daies with the most superabounding
pleasures. Away with sorrow. ‘Tis not invited to be among the Wedding guests. Noct
there is nothing else to be thought on, but to help these Lovers that they may enjoy
the kernel of the first pleasure of their marriage.

But really, there’s poor Mally the maid, is almost dead with longing, and thinks
her very heart in pieces, scarcely knowing when the first Wedding-night will be
ended, that she might carry up some water to the young couple, and have a feeling of
those liberal gifts that she shall receive from the Bridegroom and the Bride, for all
her attendance, running and turmoiling. And her thoughts are, that no body has
deserved it better, for by night and by day she waited upon them, and was very
diligent and faithfull in conveyance of their Love-Letters; but all upon fair
promises, having carried her self in the time of their wooing almost like a Bawd to the Bride; for which she never
had in all the time but three gratuities from the Bridegroom,

And now the Bride is in the bed,
The former promises are dead.

Make your self merry amongst the rest of the Wedding guests, so far as is becoming
you: who knows, but that some brave Gentlemans man, Coachman, or neighbors servant,
may fall in love with you; for many times out of one Wedding comes another, and then
you might come to be a woman of good fashion. Udsbud Mally! then you would know, as
well as your Mistress, what delights are to be had in the first Wedding night. Then
you would also know how to discourse of the first Pleasure of marriage, and with the
Bride expect the second.

THE SECOND PLEASURE.

The Woman goes to buy houshold-stuf. The unthankfulness of some of the
Wedding-guests, and thankfulness of others.

ell, young married people, how
glad you must needs be, now the Wedding’s over, and all that noise is at an end? You
may now ly and sleep till the day be far spent! And not only rest your selves
quietly; but, to your desires, in the Art of Love, shew one another the exercise and
handling of Venus Weapons.

Now you may practise an hundred delicious things to please your appetites, &
do as many Hocus Pocus tricks more. Now you may outdo Aretin, and all her
light Companions, in all their several postures. Now you may rejoice in the sweet
remembrance, how sumptuous that you were, in Apparel, meat and drink, and all other
ornaments that my Lady Bride, and Madam Spend-all, first invented and
brought in practice. Now you may tickle your fancies with the pleasures that were
used there, by dansing, maskerading, Fire-works, playing upon Instruments, singing,
leaping, and all other sort of gambals, that youth being back’d with Bacchus strength
uses either for mirth or wantonness.

Folio 30.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

O how merry they were all of ’em! And how
deliciously were all the dishes dress’d and garnisht! What a credit this will be for
the Cook and Steward! Indeed there was nothing upon the Table but it was Noble, and
the Wine was commended by every one. They have all eaten gallantly, & drunk
deliciously. Well, this is now a pleasant remembrance.

And you, O young Woman, you are now both Wife and Mistris your self; you are now
wrested out of the command of your grinning and snarling narrow-soul’d Tutors (those
hellish Curmugions) now you may freely, without controul, do all what you have a mind
to; and receive therewith the friendly imbracings, and kind salutes of your best
beloved. Verily this must needs be a surpassing mirth.

And you, O new made husband, how tumble you now in wantonness! how willingly doth
liberal Venus her self, open her fairest Orchard for you! Oh you have a pleasure,
that those which never tried, can in the least comprehend.

Well, make good use of your time, and take the full scope of your desires, in the
pleasant clasping and caressing of those tender limbs; for after some few daies, it
may be hungry care will come and open the Curtains
of your bed; and at a distance shew you what reckonings you are to expect from the
Jeweller, Gold-smith, Silk-man, Linnen-Draper, Vinter, Cook and others.

But on the t’other side again, you shall have the pleasure to hear your young Wife
every moment sweetly discoursing that she must go with her Sister and her Aunt to buy
houshold-stuf, Down-beds, dainty Plush and quilted Coverlets, with costly Hangings
must be bought: And then she will read to you, her new made Husband, such a stately
Register, that both your joy of heart, and jingling purse shall have a
fellouw-feeling of it.

For your Sweetest speaks of large Venetian Looking-glasses, Chiny-ware, Plush
Chairs, Turkish Tapistry, Golden Leather, rich Pictures, a Service of Plate, a
Sakerdan Press, an Ebbony Tabel, a curious Cabinet and child-bed Linnen cupboard,
several Webs for Napkins and Tabel-cloaths, fine and course linnen, Flanders laces,
and a thousand other things must be bought, too long to be here related: For other
things also that concern the furnishing of the house, they increase every day fresh
in the brains of these loving and prudent Wives.

And when the Wife walks out, she must either have the Maid, or at least the
Semstress, along with her; then neighbour John, that good carefull labourer, must
follow them softly with his wheel-barrow, that the
things, which are bought, may be carefully and immediately brought home.

And at all this, good Man, you must make no wry faces, but be pleasant and merry;
for they are needfull in house-keeping, you cannot be without them; and that mony
must alwaies be certainly ready, get it where you will. Then, saies the Wife, all
this, at least, there must needs be, if we will have any people of fashion come into
our house.

You know your Beloved hath also some Egs to fry, and did bring you a good Portion,
though it consist in immovable Goods, as in Houses, Orchards, and Lands that be
oftentimes in another Shire. Thither you may go then, with your Hony, twice a year,
for the refreshing of your spirits, and taking your pleasure to receive the
House-rents, fruits of the Orchards, and revenues of the Lands. Here every one
salutes you with the name of Landlord; and, according to their Country fashion,
indeavour to receive you with all civilities and kind entertainment. If, with their
Hay-cart, you have a mind to go and look upon the Land, and to be a participator of
those sort of pleasures; or to eat some new Curds, Cream, Gammon of Bacon, and ripe
Fruits, all these things; in place of mony, shall be willingly and neatly disht up to
you.

For here you’l meet with complaints, that by the War the Houses are burnt, the
Orchards destroied, and the growth of the Fields
spoiled! therefore it is not fit that you should trouble the poor people, but think,
this is the use, custom, and fruits of War. If the Impositions and Taxes run high,
the Country Farmer can’t help that; you know that the War costs mony, and it must be
given, or else we should lose all.

At such a time as this, your only mirth must be; that, through this gallant
marriage, you are now Lord of so many acres of Land, so many Orchards, and of so many
dainty Houses and Land. If your mony bags don’t much increase by it at present, but
rather lessen, that most no waies cloud your mirth. Would you trouble your self at
such trivial things, you’d have work enough daily. We cannot have all things so to
our minds in this World. For if you had your Wives Portion down in ready mony, you’d
have been at a stand again, where, without danger, you should have put it out at
interest; fearing that they might play Bankrupt with it. Houses and Lands are alwaies
fast, and they will pay well, when the War is done.

Therefore you must drive these vapors out of your head, and make your self merry,
with the hearing that your friends commend the entertainment they have had to the
highest; and that two or three daies hence; the merry Bridemen and Bridemaids, with
some of the nearest acquaintance, will come a la grandissimo to give you
thanks for all the respect & civilities that
you have so liberally bestowed upon them; which will be done then with such a
friendly and affectionate heart, that it will be impossible for you, but you must
invite them again to come and sup with you in the evening, and so make an addition to
the former Pleasure; by which means pleasantness, mirth, and friendship, is planted
and advanced among all the friends and acquaintance.

‘Tis true, you’l be sure to hear that there were some at the Wedding who were
displeased, for not being entertained according to their expectations; and because
their Uncle, a new married Niece, and some other friends were not seated in their
right places; that M^rs. Leonora had a jole-pate to wait upon her;
and M^r. Philip an old Beldam; M^r. Timothy
was forced to wait upon a young snotty-nose; and that Squire Neefer could not
sit easily, and M^rs. Betty’s Gorget was rumbled; and that
Mal, and Peg Stones, and Dol Dirty-buttocks, were almost
throng’d in pieces; and could hardly get any of the Sweetmeats; but you must not at
all be troubled with this, for ’tis a hard matter to please every body. ‘Tis enough
that you have been at such a vast charge, and presented them with your Feast.

Truly, they ought to have been contented & thankfull to the highest degree;
and what they are unsatisfied with needed not to have cost you so much mony; for if
you had left them all at home, you could have had
no worse reward, but a great deal less charge. Comfort your self with this, that when
it happens again, you will not buy ingratitude at so high a rate. ‘Tis much better to
invite them at two or three several times before hand, and entertain them with a
merry glass of Wine, up and away; and then invite a small company which are better to
govern and satisfied.

‘Tis a great deal more pleasure for you, to see your Wives friends animate one
another, to come, a fortnight after the Wedding, and surprize you; with shewing their
thankfulness and satisfaction for the respect they have received from you; and that
they are alwaies desirous to cultivate the friendship, by now and then coming to give
you a visit.

This is here again a new joy! and as long as you keep open Table and Cellar for
them, that reception will keep all discontent from growing among them. Yes, and it
will please your Wife too, extraordinary well.

And by thus doing, you will not be subject to (as many other men are) your Wives
maundring that you entertained her friends so hungrily and unhandsomly; but, for
this, you shall be both by her, and her friends, beloved and commended in the highest
degree: Yea it will be an incouragement that they in the same manner, will entertain
your friends like an Angel, and be alwaies seeking to keep a fair correspondence among them. So that in the Summer time, for an
afternoons collation you’l see a Fruit-dish of Grapes, Nuts, and Peaches prepared for
you; which cold Fruits must then be warm’d with a good glass of Wine. And in the
Winter, to please your appetite, a dish of Pancakes, Fritters, or a barrel of
Oisters; but none of these neither will be agreeable without a delicate glass of
Wine. Oh quintessence of all mirth! Who could not but wish to get such Aunts, such
Cousins, & such Bridemen and Bridemaids in their marriage?

Therefore, if you meet with one or t’other of your Cousins, press him to go home
with you, to refresh himself with a glass of Wine; O it will be extreamly pleasing to
your Wife, and a double respect paid to him; because you bring him to a collation
among other Cousins, and pretty Gentlewomen, where the knot of friendship and
familiarity is renewed and faster twisted. And who knows, if you bring in a
Batchelor, but there may perhaps arise a new marriage, which would be extraordinarily
pleasing to your Wife; for there is nothing more agreeable to the female sex, then
that they may be instrumental in helping their Bridemaids to husbands. And thus you
will see a double increase of your Minions, and your Wife get more friends to
accompany her, and drive fancies out of her head.

If your Wife should fail in her choice of
houshold-stuff, and other sort of those appurtenances; doubt not but these will be
prudent School-Mistresses for her, if she be unexperienc’d, to counsel and advise her
to buy of the richest and newest mode, and what will be neatest, and where to be
bought. Oh these are so skilfull in the art of ordring things, that you need not
dispute with your Wife about the hanging of a Picture above the Chimney-mantel! for
they’l presently say, there’s nothing better in that place then large China dishes;
and that Bed-stead must be taken down, and another set up in the place with curious
Curtains and Vallians, and Daslles: And thus, they will deliver themselves, like a
Court full of wise Counsellors, for the pleasure and instruction of your Beloved.
Well, what could you wish for more? D’ye talk of mony? Pish, that’s stamp’d with
hammers: give it liberally; the good Woman knows how and where to lay it out. If
there be but little mony by the hand; be silent of that, it might happen to disturb
your Dear, and who knows wherein it may do her harm. It is not the fashion that
Women, especially young married ones, should take care for that. ‘Tis care enough for
her, if she contrive and consider what must be bought, and what things will be most
suitable together. For this care is so great, that she never wakens in the night, but
she thinks on’t; yea it costs her many an hours
rest; therefore ought not to be so lightly esteemed.

And now, O young husband, since you are come to the first step of the School to
exercise your patience; it is not fit that you should already begin to grumble and
talk how needfull it is to be sparing and thrifty; that Merchandising and trading is
mighty dead; that monies is not to be got in; and that here and there reckonings and
bills must be paid: O no! you must be silent, tho you should burst with discontent.
For herewith, perhaps, the whole house would be out of order; and you might get for
an answer, How! have I married then a pittifull poor Bridegroom? This would be sad to
hear.

Go therefore to School by Pythagoras to learn silence; and to look upon all
things in the beginning with patience; to let your Wife do her own pleasure; and to
mix hony with your words. Then you shall possess the quintessence of this Pleasure
fully, and with joyfull steps enter upon the folowing.

THE THIRD PLEASURE.

The young couple walk daily abroad, being entertained and treated by all their
friends and acquaintance; and then travell into the Country for their
pleasure.

f it be true that there is a
Mountain of Mirth and pleasure for young married people to ascend unto, these are
certainly the finest and smoothest conductors to it; that, because it was impossible
to invite every one to the Wedding, this sweet Venus must be led abroad, and
shewed to all her husbands friends & acquaintance: yea, all the World must see
what a pretty couple they are, and how handsomly they agree together. To which end
they trick and prick themselves daily up in their best apparel; garnishing both the
whole city and streets with tatling and pratling; & staring into the houses of
all their acquaintance to see whether they are looked at.

Folio 52.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

Do but see what a mighty and surpassing mirth!
for they hardly can go ten or twelve furlongs but they constantly meet and are
saluted by some of their acquaintance, wishing them all health, happiness and
prosperity; or by others invited to come in, and are treated according as occasion
presents, wishing them also much joy in their married estate; Yea the great Bowl is
rins’d, and about goes a brimmer to the good prosperity of the young couple. Well,
thinks the young woman, what a vast difference there is between being a married woman
& a maid! How every one receives & treats you! What respect and honour every
one shews you! How you go daily in all your gallantry taking pleasure! And how every
where you are fawn’d upon, imbrac’d and kist, receiving all manner of friendship! It
is no wonder that all womankind are so desirous of marriage, and no sooner lose their
first husbands, but they think immediately how to get a second? Oh, saith she, what a
fulness of joy there is in the married estate, by Virginity! I resolve therefore to
think also upon my Bridemaids, and to recommend them where ever there is
occasion.

And this is the least yet, do but see! what for greater pleasure! for every foot
you are invited out here & there to a new treat, that is oft-times as noble and
as gallant as the Wedding was, and are plac’d alwaies at the upper end of the Table.
If next day you be but a little drousie, or that the head akes; the husband knows a present remedy to settle the brain; and the
first thing he saith, is, Come lets go to see Master or Mistriss such a one, and walk
out of Town to refresh our selves, or else go and take the air upon the Thames
with a Pair of Oars. Here is such a fresh mirth again that all Lambeth, the
Bankside, and Southwark shakes with it. Oh that Apollo would but
drive his horses slowly, that the day might be three hours longer; for it is too soon
to depart, and that for fear of a pocky setting of the Watch. So that its every day
Fair-time. Well, who is so blind that he cannot see the abundant pleasures of
marriage?

To this again, no sooner has the young couple been some few daies at rest, and
begin to see that the invitements decline; but the young woman talks of going out of
Town together, and to take their pleasures in other Towns and Cities, first in the
next adjacent places, and then to others that ly remoter; for, because she never was
there, and having heard them commended to be such curious and neat places, she hath a
great mind to see Oxford and Cambridge.

Yea, and then she saith, my dear, we must go also to see York,
Glocester and Bristol, and take our pleasures those waies; for I have
heard my Fathers Book keeper often say, that it is very pleasant travelling thither,
and all things very cheap. And when he began to relate any thing of Kent, and its
multiplicity of fruit, my very heart leapt up for joy; thinking to my self, as soon as I am married, I will immediately be pressing
my husband that we may go thither; because it seem’d to me almost incredible. And
then again he would sometimes relate of Herefordshire what delicious Syder and
Perry is made there, which I am a great lover of; truly Hony, we must needs go that
way once, that I may say I have satiated my self with it, at the Fountain-head. Ah,
my dearest, let us go thither next week.

It is most certain that the Good-man hath no mind at all to be thus much longer
out of his house, & from his vocation; by reason he is already so much behind
hand with his loss of time in Wooing, Wedding, Feasting and taking pleasure; but
alas, let him say what he will, he cannot disswade her from it.

You may as soon retort the wind,
As make a woman change her mind.

In the night she dreams on’t, and by day she talks on’t, and alwaies concludes
this to be her certain rule. “The first year won’t come again. If we don’t take some
pleasure now, when shall we do it! Oh, my Dear, a year hence we may have a child,
then its impossible for me to go any where, but I shall be tied like a Dog to a
chain: And truly, why should not we do it as well as they & they did; for they
were out a month or two, and took their pleasures to the purpose? my Mother, or my Cousin will look to our house; come let us
go also out of Town! For the first year will not come again.”

Well, what shall the good man do? if he will have quietness with his wife, he must
let her have her will, or else she will be daily tormenting of him. And to give her
harsh language, he can’t do that, for he loves her too well. His father also taught
him this saying, for a marriage lesson, Have a care of making the first
difference. If he speak unkindly to her, his Love might be angry, and then that
would occasion the first difference, which he by no means willingly would be guilty
of; for then these Pleasures would not have their full swing.

Well, away they go now out of Town: But, uds lid, what a weighty trunk they send
the Porter with to the Carriers! For they take all their best apparel with them, that
their friends in the Country, may see all their bravery. And besides all this, there
must be a riding Gown, and some other new accoutrements made for the journy, or else
it would have no grace.

Now then, away they go, every one wishing them all health and prosperity upon
their journy, & so do I.

But see! they are hardly ridden ten mile out of Town, before the young woman
begins to be so ill with the horses jolting, that she thinks the World turns
topsie-turvy with her. Oh she’s so ill, that she fears she shall vomit her very heart up. Then down lights her husband, to take her
off, and hold her head, and is in such a peck of troubles, that he knows not which
way to turn or wind himself. Wishing that he might give all that he’s worth in the
World to be at a good Inn. And she poor creature falling into a swoon, makes him look
as if he had bepist himself, & though he sighs and laments excessively she hears
him not; which occasions him such an extremity of grief that he’s ready to tear the
hair off of his head. But the quamishness of her stomack beginning to decline, she
recovers; and rising, they walk for a little space softly forwards; the good man
thinking with himself how he shall do to get his dearly beloved to an Inn, that she
may there rest her distempered body. And then getting her up again, they ride very
softly forwards, to get to the end of their journy.

Truly, I must confess, that amongst the rest of the Pleasures of marriage, this is
but a very sorry one. But stay a little, yonder me thinks I see the Steeple, we shall
be there presently; the little trouble and grief you have had, will make the
salutations you receive, and the scituation of the place seem so much the pleasanter.
And these dainty green Meadows will be a delicate refreshment. You’l find your
stomack not only sharpned, but also curiously cleansed of all sorts of filthy and
slimy humours. And you light not sooner from your horse then your appetite is ready to entertain what ever comes before you: The good
Man in the mean while is contriving at whose house he shall first whet his knife, and
where he thinks his poor wearied wife will receive the best entertainment and
caresses, to drive out of her imaginations the troubles and wearisomness of her
journy; which will the easier be dispensed with, when she walks out to see the
rarities of the place, and to visit your Cousins and relations. And so much the more,
because every one will be wishing the new married couple much joy, receiving them
kindly, and doing them all manner of pleasures and civilities: which I assure you is
no small matter of mirth.

But every thing must have an end. It is therefore now very meet to speak of
removing to some other City. But let the husband say what he will of travelling by
horseback, she is struck on that ear with an incurable deafness.

They must have a Coach to themselves, and the great Trunk must go along with them,
or else the whole journy would have no grace. Neither would it be respect enough for
them in the presence of so many good friends and acquaintance, unless the Coach come
to take them up at the dore. And it must be done to. Here now one is returning thanks
for th’entertainment, and the other for their kind visit, and withall wish the young
couple that all content, pleasure, and delight may further attend them upon their journy, &c. Then it is Drive on Coachman, and
away fly the poor jades through the streets, striking fire out of the liveless
stones, as if Pluto just at the same time were upon the flight with his Proserpina
through the City.

But, O new married couple, what price do you little think this mirth will stand
you at? What man is there in the World, that hath ever an eye in his head, but must
needs see, that if he tarry out long, this must be the ready way to Brokers-Hall. Yet
nevertheless I confess you must do it, if you intend to have any peace or quietness
with your new wife.

These are the first fruits and pleasures of marriage, therefore you must not so
much as consider, nay hardly think, of being so long from home, though in the mean
while all things there is going also the ready way to destruction; for it is the
fashion, at such times, that maid, man, and all that are in your service, to act
their own parts; and so merry they are that they possess their own freedom, and keep
open Table, that the whole neighbourhood hears their laughter. Ask the neighbours
when you come home, and you will quickly hear, that by them was no thought of care or
sorrow; but that they have plaied, ranted and domineer’d so that the whole
neighbourhood rung with it; and how they have played their parts either with some
dried Baker, pricklouse Tailor, or smoaky Smith, they themselves know best.

Down goes the spit to the fire; the pudding pan
prepared; and if there be either Wine, Beer or any thing else wanting; though the
Cellar be lockt; yet, by one means or another, they find out such pretty devices to
juggle the Wine out of the Cask, nay and Sugar to boot too; that their inventions
surpass all the stratagems that are quoted by the Author of the English Rogue; of
which I could insert a vast number, but fear that it would occasion an ill example to
the unlearned in that study. Howsoever they that have kept house long, and had both
men & maid-servants, have undoubtedly found both the truth and experience hereof
sufficiently. And how many maids, in this manner, have been eased of that heavy
burthen of their maidenheads, is well known to the whole World.

These are also some of the first fruits and delights of marriage; but if they were
of the greatest sort, they might be esteemed and approved of to be curable, or a
remedy found for prevention. Yet let them be of what state and condition they will,
every one feels the damage and inconvenience thereof, ten times more then it is
outwardly visible unto him, or can comprehend. For if you saw it you would by one or
other means shun or prevent it. But now, let it be who it will, whether Counsellor,
Doctor, Merchant, or Shopkeeper; the one neglects his Clients Suit, the other his
Patients, the third his Negotiation & Trade, and the fourth his Customers; none of them all oft-times knowing from whence it arises
that their first years gain is so inconsiderable. For above the continual running on
of house-rent, the neglect and unnecessary expensive charge of servants; you consume
your self also much mony in travelling and pleasure; besides the peril and uneasiness
that you suffer to please and complaite your new married Mistris. O miserable
pleasure!

But you will be sure to find the greatest calamity of this delight, as soon as you
return home again; if you only observe the motions of your wife, for whose pleasure
and felicity you have been so long from home. Alas she is so wearied and tired with
tumbling and travelling up & down, that she complains as if her back were broke,
and it is impossible for her to rise before it is about dinner time; nay and then
neither hardly unless she hear that there is something prepared suitable to her
appetite. If any thing either at noon or night is to be prepared and made ready, the
husband must take care and give order for the doing of it; the good woman being yet
so weary, that she cannot settle her self to it; yea it is too much for her to walk
about her chamber, her very joints being as it were dislocated with the
troublesomness of the journy.

In the mean while the servants they ly simpring, giggling, and laughing at one
another, doing just what they list, and wishing that their Mistris might be alwaies in that temper, then they were sure to
have the more freedom to themselves: the which, though done by stealth, they make as
bad as may be: and yet hardly any man, tho he had the eyes of Argolus can
attrap them; for if by chance you should perceive any thing, they will find one
excuse or another to delude you, and look as demure as a dog in a halter, whereby the
good man is easily pacified and satisfied for that time.

And these things are more predominant, when there is a cunning slut of a Maid,
that knows but how to serve and flatter her Mistris well, getting her by that means
upon her side: in such cases you’l generally see two maids where one might serve, or
else a Chair-woman; the one to do all the course work, the other to run of errands
and lend a helping hand (if she hath a mind to it) that all things may the sooner be
set in order; & she then with her Mistris may go a gadding.

And because Peggy & her Mistris, do in this manner, as it were, like a Jack in
a box, jump into each others humour, the good woman may take her rest the better; for
she hath caretakers enough about the house. And if the husband, coming from the
Change or other important affair, seems to be any waies discontented, that all things
lies stragling about the house, & are not set in order, presently crafty Peggy
finds a fit expedient for it with complaining that her Mistris hath had such an insufferable pain in her head and in her
belly, that it was beyond imagination; & also she could get no ease for her,
unless she had prepared her some butter’d Ale, and a little mul’d Sack; and this is
the reason why all things were not so ready as they ought to have been.

Herewith the good mans mouth is stopt. If he begins afterwards to speak with his
wife concerning th’unnecessary Chair-women; his answer is, prithee Sweetheart, don’t
you trouble your self with those things, leave that to me, I’l manage that to the
best advantage; men have no understanding about house-keeping; & it is most
proper for a woman to have the governance of her Maids. And also Sweetheart, if there
be now and then occasion for a semstress or a Chair-woman, they are things of so
small importance, that they are not worth the speaking of.

Now, if he will have peace and quietness at home, this reply must give him full
satisfaction; and tho he be never so patient, viewing all things at a distance; yet
the maids behind his back, that their Mistris may more then overhear it, dare call
him, a Tom Peep in the pot, or Goodman busiebody. And before dinner is
fully done, he must hear Peg asking her Mistris; Mistris, wont you please
forsooth, to go by and by and give Mistris Moody a visit, or discourse a
little with Madam Elenor? As long as you have
nothing to do, what need you ty your self to any thing? Pray tell her that story that
the North Country Gentleman related, which you laught at yesterday so heartily. Madam
Elenor will admire at it. And I’m sure she hath something that she will relate
unto you. Herewith the good Mistris begins to get a drift, and away she goes with
Peg out of dores. Let it go then as it will with the house keeping.

This is also no small pleasure, when the Mistris and the Maid alwaies agree so
lovingly together! then the husband need not go any more out of Town to please his
wives fancy; for she can now find pleasure enough by her old acquaintance sweet
Mistris Moody, and courteous Madam Elenor.

Do but see now, O Lovers, what multiplicity of roses, and thistles there are in
the very Porch of the Wilderness of Marriage; you may think then what the middle and
end must be.

Folio 52.
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

THE FOURTH PLEASURE.

The Wife goes a pratling by her Neighbours; complaining of her barrenness, and
takes Physick for it.

erily it is a great pleasure
for the new married couple, that they have been up and down taking their pleasure,
and have been feasted by all their acquaintance.

Now they have travelled from place to place, and taken a full view of what friends
and relations each other hath; and seen also the great difference there is in the
ornaments, neatness, manners and deportments of each place, and also how pleasant the
Hills, Dales and Meadows lie, with their silver streaming
Brooks; but most particularly, how neatly and compleatly one may, for their mony, be
treated. Yet come finally to a consideration within themselves of the weakness and
vanity of this pleasure; perceiving that all those who possess it, at last conclude
it burthensom, and have a longing desire to be at home again in a frugal management of house-keeping at their own
Tables.

Verily, this is that happy hour of pleasure that the new married man hath been
long seeking for; to the end he might once be freed from all such idle expences, and
be again carefully looking after his affairs and vocation. Now he begins to hope that
all things will come into a handsom posture; also not doubting, but that his wife
will, having had her full swing and hearts content of treats and all other sorts of
pleasures, begin like a House-Wife, to order her self to take some care for the
concerns of the Family, which indeed oft-times falls out so, to the great joy,
profit, and tranquility of the good man.

But can it be possible that this sweet pleasure should be so disht up, without
some bitter sauce of discontent? O kind Husband, if you will beleeve that, then you
may well think the whole state and term of your marriage to be a Paradice upon earth;
and that you have already got footing in the high-way to all fullness of pleasures
and contentments: Yet tarry a few daies, and then experience will give you a better
understanding of further pleasures.

For the new Wife is no sooner come to be at quiet; but she begins to complain,
that she can hardly addict her self to this new way of life; that it appears very
strange and odly to her to converse with a new Maid, by reason she must be telling her this thing, and commanding her the
t’other; and have a regard of all what she does, which are things that she before
never used to trouble her self with; and that it is such a trouble to her to be out
of her Parents house, in a strange dwelling place: Nay, this oft-times surges so
high, that the good man hath his hands full of work to comfort her, and to talk these
foolish fancies out of her noddle; and verily, unless he can bridle her frivolous
humour with some pleasant discourses, and dry up her tears with no small number of
kisses; oh then he’l be sadly put to’t. And if this all falls out well, before six
weeks are at an end, there’l appear another dark cloud again, to eclipse this
splendant Sunshine.

For behold, within a very small time the good woman begins to scrape acquaintance,
and get some familiarity with her neighbours, which increaseth from day to day more
and more; nay oftentimes it comes to that height, she’s better to be found among her
neighbours, then at home in her own family. Here she sees Mistris Wanton playing with
her child that is a very pretty Babe. There she sees Mistres Breedwell making
ready her Child-bed linnens and getting of her Clouts together. Yonder Mistris
Maudlen complains that she doth not prove with child; & then Mistres
Young-at-it brags how nearly she could reckon from the very bed-side. Oh then
she thinks I have been married this three months,
and know nothing at all of these things; it is with me still as if I were yet a maid:
What certainly should be the reason thereof?

This is the first occasion that begets a great disturbance in the brain-pan and
imagination; and wo be to the good man, if he doth not understand his Py-work well!
Then to the end she may hear the better how things goes; she inquires very earnestly
amongst her acquaintance what caresses they receive from their husbands; and most
shamlesly relates what hath passed between her and her husband, twixt the curtains,
or under the Rose; which she doth to that purpose, that she may hear whether her
husband understands his work well, and whether he doth it well, and oft enough; and
also whether he be fully fit for the employ, &c. for the verification whereof the
Councel of women bring so many compleat relations, that it is a shame to think, much
more to speak of them.

Whosoever she speaks with every one pities her, and gives her their advice: And
the best sort will at the least say to her, I would oftentimes treat my husband with
such sort of spices as were good for my self, viz. Oisters, Egs, Cox-combs,
sweet breads, Lam-stones, Caveer, &c. and counsell him every morning to go to the
Coffe-house and drink some Chocolate; & above all things advise him to desist
from Tabacco and drying things, or any other things that are too cooling for the
kidneys. And then I would many times my self by
dallying with him, and some other pretty Wanton postures, try to provoke him to it;
whereby he should surely know that it was neither your coolness, nor want of desire
that might be blamed in it; but rather alwaies confess, that you had sufficiently
done your indeavour.

Who will doubt but that she puts this advice, in operation? O happy man, who art
now every foot treated with some new sorts of kickshaws at your Table; and have free
leave to frequent the Coffy-house, which other women grumble and mumble at. And
besides all this, you find that your dearest embraceth you as if you were an Angel,
and shews you a thousand other friendly entertainments that are beyond imagination to
express: it is alwaies in the evening, my Dear come to bed: and in the morning, pray
Love ly a little longer. These are most certainly very great pleasures.

But if the Woman marks that this helps not, and that all things remain in the old
posture, then she begins to mump and maunder at her husband; vaunting much of her own
fitness, and not a little suspecting her husbands; oftentimes calling him a Fumbler,
a dry-boots, and a good man Do-little, &c.

This makes him look as if he had beshit him self. And though he never so much
indeavours to vindicate himself; and also to perswade her from the reasons and
examples given by several learned Doctors;
Culpepper; the Queens Midwife; and some others of his friends and acquaintance that
he demonstrates unto her; it is all but wind. She still complains, I must have a
Child, or else I shall run distracted.

And this manner of frantickness hath so vehemently struck into her brains, that
the very house seems to burn over her head: Insomuch that she’s no sooner risen from
her bed or from the Table, but immediately she goeth a gadding amongst the
neighbours; and takes other peoples children in her arms, kissing and slabbring of
them so unmeasurably, as if she would almost devour them with love; nay she useth
more simple and childish actions with them, then ever own mothers have done. By which
means the children have many times as great an affection for their neighbour, as they
have for their own Father and Mother.

This gadding out of dores doth undoubtedly a little trouble her husband: But when
he begins to consider, that his wife by this means knows how to handle, and make much
of children; and then again, that she thus beforehand learns it for nothing; it must
of necessity be no less then a great pleasure for him. And so much the more, whilest
she is pratling with her neighbour, and playing with her child; he is freed from the
curse of hearing her sighs and complaints to have a child. For she’s no sooner within
the dores, but she talks of her neighbours child,
and wishes with the loss of all that shes worth in the World that she had such a one
too; which continues alwaies so long, that finally she bursts out into the like
former frenzy against her husband: see there I must have a child also, or else I
shall run distracted.

But what remedy? which way he turns or winds himself, he finds no means or way how
to pacifie his wife. And therefore thinks it best himself to take th’advice of
Doctor, and most especially with that French Doctor, who is so renowned for his skill
of making many men and women that before were barren and unfruitfull to conceive
children: Insomuch that they do now every year precisely bear a young son, or a
daughter, yea somtimes two at a time. It is thereby also very necessary that the good
woman her self consult with some experienced Midwives, and old Doctresses; to the
end, that those distempers which are the occasion of barrenness, might be the better
removed and taken away.

To this end there are almost as many Boxes and Gally-pots brought together, as
would near upon furnish an Apothecaries shop: Then to work they go with smearing,
anointing, chafing, infusing, wherewith (as they term it) the good woman is to be
made fresh and fit; but they make the bed and whole house so full of stink and
vapours, that it may be said they rather stop the good and wholesom pores and other
parts of the body; then to open those that were
stopt and caused Distempers.

But in the conclusion we find it to be both fruitless and miserable, where the
good woman goes to seek it by th’Apothecary; even as her husband doth out of the
Oister and Eg-shels.

And if this will not do now; where shall the poor man hide his head next? What
shall he do more to please and pacifie her? He thinks upon all the ways and means
possible to entertain her to content. If she will have costly things, he will buy
them for her; and dissimulately saith that all what she practiseth for her content,
is his only pleasure and delight: yea, although her pride and ambition many times in
several things flies too high, and oft-times also doth not happen to be very suitable
with the constitution of the cash; he dares in no wise contradict her, for he fears
that she will presently be at variance with him again: And thinks in the interim,
whilest her mind hangs upon these things, she forgets her maunding and mumbling for a
child. Still hoping that there will come one happy night, that may crown his earnest
desires with fructivity; this it is that makes him that he dares not anger her or
give her a sour countenance; fearing that if she might have conceived, that would be
the means of turning the tide.

To be short, it is his only and greatest delight to see that his wife is well
satisfied and receiveth her content and pleasure; which is very hard to be practised, so long as she is not with
child.

But O what a joy there will be if he may be but once so happy as to hit that mark!
How will the first day of her reckoning to ly in stand in his Almanack, as if it were
printed with a red Letter! Well young people, be contented; Long look’d for comes at
last to the satisfaction of the Master.

THE FIFTH PLEASURE.

The young Woman proves with Child, and longs.

he old Proverb tels us, that
after the sour comes the sweet; and I find, jolly couple, that it is so with you
also; for I hear finally that your wife is big with child: Well what a Pleasure is
that! Certainly, now you see that all your Doctoring and medicining hath been to some
purpose, and now you feel also that all herbs were made for some good effects.

How happy a thing it is that you have made use of a learned Doctor, and an
experienced Midwife. Now is the only time to be very carefull, for fear the least
accident might turn the tide with the young woman, and so she get a mischance, or
some other sad mishap; and a mischance is worse for her than a true Child-bearing;
for that weakens nature abundantly, and oftentimes brings with it several sad
consequences, & Thus the women talk.

Folio 85.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

But you, O noble Champion, who have behaved
your self so gallantly; continue now to reap the further conquests of your honour.
Look not at any small matters; and most especially if you hope or desire to gain the
principal prize of your pleasure. For be assured, that you must suffer much, and see
through a perspective glass all things at a distance; because you never before saw
your wife in so gallant a state and condition as she now is in; and therefore you
must cherish and preserve her much more then formerly you have done. If you hear her
often grunt and groan, mumble and chide, either with the men or maid-servants; nay,
though it were with your own self, you must pass it by, not concerning your self at
it; and imagine that you do it for the respect you bear your wife, but not by
constraint; for it is common with big-bellied women to do so.

But most especially rejoice in your self, if this grunting and groaning happen
only by day time; because then you may somtimes avoid it, or divertise your self with
other company. Yet by night generally shall the good woman be worst of all? therefore
be sure to provide your self well with pure Aniseed, Clove, Cinamon-waters, and good
sack, that you may therewith be ready to strengthen and assist her. For it will often
happen that when you are in your best and first Sleep, that your dearest wil waken
you and complain of pain at her heart, of dizziness and great faintness; then all
what is in the house must be stirring, and you
your self also, though it be never so cold, out of the bed you must with all the
speed possible. Comfort your self herewith, that this was one of the pleasures which
you got with your wife, though it was not set down in the Contract of marriage.

Now for this again you alwaies receive the honour, that when you are invited with
her to any place at a treat, the best that is upon the Table shall be presented to
the big-bellied woman: Yea if she long or have a desire to any thing; immediately
every one that observes it, are ready to serve her with it; nay, though there were
never so little in the Dish, her longing must be fully satisfied, if no body else
should so much as tast of it. And by this means oftentimes the good woman is so ill
and disturbed, that she is forced to rise from the Table, and falls from one
faintness into another; which for civilities sake, is then baptized, that she hath
sat too high or been throng’d, or that the room being so full, the breath of the
people offended her.

And though she perceives that this very food makes her so ill; yet for the most
part she will be so choice and so dainty, that she seldom knows her self what she
will eat or hath a mind to; but generally it tends to some thing or other that is
delicate: Upon this manner again, according to the former custom, she tumbles it in
till she is sick with it; and if any one looks but
very wishly at her; immediately another saies to them; she must eat for two, nay
perhaps for three.

And not only that in this manner she grows so delicate and gluttonous; but is
thereby so easie and lazy, that she can hardly longer indure her sowing cushion upon
her lap. Also sitting is not good for her, for fear the child thereby might receive
some hindrance and an heartfullness. Therefore she must often walk abroad; and to
that end an occasion is found to go every day a pratling and gossiping to this and
then to another place; in the mean while leaving her husband without a wife, and the
family without a mistris.

Then in conclusion this falls also burthensom to her, (as it is generally with all
things that are too frequently used) then she will be for spurring you up to walk
abroad with her, that she may get all sorts of fruits and other fopperies that the
season of the year affords; and at the first baiting-place she’s for some Cream with
sugar, stewd prunes, and a bottle of sider or perry; and thus abroad to spend much,
and at home neglect more.

If she have then gone somthing far, she is so excessive weary with it, that if her
life must ly at stake, she cannot set one foot further. Herewith is the poor man
absolutely put to a stand: ride she may not, or all the fat would be in the fire; and
they are so deep in the Country that there is
somtimes neither Coach nor boat to be had.

And if you should happen to be where a River is, there’s never a boat to be had;
but if there should be one, then you must be subject to humour the churlish Ferry
man, who seeing the necessity of the occasion, and that you are able to pay for it,
will have what price he pleases. And somtimes again you are timorous your self to
hazard it, because many women are very fearfull upon the water.

But indeed, if by this unhappy occasion, a good expedient may be found to please
your dearly beloved, it is no small joy. Well then make your self jocund herewith, to
the end that other troubles may not so much molest and disturb you.

You may also be very well assured, that your wife no sooner comes to be a little
big-bellied, but she receives the priviledge to have all what she hath a mind to
& that is called Longing. And what husband can be so stern or barbarous that he
will deny his wife at such a time what she longs for? especially if it be a true love
of a woman, you must never hinder her of her longing; for then certainly the child
would have some hindrance by it.

Forasmuch then as is necessary that you alwaies seek to avoid and prevent this,
you must observe, that all women when they are with child, do fall commonly from one
longing to another: And then the providing and
buying of that for them, must be as great a pleasure to you as it is to them in the
receiving and use of it; and that not alone for theirs, but your childs sake also.
And truly he that will or cannot suit himself to this humour, will be very unhappy,
because he shall not then receive the full scope and freedom of this pleasure.

It is also most certain that these longing desires doth transport their
imaginations from one finical thing to another: If it be in the summer, then they
long for China Oranges, Sivil Lemmons, the largest Asparagus, Strawberries with wine
and sugar, Cherries of all sorts, and in like manner of Plums, and these they must
have their fill of: And then when they have gotten through the continuance their full
satisfaction thereof; then be assured they begin to long for some great Peaches and
Apricocks; And though they be never so scarce and dear, yet the woman must not lose
her longing, for the child might get a blemish by it.

If then Apples and Pears begin to grow ripe, you have the same tune to sing again;
for she is possessed with a new longing desire as bad, as if it were a Quotidian Ague
in all the joints of her body; and whatsoever comes new to her sight, creates in her
a fresh longing. If she gets one hour curious Catherine Pears, Pippins, or
Russetings, the next she hath a mind to Filberds; and then an hour or two later Wall
nuts and Grapes fall into her thoughts; do what
you will there’s no help for it, her longing must be satisfied, let it go as it will,
or cost what it will.

And this her longing leads her from one thing to another, of all what the richness
of the summer, or liberality of the harvest, out of their superfluities pour down
upon us. Insomuch that the good man wishes a thousand times over that he might once
be rid of these terrible charges and great expence.

But alas what helps it? there’s no season of the year but gives us some or other
new fruits that the women have alwaies a new longing desire to. And if it be in the
Winter, then they long for juicy Pomgranates, new Wine upon the must, with Chesnuts;
then for Colchester Oisters; then again for Pancakes and Fritters; and indeed for a
thousand several sorts of such toys and fancies as do but appear before their longing
imaginations. And oftentimes it is no real longing, for that were then pardonable,
but a liquorish delicate desire that they are sick of; as may be seen by those who
simply imagine themselves to be with child, are alwaies talking of this and t’other
dainty that they long after. And that which is worst of all, is that both they and
those that are really with child, long commonly for that which is scarcest and
hardest to be gotten: Yea in the very middle of winter they oftentimes long to have a
Greengoose or young Chickens; which in some places are very hard to be got, and not without paying excessive dear for
them.

This longing being so satisfied; immediately arises another, and nothing will
serve but Meats, and several sorts of Comfits. Yea how often happens it, though it
rain, snow, and is very slippery, that both the husband and the maid, if never so
dark and late in the night, must trot out and fetch candied Ginger, dried Pears,
Gingerbread, or some such sort of liquorish thing. And what is to be imagined, that
can be cried about in the streets by day time, but her longing before hath an
appetite prepared for it?

Yea through an excessive eating of raw fruits, and feeding upon multiplicities of
sweet-meats; to fulfill their longing; it turns to a griping of the guts and
overflowing of the Gall, which again occasion Cholick, & manytimes other
lamentable pains. Here is then another new work. There the Doctor must be presently
fetcht, and according to what he pleases to order, either a Glister must be set, or
some other Physick taken for it.

But by reason these things are not so pleasant to the good woman as the foregoing
liquorish delicacies; she thinks it best that the Midwife be sent for, because she
hath a great deal better knowledge touching the infirmities of women then the
Doctors: Then she is fetcht, and having done the first part of her office, she gives
her good comfort; and orders her to take only some
of the best white Wine, simper’d up with a little Orange-peel, well sweetned with
sugar, and so warm drunk up; and then anoint your self here, and you know where, with
this salve; and for medicines [that are most to be found in Confectionres or
Pasterers shops] you must be sure to make use of those, then your pain will quickly
lessen. You must not neglect also ofttimes to eat a piece of bread and butter with
either Caroway or Aniseed Comfits; use also Cinnamon; the first expels wind, and the
second strengthens the heart; and they are both good for the woman and the child. Be
sure also to drink every morning and every evening a glass of the best sack, for that
strengthens the fruit of the womb, and occasions you a good quickness, &c.

Who will doubt, but that she obeys the orders of the Midwife, much better then
that of the Doctors. And verily there is also a great deal of difference in the
suffering, of such or uneasie fumbling at the back part; or the receiving of such
pleasant and acceptable ingredients. And so much the more, when she begins to
remember that Doctor Drink-fast used to tell her, that Medicins never make so good an
operation, when they are at any time taken against the appetite, or with an
antipathy, by the Patient.

Thus you may see, approaching Father, how you
are now climb’d up to a higher step of glory: Your manly deeds, make your name
renowned; and your joy is so much augmented that your wife looks alwaies merrily and
pleasantly upon you, for giving her content; and she now also salutes you with the
most sweetest and kindest names imaginable; you must also now be her guest upon all
sorts of Summer and Winter fruits, & a thousand other kinds of liquorish and most
acceptable dainties. Insomuch that although you did not come into the streets in six
months, you may by the humour and actions of your wife know perfectly when
Strawberries, Cherries, Apples, Pears, Nuts & Grapes, are in season. And there is
no greater pleasure for your best beloved, then that she sees you eat as heartily of
them as she her self doth.

Confess then unfeignedly, from the very bottom of your heart; are not these great
Pleasures of marriage? And be joyfull; for this is only a beginning, the best comes
at last. Know likewise, that this is but as a fore-runner of the sixth Pleasure, and
will both touch you at heart, and tickle your purse much better: Yea, insomuch that
the experience thereof will shew you that there is a whole mountain of pleasures to
be found in the bands of Wedlock. Whereby I fear, that you will, perhaps, make a
lamentable complaint, of your no sooner arriving at this happiness.

But comfort your self herewith; that the
medicaments of the Doctor and Midwife, perhaps have done such a wished for operation,
that you thereby may obtain many Sons and Daughters, which you may then timely
admonish and instruct to that duty, so long by your self neglected, and in a manner
too late to repent of.

Doubt not, but assuredly beleeve, that now you are once gotten into the right
road, you may easily every year see a renovation of this unspeakable pleasure; and
beholding your wife oftentimes in this state; in like manner you perceive that not
only your name and fame is spread abroad, but your generation also grow formidable.
And this all to the glory of your relations, and joy of your dearly Beloved.

Folio 102.
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

THE SIXTH PLEASURE.

Care is taking for the Child and Child-bed linnen; and to provide a Midwife
and Nurse.

n good truth it is very
pleasant to see how the good womans Apron from day to day, how longer the more it
rises; now all the World may plainly see you have behaved your self like a man, and
every one acknowledge that you are both good for the sport. Verily this is a great
pleasure! And it increases abundantly, when your wife comes to be so near her
reckoning, that she feels her self quick, and begins to provide and take care for the
Childs and Child-bed linnen. Then you need not fear the turning of the tide, or that
a mischance will happen; wherewith all people, seeing no other issue, laugh and scoff
unmeasurably; and think that the Midwife hath been greased in the fist (as it
oftentimes happens) because she should say, that it was a full created child, and no
collection of ill humors, or a wind-egg.

And the greatest joy is, that you have now so
hoisted your top-sail, that your wife cannot any more call you a Dry-boots, or
a John Cannot; which were for you such disrespectfull names, and yet for
quietness sake you were forced to smother them in your breast, because you could have
no witnesse for your vindication.

You are now so far exalted, that you will very speedily be saluted with the name
of Dad & Pappa; which is as pleasing and acceptable for you now, as
the name of Bridegroom was before.

O how happy you are! & what pleasures doth the married estate provide for you!
how glad must your wife be now! how strictly she reckons the months, nay the very
weeks and days! O what an unexpressible love hath she for you now! and with what
imbraces and kisses she entertains you, because you have furnish’d her shop so well!
Now you may perceive that the procreating of children, makes the band of wedlock much
stronger, and increaseth the affections.

Now were it well time, that by death either of the good woman or the Child, that
you did, by a will, seek the mortification of the disadvantagious Contract of
marriage; and by that means get all there is to your self, in place of going back to
her friends and relations; But, alas, she hath so much in her head at present, that
there is no speaking to her about it, without being a great trouble to her: besides
her sences cannot now bear it therefore you must
let it alone till another time.

Do you your self but observe, & you’l quickly see that a lying-in requireth so
much trimming, that she hath really care enough upon her! the Child-bed linnen alone,
is a thing that would make ones head full of dizziness, it consists of so many sorts
of knick-knacks; I will not so much as name all the other jinkombobs that are
dependances to it. Therefore, ought you to be so compassionate with her, as not to
speak to her about any other thing; for all her mind and sences are so imploied upon
that subject, that she can think upon nothing else but her down-lying. Hear but
deliberately to all her lying-in, and of what belongs to it. Tis no wonder neither
for there is not one of her acquaintance comes to her, either woman or maid, but they
presently ask her, Well, Mistris, when do you reckon? And that is a Text then, so
full of matter that there is oftentimes three or four hours preacht upon it, before
any of the Auditors be weary. O that all Ministers were so happy, as to have alwaies
such earnest and serious hearers. In the mean while there is no body happier than the
maids, for they are then free from being the Town-talk; for at other times, the first
word is, How do you like your maid? which is another Text that the women generally
preach out of, and make longest sermons in.

But methinks, I should happen to fall here from
the Mistris upon the Maid.

To go forward then. See how serious your dearest is, with Jane the
Semstress, contriving how much linnen she must buy to make all her Child-bed linnen
as it ought to be! how diligently she measures the Beds, Bellibands, Navel clouts,
shirts, and all other trincom, trancoms! and she keeps as exact an account of the
ells, half ells, quarters, and lesser measures, as if she had gone seven years to
school to learn casting of an account.

Let this measuring and reckoning be pleasant to you, because the charge thereof
will fall costly enough for you. To morrow she goes to market, to buy two or three
pieces of linnen, one whereof must be very fine, and the other a little courser. And
you need not take any notice what quantity of fine small Laces she hath occasion for,
by reason it might perhaps overcloud this sixth pleasure of marriage, which you now
possess.

Why should you not be merry? you have now above all things a Wife to your mind;
who whatsoever she imagines, desires or doth, it is alwaies accompanied with wishes.
O, saies she, how glad shall I be; when all things is bought that there ought to be
for the making of my Child-bed linnen. And no sooner is it bought, but then she
wishes that it were made.

But this requires some time: and then you’l have reason to rejoice; for it is commonly the usual custom of the
semstresses to let you go and run after them, and fop you off with lies and stories,
till the time be so nigh at hand, that it will admit no longer delay.

Yet before you see that your wife hath accomplisht this desire, you’l find her
very much troubled at two several causes, which will make you glad when she hath once
obtained them. For these are things of importance, to wit, the making choice of a
Midwife and a Nurse, because upon one depends the health and preservation of the life
of the Woman; and on the other that of the Child.

Let it no waies molest or trouble you, but rather be pleasing and acceptable, if
she be continually chattering at you, and desiring your advice and councell, who she
shall make choice of or not; hereby you may observe, that you have a very carefull
wife; and if you listen a little more narrowly, you will hear what a special care she
hath for all things; then she will every day be relating to you that amongst the
number of Midwives which have been recommended to her, there is not one that pleases
her; for one is too young and unexperienced, another is too old and doting; a third
is too big handed; a fourth hath too much talk; and the fifth drinks too much wine.
To be short there is so many deficiencies in every one of them, that the good woman
hath need of a learned Counsellors advice to help
her to chuse the best.

And the like trouble hath she also concerning the taking of a Nurse, having
already spent above a months time in examining among her kindred and relations, and
other good acquaintance, how such and such nurses have behaved themselves; & she
is informed that there are few to be found but have certainly some faults or other,
and somtimes very great ones, for one is too sluttish, another saunters too much, a
third too lazy; another too dainty: and then again, one eats too much, and another
drinks too much; one keeps company too much with the maid, and another in like manner
with the good man: And such a one or such a one are the best, but they were not very
handy about the hearth, to make ready some liquorish dainty things for the good
woman, which is a matter of no small weight.

Behold! hath she not very great cause to be troubled: and thereout you may very
well also observe how happy you are, seeing you have gotten a wife that night and day
is busie and taking care of all these concerns and other affairs. Yes verily,
although her big-belly be very cumbersom to her, yet she must be abroad, every day
from morning till evening, to take care and provide all these important things, that
nothing may be wanting. Well what a carefull wife you have! how mightily she is concerned for this above all other things
whatsoever!

And scarcely hath the good woman gotten these two main instruments; but she finds
her self still involved in so much other business, that she hardly can tell how to do
or turn her self in it; for now there wants a Groaning stool, a Screen, and a Cradle,
with what belongs to it; and heaven knows what more, which have been so long
neglected with the care that was taking to get a Midwife and a Nurse. Then again
there wants new Hangings, a Down-bed, a Christening-cloath, silver candle sticks, a
Caudle-cup, &c. that of necessity must be bought & used at the lying-in,
& Gossips feast; so that the good man need not fear that his mony will grow
mouldy for want of being turned too & again.

Oh were your dear wife so happy that she had once made an end of all these
ponderous affairs, then all would be well: For then she could begin to give order for
the making clean the house from top to bottom; and for the pressing of some curtains,
Vallians and Hangings; the rubbing of Stools, Chairs and Cupboard; the scouring of
the Warming-pan and Chamber-pot: And ’tis no wonder, for when the good woman lies in,
then come so many busie bodies that with their glouring eyes are peeping into every
hole and corner.

These things do so excessively trouble her brain; that she can hardly the whole day think upon any thing else,
yea goes so near her that it oftentimes totally bereaves her of her nights rest
insomuch that she is fain to ly very long abed in the morning. And if by night she
happen but only to think of Boobincjo, she hath immediately such an alteration in her
very intrals, that she feels here or there some or other deficiency; which comes so
vehement upon her that the poor husband, though it be never so cold, must out of bed
to fetch some Cinnamon and Annis-seed water, or good sack; or else some other such
sort of those liquorish ingredients and then these are the principal keys of Musick
that the whole night through are sung and plaid upon. O how happy is the good man,
that he hath, from time to time, in her child-bearing, learned all these things with
so much patience, which makes him now that he can the better bear with all these
finical humours.

But for this again, O compassionate Ninny-hammer, you shall have not only great
commendations for your patience; but the pleasure also that some of your nearest
relations will come and kiss your hands, and withall tell you how happy you are that
y’are almost arrived at that noble degree of being intituled Father. And then, with
great respect & reverence, they desire to receive the honour, some of being your
first-born childs God-fathers, and others to be
God-mothers: Neither will they then be behind hand in presenting the Child with
several liberal gifts, as an acknowledgement of the honour they receive, above
others, in being favoured with your Gossipship.

Well who would not, for so much honour and respect, but now and then suffer the
trouble of his wives quamish stomack with some charges to’t? And more then that, you
have now the best opportunity in the World, to go with your new chosen Gossips, (as
you did before with your Bridemen) & chuse & taste out some of the most
delicious Wine, for you must be sure to store your Cellar well, because then both the
Bridemen and Bride-maids will certainly come to eat some of the long-look’d for
Caudle; besides the great number of friends that will come then also to give you a
visit, and with all respect wish you much joy: I will not so much as think any thing
of those that will come also to the Christning and Gossips Feast.

Be joyfull with this, till such time as the t’other Pleasure begins to appear.

THE SEVENTH PLEASURE.

The Woman falls in Labour.

ehold, young couple, hitherto
a considerable deal of time is spent and passed over, with the aforesaid Mirth and
Pleasures; do not you now perceive what a vast difference is between the married or
unmarried estate? You have, by provision, made your self Master of these six
Pleasures; nay oftentimes before you have gotten the longd-for joy of the fourth
Pleasure, appears that of the seventh very unexpectedly; for the good woman begins to
look so sour, grumble, grunt and groan, that it seems as if she would go into the
Garden and fetch a Babe out of the Parsley-bed.

But Uds-lid this is a great-surprizal; for a little while ago she said that she
was but seventh months gone of her reckoning. How then? should she have jested upon
it? or has the good woman lost her book, and so made a false account? Yet this being
the first time of her reckoning, ought the more favourably to be passed by as long as
the Trade goes forwards.

Folio 116.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

There’s now no small alarm in the Watch. Who is
there that is but near or by the hand that is not set a work! Oh, was Dorothy the
Semstress, and Jane the laundress now here, what a helping hand we might have of
them! Where are now the two Chair-women also, they were commonly every day about the
house, and now we stand in such terrible need of them, they are not to be found?
Herewith must the poor Drone, very unexpectedly, get out of bed, almost stark naked,
having hardly time to put on his shoes and stockins; for the labour comes so pressing
upon her, that it is nothing but, hast, hast, hast, fetch the Midwife with all
possible speed, and alas, there is so many several occasions for help, that she
cannot miss her maid the twinkling of an eye; neither dare she trust it to the Maids
fetching, for fear she should not find the Midwives house; and she hath not shewed it
her, because she made her reckoning that she had yet two months more to go.

Therefore without denial away the good man himself must to fetch the Midwife; for
who knows whether or no she would come so quick if the maid went; nay it is a
question also, being so late in the night, whether she would come along with the maid
alone, because she dwells in a very solitary corner clearly at the t’other end of the City: (for after a ripe deliberation of the good
woman, the lot fell so that she made choice of this grave and experienced
Midwife).

Away runs the poor man without stop or stay, as if he were running for a wager of
some great concern. And though it be never so cold, the sweat trickles down by the
hair of his head, for fear he should not find the Midwife at home; or that perhaps
she might be fetcht out to some other place, from whence she could not come. And if
it should happen so, we are all undone, for the good woman must have this Midwife, or
else she dies; neither can or dare she condescend to take any of the other, for the
reasons afore mentioned.

But what remedy? if there must come another, then she will so alter, vex, and fret
her self at it, that all the provocations of pains in labour, turns against her
stomack, and there is no hopes further for that time.

But whilest you are running, and consider in this manner hope the best; rather
think with your self, what great joy is approaching unto you, if your wife, thus
soon, come to be safely delivered of a hopefull Son or Daughter: In the first place,
you will be freed from all that trouble of rising in the night, and from the hearing
of the grumbling and mumbling of your wife; two months sooner then you your self did
expect you should have been.

Be not discomforted although she doth thus
unexpectedly force you out of bed, before you have hardly slept an hour, for you see
there’s great occasion for’t; and now is the time to show that you truly love your
wife. This first time will make it more accustomary, the first is also commonly the
worst. And if you be so fortunate that at the very first you happen to meet with this
prudent and grave Matron Midwife, & do bring her to your longing-for dearly
beloved Wife; yet nevertheless you may assure your self, that before you can arrive
to have the full scope and heighth of this Pleasure, you’l find something more to do:
For the Midwife is not able alone to govern and take care of all things that must be
fetcht, brought and carried to and again; therefore of necessity the friends must be
fetcht with all the speed imaginable, viz. Sisters, Wives, Aunts, Cousins, and
several familiar good acquaintances must have notice of it, and be defraied to come
to her quickly, quickly, without any delay; and if you do not invite them very
ceremonially, every one according to their degrees and qualities, it is taken to be
no small affront.

It hath hapned more then a hundred times that the Sister afterwards would not come
to the Christning Feast; because, by chance, she heard, that the Brothers wife had
notice given her of the Child-bearing before her self; little considering how few
people the young people had in the night to assist
them; or that the confusion and unexperiencedness was the occasion that they did not
think of such a method or order. Nay oftentimes is this sort of jealousie arisen
between the Aunt and Cousin; whereby may most certainly be observed the
intelligibility of the most prudent female sex.

‘Tis true this running seems both troublesom and tiresom but little doth the good
man know that he is now first come into that noble School & herein his patience
shall be effectually exercised or that this is but the first year of trying the same!
O how happy are they that are well instructed in it.

Do but see how impatient the good expecting Father is. What is there not yet
wanting, before he hath his lesson perfect! Behold the poor Drone, how he moves too
& fro! see what a loss and tostication he is in! he tramples his hat under his
feet, pulls the hair off his head, not knowing what he would do, or which way to help
his dear Wife; and the Friends that were sent for do not come so quick as he
expected, because the most part of them must first trick and prick themselves up
before that they dare come; the one fearing the piercing view of another, though they
be all near relations and friends.

Here he stands trembling, not knowing which way to turn himself. Womens assistance
is at this present most requisite, and a good Stierman at Stern, or the ship may run upon a sand. She runs first backwards
then forwards; seeks here then there. And although he hath the keys of all the
Chests, and Trunks, his head runs so much a Wool gathering, that, let him do what he
will, he can find no sort of those things he most stands in need of.

Alas all things is thus out of order, by reason the good woman did not think to
come so soon in Childbed. Oh what manner of Jinkinbobs are not here wanting that are
most useful at this occasion; and the Midwife cries and bawls for them that she’s
hoarse again! here’s both the groaning-stool and the screen yet to be made: And
Mistris Perfect hath them both, but they are lent out.

Yonder Peg the maid runs her anckle out of joint, and her self out of breath, to
desire to borrow them of Mistris Buy-all. And she’s hardly gotten out of
dores, before they perceive that the warming pan is yet to be bought; and that that’s
worst of all, is, that all the Child-bed linnen is not yet starch’d or iron’d;
oftentimes it happens that it is yet upon the Bankside at bleach. What a miserable
condition is this!

Here the good man is at no small quandary, with all the women, oh were this the
greatest disappointment for him! but presently he sees all the womens countenances
looking very dole-fully and mournfully at each other, one beginning to pray; another to cry in; there comes a great alteration
in the pangs and pains of her Labour; nay they are so desperate, that the fear is,
either the mother or the child, or perhaps both must go to pot. For all whatsoever
the Doctor hath prescribed, or that hath been fetcht from the Apothecaries; nay the
very girdle of Saint Francis can work here no miracle.

Uds bud, this is but a sad spectacle. Oh, says Peg the maid, doth this come by
marrying? I’l never venture it as long as I live. I do beleeve that it is very
pleasurable to ly with a Gentleman, but the Child-bearing hath no delight at all in
it. Oh I am affraid, if there come not a sudden change, that my good Mistris will not
be able to undergo it. Oh sweet pretty blossom as she is.

‘Tis most true, that here wants crums of comfort both for the husband and the
wife; yea for the Midwife and all the rest of the Women beside; for they all cry that
the tears run streaming down their cheeks; and neither their Cinamon-water, nor burnt
wine, can any waies refresh or strengthen her. Uds-lid: if there come no other tiding
the sweetness of this pleasure will prove but bitter to them.

But hark a little! there comes something of a tiding, that brings us five pounds
worth of courage with it. Two or three more such, would make every one of our hearts
a hundred pound lighter, and the great Caudle
Skellet would begin to quake and tremble.

Pray have a little patience, tarry, and in the twinkling of an eye you shall be
presented with a Child, and saluted with the title of Father.

THE EIGHTH PLEASURE.

The Womans brought to bed.

a boys! after all the toiling,
the happy hour is at last arrived, that the good Woman, finally is delivered &
brought to bed: well this is a mirth and pleasure that far surpasseth all the other;
for the good man is, by a whole estate, richer than he was before.

Who can imagine or comprehend the jollity of this new Father? O he is so overjoyed
that it is inexpressible: Doll and Peg must out immediately to give notice of it to
all the friends and acquaintance; thinking to himself that every body else will be as
jocund and merry at it as he is. Do but see how busie he is! behold with what
earnestness he runs up and down the house to give order that the great Caudle Skillet
may be in a readiness!

Folio 127
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

What a pleasure is it for him that he sees
Mistris Do-all attending the Midwife, and giving her all manner of warmed beds
and other Clouts, the number and names whereof are without end; and that Mistris
Swift-hand & Mistris Fair-arse are tumbling all things topsie-turvy
forsooth to seek and prepare in a readiness all those things that are most necessary
for the Child; but little doth he think that they do it more to be peeping into every
hole and corner, and to have a full view of all the Child-bed linnen, then out of
needfull assistance? And wo be to the Child-bed woman, if they do but find any where
a Clout, Napkin or Towel, that by chance hath either a hole or a rent in it: for one
or another of them will with grinning and laughing thrust her finger through it, and
then shew it to the rest, taking also the first opportunity she can lay hold of, when
they are a little at liberty, to make a whole tittle-tattle about it, and very much
admireth the carelessness and negligence of the Child-bed woman; as if she were a
greater wast-all, and worse house-wife than any of them else when to the contrary, if
you should by accident come into any of their Garrets, when the linnen is just come
home from washing you would oftentimes find it in such a condition, that you might
very well imagine your self to be in Westminster Hall where the Colours that are
Trophies of honour are hung up, one full of holes, another tatter’d & torn, and a
third full of mildew.

Yet notwithstanding all this peeping and snuffling in to every nook and corner,
they finally get the Child swathled: And then to
the great joy of the Father, it must be presented him in state by the Midwife, with
this golden expression, a Proverb not above two hundred years old, Father, see
there is your Child, God give you much joy with it, or take it speedily into his
bliss.

Uds bud how doth this tickle him! what a new mirth and pleasure is this again! see
him now stand there and look like a Monky with a Cat in his arms. O what a delicate
pretty condition he’s now in!

Well Midwife look to’t, for this joy hath taken such a tyrannical possession of
his heart, that doubt not but immediately there will be a good present for you, when
he gives it you back again. ‘Tis no wonder, for if it be a Son, he is at least a
thousand pound richer then he was before: though he may look long enough before he’l
find a Bankers Bond in his Chest for the sum.

Now whilest the Child is swadled and drest up, all the other trinkum trankums are
laid aside; and the Table is spread neatly to entertain the friends, who not alone
for novelties sake, but also out of a sweet tooth’d liquorish appetite, long to see
what is prepared for them. And I beleeve that although the Kings Cook had drest it,
yet there will be one or another of them that will be discommending something, and
brag that she could have made it much delicater, if there be then any one that seems
not fully to beleeve her, immediately she cites
two or three Ladies for her witnesses, who have given her the greatest praise and
commendations for her dressing of such dishes above all others. And who can have
better judgement than they? This is then a discourse for at least three hours, for
they are all of them so well verst in the Kitchin affairs, that its hard for one to
get a turn to speak before the other.

But this is an extraordinary Pleasure for this new Father to hear out of all their
prittle pratlings how sweetly they will commend the Quill that hath received all the
Colchester Oisters, Cox-combs, Sweetbreads, Lam-stones, and many other such like
things, for they have found by experience that such sort of ingredients occasion very
much the kindness of men to their wives. Yes, yes, saies M^rs.
Luxury it is very good for my husband, and not amiss for any pallate neither,
and I’m sure the better I feed my Pig, the better it is for me in the soucing out.
And this discourse then is held up with such an earnestness, and continues so long,
that the Child-bed woman almost gets an Ague with it, or at the least falls from one
swooning into another, whilest there is not so much as any one that thinks upon
her.

Happy is the good man, if he can but act the part of a Ninny, and hath busied
himself for the most part in the Kitchin; then he may be now and then admitted to
cast in his verdict; otherwise, let them talk as
long as they will, he is forced in great misery to afford them audience. But it is
much better for him, if, according as the occasion gives opportunity, there be now
and then spoken something concerning the Child-bed woman, or about the shaking of the
sheets, which is seldom forgotten; because he is now already so far advanced in the
Cony-craft of that School, that he is gotten up to the Water Bucket.

In the mean while Peg runs too and again, almost like one out of her sences, to
hunt for the Nurse, who dwels in a little street upon a back-Chamber, or in an Ally,
or some other by-place; and she is just now no where else to be found but at t’other
end of the City, there keeping another Gentle woman in Child-bed.

Here is now again other fish to fry, for one will not be without her, and t’other
must needs have her, each pretending to have an equal right to her. And the Nurse,
finding that each of them so much desires her, thinks no small matter of her self,
but that she is as wise as many a Ladies woman or Salomons Cat, and that her fellow
is hardly to be found. But before some few daies are past, there’s a great trial to
be made of the Nurses experience and understanding; for, let them do what they will
or can, the Child will not suck; yea, and what’s worse, it hath gotten a lamentable
Thrush. Alas a day what bad work is here again, the Nurse is so quamish stomackt that she cannot suck her Mistres, therefore care
must be taken to find out some body or other that will come and suck the young womans
breasts for twelve pence a time; or else her breasts will grow hard with lumps and
fester for want of being drawn. Or else also with the sucking she gets in the
tipples.

Now is the right time to fetch the Apothecary to make ready plaisters, and bring
Fennel-water to raise the milk, that the lumps may be driven away; and most
especially that the cloves in the tipples may be cured. Help now or never good
M^r. Doctor, for if this continue much longer, the young woman perhaps gets
an Ague that may then cost her her life.

Verily, in this state and condition of the woman is also some pleasure to be
found, for you may keep your wife now very cheap; she is not now so liquorish and
sweet-tooth’d, as when she was with Child; which in deed is very good at all times,
but most especially in this pittifull time for there’s now nothing fitter for her to
eat then a little good broth, stew’d Prunes, Caudle, Water-gruel, roasted Apples, or
new laid Egs.

But now, Father, your Pleasure will immediately be augmented, for it will not be
long before you will have some or other Gentlewomen come to give you a visit, who
will then also out of their Closets of understanding be very much assistant to you with their advice and counsel for there are very
few of them that are not deeply experienced in Sir Thomas Browns Mid-wivery,
and if any thing do happen more then ordinary, they never want for remedies.

Now there is Doctor Needhams wife, who by her own experimenting, hath
knowledge of several other things: But upon such an occasion as this, there is
nothing better then that the child must be glister’d; and for the lumps you must
indevour through a continual chafing to get them out of the young womans breasts. But
Mistris Rattle-pate relates, how miserably, she was troubled with an humour in
her breast, when she lay in; but that she had alwaies cured her self of it, by only
taking a Sandwich Carrot, and scraping it hollow in the inside, and then put like a
hat upon the tipple, this drew out all ill humour, without any pain, or the least
fear of danger.

Yes truly, saith Mrs Talk-enough, I do indeed forsooth beleeve that that is
very good, but here are very sore nipples, and they begin to be chop’d; and there
must be a special care taken for that; therefore it will not be amiss to strengthen
the nipples with a little Aqua vitæ, and then wash them with some
Rosewater that hath kernels of Limons steep’d in it. There’s nothing like it, or
better, I have lain in of thirteen children, but never tried any thing that did me so
much good, or gave me half the ease. Pray, dear
Mistris, be sure to make use of that, you will never repent it.

But Mistris Know-all saith, that she hath made use of this also, and found
some ease by it; and that she hath tried above an hundred other things, that were
approved to be good; yet of all things never found nothing under the Sun that was
more noble then Salvator Winter’s Salve, for that cures immediately: And you
can have nothing better.

Yet Mistris Stand to’t, begins to relate wonderfull operations done with
oyl of Myrrhe; and of the plaisters that are made by the Gentlewoman in Py-yard.

Now comes the sage Matron Experience, saying that she hath learnt a secret from a
prudent Doctor that’s worth its weight in Gold, nor can the vertue thereof be too
much commended. And she hath already communicated it unto several persons; but there
are none that tried it who do not praise it to be incomparable: therefore she hath
been very vigilant to note it down in S. John Pain, and Nic-Culpeppers
Works; to the end that her posterity may not only make use of it, but participate it
to others: This is, Lapis Calaminaris prepared, mingled with a small quantity
of May-butter, and then temper them together with the point of a knife upon an
earthen plate, just as the Picture Drawers do their Colours upon their Pallet, which
will bring it to be a delicate salve; and is also very soft and supple for the chops of the tipples; nay, though the child
should suck it in, yet it doth it no harm; and it doth not alone cure them, but
prevents the coming of any more.

Yes, saith Mistris Consent to all, and my advice is then to take a little
horn, with a sheeps udder, & lay that upon the Tipples, for that defends them,
and occasions their curing much better and sooner.

O what a pleasure it is to hear all the pretty considerations of so many prudent
Doctresses! If Clement Marot might but revive, I am sure he would find here as
many Doctresses, as ever there were Doctors at Paris. But O how happy will this
fortunate new Father be, when he may but once see the back-sides of all these grave
and nice Doctresses! But my truth, this may very well be registred for one of the
most accomplished Pleasures.

But yet all this doth not help the young woman. Perhaps all these remedies may be
good, saith the Grand-Mother but they are not for our turns; for alas a day, the very
smell of salve makes her fall into a swoon; neither can she suffer the least motion
of sucking, for the very pain bereaves her of her sences. What shall we do then? to
keep a Wet-Nurse is both very damageable, and cruel chargeable; for Wet-Nurses are
generally very lazy and liquorish, and they are ever chatting and chawing something
or other with the Maids; and in their manner they
baptize it, with saying it is very necessary & wholesom for the Child. And then
again, to put the Child out to Nurse, hath also several considerations; first it
estrangeth much from you, and who knows how ill they may keep it. Therefore it is
best to keep it at home, and indeavour the bringing of it up with the Spoon, feeding
it often with some pure and cordial diets fit for the appetite, and now and then
giving it the sucking bottle.

But what remedy now? this is all to no purpose: For though the Grandmother, Nurse,
and Ant do what they can, yet all their labour’s lost. And the Child is so froward
and peevish, that the Nurse is ready to run away from it; nay, though she dandle and
play with it alwaies till past midnight, it is but washing the Black-a-more; in so
much that a Wet-Nurse must be sought for, or away goes the Child to Limbo. For
this again is required good advice, and the chusing of a good one hath its
consideration: But the tender heartedness and kind love that the Mother hath for her
Child can no way suffer this, she will rather suck it her self though the pain be
never so great. Yet having tried it again a second time, the pain is so vehement that
it is impossible to withstand it; therefore the new Father cannot be at quiet till
there be a Wet-Nurse found and brought to them. For it goes to the very heart of both
Father and Mother to put the Child out to Nurse.

And do but see after much seeking and diligent
inquiring, the new made Grandmother, hath at last found one, who is a very neat
cleanly and mighty modest woman, her husband went a little while ago to the
East-Indies, & her child died lately.

This is no small joy but an extraordinary Pleasure, both for the new Father, and
Child-bed woman. Oh now their hearts are at rest. And now all things will go well;
for as the Wet-Nurse takes care of the Child; the dry Nurse doth of the Mother, &
all this pleases the good Father very well.

Now Child-bed-woman your time is come to make much of your self, that you may
recover strength. Now you wont be troubled with the pains of sucking, or disturbed of
your natural rest: now you must let the Wet-Nurse take care for every thing, and look
after or meddle with nothing your self. Now you must sleep quietly, eat heartily, and
groan lustily. And though you be very well and hearty, yet you must seem to be weak
and quamish stomackt; for first or last the month of lying-in must be kept full out.
Do but think now by your self what you have a mind either to eat, or drink; the first
and worst daies are with the tossing and turmoiling passed by; neither can you
recover any strength with eating of Water-gruel, sugar-sops, rosted Apples, and new
laid Egs; you are not only weary of them, but it is too weak a diet for you. The nine daies are almost past, and now you must have
a more strengthening diet; to wit, a dish of fine white Pearch, a roasted Pullet,
half a dozen of young Pigeons, some Wigeons or Teal, some Lams-stones, Sweetbreads, a
piece of roast Veal, and a delicate young Turky, &c. And whilest you are eating,
you must be sure to drink two or three glasses of the best Rhenish wine, very well
sweetned with the finest loaf sugar, you must also be very carefull of drinking any
French wine, for that will too much inflame you.

O new Father, what a Pleasure must all these things be for you; and especially,
because now you begin at the Bed-side to eat and drink again with your Child-bed
wife; and you begin also to perceive that if all things advance as they hitherto have
done, you may then again in few daies make fresh assaults of hugging and embracing
her.

This is that jolly month or six weeks that all women talk so pleasantly of;
because it learns them alwaies such a curious remembrance. And really it is almost
impossible that the husband at these rates can grow lean with it; because he as well
as his wife sits to be cram’d up too: And he can now with his dearest daily contrive
and practice what the Nurse shall make ready, that his Child-bed wife may eat with a
better appetite, and recover new strength again. I would therefore advise the
carefull Nurse as a friend, that she should be
sure to provide her self with the Compleat Cook, that she might be the more
ready to help the Child-bed woman to think upon what she hath a mind to have made
ready, for her brains are but very weak yet; so that she cannot so quickly and easily
remember at first what is pleasantest and wholesomest to be eaten.

O thrice happy new Father that have gotten such a prudent diligent and carefull
Nurse for your Child-bed wife! what great Pleasure is this! And behold, by this
delicate eating and drinking, your Dearest begins from day to day to grow stronger
and stronger; insomuch that she begins to throw the Pillow at you, to spur you up to
be desirous of coming to bed to her: Yea, she promiseth you, that before she is out
of Child-bed, she will make you possessor of another principal and main Pleasure.

Folio 141.
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

THE NINTH PLEASURE.

Of the Gossips Feast.

ow, O new Father, you have had
the possession of eight pleasures, which undoubtedly have tickled you to some
purpose.

But now there is a new one approaching, that will be as full of so many joyfull
delights and wishings of prosperity, as ever the first and most famous hath been; for
it seems as if your Child-bed wife begins to be a weary of this lazy liquorish life,
and to leave off her grunting and groaning; because she now longs to be gadding up
and down the street, or standing at the dore with her Babe in her arms.

But before this can be done, you know that there ought to be a Gossips Feast kept.
To this end the Nurse must be sent abroad; and a serious Counsel held, as if the
Parliament of women were assembled, to consult who shall be invited, and who not. ‘s
Wounds, what a list of relations and strange acquaintance are here sum’d up in a company together, to be invited to the
Gossipping Feast. ‘Tis impossible, the Nurse can ever do this all in one day; because
she would not willingly miss any of them, out of the earnest hopes she hath of the
Presents she expects. And then also she must give an account to every one of them
that are invited of the state and condition of the Child-bed woman and her Child. I
wonder that there is no body that sollicites to have the Office of an Inviter to all
such sort of Gossippings, but the women understand these affairs and the ordering of
such sort of invitations much better than any one else, therefore ’tis not
necessary.

O, new Father, what a sweet Delight and Pleasure you must needs have in reviewing
this great List of your Gossips! What multiplicities of wishes of joy and prosperity
have you to expect! But if I were to be your Counsellor, I assure you I would order
the Nurse to desire Doctor Toss-bowl, my Lord Drinkfirst and then the
other Gentlemen, to wit, Masters Cleardrinker, Dryliver, Spillnot, Sup-up,
Seldom-sober, and Shift-gut, to fetch home their Wives in good time from
the Gossipping; because you have other mens Wives, who are your near relations, that
you must entertain longer; and they otherwise will never think of rising or going
home though it were midnight: And by this means you will have a fit opportunity, with
a full Bowl and a Pipe, to wash away that rammish sent of a Child-bed out of your brains; and also after many hopes, once
arrive to the height of receiving your full delight and pleasure. And then you may
e’en clap it all together upon the account of a Lying-in.

Now Nurse, here you have work by whole hand-fulls: for you shall no sooner have
made an end of your other errands, but immediately there’s so much tricking and
pricking of all things up in neat order against the coming of the sharp-sighted
guests; that it’s a terror to think on’t. Their eys will fly into every nook and
corner; nay the very house of Office must be extraordinary neat and clean; for
Mistris Foul-arse, Gossip Order-all, and Goody Dirty-buttocks,
will be peeping into every crevise and cranny: And because they will do it forsooth,
according to their fashion, they make a shew as if they must go to the necessary
Chamber, with a Letter to Gravesend, only to take an inspection whether it be
as cleanly there as it is upon the Gossipping Chamber where all the Guests are. And
’tis a wonder if they do not look into the Seat, to see whether there be no Spyders
webs spun in it; or whether the Goldfinders Merchandize be of a good colour,
equal-size and thickness.

But come let’s pass all this by: for in the middle of these incumbrances, the time
will not only fly away; but we shall, at the hour appointed, be surprized by our
Guests. Uds life, how busie the Wet and Dry-Nurses are with dressing the Babe neatly. Now Father, look once upon your Child! O
pretty thing! O sweet-fac’d dainty darling! ’tis Father’s own picture! Well what
would not one undergo to be the Mother of so fine an Angel! And who can or dare doubt
any thing of it, for the Mother loves it, and the Father beleeves it, nay and all the
friends that come tumbling in one upon another to-day, do confirm it: For behold,
every one looks earnestly at the Babe; and doth not a little commend his prettiness.
One saith it is as like the Father (alias Daddy) as one drop of Water is like
another. Another, that the upper part of the face, forehead, eys and nose incline
very much to be like the mother; but downwards it is every bit the Father. And who
forsooth should not beleeve it, if it be a son. Every one is in an admiration. O me,
what a pretty sweet Infant! Nurse, you have drest it up most curiously! And truly
there’s no cost spar’d for the having very rich laces.

Thus they ly and tamper upon this first string, till the Child-bed woman begins to
enter upon the relating what great pain in travell she had to fetch this Child out of
the Parsly-bed, what a difference there was between her, and others of her
acquaintance, &c. Thereout every one hath so much matter, as would make a
long-winded sermon; and the conclusion generally is the relating how and when the
good man crept to bed to her again; and how such a one had been a fortnight with Child, before she went to receive her
churching. Where upon another comes with a full-mouth’d confession, that her husband
was not half so hot.

Do but tarry a little yet, till the Gossipping-bowl hath gone once or twice more
about with old Hock; then you’l hear these Parrots tell you other sorts of tales.

In the mean while, do but see the husband, poor Nicholas None-eys how he
rejoyces, that his wife is so reasonable strong again; and that she is so neatly
trickt up sitting in state in the best furnished room, by the bed-side! O what a
pleasure this is! O how he treats all the women with delicate Marget Ale, and Sack
and Sugar! [unless he begin to bethink himself, and for respects sake or frugality,
sets some bottles aside; because he perceives it to be nothing else but a vast
expence and womens Apish tricks]. How busie he is in carving for them of his
Roast-beef, Capons, Turkey-py, Neats-tongue, or some other savoury bit to make their
mouths relish their liquor the better; and then stand fast Bowls and glasses for they
resolve not to flinch from it. And indeed why should he not? for he is now a whole
estate richer then he was before; and what need he care for it then.

Well behold here! Now the womens mouths are a beginning to be first a little warm;
and none of them all can be silent, though they should speak of their own
Commodities.

O how happy would you be, O Goodman
Cully, if you had but as many ears as Argus had eys, that you might
hear every where, whilest you are carving and serving of them, what pretty sweet
stories and discourses, these sorts of Parrats will be talking of? For Mistris
Sharp-set relates, what a pleasure she oft times received in it, to keep
School-time with her husband at noons, as soon as they had feasted their carkasses
well: but that conning of her lesson had caused her severall times to make a journy
to the Parsly-bed.

At this Mistris Sincere wonders extreamly; saying how strangely these
things happen to one woman more then another. In our Parish there is a married woman
brought to bed, but she was so miserably handled by the Midwife, that no tongue can
express it. Insomuch that Master Peepin the Man Midwife, was fain to be
fetcht, to assist with his Instrument; it was a very great wonder that the woman ever
escaped it; which is most lamentable indeed to be related; and too sad indeed to be
placed by me among the Pleasures of Marriage.

In the mean time, at the t’other end of the Chamber, Mistris Fairtail
relates a pretty story how their Maid was very curiously stitcht up by their Tailor;
and how she was every foot running thither, then to have a hole finely drawn that she
had torn in her Petti-coat, another while to have her Bodice made a little wider, and
then again to have her stockins soled.

It is no wonder, (saith Mistres
Paleface) that this should happen to a poor innocent servant Maid; there was
my husbands first wives niece M^rs. Young-rose that modest Virgin,
she kept such a close conversation & daily communication with Master
Scure, that at last there appeared a little Cupid with little ears, and
short hair.

Nay then (saith Mistris Lookabout) those two sisters need not twit one
another in the teeth with it; for the t’other kept such a sweet compliance and
converse with the Spanish Fruiterer, yonder at the corner-house, where she did eat so
many China Oranges, and other watrish fruits, that they caused her to get an
extraordinary swelling under her stomack; which Doctor Stultus judged to
proceed from some obstructions, wind, and other watrish humours; but it did not
continue so long before her Mother, beginning better to apprehend the nature of her
distemper, sent her away to her Country-house at Hackney.

Mistris Lookabout was going to begin again; but they heard such rapping and
knocking at the dore, that one of them said I beleeve there are our husbands; and
indeed she guest very well. This augmented their mirth mightily. And especially of
the Nurse; for now she was sure that, if the good Cully her Master treated his
Gossips nobly and liberally, her presents would be doubled. But Nurse do not cheat
your self, for fear it might happen otherwise; I know once a merry boon Companion,
who being at a Gossipping Feast, called the
Nurse alone to him; and saies to her, Nurse, I’l swear you are very vigilant and take
a great deal of pains, in serving both us and our wives with all things, and also
filling of us full glasses and bowls: hark hither, my wife is a little covetous, and
oft-times so narrow-soul’d that she doth not keep her credit where she ought to do,
so that I beleeve her gift will not be very great, and truly because you are such a
good body, see there, that’s for you, put it some where privately away; &
there-with thrusts her an indifferent great brass Counter, wrapt up in a paper, into
her hand. The Nurse certainly beleeving this to be at the least a Crown piece, thanks
him very demurely, and puts it in her Pocket; never opening it till they were every
one of them gone, but then she saw that she was basely cheated. But Nurse you are
warned now by this, another time you may look better to’t. Yet methinks I’d fill
about lustily, it is the good man of the house his wine; and when the Wine begins to
surge crown-high; the men are much more generous than before.

And verily methinks I have a mind to take my portion of it also; but yet not so as
the Nurse did at my Neeces, who had toss’d up her bowls so bravely upon the good
health of the Child-bed woman her Mistriss, that when she was going to swathe and
feed the Child, instead of putting the spoon into the mouth, she thrust it under the chin, & sometimes against the breast;
and then when she was about swathing of it; as it is commonly the custom to lay a
wollen blanket and linnen bed together, she wrapt the poor Infant with its little
naked body only in the blanket alone.

O thrice happy young Father, who have hitherto so nobly treated and entertained
all your She Gossips, and had the audience of all their curious relations! Now you
will have the honour also of entertaining their husbands your He-Gossips, who will
not be backward in doing of you reason out of the greatest bowl you will set before
them, and talk as freely of a Py-corner merchandize.

Who is there now that doth not praise, and commend your manfull deeds to the
highest? Ha, ha, saith Master Laugh wel, that’s a Child! who ever saw a
braver! there’s not the fellow on’t! O my dearest, I have such a delight in this
Child, that if we were but a little alone together, I’d cast you such another as if
it were of the same mould. Stay a little, stay a little, saith Master Fillup,
it may be you would not run so strong a course. Yet I saw once two Souldiers who were
Batchelors, that were sitting in an evening drinking in an Alehouse, and talking
lustily of the Bobbinjo trade; whereupon one of them said; Cocksbobs Jack if I
had but a Wife, as well as another, I’d presently get her with Child of a brave boy.
Ho, ho, saith the t’other, it is an easie thing
to get a Wife if one seek it. If I would, I dare lay a wager on’t, I would be the
Bridegroom within the space of two hours. The other not beleeving him, they laid a
wager between them for a bottle of Wine. Hereupon one of them went out of dores just
upon the striking of the clock; & hardly was gone a streets length, before he met
with a bonny bouncing girl, who was going of an errand for her Mistris, and he
presently laies her on board. But she seemed to be very much offended, that an honest
Maid going about her business in the evening, should be in this manner so encountred
by a strange fellow, with a sword by his side. Verily, Sweetheart, said he, you have
a great deal of reason in all what you say; but you may certainly beleeve that it is
an honest person who speaks to you, and only seeks an occasion to be acquainted with
a virtuous good condition’d Maid. My wearing of a sword, is because I am a Souldier,
and am very well known by many honest people. And truly, if you please to admit me
this favour, you shall see and find me to be an honest man, and none of those that go
about to ly and deceive any body; and indeed my intention & desire is to marry,
to that end seeking nothing but an honest Maid, and I doubt not but that I have at
this time found one to my mind. And went forward with his chat in these sort of
terms. But the Maid denied him, saying, that she had no mind at-all to a Souldier, because it was one of the poorest and
miserablest sort of levelihoods; their pay being but very little, and they were
seldom advanced, &c. He on the other side commending & approving a Souldiers
life to be the merriest, resolutest, & absolute easiest of any that was under the
Sun; because that neither hungrie care, nor finical pride did any waies take place by
them, but that they, on the contrary, were alwaies merry, never admitting sorrow into
their thoughts. ‘Tis true, said he, our pay is but small; but then again, all what
the Country people have, is our own; for what we want our selves, we get from them:
we never take care for to morrow, having alwaies something fresh, & every day new
mirth. Riches, Sweetheart, doth not consist in multiplicity of Goods, but in content;
& there’s no one better satisfied than a Souldier, therefore you shall alwaies
see an honest Souldier look plump and fat, just as I do: but Drunkards and
Whore-masters fall away miserably, &c.

In short, the Maid begun a little to listen to him (and so much the more, because
that very morning she had a falling out with her Mistris) and told him, she would
take it into consideration. He answered her again, what a fidle stick, why should we
spend time in thinking? we are equally matcht: a Souldier never thinks long upon any
thing, but takes hold of all present opportunities, and it generally falls out well
with him. But she drawing back a little, he
saith, ah my dearest, you must take a quick resolution. Behold there, yonder comes a
Cloud driving towards the Moon: I’l give you so much time, till that be past by;
therefore be pleased to resolve quick, for otherwise I must go & seek my fortune
by another. For a Soldier neither woos nor threatens long.

Upon this she considered a little, but before the Cloud was past by the Moon, she
gave him her consent; and he gave her his Tobacco-box for a pledge of marriage; and
desired something of her in like manner for a pledge; but she said she had nothing:
howsoever he persisted so strongly, that in conclusion she gave him her Garter for a
pledge of marriage. He was contented with it, and taking his leave, went unto his
Comrades; and told them what had hapned to him, shewing them the Garter. Whereupon he
that had laid the wager with him, askt, who it was, what her name was, and where she
dwelt, &c. And being told by another, that it was a handsom, neat, and very well
complexion’d Maid, By my troth, said he, I wish I were to give four Cans of Wine that
I could light upon such another. Well, see there, saith the first, if you will give
four Cans of Wine, I will both give you the Garter & the Maid too into the
bargain: It was done but by Moonlight; so that she’l hardly know whether it be me or
another.

Hereupon the agreement was concluded, the two
first Cans of Wine were spent, and the Garter was delivered to him, and every one
charged to keep it secret.

This second Souldier goes to the Maid next day in the evening, at the hour and
place where they had appointed to meet. And there relating to her several passages
that were passed between them the day before, and shewing her the Garter, made her
beleeve that he was the person that had contracted with her the day before. To be
short, the Maid leaves her service and marries him. And that which is most to be
observed, is, that that which the first Souldier vaunted to have done, the second
performed; for just nine months after they were married, she was brought to bed of a
gallant young boy, and they lived very peaceably and quietly together.

Well, I’l vow, saith Master Crossgrain, that’s a very notable relation; it
is better a great deal that the business happen so, then like another, which is just
contrary, that I shall make mention of to you.

Barebeard and Mally, who by a sudden accident, without much wooing,
were gotten together, and their first Bane of matrimony was published; but falling
out, they called one another all the names that they could reap together; nay it run
so high, that they would discharge each other of their promises, and resolved to go
to the Bishop & crave that they might have
liberty to forbid the Banes themselves, which hapned so.

Barebeard coming then with Mall before his Grace, complained that he
did already perceive his intended marriage would never come to a good event, because
he found perfectly that this Maid was a lumpish Jade, a nasty Slut, a Scolding,
bawling Carrion, & a restless peece of mortality. Therefore it might go as it
would, he did not care for the Maid, neither would he marry her, and for those
reasons, he desired his Grace to grant that the Banes might be forbidden; as thinking
it much better for him to quit her betimes, before it was too late. She on the
t’other side said, that he was one that run gadding along the streets at all hours of
the night, a private drunken beast, a Spend-thrift, &c. so that she did not care
for him neither. Whereupon his Grace smiling told them, well you fellow and wench; do
you think that we do here so give and take away the consent of marriage? perhaps when
you are married, it may be much better, for the marriage bed doth for the most part
change the ten sences into five. But she answered, may it please your Grace, he is no
such man to do that, for all that he can do is only to-follow his own round-head-like
stiff-neckedness, and e’en nothing else. Whereupon he again answered, may it please
your Grace, I have no mind ever to try it with such a creature as she is; I should be
then fast enough bound to her; neither would I
willingly go alive headlong to the Devil, to take my habitation in Hell.

The Bishop thus perceiving that no good thread could be spun of such sort of Flax,
caused the Banes to be forbidden. Then said Barebeard, may it please your
Grace, am I not a freeman, & may I not marry with whom I please, or have a mind
to? to which his Grace answered, yes. Presently Barebeard thrusting his head
out at the dore, calls out aloud, Peg do you come hither now; and begged that
his Grace would be pleased to give him leave to marry with this person. Which Mall
seeing she cries out, you Rogue, you have been too cunning for me in this; if I had
the least thoughts on’t, I would have had my Hal to have tarried for me at
this dore, instead of tarrying for me at another place. Whereupon his Grace, being in
great ire, chid them most shrewdly, giving them such strong reproofs, that at first
it might very well be imagined that he would never have admitted of a second consent;
yet afterwards upon considerations it was granted. But Barebeard being now
married with Peg, they got no children: And Mall being married to
Hal, they had both a Son and a Daughter at one birth. By which its easie to be
observed what acquaintance Mall had made with Barebeard before hand,
& why she would rather marry with Hall then with him.

To this again Mistris Sweetmouth relates, that she had been several times invited to Mistris Braves labour;
and that she had been twice brought to bed very happily of two delicate twins. And in
the last encounter, for a recompence of the affection of her Beloved, she presented
him with two lustly and gallant boys; but because she would equally balance his great
bounty; the Midwife takes the same walk again for another, and finding in what
condition things stood, she calls for a bason of warm water, bringing out at last a
most delicate pretty daughter, that was yet poor thing wrapt up in the Cawl. Which
she immediately laid into the warm water, and shewed unto them all the wonderfull
works of nature; for there they could see it move and stir, as if it had been in its
Mothers glass Bottle; but the skin being just cut open with a small hole, it begun
presently to make a little noise like a weak childish voice, which indeed was very
rare & pleasant to be seen. In truth, such a Father, who can cast every time such
high doubblets, may very well be called by the name of Brave.

But this Story was hardly told before Mistris Tittle-tattle pursued it with
another out of the same Text, saying, A little more then two years ago I was at a
Gossipping by Mistris Gay, who was then brought to bed both of a Son and a
Daughter, also at one birth; but indeed the Labour came so violently upon her, that
as she was standing upon the stairs, not being able to set one foot further; and having neither Midwife, nor any other
women of her neighbors and friends, only the assistance of her husband and the Maid;
she was immediately delivered of two gallant Children; but they did not live
long.

Upon my word, said Mistris Bounce-about, it is an excellent help when men
understand their travelling upon such sort of roads. It hapned to me once that some
Gentlewomen were merry with me somewhat late in the evening; and because I had had
several Symptoms of Labour, said this, Mistris Bounce-about, if you would now
take a walk to the Parsley bed, we would help you very bravely; but neither wind nor
weather was serviceable at that time. But they had hardly been gone an hour, and
being in bed with my husband, and he very fast asleep; before there begun such an
alteration of the weather; that my husband must up with all speed, who wakened the
Maid, and sent her for the Midwife laying on fire himself in all hast; yet do all
what they could, within less then a quarter of an hour, and that without any bodies
help but my husbands, my journy was performed; but things were done with such a
confusion; that he received the child in the Christning cloath instead of the
Blanket.

And a thousand more such stories as these are ript up; that would burthen the
strongest memory to bear them: and so much the more, because it is impossible to
distinguish one from the t’other, when the men
and the women that gabble so one among another. And oft-times they spin such course
threads of bawdery in their talk, that are enough to spoil a whole web of linnen. And
who can tell but that their tattling would last a whole night, for there’s hardly one
of them who hath not at the least a hundred in their Budgets; but because it is high
time that either the Dry or Wet-Nurse must go to swathe the child, they begin to
break off and shorten their prittle-prattle.

Now young Father, do but observe what fine airy complements will be presented to
you at their parting. Every one thanks you for your kind and cordial entertainment,
and not one of them forgets to wish that you may the next year either have a Daughter
to your Son, or a Son to your Daughter; imagining then that all things is well, when
you receive such a full crop: But I am most apt to beleeve that all their wishes aim
at the But of coming next year again to the Gossips Feast, to toss up the
Gossips-bowl, and in telling of a bobbinjo story they peep into all nooks and
corners.

Well, O new Father, this Pleasure begins to come to a conclusion; but prithee tell
me, would not a body wish for the getting of such another, that his Wife might make a
journy to the Parsly-bed twice a year?

Now Nurse have at you; you shall now reap the fruit of all your running and going
early & late to invite them. Oh thinks she
by her self, would but every shilling change it self into a crown-peece. But Nurse
you’l hardly be troubled with a fit of that yellow Jaundies sickness, for there’s no
drug at the Apothecaries, nor any lice among the Beggars that can cure you of it. And
I dare say Nurse, that you’l go nigh to perceive that its a very hard time, and mony
mighty scarce: because formerly the women used to put their hands more liberally in
their purses, and one gave a crown, another half a crown; but the times are now so
strangely altered, that they keep little mild-shillings only for that use, nay some
of them rub it off with a couple of their Grandams gray groats. But howsoever I hope
for your sake, it will not be here according as often happens, fair promises but no
performances; for if it should, I protest ye ought to have made your bargain to have
had a peece more at the least for your Nurse keeping; or otherwise you must have had
the full liberty to toss up the remains of all that was left in the Gossipping Bowls,
or else to have carried the key of the Wine Cellar alwaies in your pocket, and then
after the feeding and swathing the child, you might in the twinkling of an eye,
swinge up a lustly glass upon the good health of the Father, Child-bed mother and the
Child; for the Wine was laid in to be made use of to that end and purpose; and it is
commonly known that the Nurses are not so mealy
mouth’d; for although they don’t do it that every one should see it, they’l be sure
with the Maid to get their shares in one corner or other. But you must for this again
think, that the freer you let them take their swing herein, the more care they will
take for the Child.

Now Nurse, don’t spare to make good use of your time, for it belongs amongst other
things to this Pleasure; and the new Father will nevertheless be turning about to
another mirth, and then you may be sure to expect to have a God be w’ye. Therefore
make much of your self, and toss up your glasses stoutly at the Wine-Cask; who knows
whether you may have the opportunity this twelve month again to meet with such a good
Nurse-keeping; a liquorish sweet-tooth’d Child-bed woman, & a plentifull
housekeeping, is not every where. And you may certainly beleeve, that the month will
be no sooner ended, then that you’l begin to stink here; for the Mistris will begin
to consider with her self, that she can make a shift with the Maid and Wet-Nurse; so
that then you must expect to get your undesired Pass.

Then you must return back again to your own lodging, that dark, moist and
mournfull Cell, and satisfie your self, if you can get it, with a mess of milk and
brown George, or some such sort of lean fare. So that you’l have time enough to wast
away that fulsomness and fogginess of body, that you have gotten in your
Nurse-keeping. For there’s no body that will
give you any thing, or thinks in the least upon your attendance, unless they want you
again.

O new Father, pray for it to come again within a twelve month, that you may have a
renewing of this pleasure once more; for it is with the Nurse-taking its leave, and
will conduct you to a following.

THE TENTH PLEASURE.

A great Child-bed Feast is kept, and the Child put in Cloaths.

h how pleasant is th’estate of
married people, above that of Batchelors and Maids? how it distributes Mirths and
Pleasures! Verily one may in some measure recogitate or write something of it, but it
is impossible to imprint so Sun-like a splendor in Potters clay, or to display it
with the most curious Colours. Though the accomplishedst Painter might have drawn it
very near the life, yet it would be but a dead draught, in comparison of the reality
and experience that is found in it self. You have already seen here nine Parts or
Tables but it is not ninety Pictures that can sufficiently shew you the fulness of
one of the nine Parts.

Be therefore chearfully merry, O sweet Couple, because you are in so short a time
arisen to the height of being possessors of all these Pleasures: And so much the
more, the ninth being hardly past, before the tenth follows, as it were treading upon
the heels of the t’other.

Folio 188.
Published by The Navarre Society, London

They have scarce wiped their mouths or
digested the Child-bed Wine in their stomacks, before there starts up a new day of
mirth & jollity; for now there must be a Child-bed feast kept & the child
must be put in Cloaths. O what two vast Pleasures are these for the young Father!
’tis indeed too much joy for one person alone to be possessor of.

At first you had the Pleasure for to treat the Women, those pretty pleasing
Creatures, and to hear all their sweet and amiable discourses. But now you shall be
honoured with treating the Matron like Midwife, and those Men and Women that are your
kindest friends and nearest relations; Yea and the God-Fathers and God-Mothers also
who will all of them accompany you with courteous discourses and pleasant
countenances: They will begin a lusty Bowl or thumping glass, super naculum
drink it out, upon the health & prosperity of you, your Bedfellow and young Son;
and very heartily wish that you may increase and multiply, at least every year with
one new Babe; because that they then might the better come to the Child-bed
Feast.

Here you’l see now how smartly they’l both lick your dishes, and toss your Cups
and Glasses off. Begin you only some good healths, as; pray God bless his Majesty and
all the Royal Family: the Prosperity of our Native Country; all the Well wishers of the Cities welfare, &c. And when you
have done, they’l begin; and about it goes to invest you with the honour and name, in
a full bowl to the Father of the Family; Well is not that a noble title; such a
Pleasure alone is worth a thousand pounds at lest.

And whilest the Men are busie this way; the good woman with the other Women are
contriving on the other side how the Child ought to be put in Cloaths upon the best
and modishest manner: For she is resolved to morrow morning to be Church’d, & in
the afternoon she’l go to market.

She accomplishes the first well enough, but is at a damnable doubt in the second
part of her resolution; for by the way, in the Church, and in the streets, she hath
continually observed severall children, and the most part of them dressed up in
severall sorts of fashions: Some of them she hath a great fancy for, but then she
doubts whether that be the newest mode or not. One seems too plain and common, which
makes her imagine in her thoughts; that’s too Clownish. But others stand very neat
and handsom. ‘Tis true, the Stuf and the Lining is costly and very dear; but then
again it is very comly and handsom. And then again she thinks with her self, as long
as I am at Market, I’d as good go through stirch with it; and make but one paying for
all; it is for our first, and but for a little child, not for a great person;
therefore it is better to take that which is
curious and neat, the price for making is all one; besides it will be a great
Pleasure for my husband when he sees how delicately the child is drest up, and his
mony so extraordinarily well husbanded.

Now, my dearest, pray be you merry: if the stuf hath cost somthing much, you have
need but of little; and it is for your first. When it grows bigger, or that you get
more, you must part with much more mony. Don’t grudge at this for once, because then
you would spoil all your mirth and Pleasure with it. Rejoice that you have a Wife,
who is not only good to fetch children out of the Parsley Bed; but is also very
carefull to see them well nourished, and neat and cleanly cloath’d. You your self
have the praise and commendation of it. Let her alone a while, for women must have
their wills; say but little to her, for her brains are too much busied already; and
it may be that in three hours time, you would hardly get three words of answer from
her; and suppose you should relate somthing or other to her, this shall be your
answer from her at last, that she did not well understand you, because all her
thoughts, nay her very sences do as it were glide to & again, one among another
continually, to order the dressing up of her child.

I am very well assured, O new invested Husband, that your wits at present run a
Wool-gathering, because that both Merchandize and Trade are neither of them so quick as you would fain see them; and
by reason of this tedious and destructive War, monies is horrible scarce, nothing
near so plentifull as you could wish it to be: But comfort your self herewith, that
it hath hapned oft-times to others, & will yet also happen oftner to you. Yet
this is one of the least things; but stay a little, to morrow or next day the Nurse
goes away. This seems to be a merriment indeed; for then you’l have an Eater, a
Stroy-good, a Stuf-gut, a Spoil-all, and Prittle-pratler, less than you had
before.

You are yet so happy that you have a Wet-Nurse, that carefully looks after the
Child; by which means both you and your Wife are freed from tossing and tumbling with
it in the night: whilest others, on the contrary, that have no Wet-Nurses in their
houses; begin first to tast, when the Dry-Nurse goes away, what a Pleasure it is that
the Child must be set by the Bedside, and the charge thereof left unto both Father
& Mother, when it oftentimes happens that the good woman is yet so weak, she can
neither lay the Child in, nor take it out of the Cradle; insomuch that the Father
here must put a helping hand to’t, because he is of a stronger constitution, and hath
the greatest share in it.

By my faith such as those are they who have the first and true tast of the Kernel
of the Tenth Pleasure; because the husband ought as then, out of a tender affection for his wife to rock continually, that
she might take her rest; otherwise she would not get any suck in her breasts for the
Child: And happy they are somtimes, if they come off with but rocking the most part
of the night; for many times it happens, that the Child is so restless and unquiet,
that Father, Mother, & Maid; nay and all whatsoever is in the house must out of
their beds to quiet it; and though they use a thousand tricks and stratagems, yet
all’s to no purpose.

And yet this is but a small matter for them neither; for before a few months are
past, the child begins to get teeth; and bawls and cries so night & day, that
they can tell the clock all the night long; wishing a thousand thousand times over
that they might see day-break; and so by the comfortable assistance of day-light
receive a little solace for all their toiling and tumbling too and again.

Yet I would advise such as these, that they must in no manner be discomforted at
this; if they intend to demonstrate that they have learnt somthing in the School of
Marriage, to exercise their patiences: But, on the contrary, to shew themselves
contented with all things; being assured, that hereafter when all this trouble is
past, they shall receive the happiness, that the child will return them thanks with
its pretty smiles; and in time also will salute them with a slabbering cocurring. And
I beleeve now that they clearly find that all
things do not go so even in this World, as they well imagined: And that the fairest
Sunshine of Marriage, may be somtimes darkned with a Cloudy Storm.

You married people, that have the help of a Wet-Nurse, receive a much greater
advantage in participating of the Pleasures of Marriage, neither need you to be
troubled with tossing & dandling of the child in the night.

O, young House-Father, this is a most incomparable Pleasure for you! For now you
may most certainly see the approach of a Daughter to your Son; and by that means reap
the possession again of all those former Pleasures; & by every one be saluted
with the Title that you are an excellent good Artist.

If it be so, be carefull that you do not gad up and down with your wife too much
on horseback, or in Coaches; for fear it might make her miscarry. But you have learnt
all these things well enough at the first, and without doubt have kept them well in
remembrance.

Do but behold, in the mean time, what an unexpressible Pleasure your dearly
Beloved hath in the tricking up of her sweet Baby in the most neatest dresses. What a
World of pains she takes & spends her spirits, to make the Tailor understand,
according to what fashion she will have it made; & to hasten him that all things
may be ready and totally finisht against Sunday next.

O new Father, now open your eys! Behold what
a pretty Son you have! How happy you are in so loving and understanding a Wife that
knows how to trick it so curiously up in this manner! She was never better pleased!
Undoubtedly the Summer nights are too long, and the daies too short for her to gad up
and down traversing the streets of the City, that she may fullfill her desire of
shewing it to every body: never was any thing more neatly drest. But the Nurse and
the Maid with the Child in the mean while at Jericho; for their very backs and sides
seem to be absolutely broken with carrying it up & down from day to day. And most
especially when the Child is wean’d, and the Wet-Nurse turn’d away, the Maid cannot
let it penetrate into her brain; that she now not only the whole week must rock,
sing, dandle, dress, and walk abroad with it; but that she is upon Sundaies also
bound to the Child, like a Dog to a halter; and never can stir out, as she formerly
did, to walk abroad with Giles the Baker, or John True the Tailor; nor
so much as go once to give a visit to her Country-folks or kindred; which occasions
no small difference between the Maid and the Mistriss.

But good House Father, never trouble your self at it, for this belongs also to the
Pleasures of Marriage; nor do not seem discontented because your Dearest walks abroad
thus every day; but rather think with your self, she takes her spinning Wheel and reel along with her. And if in her absence, you
have not that due attendance, nor find that in the house and Kitchin things are not
so well taken care for, why then, you must imagine to be satisfied with th’assistance
of the Semstress, or some such sort of person, as well as you were when you enjoied
the Eighth Pleasure: You must also observe, that if the Child should sit much, it
might get crooked legs, and then the sweet Babe were ruined for ever. It is also too
weak yet to be any waies roughly handled; but it begins from day to day to grow
stronger and stronger: Also with your Dearest carrying it abroad continually to visit
all your friends and acquaintance, it learns by degrees to eat all things, and drinks
not only Beer, but some Wine too. And I assure you it is no small Pleasure for the
Father and Mother to see that this little young Gosling can so perfectly distinguish
the tast of the Wine, from the tast of the Beer: tho when it is come to some elder
years, perhaps they would give a hundred pound, if they could but wean it from it.
But that’s too far to be lookt into. And care too soon taken makes people quickly
gray-headed.

Before you reach this length, yea perhaps before some few weeks are at an end; you
will see this sweet Babe afflicted with either the Measels or small Pox; and then
you’l wish for a good sum of mony that he might not be disfigured with them, in having many pock-holes. And it is no
wonder, for who knows whether he may be past small-pocking and measeling when he is
five & twenty years of age? But on the contrary there may then perchance appear
so many glimps of marriage Pleasures from him, that such small things will not be
once lookt at.

For if your Wife be now upon a new reckoning, and you come then, as I have told
you before, to get a Daughter; you will in time see what a pretty sweet Gentlewoman
she’l grow to be; how modestly & orderly she goes to learn to write and read; but
most especially to prick samples; which perhaps she’l be wholly perfect in, before
she hath half learnt to sow: nay its probable that she’l be an Artist at the making
of Bone-lace, though she was never taught it.

Otherwise both you & her Mother will reap an extraordinary Pleasure in seeing
your Daughter grow up in all manner of comly and civil deportments; and that she
begins to study in the book of French manners and behaviours; and knows also
how to dress up her self so finically with all manner of trinkum trankums, that all
the neighbouring young Gentlewomen, and your rich Neeces esteem themselves very much
honoured with the injoiment of her company; where they, following the examples of
their Predecessors, do, by degrees, instruct one another in the newest fashions,
finest Flanders Laces, the difference and richness of Stuffs, the neatest cut Gorgets, and many more such Jincombobs as these. Nay,
and what’s more, they begin also to invite and treat each other like grave persons,
according as the opportunity will allow them, first with some Cherries and Plums;
then with some Filbuds and Small Nuts; or Wallnuts & Figs; and afterwards with
some Chesnuts and new Wine; or to a game at Cards with a dish of Tee, or else to eat
some Pancakes and Fritters or a Tansie; nay, if the Coast be clear to their minds to
a good joint of meat & a Sallad. Till at last it comes so far, that through these
delicious conversations, they happen to get a Sweetheart, and in good time a
bedfellow to keep them from slumbring and sleeping. And it is very pleasing to see
that they do so observe the making good of the old Proverb,

As old Birds did, the young ones sing, Which is a very pleasant
thing.

Happy are you, O you new Housholders, who have already possessed your selves of so
many Pleasures in your marriage; and are now come just to the very entrance to
repossess your selves of them over again; and perchance they’l never depart from you
as long as you see the one day follow the other. Be not backward or negligent in
relating your happiness to others; but if there be any distast or disaster that can
happen in the married estate, lock it up in the very Closet of your heart, and abhor
everlastingly the thoughts of relating it; then
you will have many that will pursue your footsteps, and be Listed into your Company,
& then also will your estate and condition be famous through the whole World.

Conclusion.

Thus long you have seen, Courteous Reader, how that those married people, who are
but indifferently gifted with temporal means, indeavour to puff up each other with
vain and airy hopes and imaginations, perswading themselves that all the troubles,
vexations, and bondages of the married estate; are nothing else but Mirths, Delights
and Pleasures; perhaps to no other end but to mitigate their own miserable condition,
or else to draw others into the same unhappy snare; as indeed oftentimes hapneth. But
it is most sad and lamentable, that the meaner sort of people, when they have thrown
themselves into it, make their condition a thousand times worse then it was before:
For they, who at first could but very soberly and sparingly help themselves, do find
when they are married, that they must go through not only ten, but at least a
thousand cares and vexations. And all what hath hitherto been said of the ten
Pleasures, is only spoken of the good and most agreeable matches; and not of any of
those, which many times are so different and
contrary of humour, as the light is from darkness; where there is a continual Hell of
dissention, cursing, mumbling and maundring; nay biting & scratching into the
bargain, which for the most part is occasioned by the quarrelsom, crabbed, lavish,
proud, opinionated, domineering, and unbridled nature of the female sex. Besides
there are a great number (which I will be silent of) who do all they can to please
others, and Cuckold their own husbands. And others there are that disguise themselves
so excessively with strong Waters, that a whole day long they can hardly close their
Floud-gates. So that you need not wonder much, if you see the greatest part of women
(tho they trick themselves never so finely up) can hardly get husbands; and their
Parents are fain at last to give a good sum of mony with them, that they may
disburthen themselves of them. Insomuch that it is easie to be seen that they are in
effect of less value then old Iron, Boots and Shoes, &c. for we find both
Merchants and mony ready alwaies to buy those commodities.

Therefore O you that are yet so happy as to have kept your selves out of this
dreadfull estate of marriage, have a horror for it. Shun a woman much more than a
Fish doth the hook. Remember that Solomon amongst all women kind could not find one
good. Observe by what hath befallen those that went before you, what is approaching
to your self, if you follow their footsteps. And
be most certainly assured that the acutest pens are not able to expound the light
& feasiblest troubles and disasters of marriage, set then aside the most
difficile and ponderous. Do but read with a special observation the insuing Letter of
a Friends advice touching marriage; imprint it as with a Seal upon your heart; and
lay fast hold upon that golden expression of the glorious Apostle, It is good for
man not to touch a woman.

The End of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage.

A LETTER

From one Friend to another,

Desiring to know whether it be advisable to marry.

SIR,

I must acknowledge that the Letter which you have writ me hath given me some
incumbrance, and made me more then three times to ruminate upon the question you
propounded to me concerning Marriage; for it is a matter of great importance, that
ought to be well pondered and considered of, before one should adventure to solemnize
& celebrate it. Several of my familiar friends have troubled me touching the very
same subject, and I gave them every one my advice according as they were affected;
but me-thinks I ought not to deal so loose and unboundedly with you, by reason I dare
speak unto you with more freedom and truth. First, there are two things which bind me
strictly to you, Nature and the Affection; and moreover the great knowledge I have of
this so necessary an evil. I will tell you my opinion, then you may use your own discretion, whether you will approve of my meaning
for advice or not. For my part, I beleeve that of all the disasters we are subject to
in our life time, that of Marriage takes preference from all the rest: But for as
much as it is necessary for the multiplying the World, it is fit it should be used by
such as are not sensible of it, and can hardly judge of the consequences thereof.
Neither do I esteem any man unhappy, let whatsoever disasters there will happen to
him, if he doth not fall beyond his sence so far as to take a Wife. Those troubles
that may befall us otherwise, are alwaies of so small a strength! that he who hath
but the least magnanimity may easily overpower them. But the Tortures of Marriage are
such a burthen, that I never saw no man, let him be as couragious as he would, which
it hath not brought under the yoke of her Tyranny. Marry then, you shall have a
thousand vexations, a thousand torments, a thousand dissatisfactions, a thousand
plagues; and in a word, a thousand sort of repentings, which will accompany you to
your Grave. You may take or chuse what sort of a Wife you will, she’l make you every
day repent your taking of her. What cares will come then to awake and disturb you in
the middle of your rest! and the fear of some mischance or other will feed your very
spirit with a continual trouble. For a morning-alarm you shall have the children to
awaken you out of sleep. Their lives shall
hasten your death. You shall never be at quiet till you are in your Grave. You will
be pining at many insufferable troubles, and a thousand several cogitations will be
vexing your spirits at the chargeable maintenance of your Family. Insomuch that your
very Soul will be tormented with incessant crosses, which alwaies accompany this
evil, in the very happiest marriages. So that a Man ought in reality to confess, that
he who can pass away his daies without a Wife is the most happiest. Verily a Wife is
a heavy burthen; but especially a married one; for a Maid that is marriageable, will
do all that ever she can to hide her infirmities, till she be tied in Wedlock to
either one or other miserable wretch. She overpowers her very nature and affections;
changes her behaviour, & covers all her evil and wicked intentions. She
dissembleth her hypocrisie, and hides her cunning subtleties. She puts away all her
bad actions, and masks all her deeds. She mollifies both her speech and face; and to
say all in one word, she puts on the face of an Angel, till she hath found one or
other whom she thinks fit to deceive with her base tricks and actions. But having
caught him under the Slavery of this false apparition; she then turns the t’other
side of the Meddal; and draws back the curtain of her Vizards, to shew the naked
truth, which she so long had palliated, and her modesty only forbad her to reveal: By
degrees then vomiting up the venom that she so
long had harboured under her sweet hypocrisie. And then is repenting, or the greatest
understanding of no worth to you: Perhaps you may tell me, that you have a Mistriss,
who is fair, rich, young, wise, airy, and hath the very majestical countenance of a
Queen upon her forehead; and that these are all reasons which oblige you to love her.
But I pray, consider with your self, that a fair Woman is oftentimes tempted; a
young, perillous; a rich, proud and haughty; a wise, hypocritical; an airy, full of
folly; and if she be eloquent, she is subject to speak evilly: if she be jocund and
light hearted, she’l leave you to go to her companions, and thinks that the care of
her mind, is with you in your solitariness; and by reason she can flatter you so
well, it never grieves you. If she be open-hearted, her freedom of spirit will appear
hypocritical to you: her airiness you will judge to be tricks that will be very
troublesom to you. If she love playing, she’l ruine you. If she be liquorish and
sweet-tooth’d, she leads your children the ready road to an Hospital. If she be a bad
Housekeeper, she lets all things run to destruction, that hath cost you so much care
and trouble to get together. If she be a finical one, that will go rich in her
apparel, she’l fill the Shopkeepers Counters with your mony. And in this manner her
lavishness, shall destroy all your estate. To be short, let her be as she will, she
shall never bring you much profit. In good
troth, I esteem very little those sort of things, which you imagine to have a great
delight in. ‘Tis true, if you take a Wife, which is ugly, poor, innocent, without
either air or spirit; that’s a continual burthen to you all your life time. The old
are commonly despised; the ugly abhor’d; the poor slighted; and the innocent laught
at. They are called beasts that have no ingenuity: and women without airiness, have
generally but small sence of love. In these last some body might say to you, that one
ought to take of them that are indifferently or reasonably well qualified. But I will
surge a little higher, and tell you plainly, that that will be just like one who
fearing to drown himself at the brinks of a River, goeth into the middle, to be the
higher above water. You see now, why I cannot advise you to marry. Yet I would not
have you to beleeve, tho I so much discommend it, that it is no waies usefully
profitable. I esteem it to be a holy institution ordained by God Almighty. That which
makes it bad is the woman, in whom there is no good. If you will marry, you must then
conclude never to be any thing for your self again; but to subject your self to the
toilsom will and desires of a Wife, most difficult to be born with; to pass by all
her deficiences; to assist her infirmities; to satisfie her insatiable desires; to
approve of all her pleasures, & whatsoever she also will you must condescend to. Now you have heard and understood all my
reasons and arguments, you may then tell me, that you have a fine estate, and that
you would willingly see an heir of your own that might possess it; and that it would
be one of your greatest delights, to see your own honour and vertues survive in your
children. But as to that I’l answer you, and say, that your reward shall be greater
in relieving the poor and needy; then to leave rich remembrances to Heirs; and
procure you an everlasting blessing, that you might otherwise leave for a prey to
your children; who it may be are so bastardized in their birth, that they are both
Spendthrifts and Vagabonds; for it happens oft that good trees do not alwaies bring
forth good fruit. If, when you have seriously perused this my Letter, you are not
affrighted at your intention; marry: but if you take it indifferently; marry not. And
beleeve me, that a man who is free from the troubles & vexations of marriage, is
much happier and hath more content to himself in one day, then another in the whole
scope of his Wedlock. And what’s more, a single man may freely and resolutely
undertake all things, to Travel, go to battell, be solitary, & live according to
his own delight; without fearing that at his death he shall leave a Widow and
Fatherless children, who must be delivered over to the Fates, for their friends will
never look after them. Hitherto I have kept you up, concerning your intention; and further I give you no other advice, then what
by your self you may take to your self. If you marry, you do well: but not marrying,
you do better. And if you will incline to me, rather then to marry, you shall alwaies
find me to be

SIR
Your very humble servant

A.B.

The

CONFESSION

Of the

New Married Couple.

THE CONFESSION OF THE NEW MARRIED COUPLE
LONDON,
PRINTED in the JEAR 1683.
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

The

CONFESSION

Of the

New Married Couple,

Being

The Second Part of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage.

Relating

The further delights and contentments that ly masked under the bands of
Wedlock.

Written by A. Marsh. Typogr.

LONDON,

Printed in the year 1683.

To the READER.

Courteous Reader,

Thy kind acceptance of the First Part, hath incouraged me to go forward with a
Second, which I here present thee with; being now indifferently confident that it
will be no worse used by Thee then the Brother of it was: I hope there is never a
Part of it, in which thou wilt not find somthing that will please thy Fancy: But for
such as profess to be of the zealousest sort of people, and make use of the gestur of
casting up the whites of their eys, when they intend to tell you a notorious ly, I
would not have them to study in it, by reason it speaks a great deal of truth, and
will not be so suitable to their humors; because it is a bundle of matter that is
scrambled together, which could not be wrapt up in such clean linnen, or drest up in
such holding forth Language and pious hypocrisie, as such generally make use
of: It is only fit for truehearted Souls that will solace their Spirits with a little
laughter, and never busie their brains with the subversion of State and Church
government: And being well received by such, it is as much as is expected by him who
is thine. Farewell.

The

CONFESSION

Of the

New Married Couple,

Being

The Second Part of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage.

INTRODUCTION.

It is an inexpressible pleasure for Travellers, when after many traverses and
tossings too and again, they return quietly home to their studies and rememorates all
the unexpected pleasure that they encountred with upon the one Coast, and the
horrible vexations and confusions that they had upon another. And the very penning
thereof, doth, as it were anew, repossess them of all the pleasures, and conveyeth
them through all the Countries, without so much as the least moving of a foot. Just
so it goes with those that have been under the Bands of Matrimony, and are loosed
from them: These being then come to be solitary, at rest, and in quiet, can the more seriously rememorate and recogitate what
pleasures they injoied at one, and what thwartings and crosses they met with at other
times. And the writing down of these, doth not only afresh regenerate in them the
received pleasures; but serves also for a Looking-glass to all married Couples, for
them to recogitate what pleasures they have already received, and what joys are still
approaching towards them. And for those which as yet know not the sweetness of the
Nuptial estate, it serves for a Fire-Beacon that they may with all earnestness Sail
unto it, and possess those joys also. Of those we have before demonstrated unto you
Ten Pleasant Tables: But because the Scale of Marriage may hang somwhat evener, and
not fall too light on the womens side, we shall for the Courteous Reader add unto
them Ten Pleasures more, being that which some Married people have since confessed,
or to be short with you, was formerly wink’d at, and passed over.

9
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

The First Pleasure.

The young Couple begin to keep Shop, and demand their promised
Portion.

Till now, O new Married Couple, you have passed through the First part of your
Wedlock with feasting and pleasures, and have injoied no smal delights in it. But
what is there in this World that we grow not weary of? You have seen that the
sumptuosest Feast full of delicate dishes, and the pleasurablest Country Scituations,
with al their rich fruits, finally cloggeth, through the continual injoyment of
them.

Nevertheless it is the generall desire of all persons, forasmuch as it is
possible, to live in the World in pleasure and delights. Amongst the rest the gain of
mony is none of the smallest pleasures, and this appears to be the least burthensom,
tho it have much trouble in it. Therefore is it very much commendable, O young
Couple, though you have a pretty estate of your own, according as your Contract of
Marriage testifies, and as we have also seen by the Wedding you kept, your apparel,
and the other ap and dependances, that you begin to meditate how to make the best
benefit of your stock; and so much the more, because your Predecessors got it with a
slavish diligence, reaped it together with sobriety, kept it with care, and finally left it unto you for your great pleasure. It is
then also not strange, if you, as true bred children, keep it carefully, and make the
best profit of it; to the end, that your Successors, when time shall serve, may find
that they have had frugall Parents; and so walk in your footsteps. Verily this is one
of the necessariest meditations in the World. If we could but any waies make the dead
sensible of it in their grave, undoubtedly the Reliques of your Parents would rejoice
at so happy and carefull an intention of you their children.

And truly, what is there, among other cogitations, more pleasurable, then to begin
with a handsom Shop-keeping? For this through the daily gain, yeelds every day new
pleasures, and by consequence a merry life. ‘Tis true, Merchandize bears a greater
respect, and yeelds also sometimes great gains; but with these trouble somtimes, it
is for the most part subject to great and weighty losses, which is the destruction of
young people, and so intangles the merriest part of their lives, that fears and cares
deprives them of their night rest. If the wind blow hard, they are presently in a
fear that the Ships at sea laden with their Goods and Wares may be Shipwrack’d. If
they will assure them, then the Assurer goes away with the profit: and they are also
so greedy and cunning, that the least storm or bad tiding makes them very slow and
circumspect; or if they be not so, it is to be
feared, so there happen many losses, that then the Assurer himself might come to be
lost.

But the handsom Shop-keeping is the surest and pleasurablest; for every moment you
get new customers as well from abroad as at home, who buy continually with ready
mony; or otherwise pay the old score, and trust the new. Yea all the news that goes
about the City, is brought home and imparted to you. There’s not a man dies, or woman
brought to bed, but you have knowledge of it. Well then, what greater pleasure can
there be then this?

Also, young Woman, you may, through love and care, herein be assistant to your
husband oftentimes, which you cannot do in Merchandize, and so by degrees learn to
understand the Shop, and converse neatly with the customers; whereby you can in his
absence, also help the customers, and give them pleasing answers, insomuch that you
oftentimes attain to as perfect a knowledge of the Trading, as your husband
himself.

You are happy, yea ten times over happy, O housewively young Woman in this choice,
and that not only for your husband, but principally for your self. For if that
mischance might happen to you, that death should bereave you of your husband, you
find your self oftentimes setled in a way of Trading, which you can manage your self,
and set forward with reputation. Nay though you
might happen to have children, you have the opportunity your self to bring them up in
the same way, and so get a due, faithfull and carefull assistance from them, which
will not so well be done by Men and Maid-servants, and over whom there is seldom so
much command, as over ones own children.

And if your husband continue in health, and find that Trading grows quick, he
perceives that by the assistance of his wife, something else may be taken by the hand
that is also profitable, and then he will alwaies exercise some sort of Merchandise
that is secure and advantagious.

It is most certain, sweet Woman, you will be the more tied to your housekeeping,
and cannot so often go to visit and take your pleasure with your Gossips as you
formerly did, in Coaches or by Water; as if your husband had taken any sort of
Merchandice in hand; because that a Woman who is married to a Shopkeeper, is as it
were also wedded to the Counter, by reason you dare not trust your Shop to old, much
less to new men or Maid-servants, because they do not perfectly understand the Trade,
and thereby also find occasion to make one bed serve for both and junket together;
which makes no small confusion in the family; but little regard must be taken about
that, for the importantest must alwaies be taken care of.

And be assured, if the desire of gain, small Trading, and bad paiment, begin once
to take possession of you, the thoughts of all
the former pleasures will remove, and you will exchange them for those that are more
noble and becoming, viz. in the well governing of your Men and Maid-servants
in the Shop and House, and taking inspection that they be obedient unto you; the
Family must be wel taken care of; going to Market with the Maid to buy that which is
good, and let her dress it to your mind; and every Market day precisely, with the
Maid neatly drest, and following you with a hand-basket, go to take a view of
Newgate, Cheapside, and the Poultry Markets; and afterwards, when your got a little
farther, then to have your Baby carried by you, neatly and finically drest up; and in
hearing of it, whilest it is in the standing stool, calling in its own language so
prettily Daddy and Mammy. O that is such an extraordinary pleasure, that where ever
you go, what soever you delight in, all your delight is, to be at home again in your
Shop, by your servants; and most especially (when you have it) to be by your
Baby.

And if you do get a fit to be gadding abroad with some of your friends and
neighbours (for one cannot alwaies be tied as if they were in Bridewell, nor the Bow
ever stiff bent) why then you have Ascen-sion-day, which may as well be used for
pleasure as devotion. And if that be too short, presently follows Whitsontide, then
you may sing tantarroraara three daies together,
and get your fill of it. So that you may find time enough to take your delight and
pleasure, tho you be a little tied to a Shop.

This being then in such manner taken into a ripe deliberation by some of the
nearest relations, it is concluded on to set up a handsom Shop, and to furnish it
with al sorts of necessaries; and by that means make that you may alwaies say Yea and
never No to the Customers.

O how glad the good Woman is, now she sees that her husband, who is otherwise
somewhat stifnecked, lets himself be perswaded to this, by his friends! and how
joyfull is the husband that his Wife, who at first seemed to be high-spirited, is now
herewith so absolutely contented.

O happy Match, where the delight and pleasure of both parties, is bent upon one
subject. How fast doth this writhe and twist the Bands of Wedlock and love together!
Certainly to be of one mind, may very well be said to be happily married, and called
a Heaven upon Earth.

Here they are cited to appear who display the married estate too monstrously, as
if there were nothing but horrors and terrors to be found in it. Now they would see
how that Love in her curious Crusible, melteth two hearts and ten sences together. To
this all Chymists vail their Bonnets, though they brag of their making the hardest Minerals as soft as Milk and Butter. This
Art surpasseth all others.

Yet here ought to be considered what sort of Trading shall be pitcht upon. The man
hath good knowledge in Cloath, Silk stufs, French Manufactures and Galantries,
&c. But the Woman thinks it would be much better, if they handled by the gross in
Italian Confits, Candied and Musk sugar plums, Raisons of the Sun, Figs, Almonds,
Pistaches, Bon Christian Pears, Granad-Apples, and dried fruits; together with Greek
and Spanish Wines, delicate Sack, Muskadine, and Frontinyack Wine; which is a
Negotiation, pleasing to the ey, delicious for the tast, and beloved by all the
World. And by this she thinks she shall procure as many Customers as her husband,
because she hath familiar acquaintance with severall brave Gentlewomen, that throw
away much mony upon such commodities, and make many invitations, Treats and
Feastings. And she her self could alwaies be presently ready, when she received an
honourable visit.

O happy man, who hath gotten such an ingenious understanding wife! that takes care
and considers with her self for the doing all fit and necessary things to the best
advantage. And really she is not one jot out of the way, for this sort of Merchandize
is both relishing and delightfull, and must be every foot bought again.

Now the time requires going to market to buy Fir, Oak, and Sackerdijne Wood, and
to order that the Shop may be neatly built and set up. And you are happy, that Master
Paywell, who is a very neat Joiner and Cabinet-Maker, is of your very good
acquaintance, and so near by the hand: He knows how to fit and join the pannels most
curiously together, and so inlaies, shaves, and polishes the fine wood, that you
would swear it is all of one piece.

Well here again is another new pleasure and delight! If all things go thus
forward, certainly the wedding-cloaths will in a short time be, at the least, a span
too little. O how glad you’l be, when this trouble is but once over! and that the
Shop is neatly built, painted, gilt, furnished, and finely put into a posture.

O how nobly it appears, and how delightfull and pleasing it will be when this new
Negotiant sees his Shop full of Customers, and he at one Counter commending, praising
and selling, and one servant bringing commodities to him, and another hath his hands
full with measuring and weighing! And his beloved at another Counter finds imploiment
enough with telling mony, weighing of gold, and discoursing with the Customers. Then
it wil not seem strange unto you, how it came to pass that your Predecessors got such
fine sums of mony together, and left them unto you to be merry with. Therefore you
ought also, even as they did, to provide your
selves with a curious and easie to be remembred Sign, because your Customers by
mistake might not come to run into your Neighbors Shops.

I have not yet forgotten that your Grandfather, being a Wollen Draper, first hung
out the Sign of the Sheep, and his name was James Thomson, but by reason of his great
custom, they called him, by the nick name, of James in the Sheep; which remains still
as a name to the generation. And in like manner your wives Grandfather, a well
customed Shopkeeper in silk-stufs, whose name was William Jackson, hung out the sign
of the Silkworm, but his son going to school with another boy whose name was also
William Jackson, for the making a distinction between them, they gave him the name of
William the Silkworm, which also remains as a name to the Family. This is not common
only among the Londoners, but in other Cities and Country Towns, also among Coachmen,
Wagoners, and others.

But come we wil take our leaves of these people, and turn again to our new married
Couple, who can hardly rest quietly a nights, for the earnest desire they have to see
all things accomplished, and their Trading going forward. And in time Tom Thumb got
on his doublet, tho he was seven years pulling on the first sleeve. Yet before you
come to this great pleasure, you’l meet with a troublesom obstruction in the way, which if you can but turn of bravely, it
will be much the pleasanter.

For before the Shop is fully furnisht, you will see what there will be wanting to
fill all the corners and places with commodities that must be sold by length of time,
and to stand out the trust; and also with patience and meekness expect the coming of
mony from slow and bad paymasters: therefore it begins to be time to speak of the
promised Portion.

Uds bud, what a racket is here now! For the young mans father had made his full
account that he should not already be dun’d for the promised Portion; not doubting
but that the young womans lay all totally ready told of in bags; and thought to take
it in the best sence, I will pay my son his interest yearly; and afterwards, in
peaceable times, when there’s little or no impositions, and that my Coffers are
better furnisht, will then give him the principal.

And seriously the old man seems to deal herein very cordially, since other mens
fathers do not do half so well, and only give this for an answer, With young men
must be promised, and with daughters must be given. And others make their sons
give them a bond, wherein he, as by example, acknowledgeth to be indebted to his
father six hundred pound, whereupon the Father closes the match, and promiseth to
give in marriage with his son six hundred pound: which at last comes to nothing at all, and only serves for a perfect
cheat to deceive and hood-wink the eys of the pretended Gentlewoman and her
Guardians.

It is no wonder where such Matches are made, if, when such things are discovered,
there be a great deal of time spent, before they can come to the true pleasure.

But you, O new married man, who have a liberal father on your side, you can get
provisionally your interest, and when times mend your principal. Perhaps it will not
be half so well with your wives estate, for she it may be in her maiden estate, hath
spent and run out more in gaudy apparel, to intice a Lover, then the interest of her
estate could bear, insomuch that the principal is diminished, or the revenues thereof
received and consumed long before they were due.

‘s Wounds in what a sweat and fear, with these sort of cogitations, is this
approaching new Shop-keeper in! How earnestly he runs to her Guardians, to see if
they will unriddle him this doubt that he is in. But to his good fortune, he finds it
in a much better condition than he thought he should. For his dearest, hath spent
much less in her apparelling and maintenance, then she could have done, so that
there’s not only mony in stock, but rents of her real estate that are yet to be paid
unto her, though there was very much consumed for her Brides apparel and the other accoutrements. Well this is an
extraordinary pleasure, and a great comfort for his panting heart. Uds life how many
hundred kisses are now offered at the Altar of her sweet lips, that otherwise would
not so much as have been thought upon. Therefore one may easily perceive that mony
increaseth love very much; and that Lovers in these times are so bent upon mony, and
so diligent in search of it, is no admiration; nay they scruple not to inquire of the
Guardians, and up and down by unsworn Brokers, who negotiate with a very close
intelligence in this sort of Flesh-Trade, and draw ten double salaries (and that
ofttimes too from both sides) if they can but help anyone to a good bargain, and that
he obtains access; and afterwards wheedle it about so, that it finally comes to be a
match. But what sad issue generally such sort of Matches are attended with, is well
known to the whole World.

You, O Lovers, who seek to be Livry men of the great Company, and aim to possess
the pleasures of Marriage, have a care of the inchanting voices of these crafty
Syrens, because they intend to batter you upon the Scylla and Charibdis
where the Hellish Furies seem to keep their habitation. These are the only
Occasioners of bad Matches, and such as raise a Scandal of that Estate, which at once
affoards both Pleasure, Mirth and Joy.

But our new married Couple went clear another
way to work, who now to their full contentment, act so many pretty Apish tricks,
injoy such multiplicities of kindnesses, and toss each other such quantities of
kisses, as if there were a whole Kingdom, or at the least a vast Estate to be gained
thereby: So that they find, that in that estate, there are not only Ten, but a
thousand Pleasures cemented together in it; whereof in the following shall be
demonstrated in some part the imperfect gloss, but never the accomplished
Portrait.

27
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

The Second Pleasure.

The Husband grows Pipsy; and keeps the first Lying-in: Takes the Doctors
advice. Is mocked by his Pot-Companions.

Just as one Candle lights another, so we see also, that two, sympathetically
minded, know, by the cleaving of their lips together, how to breathe into each other
their burning hearts-desire, wherewith the one doth as it were kindle the other, and
do every moment renew and blow on again their even just now extinguished
delights.

Of this you have here a pattern from our late married, for whom the longest Summer
daies and Winter nights fall too short to satisfy their affections; they hardly know
how to find out time that they may bestow some few hours in taking care for the ordring and setting all things in a decent
posture in their new made Shop; imagining that they shall alwaies live thus,
Salamander-like in the fire, without being ever indamaged by it. But time will
teach them this better. In the mean while we will make our selves merry with the
pleasure of this married Couple, who see now their Shop fully in order, furnisht with
severall brave goods, and a pretty young fellow to attend it.

But because Customers do not yet throng upon them, they find no other pastime then
to entertain each other in all manner of kind imbracements, and to chear up their
hearts therein to the utmost. Here it may be plainly seen how pleasant and
delightfull it is for the young woman, because her physiognomy begins to grow the
longer the more frank and jocund.

So, that to us, her countenance doth display
Her souls content, e’re since her Wedding day.

But just as a burning Candle doth consume, though to it self insensible, yet
maketh of hers joyfull by its light, so doth our new married Man, before few months
are expired, find that he becomes the very subject of flouting at and laughter, among
his former boon Companions; because every one jestingly tells him, that he is sick of
a fever, that the paleness of his Face, the lankness of his Cheeks, and thinness of
his Calves, doth shew it most plainly.

And verily there are some artificial Jesters who do it so neatly, that he himself
beleeves it almost to be true: yet nevertheless, to avoid their mockeries, casts it
of from him as far as possible may be. But his own opinion doth so clearly convince
him, that in himself he ponders and considers what course is best to be taken.

But housoever as long as he goes and walks up and down, eats and drinks, he thinks
that the tide will turn again. Yet finding himself inwardly weaker of body rallies
with his own distemper, in hopes that by his jesting, among his merry Companions, he
may from them understand what is best, upon such occasions, to be done or avoided;
and they seriously jesting say to him: O friend, wean yourself from your wife and
Tobacco, and drink Chocolate, and eat knuckles of Veal, or else you’l become like one
of Pharaohs lean Kine. Oh ho, thinks he, if that be true, I have spent my reckoning
this evening very happily.

Now young woman, don’t you admire if your husband comes home at night discontented
in mind, for his wits run a Wool-gathering, and he has walkt in a dump from Towerhill
to Tuttle Fields contriving what’s best for him to do, and how to compass the matter
neatly. For to remain so from his dear and delicate Wife, not paying unto her the
usual family duty, is below the generosity of a man; and to tell her what the matter
is, is yet worse. To leave of Tobacco, and eat
knuckles of Veal, is feasible. But to go to a Coffehouse and alwaies drink Chocolate,
that sticks against the stomack.

Nevertheless Necessity hath no Law. And the Occasion overpowers affection.
Insomuch that after a thousand pondrous considerations, he resolves to deny his
dearly beloved Wife a little of that same; and to that purpose will somtimes in an
evening feign to have the headake, or that he is very dull and sleepy, (which is no
absolutely;) and thereby commands his man to call him up somtimes very early in the
morning, as if there were forsooth Customers in the Shop, &c. and hunts up and
down among the Chocolate Dealers to get of the very best, preparing it himself in
milk, treating all that come to visit him with Chocolate instead of Tobacco; and he
feigning that he hath an extraordinary delight in it; and on the other side, perswade
his wife that he has a huge mind to eat a knuckle of Veal, some good broath, and
new-laid Egs, or some such sort of pretty conceited diet.

But perceiving that this avails little, and that he grows rather weaker then
stronger; away he trots to the Scotch Paduan Doctor, who immediately prescribes a
small Apothecaries Shop, at the least twenty or more several sorts of herbs, to be
infused in a pottle of old Rhenish wine, and twice a day to drink half a quartern
thereof at a time: Item a Plaister to be applied
to his Stomack; and an unguent for the pit of the Stomack, under the nose, and to
chafe the Temples of the head; but most especially to keep a good strengthning diet,
&c.

But this seems to have too much stir in the view of his wife; therefore must be
laid aside; and away he goes then to a High German Doctor, who without stop or stand,
according to the nature of his country, Mountebank-like begins to vaunt, as
followeth: Ach Herr, ihr zijt ein hupscher, aber ein swaccher Venus-Ritter; ihr
habt in des Garten der Beuchreiche Veneris gar zu viel gespatzieret, und das
Jungfraulicken Roszlein zu oftmaal gehantiret; ihr werd ein grosze kranckheyt haben,
wan ihr nicht baldt mein herlich Recept gebraucht, aber wan ihr dieses zu euch neimt,
ihr zold alzo baldt hups gecuriret warden, zolches das ihr wie ein redlicher Cavalier
andermaal tzoegerust, daz Jonfferliche Slosz besturmen, erobren, und da uber
triomfiren zol. Dan ihr must viel gebrauchen daz weise von Ganze und Enteneyeren, die
wol gebraten sind, Rothkohl mit feysem fleisch gekockt, alte Huner kleyn gehacket,
Hanen Kammen, Swezerichen, Schaffe und Geisse-milch mit Reisz gekockt, auch Kalbs und
Taubengehirn viel gegessen mit Nucis Muscati; und Reinischer Wein mesich getruncken;
es is gewis wan ihr dieses vielmaal thut, ihr zold wieder kreftich und mechtich
werden, und es werd sijner liebsten auch gar wol gevellich zein.

In English thus.

Oh Sir, you are a brave, but a weak Knight, you have walkt too much in the
mid-paths of the Garden, and plukt too often from the Rose-tree, if you make not use
of my noble remedies, you’l have a great fit of sickness; but if you do take it,
you’l be very quickly and dextrously cured; in such a manner, that like a Warriour
you may both storm and take the Fortress, and triumph over it. Be sure then to make
often use of the whites of Geese and Ducks-Egs roasted, Red-Cabidge boild with fat
meat, old Hens beaten to pieces, Cox-combs, Sweet breads, Sheeps and Goats milk boild
with Rice; you must also often eat Calves and Pigeons brains with Nutmeg grated in
them; and drink temperately Rhenish Wine; it is most certain that by a frequent doing
of this, you will grow both able and strong again; and it will also be very
acceptable to your dearly beloved.

Here stands the poor Cully again, and looks like a Dog in a Halter, and perceives
that this Doctor Jobbernole gives him an abundance of words but few effects for his
mony; because all his boasting, doth, for the most part, contain what he had before
made use of; and is therefore unwilling to trouble his wives brain with all that
boiling and stewing, and all the rest of the circumstances. This makes him take a resolution to let it take its course. But still
growing weaker and weaker, is at last fain to keep his bed, and constrained to send
for one of our own Country Doctors, and makes his complaint to him, that he is
troubled with an excessive head-ake, weakness in the reins of his back, a lameness in
his joints that he can hardly lift his arm to his head; together with a foulness of
his stomack, which makes him that he can retain nothing, but is forc’t to vomit all
up again, &c. Out of all which reasons the Doctor perfectly understands the
ground of his distemper; and in the absence of his wife, reveals it unto him.

O how delicately these Cards are shufled! if the game go thus forward, it will
come to be a stately Pleasure! but principally for the Doctor, who privately simpers
at the playing of his own part, and never fails to note down his Visits; but most
especially if he have the delivery of the Medicins into the bargain; placing them
then so largely to account as is any waies possible to be allowed of; which makes the
Apothecary burst out into such a laughter, as if he had received the tiding of a new
Bankrupt.

But go you forwards Doctor, it must be so, you have not studied for nothing; and
it is no small matter to be every time ordering of new remedies; especially when we
see that you constantly write.

Rx Vini Rhenani vetustissimi & generostssimi M ij.

And then again to eat oftentimes Pistaches, Almonds, Custards, and Tansies,
&c.

Though since the Patient, like making a
Martyr of himself, is in this manner fallen into the hands of the Doctor, his dearly
beloved Wife is not negligent to acquaint all the friends with it; who immediately
come running to give a visit to the sick, and speak words of consolation to the good
woman. But alas grief and sorrow hath taken such deep root in her heart, that no
crums of comfort, though ever so powerfull, can dispossess her calamities: for the
seeing of a husband who loved her so unmeasurably, and was so friendly and feminine,
to ly sick a bed, would stir up the obdurest heart to compassion, and mollifie it
with showers of tears.

But even as all the Relations, by messengers, are made acquainted with this
sickness; report in like manner is not behind hand with making it known to good
acquaintance and arch Jesters, who (as I shewed you before) are very ready to appear
with their flouts and gibes, and instead of comforting, begin to laugh with the
Patient, saying: O Sir, we have perceived, a long time since, that you were more then
half your reckoning, and that your lying-in was much nearer then your wives; and we
alwaies thought, because we had tasted out such delicate Wedding-wine for you, that
you would have desired us to have taken the like care for to have such at yours, and
afterwards at your Wives lying-in. Yet since it
hath not so hapned, we hope that the Doctor hath taken so much the better care for
it.

Thus rallying, they begin to get the bibbing-bottle, and guess at the same time,
as if it had been told them, that the Doctor in his last receipt had ordered Rhenish
Wine.

And just as the Women in the Eighth Pleasure of the First Part produce abundance
of Remedies; the assembly of Men do here in like manner cast up a hundred Receits
which makes Peggy the maid blush and be most cruelly ashamed at; but behind
the Window she listens most sharply to hear what’s told and confessed by those that
be in the Chamber, as to the further matter of fact.

For Master Barebreech relates, that as he was travelling the last Summer
into the North, and so forwards into Scotland, going through Edenburgh, met there
with his cousin Master Coldenough, who look’d so lean and pale-fac’d; that
Master Barebreech told him, in truth Cousin, I should hardly have known you;
verily you look as if you were troubled; and I beleeve you have the feeling of a
first lying-in through all your joints. Well Cousin, saies the t’other, it seems that
you are deeply studied in the Art of Witchcraft, for I fear its too true. I went from
home on purpose to take my pleasure for three weeks or a month, that I might store my
self with fresh provisions, and sing a sweet ditty in commendations of my Betty. Ho,
Ho, saith Master Barebreech, flatter not
your self with such a fancy, that you’l get as much up again in three weeks or a
month, as you have been running behind hand in four. If you’l do well, let’s for a
frolick go into France, there’s a gallant air, and we shall be very good company
together, and fear not but that we’l make much of our selves; then when we come home
again, you’l find your self so well, and both you and your wife will be thankfull to
me as long as you live for my good advice of taking this journy. To be short, the
Cousins travell together, and Master Coldenough came home so lusty, fat and
plump, that all his acquaintance, and especially his hungry wife, admired mightily
that he was so fat and corpulent.

At this all the jesting-wags burst out into a laughter. But having toss’d up their
cups bravely about again, Peggy comes in with a fresh Kan, and Master Winetast
begins to relate how that he used to be familiarly acquainted with a certain brave
Judge, who had a bucksom bouncing Lady to his wife. The Judge feigns a Letter, which
at noon, as he was sitting at Table with his Lady, was brought him very cleaverly by
his man. He seemingly unknowing of it, opens and reads, that he must immediately,
without further delay, go upon a journy; having read that, prepares himself with his
man forthwith to be going.

But whilest the Judge was gone into his Closet, as seeming to take some important
writings along with him; the Lady calls his man
privately into the Parler, and forces him by threats of her displeasure to tell her,
who delivered him that Letter; with a promise of her favour if he spoke the truth.
Whereupon the fellow trembling, answered, Madam, I have received it from my Lord the
Judge; but he hath strictly commanded me to keep it secret, so that if he come to
know that I have mentioned any thing of it to your Ladiship, he will have the
greatest displeasure of the World against me. Do not you fear anything, said her
Ladiship, but be faithfull in what you do.

A pretty while after, the Judge having been some time at home, and walking with
his Lady towards their Garden, they met with a drove of Sheep, having but one Ram
amongst them: Whereupon her Ladiship askt, Sweetheart, how comes it, that that one
Sheep hath such horns, and the t’others none at all? My Dear, said he, that is the
Ram, the He-Sheep. What, said she, are the others then all She’s? O yes, my Love,
answered he. How! replied she, but one Ram among so many Sheep. Yes Hony, saies the
Judge, that is alwaies so, then (sighingly she said) alas poor Creature, how must you
long then to walk some other Road!

There had been more related; for Master Carouser was entred upon a new
subject; but because the Doctor came in, they were constrained to break of.

But Ellen the starchster, being busie
in the Kitchin with the Mistriss about ordering the Linnen, having let the Doctor in;
saith, Mistriss, the Doctor is come there, and is gone into the Chamber; by my truly
Mistriss, I hear say that my Master hath got a fever. O Nel, saith the Mistriss, this
is clear another thing, this sickness is not without great danger; and it would be no
such wonder, if my husband hapned to dy of it; and where should we then find the
Pleasures of Marriage that some arch Jesters so commonly talk of.

But kind Mistriss be not so hasty, it is impossible to express all the Pleasures
so fully in one breath: you must note, that they are all as it were for the present
hid behind the Curtains; neither must you expect to sail alwaies before wind and
tide; and beleeve me there are yet other Nuts to be krackt.

The Third Pleasure.

Whilest the Husband is from home, the Wife plaies the Divel for God’s sake.
The Husband upon his journy will want for nothing.

It seemed to be a divellish blur in the Escucheon, and a cruel striving against
the stream, that as soon as the Shop was just made and furnisht, then the good Man
falls sick, and keeps the first Lying in.

50
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

But Experience having taught him, that with
relishing and solid dishes a man may overclog himself; he thinks it not unadvisable,
to take a journy now and then from home, to see if he can get some new Customers in
other Towns, or buy in some Goods and Wares for his Shop; by which means he may as
well take as good care for his health, as he doth of his Shop-keeping.

Yet what comes here in the way, the pleasure is so great, and their loves so
tender and newly stamped to each other again; that the young woman thinks she shall
do, as formerly Cyana did, either consume her self in tears, or drown’d her
self in a River, if she must suffer this.

Oh, the whole World will be unto her as dead, and without any thing of mankind, if
her dearly beloved depart from her! Well, who will not then but beleeve that the
married estate is full of incomprehensible and inexhaustible pleasures and
sweetnesses? Do but behold how these two Hony-birds, sing loath to depart! Yea, pray
observe what a number of imbracings, how many thousand kisses, and other toyisch
actions are used, before this couple can leave one another! Nevertheless the reason
of necessity, doth forsooth conquer in a vigilant husband these effeminate
passions.

Therefore away he goes, leaving his whining beloved sitting between her Sister and
her Neece, speaking words of consolation to her; and using all arguments possible to enliven and make her sorrowfull
heart merry; either of them striving to be most free in proffering to be her
bedfellow, and the next day to keep her company: But alas, saies she, suppose ye did
all this, yet nevertheless I have not my husband with me!

But because time and good company help to decline and pass away sorrow; she very
happily begins to consider, that she hath now a fit opportunity, to invite her Neeces
and Bridemaids and other good acquaintance, with whom she hath been formerly mighty
familiar, to come and take a treat with her, and to drink a dish of Tee; for they
have, when she was in her Maiden estate, treated her so many times with Tarts,
Pankakes and Fritters, Custards, and stew’d Pruins, that she is as yet ashamed for
not having made them some recompence. And she never could find an occasion that was
convenient before, because one while she dwelt with her Guardians, and at another
time with her Uncle; who took very sharp notice where on, and in what time her
pocket-mony was spent and consumed, that they continually gave her for trivial
expences. Which vext her so much the more, because the treat she received, was for
the most part done, to bring her acquainted with this or that Gentlewomans Brother,
or Cousin, or some other pretty Gentlemen; to the end, that by this means she might
happen to make a gallant Match; and indeed the
first original of the wooing, and acquaintance with her beloved, had there its
foundation.

To treat these Gentlewomen when her husband is at home, would no waies appear so
well; and so much the more, because they generally suffer themselves to be conducted
to the place by one or other of their Gallants; who then either very easily are
persuaded, or it may be of themselves, tarry to take part with them. Therefore this
must be done and concluded on, because she hath now the disposal and keeping of the
mony as well as her husband.

Here now must Doll run up and down tan-twivy to borrow a Rowling-pin, and
some other new invented knick-knacks, to bake Cheesekakes and Custards in; whilest
Mage is also hardly able to stand longer upon her legs, with running up and
down to fetch new-laid Egs, Flour, Sugar, Spices, blanch’d Almonds, &c. The
Mistriss and Doll are able to perform this duty well enough; for they both
helpt to do it, very neatly at her Neeces birth-day; but the Pastry-Cook must be
spoken to for the making a delicate minc’d Py; and Mage must run to the
Confit-makers in Black-Fryers, to fetch some Conserves, Preserves, and of all
other sorts of Sweetmeats, Raisins of the Sun, and more of the like ingredients,
&c. for she knows best where all those things are to be had. And for a principal
dish there ought to be a Pot of Venison, a
couple of Neats-tongues, a delicate peece of Martelmas beef, some Anchovis, and
Olives for the Gentlemen, because they certainly will accompany the Gentlewomen. And
truly they that bring them, may very well tarry to carry them home again; it is also
but one and the same trouble. Goodman Twoshoes is gone out of Town, and sees it not,
neither need he know it when he comes home: He treats so many of his friends and
acquaintance, and then again next day following invites them to a Fish-dinner. I may
very well play my part once in my life, and have all things to my mind, let come on’t
what will, who knows whether such another occasion may happen again this three years.
And against next morning, very privately, she invites the Gentlewomen alone, to come
about nine a clock in the morning, to eat hot Buns, and Cakes, for then they come
precisely out of the Oven; and in the afternoon again, to some curious Fruit,
Pankakes and Fritters, and a glass of the purest Canary let it cost n’er so much, or
be fetcht ne’r so far.

Thus runs the tongue of this pretty housewife, that but a while ago was so
sorrowfull for the departure of her beloved husband. Certainly there’s nothing comes
out more suddenly, or dries up more easily, then womens tears!

But hangt no more of that; for the guests will be here presently, therefore all
things ought to be in order for mirth. And moreover there there are some of them that frequent Mr. Baxter’s Puritanical
Holding-forth, whose heads will immediately, in imitation of their Patron, hang like
Bull-rushes; for they are taught to mourn with the sorrowfull, and to rejoice with
the joifull. But it is now a time to be merry, and throw away masks and vizards; for
all is done under the Rose, and among good acquaintance. And verily if the good woman
had not this or some such sort of delight, where should we find the pleasures of
marriage? for in the first Lying-in of the husband there was no looking for them.

Come on then, that mirth may be used, let the Cards also be brought in sight;
which formerly, out of a Puritanical humour, ought not to have been seen in a house;
nay, not so much as to have been spoken of; but now every one knows how to play
artificially at Put, all Fours, Omber, Pas la Bete, Bankerout, and all other games
that the expertest Gamesters can play at. And who knows whether they do not carry in
their Pockets, as False-Gamesters do, Cards that are cut and marked. They learn to
play the game at Bankerout so well with the Cards, that in a short time they can and
also do it with their Housholdstuf, Wares, and Commodities. To be sure, you’l alwaies
find, that every one of them, by length of time, are capable of setting up a School,
and to act the part of a Mistriss. And most
especially they learn to discourse very exactly touching the use and misuse thereof;
just as these dissimulating Wigs intend to do, though indeed men have never seen that
they practised this lesson themselves.

But, although the Mistriss and her Companions know little or nothing of these
tricks, they serve howsoever, without setting up a School, and that also for nothing,
for good Instructresses to their servants, who hereby are most curiously taught, what
paths they have to walk in, and what’s best for them to do that they may follow their
Mistresses footsteps, as soon as their Master and Mistriss are but gone abroad
together; who then know so exactly how to dance upon those notes, that we thought it
necessary, as being one of the principallest Pleasures of Marriage, also to be set
down in the Third Table of the First Part.

Many women, who are sick of this liquorish and sweet-tooth’d disease, will be
grumbling very much at this, that such a blame and scandal should be cast upon their
innocent sex; and say that Batchelors hereby will be afraid to marry; But if they,
and the Gentlewomen that were in private domineering together, had not gone to
Confession, and made a publick relation of it, who would have known it. Therefore
this sort of well treated female Guests, are like unto those that when they have
gotten a delicate bit by the by, cannot fare
well but they must cry roast-meat, though they should be beaten with the spit for
it.

But the good ones, though they are thin sown, who are not distempered with this
evil, never trouble themselves at what one will say, or another write concerning
women, because their guiltless consciences, serves them as well as a thousand
witnesses; and they are very indifferent whether that the deceased scandal raiser
Hippolitus do arise, and come into the World again; daring him in this manner

Surge then Hippolytus, out from thy Ghostly nest:
Who scandal least esteem, revenge themselves the best.

Yet howsoever though this is true, nevertheless I must furnish the delicate
stomackt Ladies with some sort of weapons, that they may be in a posture of defending
themselves against their vituperous enemies: For verily there are several men that
walk not so even and neat in their waies as they ought to do; and who knows, whether
our Mistresses dearly Beloved, at this very present, doth not as many others have
done; who when they are travelling any whither, the first thing they do, is to be
very diligent, and look earnestly about, whether there be not some handsom
Gentlewoman that travels with them, by whom they very courteously take place, shewing
themselves mightily humble and complacent, and telling them that they are Batchelors
or at the least Widowers; then casting out a
discourse of playing a game at Cards, that they may the better see what mettle the
Lady is made of, and then again when they come to a Baiting-place, or where they must
stay the night over, there they domineer lustily with them, and play the part of a
Rodomontade. Where many times more is acted and spent, then they dare either tell
their Wives, or their father Confessors of.

Others there are, who seek not so much such company, but very artificially before
hand, know how to find out such Fellow-travellers as most suit with their own humour;
to that end providing themselves with some Bottles of Canary, and pure Spanish
Tobacco; and where ever they come are sure to make choice of the best Inn, where
there’s a good Table, delicate Wine, (and a handsom Wench) to be had.

Certainly, if the Husband thus one way, and his Wife another, know how to find out
the Pleasures of Marriage, they are then both of them happy to the utmost. Is it not
possible, but that they might, if this continued long, take a journy, for pleasure,
to Brokers-Hall? For at first it was by them esteem’d too mean a place to be look’d
upon, and not worth their thinking of: but then its probable it may come into their
considerations, by reason that rents are low there, provisions very cheap, and
pleasures in abundance; neither hath Pride or Ambition taken any habitation there. Nay, who knows but that they might
chance to observe that there is no such need of feasting and junketting; nor be
subject to so many visits, because there dwells not such a number of their friends
and acquaintance: and besides all this, you may there, for a small matter, agree with
the Collectors of the Excises, so that, for a whole year, you may have Wine, and
severall other things plenty, for little or nothing.

But let’s lay aside all this, because they are untimely cogitations, that fly
astray; and it is much decenter that we turn again to our kind-hearted Mistriss, with
her merry companions; who now, are about the taking leave of each other; using, to
shew their gratitude, whole bundles full of complements; offering them up with an
inexpressible amiablenes and eloquency for the respect and honour they have received;
and confirm them with so many kisses, cursies, bows and conges, that it is easie to
be perceived, that on both sides its cordially meant. And Doll, that good and
faithfull servant, is not able to express how pleasing this entertainment hath been
to all the company. Nay, it lies buzzing her so in the pate, that she cannot be at
quiet in a morning, whilest her Mistriss is asleep, but she must, with the Neighbors
Maids, either at the opening of the Shop, or sweeping of the street, be tatling and
telling of it to them; putting, every foot, into their hands privately, some Almonds and Raisins, that came in by leger
de main: Relating unto them, as if she did it by a scrole, what a horrible
quantity of things she hath to scour and wash, that must be made clean, and set in
order, against the time that the Bridemaids, as it was mentioned, are to come again
alone; and so much the more, because her Master is daily expected home. Who then
finally coming in, is not ordinarily welcomed, for she is so full of joy that her
husband is come home, that both her tongue and actions are incapable of demonstrating
her felicity; and he on the t’other side, is so glad to find his dearly Beloved in
good health, and all things in decent order, that it is beyond imagination.

All this while they both laugh in their sleeves, that each one, in th’absence of
the t’other, hath taken to themselves such a private an cunning pleasure. Finding so
much content and injoiment therein, that they both hope to serve themselves again
with the like occasion. O mighty Pleasure of Marriage! Who would not but be invited
to go into this estate? Especially if we proceeded to write down and rehearse the
further Confession of the separate Pleasures of Man and Wife, which is preserved as
matter for the insuing Fifth and Sixth Pleasure.

65
Published by the Navarre Society London.

The Fourth Pleasure.

The Wife will be Master of the Cash, or mony Chest.

As Mony is one of the most curiousest Minerals, is it, in like manner, the less
admirable, that the handling and use there of rendreth the greatest Pleasures of the
World. It is Loves Fire, and Charities Fountain. Yea, if Man and Wife in their house
keeping may be esteemed or compared to the Sun and Moon in the Firmament; verily,
those merry white or yellow boies, may very well be considered of as twinkling
stars.

It rejoiceth all mankind to behold in the sky the innumerable multitude of
glittering Stars: but it is a far surpassinger Pleasure, that the new married Couple
receive, when they see vast heaps of Silver and Gold ly dazling their eys, and they
Lording over it.

You, O lately married Couple, possess this Pleasure to the utmost; you have to
your content received your promised Portions; you onely want the great Iron
Mony-Chest to lock it up in securely, and to keep it safely, that it may be laid out
to advantage. O how pleasant the free dispensation thereof is unto you! What a noble
Valley it is to walk in between these Mountains, and to delight your eys with such an
object!

Yet nevertheless, O faithfull Couple, here is need that a great deal of prudence
be used, as well in the laying of it out, as the preserving of it. In ancient times
it hath been often observed and taken notice of, that where mony was hid, the places
were generally hanted with terrible spirits, and strange Ghosts, that walked there,
coming in frightfull apparitions: but since they have been driven out of our Country
and Houses; there’s another sort of Imp come in, ten times wickeder then any of the
other; which regards nor cares neither for Crosses, Holy-water, Exorcisms, or any
sort of Divel-drivers; but dares boldly shew himself at noon-day, namely a
Plague-Divel, which sets Man an Wife together by the ears, to try who of them both
shall have the command and government of the Cash or mony-box.

And to the end he may herein act his Part well, he knows how very subtlily first
to fill the weak womans ears full, that she ought above all things to have the
command of the cash; because she had such a great Portion; and that it is her mony
which she hears gingle so. And then again, because the care of the house-keeping is
appropriated to be her duty, it is against all reason, that she, like a servant,
should give an account to her husband, what, wherefore, or how that the mony is laid
out; because the necessaries also for house-keeping are so many, that they are
without end, name or number, and it is
impossible that one should relate or ring them all into the ears of a Man. Likewise
the good woman cannot have so fit an occasion every foot to be making some new
things, that she may follow the fashion, as it is usual for women to do; much less to
have any private pocket-mony, to treat and play the Divel for God’s sake, with her
Bride-Maids, when her husband is gone from home.

And on the contrary, when men pay out any thing, it goes out by great sums,
according as is specified by the accounts delivered, which must be set to book, and
an acquittance given: This cannot be so done with every pittifull small thing that
belongs to house-keeping. Insomuch that the Husband can then, with all facility,
demand what Mony is needful for his occasion from his Wife.

Moreover, when the Wife hath the command of the mony, she can alwaies see in what
condition and state her affairs stands; and by taking good observation thereof, her
husband cannot fob her off with Pumpkins for Musmillions; but she’l easily perceive
whether she be decreasing or increasing in her estate. So that if her husband might
come to dy, and she be left a Widow with several children, she can immediately see
and understand in what posture her affairs stands, and whether she be gotten forward
or gone backward in the World.

And what’s more yet, it would be a great shame for a Woman, who hath alwaies been so highly respected by her
husband; and as it appeared to all the World, was honoured like a Princess; that she
should within dores be as servile as a servant; and must be fed out of her husbands
hands, just as if she were a wast-all, a sweet-tooth, or gamestress, &c.

With these, and a thousand such like arguments, doth this Plague-Divel know how to
puff up the vain humours of the weak Women, to the true pitch of high-mindedness. And
on the contrary, is in the mean while busie with flatteries, to stir up the husband
to idle imaginations and self-conceitedness; demonstrating unto him, that he is the
Lord, and guide of his Wife; created to command her, and she to obey him. That it is
most easie to be perceived, what a noble creature Man is, whilest that Woman who is
so handsom and haughty, is nevertheless but added unto him as a servant. Therefore if
he once admit his Wife into an equality with him; he will then be subject to see that
she will be striving for the predominancy: and that it is the greatest curse
imaginable in a Country, for Women to Lordize over Men. And for these reasons they
ought to be but like the nul in Figures, and to be kept as a Controuler by the Harth,
the Pot, and the Spinning-wheel. Whilest they that deliver up to them the keys of the
Mony-Chest, are deprived of all their superiority, and like Men unman’d, have only the name but cannot obtain the
effect.

In such manner doth as yet this Divel-plaguing Spirit domineer, by clear daylight,
in many of the principallest houses and hearts, and makes oftentimes so great a
difference and discord about the key of the Cash, that the Cash it self seems to get
Eagles Wings, and swiftly flies away. Whilest the husband, perceiving that the Wife
seeks to deceive and take the key from him, is alwaies possessed with abhominable
suspicions; certainly thinking that she is minded to make some unnecessary thing or
other, or to hide some mony from him; which makes him watch her waters so much the
stricter; and is not ashamed to give out and make what he hath a mind to for his own
pleasure.

And the Wife, perceiving that her husband is so sneaking, and forsooth so
circumspect, with subtilety contrives and practises how to make him pay out mony for
all what she hath any waies a mind to; by that means making her self Mistriss of the
Mony-Chest, beyond his knowledge, though he hath the name, and carries the keys in
his Pocket: for if she have a mind to new Stays for her self or daughter; away she
goes to a Silk-shop, buies Stuf to her mind, and causeth it to be made as modish as
possible may be; and having tried that it fits and pleases her fancy fully; then it
is brought home by one or other of her trusty acquaintance, who come at a convenient time appointed, just like
some petty Brokester, proffering it forsooth in sale to the Mistriss, and tilling her
a relation that it was really made for such a Lady, but that she died whilest it was
making; and for that reason it may be had for a very low price; yea, that it is such
a cheap bargain, that perhaps the like may not be had again this ten years,
&c.

Thus the good wife knows rarely well how to play her part, and begins to reckon
how many ells of Stuff, how much for lining, and the making thereof would come to
cost: so that her husband, by reason of the cheapness is curious of himself to desire
her to try it on; and finally, sees that it fits her, as if it had been made for her.
To be short, after much cheapning and bargaining, the price is concluded on, though
it be against the husbands stomack, or the Cash wel can bear it; and then the Broker
is ordered when she hath such or the like other good bargain to come again, and let
them see it.

In this manner the Wife fetches about by the by as much as she can, and
hoodwinking her husband e’en as she pleases; for at other times there comes to be
sold Table-cloaths, Napkins, and then again Coats, Sheets, Blankets, and all sorts of
necessaries for housekeeping and habit, from some Gentlewoman or other that its left
to, by the decease of some friend, &c.

Insomuch that the Wife, through the niggardliness of her husband, imbezles away
and buies more, then otherwise she would do; making it all her delight and sole
pleasure, to blind fold her narrow-soul’d Peep in the Pot, (as she calls him;)
although she, by these waies and means, doth jestingly consume her own self. But this
belongs also to the Pleasures of Marriage. And if it in the conclusion prove to be a
pain, patience is the best remedy.

But be merry, O new married Couple, that you, like unto young Toby, have
found out the remedy, how to drive away this Devil-Plaguer of your Wedlock; by living
in love and tranquility, equally confiding in each other, desiring no superiority;
but with a true cordiality, interchangeably granting, and having each alike freedom
of the monies; the Husband hath the keeping and government of the keys, and the Wife
wants for no mony; nay hath access also her self to it. Who can doubt but that your
family will be blest, and your stock of monies increase.

And that so much the more, because the Husband hates playing at Tables, and the
Wife is an enemy to Cards, which hath been the occasion ofttimes on both sides of the
consuming much mony, and therefore is little used by some Shopkeepers; leaving that
to Gentlemen to lose both time and mony, who therein seek their pastime, delight and
pleasure. And this is in like manner imitated by many great Ladies, who are often so cruelly addicted to Card-playing,
that they somtimes value not, in one evening, the losing of very great sums, and yet
know how to maintain their respects therein very prudently and gallantly; but in the
mean while let the Millaner, Linnen-Draper, Tailor, and Shoemaker run most miserably
and shamefully after them for moneys from one month to another, ofttimes from one
year to another, as if they came begging to them for a peece of bread; and when they
do pay them, it must not be taken notice of by their Lords and husbands.

These generally use the greatest violence against the peace of the Family; because
this superfluous expence, and liberal disposition of my Lady, is very seldom pleasing
to my Lord, who little thought that her Ladiship would have been such a spend-thrift
of the Cash.

But since great Lords, as well as other meaner sorts of persons, are shot and
pierc’d by one and the same blind Cupid, they are in like manner subject to such
casualities of adversities and pleasures; and every one perceives, when it is too
late, what kind of election he hath made; just as they do who begin a War, but before
its half finished are weary of it. Therefore

To Battel be ye slow, but slower be to Wed,
For many do repent, untill that they be dead;
But if avoided then, by you it cannot be,
A thousand Counsellors will well deserve your Fee.

60
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

The Fifth Pleasure.

Of Mens negligence of their affairs; whereby their Antic-tricks and loss of
time is discovered.

Verily the Women, being the weakest Vessels, are many times most cruelly impeacht,
when the Marriage-Ship sails not well before Wind and Tide: just as if they, to whom
is only given the charge of the Family, care of the Kitchin, and nourishment of the
Children, were the occasioners of sad casualities and disasters in the Merchandizes
and Shop-keepings: When, on the contrary, the negligence of the Men is many times so
great, that if the Woman knew not how to carry her self like a prudent
Abigail, it would be impossible ever to bring the Ship to a safe harbour, and
to free it from Shipwrack, but all things must run to a total destruction.

Many men are free hereof, who are continually using their utmost indeavours, and
take their chiefest delight in the promotion of their affairs, by day with their
bodies, and at night with their sences, are earnestly busie in contriving them it.
Whose main aim is, to live honestly, to get a good name, to shew good examples to
their Children and Servants, to leave somthing to their Widows, and never to be a
laughing-stock or derision to their enemies. And this manner of diligence makes no
labour irksom, no morning too early, nor no
evening too late for them.

But others, on the contrary, are so easie humoured, and so negligent of their
vocation, that they think its much below the respect of a Man, to be seen whole daies
in their houses with their Wives, and about their affairs. Then in such cases, there
must, by every one in his calling, be found a multitude of lame excuses, before they
can blind the eys of a quick-sighted Woman, or pin it upon her so far, that she
perceives not he seeks his pleasure from her, in whom his whole delight ought to
be.

If it be Doctor of Physick, he forsooth hath no time to study, because he
must go to visit a Patient that hath a violent Ague, to see what operation the
Cordial hath done which he ordered him to take yesternight; for if any thing else
should come to it, he would certainly be a dead man, &c.

And if you do but trace his paths and Patient, it is by his friend, who
yesternight was troubled with a vehement Cellar-Fever; and at the very last, before
he went to sleep, took in a swinging bowl of strong liquor; which made his Pulse beat
so Feaverish and disorderly the next morning, that he was necessitated, at one
draught, to whip off a lusty glass of Wormwood-Wine, (an excellent remedy for the
Ague;) and then to walk an hour or two upon it, wherein the Doctor accompanying him,
it causes the better operation.

Here now you see the Doctor, and what Ague the Patient hath, what he takes for’t,
what comes to it, and how dead a man he is. Truly the Doctor hath made as neat a
guess at it, as if he had studied long for it. Hang the Books, when a man hath his
Art so perfect in his Pate.

For this, the Doctor hath so much good again, when he hath a mind to visit a
Patient in Tuttle-street, or St. Jameses Square, this Patient walks along with him
for company. And when one hand washes the other in this manner, O then they are both
so Silver clean!

Turn you about now to the Counsellors, and see how their Studies are all on
Fire, only to be going too and again from one Court to another, to hear, forsooth,
this or t’other Cause pleaded, that mightily concerns them, thereby to take their
measures accordingly: When to the contrary, it serves to no other purpose then to
sell a parcel of Chatwood, and tatle tales, of some brave Practitioners, a great deal
worse then women would do; and finally to appoint a place, where in the evening they
may accompany their Fraternity at a good glas of Wine.

Under this bundle resorts continually the Shittlecock Excisemen, accompanied with
Collectors and Promooters, who are the greatest Bellringers in Taverns, and somtimes,
in one evening, spend as much in Rhenish Wine, Oisters and Tobacco; as ten sufficient
Families would do in a month. These live without care, and command freely out of a full purse, imagining in themselves that all the
Revenues are their own. And if their Wives do, in the least, but peep into their
concerns; they presently baptize it with the name of going upon an exploit, to chase
a fat Doe, or neatly to attrap some Defrauder. And that this part may have the better
gloss, when they come home in the morning, they have their pockets full of mony,
which they throw into their wives laps; and tell them that they have attrapped some
body, and agreed with them for a great sum of mony, having in part of paiment
received this; when to the contrary, it is all the King and Countries mony, only
taken out of their Offices. This generally lasts so long, till they are pursued by
the Treasurer, and are arrested, and clapt up, or that they prevent it by playing
Bankrupt, and in this manner leave a sorrowfull Widow and Children behind them.

By these the Foolwise Notary’s for the most part join themselves; making
their Wives beleeve that they are sent for into this or t’other Alehouse or Tavern,
about an Excise-mans business; or to write a Will, or a Contract of agreement of
Merchandize; though it be to no other end or purpose then to have a perfect knowledge
who plaies best at Ticktack, Irish, Backgammon, Passage, or All-fours. From thence
then they cannot come before it be late in the night, and have learnt there to make a
Scotch Will so wel, that they are, by two witnesses, half carried, and half trail’d home to their houses;
bragging still, that they have had Wine and Beer, and received mony into the bargain.
Thus all things is baptized with the name of having earnest business.

The like knowledge have also the Merchants, Shop-keepers, and others
who love company, to alledge for their excuses and defence; but the most fashionable,
give it the name of going to a sale of some Lands and Houses, Parts of Ships,
Merchandizes, Shop-Wares, Meetings, or Arbitrations. Though many times, in more then
a month, there hath not been the least sale of any of the aforenamed Commodities, or
occasion for any such sort of businesses.

And verily whom do you see sooner or later at the Exchange then these sort of
people? And ’tis no wonder: for since they indeavour not to have the name of brave
Negotiants, their principallest aim is to obtain the name of great
News-mongers, and that hath so much tittle-tattle in it, that it requires a
person free from all affairs and business to be imploied therein.

Here you may perceive them to be the most diligent of all others, oftner inquiring
what tidings there are in the French, English, and Flanders Letters; then to know
what news from the Seas, concerning the arrivall or loss of Ships, or what
Merchandizes, Commodities and Wares, are risen or fallen in price.

Nevertheless these make the greatest bawling and scolding at their Wives, if they have not their Dinners made
ready for them precisely an hour before Change-time, just as if the main weight of
all the Traffick and Negotiation at Change, lay upon their shoulders; though it only
tends to follow the train, and to hear some news, or to seek some Pot-Companions.

These Blades will be sure also, in the Winter time by four, and in the Summer time
by six a clock in the evening, to be precisely at the Coffe-houses; where, under the
taking of a pipe of pure Spanish Tobacco, some dishes of Coffe, Chocolate, Sherbate,
or Limonado, there is a relation made of the newest tidings, or what is most
remarkable of things that have hapned here or there. They hear there no clock strike,
nor think upon Wives, Children, or Servants, though it were never so late.

There’s another sort of Men, that do not frequent the Exchange, and go out only
about their Shop affairs, these we see taking their pleasures for several hours
together at Queenhithe and other places, with selling of chatwood; and when they are
a weary with walking and talking, away they go to the Plume of Feathers to rest
themselves, and call for half a pint, or a pint of Sack, and some to the Strong Water
Shop, and drink a quartern of Cinamon water, Clove-water, or Aqua mirabilis.

And these imagine themselves to be of the most orderly sort; by reason that some
men, in the Summer time, take their pleasure
most part of the morning, to be busie at their Wormwood Wine; and consume their
afternoon in clashing and quafing off the bottels of Old Hock and Spaw-water. And
when it grows cold, and the daies short, then they are early at the Strong-water
Shop; and in the evening late in the Coffe-houses; and again twice or thrice a week
precisely, and that more devouter then once in a Church, they are most certain to be
found at the Playhouses.

Whilest others again are earnestly imploied in taking their pleasures in a Coach,
or on horseback, ambling, trotting and gallopping along the high ways, from one
Country Fair, or Horsemarket to another; and at every place where they see but a
conveniency to stable their Horses, there they are certain to bait; and consume an
infinite deal of time; especially if they happen to find any Horse-Coursers there to
be chatting and chaffering with.

These are much like unto those that take delight in Pleasure-boats and Barges, who
with the smallest gale of wind, are stormed out of all their occupations; nay,
although they were never so important, yet the very breathing of a warm Zephyr blows
not only all business out of their heads, but themselves in person out of their Shops
and Counting-houses.

Here you may behold them with unwearied bodies rigging of their Masts, spreading
of their Sails, hailing up their Spreet and
Leeboards, and all in a sweat catching hold of the Oars to be rowing, whilest at home
they are too weak or lazy to move or stir the least thing in the World, nay can
hardly bring pen to paper. For to neglect such a gallant and pleasant day of weather,
would be a crime unpardonable.

No lover of a boat, may stay within a Port,
Though Shop and Office both, should dearly suffer for’t.

Others again are sworn Pigeon Merchants, and every Market day in the forenoon
precisely, let it cost what it will, must be attending there, and the rest of the
week both morning and afternoon at their Pigeon-traps. Here in they take an infinite
pleasure, hushing up their Pigeons to flight, then observing the course they take;
looking upon the turning of their Tumblers; and then to the very utmost, commending
the actions, carriages and colours of their Great Runts, Small Runts, Carriers, Light
Horsemen, Barberies, Croppers, Broad-tail’d Shakers, and Jacopins; taking care and
making so much provision for their young ones, that they let both their own young,
and the house-keeping, run to destruction.

But there are the Cock-Merchants surpass these abundantly; who, upon certain
penalties, must at the least, thrice a week appear in the Cock-pit; and there, before
the Battel begins, consume two or three hours at Tables, and in Wine, Beer and Tobacco; whilest they attend there the coming of
their Adversaries and other lovers of the sport. Here then a view must be taken of
each others Cocks, which are forsooth according to their merits and value, set apart
in their Coops either in the yard, or above in the Garret, to be fed as is most
convenient; and there’s then a discourse held concerning them, as if they were
persons of some extraordinary state, quality, and great valour. Not a word must be
spoke, (as much as if there were a penalty imposed upon it) but of Cock-fighting.
Here Master Capon vaunts that his Game-Cock was hard enough for the gallant Shake-bag
of Sir John Boaster; although Sir John Boasters famous Shake-bag, but three weeks
before, had fought against that incomparable Game-Cock of Squire Owls-eg, and claw’d
him off severely.

Here you may see abundance of Country Gentlemen and rich Farmers, coming from
several parts with their Cocks in their bags to the Battel; hanging them up there in
ample form till it be their turns to fight. And there also you may behold Lord
Spendall brought thither in his Coach very magnificently, and carried home in no less
state; but seldom goes away before he hath either won or lost a pretty number of
Guinneys.

Yea there’s Squire Clearpurse, with his Princely companion, who keep alwaies six
and thirty Game-Cocks at nurse by the Master of the Pit; never goes away from thence, before he hath got, by his
ordinary dunghill Cock that runs about the streets, and without false spurs too, half
a score Crown-pieces, and as much more as will pay his reckoning in his pocket. But
if they both begin to appear with their Shake-bags, then it is, Stand clear
Gentlemen, here comes the honour of the Pit; and then the Master of the Pit must have
out of each Battel for Sharpning the Spurs, and clipping of the neck feathers, half a
Ginny; and then when the Battels ended, he brings into the reckoning half a Crown
extra for Brandy, Salve, and cherishing and chafing it by the fire, &c.
But for this, they have the honour also to be in the Chamber with the principallest
Gentlemen, to sit in the best places of the Pit; to turn the hour-glass and like
prudent Aldermen, in the presence of all the Auditors, to give their judgements
touching the contending parties; where there are generally more Consultations,
Advices, and Sentences, held and pronounced, then are to be found or heard of in the
principallest Law-books or Statutes of the Kingdom.

It would be here an everlasting shame; if the Conqueror, like a Niggard, should
carry all this mony home; therefore the greatest part must be given and generously
spent with the company. This is the duty of every one, whose Cock hath beaten
anothers out of the Pit, and went away Crowing like a Conqueror. Nay, what’s matter
if it were all spent, its no such great peece of
business; the honours more worth then the mony.

In the mean while it grows late in the night, and the good woman, with the Table
covered, sits longing, telling every minute, and hoping for the coming home of him,
who seems to find and take more pleasure in Cockfighling, then like a brave Game-Cock
himself to enter into the Pit with his Wife. O most contrary and miserable Pleasure
of marriage on the mens side.

But amongst these Cock-Merchants, I am of opinion, there’s none hath more pleasure
then the Master of the Pit; because he gets more for the feeding, clipping, salving,
and anointing of them, &c. then ten good Nurses, and put them all together. And
moreover he hath all the pleasure for nothing, and is mighty observant to feed and
tickle their fancies, and obey their commands, that their delight therein may the
more and more increase, and the reckoning also be ne’r a whit the less.

And these Lovers and Gentlemen are no sooner departed, but he laies him down very
orderly in a very fashionable Bedstead, hung round about the Curtains and Vallians
with Hens-Eg-shels suck’d out. But if he did, for the same purpose, suck out all the
Cocks-Egshels, it would be a much more rare and pleasant sight.

There is yet another sort of men, which we in
like manner find, that consume their time, neglect their occasion, and spend their
mony with Dog-fighting, Bull and Bear-baiting, as the Cock-Merchants do with
Cock-fighting. One way that they take pleasure in, is to bring their Dogs together,
and there fight them for a Wager of five, or ten pound, and somtimes more; which mony
must be set or stak’d down, though they hardly know how to find as much more again in
the whole World, and there the poor Dogs by biting and tearing one anothers skins and
flesh in pieces, for the pleasure of their fantastical Masters; and if the Wager be,
in the least manner to be contradicted, then too’t they go themselves, and thump and
knock one another till they look more like beasts then men.

This being done, the next meeting is, to try their Bear and Bull-Dogs at the Bear
Garden; the match being made, all their wits must be screw’d up to the highest, how
to get mony to make good their wagers; though Wife, House and Family should sink in
the mean while: Then away they go with their Tousers and Rousers to the Bear-garden,
and then the Bull being first brought to the stake, the Challenger lets fly at her,
and the Bull perceiving the Dog coming, slants him under the belly with her horns,
and tosses him as high as the Gallerys, this is much laught at; but his Master, very
earnestly and tenderly, catching him in the fall, tries him the second time, when he
comes off with little better success: Then his
Adversary lets loose his Dog at the Bull, who running close with his belly to the
ground, fastens under the Bulls nose by the skin of the under-lip; the Bull shaking
and roaring to get him loose, but he holds faster and faster; then up flie caps and
hats, shouting out the excessive joy that there is for this most noble victory.

Now comes the Bear dogs, being stout swinging Mastives; and the Bearard having
brought the Bear to the Stake, unrings him, and turns him about, so that he may see
the Dog, that’s to play at him; the Challenger lets fly his Dog, which being a cruel
strong Cur rises up to the Bears nose, fastens and turns him topsy-turvy; there’s no
small joy and an eccho of Shouts that makes the very earth tremble; then there’s
pulling and hawling to get him off from the Bear: Then the Adversary let’s fly his
Dog, who coming to fasten, the Bear being furious and angry that he was so plagu’d
with the first Dog, claps his paw about the back of him, and squeezes him that he
howls and runs; there stands the Master, looking like an Owl in an Ivybush, to see
the stakes drawn, and he haply with never a penny in his pocket, hath no mony at
home, nor knows not where to get any. And that which vexeth him worst of all, is,
that his delicate Dog is utterly spoil’d.

But we’l leave of these inhuman, and brutal stories; and rather relate the
Confession of another sort of Men; who are
generally of a longing temper, not much unlike to the big-bellied weak women; nay,
sometimes do therein far surpas the Women: And altho they know that it is never so
damagable or hurtfull unto them, yet dare boldly say:

When Women long, it harms by chance,
But mens desire’s a worser dance.

And in this they are both bold and shameless, clear contrary to Women-kind; in so
much that they without fear or terror, dare, at noon day, say to their
Pot-companions: I have a mighty mind to a pipe of Tabacco, come lets go to the Sun,
half Moon, or to the Golden Fleece, and smoke a pipe: where they rip up such a
multiplicity of discourse, and consume so much time and Tabacco; that if they tasted
neither beer nor wine, they might with all reason be upbraided to be debauch’d
persons. But it would be a work as inexpressible as infinite to relate their longing
appetites at all other times, to Musmillions, Seldry, Anchovis, Olives, or slubbring
Caviart, with all their appurtenances. Much more their liquorishness at Oisters,
where they stand greedily swallowing them up in the open shops, not giving themselves
time to send for them to a Tavern, and eat them decently.

If they did thus, in the presence of their Wives, they might have some pleasure of
it also: But the content hereof seems to consist therein, that either alone, or with their Fraternity, they may thus lustily
satisfie their longing appetites.

Here we shall commend the Lovers of Tee, because they are willing to make use of
it in the company of women; although there be now a daies so much formality used with
it, and so much time idly spent in the consumption of it, that it seems almost as if
this herb were found out, or brought over to no other purpose, then to be the
occasion of an honest chatting-school, between men and women; where you may have
intelligence of all that passes betwixt married and unmarried persons throughout the
whole City. And wo be to them that have the least symptom of a meazle upon their
tongue, for the true lovers of Tee, are like unto the Suppers up of Coffy, and are
the best News-Mongers for all things that happens in the City, yea almost in all
Kingdoms; and when you hear the men speak seriously of such matters; it is as if they
had the best correspondence for intelligence out of all Princes Courts; but
especially, if this miracle be wrought thereby, that the Water be changed in to
Wine.

Others, who love neither Tee nor Coffy, and yet are very desirous to know what
passes in the World; you may find mighty earnestly, for some hours, stand prating in
the Booksellers Shops; alwaies asking what news is there, what Pamphlets, what
Pasquils, what Plays, what Libels, or any of the like rubbish, is lately come out; and then they must buy and read them, let it cost
what it will.

Here they make the sole balance of State-business. Here, with great prudence,
discourse is held of the importantest State-affairs, and of the supreamest persons in
authority; and in their own imaginations know more then both the Houses of Lords and
Commons. Although they never sate in Councel with any of their Footmen. Nay they know
to the weight of an ace, and can give a perfect demonstration of it, which of the
three Governments is best, Monarchy, Anarchy, or Democracy. Which many times takes
such a deep root and impression upon them, and touches them so to the very heart,
that they absolutely forget the governing of their needfull affairs which they went
out about; for when they come to the place where their occasions lay; they find the
person either long before gone abroad, or so imploied with his own business, that he
can hardly a quarter do that he ought to do.

‘Tis true some soft natured women, that are as innocent as Doves, observe not
these sort of actions and tricks; but suffer themselves easily to be fopt off by
their husbands; or else by a gentle salutation are appeased; but others who are
cunninger in the cares of their Shops and Families, can no waies take a view of these
doings with eys of pleasure.

Yet this is nothing near the worst sort, and is naught else but a kind of a scabbiness that the most
accomplishedst marriages are infected with. And verily if the husbands do thus
neglect their times, and their Wives, in the meanwhile, like carefull Bees, are
diligent in looking after their Shop and housekeeping; they ought, when they do come
home to speak their minds somthing freely to them.

But the imaginary authority of men, many times surges to such height, that it
seems to them insupportable, to hear any thing of a womans contradiction, thinking,
that all what ever they do, is absolutely perfect and uncontrolable. And can, on the
contrary, when their Wives go to the Shambles or Market, reckon to a minute in what
time they ought to be back again: And wo be to them, if they do, according to the
nature of women, stand and prattle here or there their time away, concerning Laces,
Cookery, and other houshold occasions.

But you, O wel married Couple, how pleasant it is to see that you two agree so
well together! That either is alike diligent and earnest in taking care of their
charge. That your husband many times saith unto you his houswife, my Dear, it is a
curious fair day, go walk abroad, and give a visit to some or other of your good
acquaintance; I shall tarry at home the whole day, and will take sufficient care of
all things, and in the evening come and fetch you home, &c. And you again in like
manner, upon a good occasion, releeve your
husband, and take delight in his walking abroad with some good friends to take his
pleasure, and to recreate and refresh his tired sences.

If he be a little sickish of that distemper and that he will somtimes spend a
penny upon a Libel or new Tiding; that is a great pleasure for you, because you know
that the Booksellers and Printers must live; and every fool must have one or t’other
bawble to play with.

You had great reason to be dissatisfied if he consumed his mony in the Tavern or
with Tables. But you know that Ben Johnsons Poems, and Pembrooks Arcadia, did so
inchant you, that they forc’t the mony out of your Pocket; yet they serv’d you in
your Maiden estate with very good instructions, and shewing you many Vertues. You may
therefore think, that such men who desire to surge higher in knowledge, will have
somthing also to be reading. And it is most certain, whilest they are busie with
that, their Wives are free from being controled. ‘Tis also undeniable, that men
cannot alwaies be alike earnest in their affairs; for verily if they be so, they are
for the most part great Peep in the Pots and directers of their Wives, who
have certainly their imperfections. And it is the principallest satisfaction, and
greatest pleasure in marriage, when a woman winks or passes by the actions of her
husband; and the husband in like manner the actions of his wife; for if that were not so, how should they now and then in
passing by, throw a love-kiss at one another; or how should they at night be so
earnest in pressing one another to go first to bed.

‘Tis therefore, above all things, very needfull for the increasing of love, that a
woman wink at many of her husbands actions; especially if he keep no correspondence
with Tiplers, that will be alwaies in the Alehouses; and there too will be serv’d and
waited upon, forsooth, to a hairs breadth; nay, and as we perceive, if the Wife
brings in the Anchovis upon the Table, without watring them a little, as oftimes
happens there, then the house is full of Hell and damnation. For these smaller sort
of Gentlemen, are they who sow strife and sedition between man and wife, and
continually talk of new Taverns and Alehouses, clean Pots, and the best Wine; they
alwaies know where there is an Oxhead newly broach’d: and the first word they speak,
as soon as they come together, is, Well Sir, where were you yesternight, that we saw
you not at our ordinary meeting place? Ho, saies the t’other, ’twas at the Blew
Boar, where I drunk the delicatest Wine that ever my lips tasted. You never
tasted the like on’t. If I should live a thousand year, the tast would never be out
of my thoughts. Nay, if the Gods do yet drink Nectar, it is certainly prest out of
those Grapes. Words cannot possibly Decipher or
express the tast, though Tully himself, the father of eloquence, having drunk
of it, would make the Oration. What do you think then, if you and I went thither
immediately and drunk one pint of it standing? I am sure, Sir, that you will, as well
as I, admire it above all others. Done it is, and away they go: But it is not long
before you see those roses blossoming in their hands, of whose smell, tast, and
colour a neat draught is taken, and an excellent exposition of the qualities. Yet the
t’other Gentleman commends it to the highest; though he is assured that he tasted a
Glass in Master Empty Vessels Cellar that was far delicater, and that he would
far esteem beyond this. Nevertheless he acknowledges this to be very good. But the
pint being out, the first word is, Hangt, What goes upon one leg? Draws t’other
pint of the same Wine. And then they begin to find that the longer they drink,
the better it tasts; which is an undeniable sign that it is pure good Wine. And this
pint being out again; presently saies the t’other, All good things consist in
three: so that we must have the t’other pint. Where upon the second saith, As
soon as this is out, we will go with the relish of it in our mouths to Master Clean
Pints, to tast his and this against each other. I am contented, so said so done; and
thus by the oftentimes tasting and retasting, they grow so mighty loving, that it is
impossible for them to depart from one another,
because they every foot say, they cannot part with an empty Pot, and this love in a
few hours grows on so hot, that the love of the Wife is totally squencht; not only
drawing men mightily out of their business, but keeping them late out from their
families; and making them like incarnate Divels against their Wives. From whence
proceeds, that when they come either whole or half drunk home, there is nothing well
to their minds, but they will find one thing or another to controul, bawl or chide
with.

To these also may be adjoined those who generally resort to the Miter, Kings Arms,
and Plume of Feathers, or some other places where they commonly make their bargains
for buying and selling of Goods and Merchandizes; from whence they seldom come before
they have spent a large reckoning, and lost more then three of their five sences;
thinking themselves no less rich then they are wise; and ly then very subtlely upon
the catch to overreach another in a good and advantagious bargain; by which means
they themselves are somtimes catcht by the nose with a mouldly old sort of unknown
commodity, that they may walk home with, by weeping cross; and next morning there
they stand and look as if they had suckt their Dam through a hurdle, and know not
which way to turn themselves with their Merchandize they have made; in this manner,
bringing their Wives and Children (if they let
them know it) into excessive inconveniences; and for all this want for nothing of
grumbling and mumbling.

Some sorts of men, Are Tyrants when, Their thirsty Souls are
fill’d:
They scold sore hot Like Peep
in th’ Pot And never can be still’d.
They talk and prate At such a
rate, And think of nought but evil;
They fight and brawl, And Wives do
mawl, Though all run for the Divel.
But at their draugh, They quaff
and laugh Amongst their fellow creatures.
They swear and tear And never
fear Old Nick in his worst features.
Who would but say Then, by the
way That Woman is distressed,
Who must indure An
Epicure With whom she’ll ne’r be blessed.

In this last many Fathers commit great errors, who, when they are hot-headed with
multiplicity of Wine, take little regard of the
bad examples they shew unto their Children and Families. Nay some there are that will
in their sobrest sence go with their sons, as if they were their companions, into a
Tavern without making any sort of difference; and also, when there is a necessity or
occasion for it, know but very slenderly how to demonstrate their paternal prudence
and respect; but in this manner let loose the bridle of government over their
children.

Thus I knew an understanding Father do, who with some other Gentlemen, and his
son, being upon a journy together, to take care of some important affairs; but seeing
that at every Inn where they came, that his fellow-travellers were resolute blades,
and that he must pay as deep to his son as himself; exhorted his son to take his full
share of all things, and especially of the Wine; every foot whispering him in the
ear, Peter, drink, and then after a little while, again, Peter, drink; And as he
recommended this so earnestly to his son, he himself very diligently lost no time to
get his share; which continued so long that going out of the chamber for their
necessities, they both fell into a channel, where clasping each other in the arms,
the son said, Father! are we not now like brothers?

By this we may observe, what the Father of a Family, by his examples, may do. But
you, O well-match’d Woman, have no need to fear
this sort of president in your husband, because he is a perfect hater of excessive
drinking, and an enemy to such company that alwaies frequent Taverns and Ale-houses;
and if he doth go once among good acquaintance, and take a glass more then ordinary,
which is but seldom, there’s nothing that he doth less then maunder and mumble; but
he’s all for kissing, hugging and dallying; hating pot-company to the highest, or
those that make it their business, or spend their times in the Summer with going a
Fishing, and in the Winter go a Birding; upon which sort of Gentlemen this old rime
was made:

Who in the Winter Bird, and Summers go a Fishing,
Have no bad meat in Tub, that is not worth the dishing.

But your husband on the contrary, takes especial care of his affairs; and for the
pleasure and ease of his wife, goes himself to market, there buies a good joint of
meat or a Fowl, and gets it made ready, and sits down and eats it with his beloved:
Then when he and you have very relishingly satisfied your appetites, and drunk two or
three glas of wine into the bargain, he invites you very quietly to walk up stairs
into your chamber to say a day-lesson. Well who could wish for greater Pleasure then
this!

O good Woman, how happy are you, if, as well
as your husband you can keep your self in these joys and delights. What state or
condition is there in this World that may be compared to such a loving, friendly and
well accomplished match! For without jesting, it happens hardly once in a thousand
times that a match falls out so well. And although it did, yet it is not free from a
thousand crosses and dissatisfactions, which are done unto you either by children,
wicked friends, or somtimes bad neighbours: and are oftentimes so many, that if they
were all drawn up in one Picture; we should, in good truth, see more grief and horror
in it, then is demonstrated in the very Picture of Hell it self. But one pound of the
hony of sweet love, can easily balance a hundred weight of that terrible and bitter
Wormwood.

But where is there one among all the whole number of tender young Gentlewomen, who
being incountred by an airy exquisite Lover, that doth not start back with a thousand
troublesom cogitations; and beleeves, that he, who thus earnestly affects her, is at
the least possessed with one of these terribly evil natures? Nay, perhaps with some
what else, as a cross-grain’d pate, a grumbling gizzard, not wel in his sences,
jealous thoughts, or the actions of a Cotquean are his companions; and that is more
then all these, keeps hid a certain imbecility in his defective nature; which is no waies to be discovered till
the nuptial rites be absolutely celebrated.

This seems to be a great occasion and reason to have an abhorrance for marrying.
But when we begin again with serious judgement to consider, the weaknesses, strange
humors, and deficiences, that the most gaudiest and neatest Ladies are subject to;
experience will teach us, that they are Cakes bak’d of one Dough, and Fruits of one
Tree.

And therefore they are very happy, if two of one mind, and alike natured meet
together; but if two of contrary humors happen together, there is nothing to be
expected but grief, sorrow, and destruction; unless it happen that the understanding
of the one knows extraordinarily how to assist the weakness of the other; by somtimes
letting loose a rope and then drawing it in again; whereby they may the prudentlier
sail against wind and tide. These do arrive in the Haven of the Pleasures of
Marriage, whereas others on the contrary suffer most miserable Shipwrack.

116
Published by the Navarre Society, London.

The Sixth Pleasure.

The Woman hath got the Breeches. What mischeefes arise by it. Counsel for the
unmarried. To shun those that are evil natured.

Under a thousand Pleasures that we find in the estate of marriage, it is none of
the least, to see the Woman put the breeches on, seeming that she will act the part
of a Jack-pudding. But melancoly men oftentimes cannot bear with such sort of
jesting, and presently bawl and rail at such a Woman, calling her a Monster, or some
other ill name. Although they know very well that such sort of Monsters are now a
daies so common, that if they were all to be shewn in Booths for farthings a peece,
there would be less spectators, then there was to see the Sheep with five legs, or
the great Crocodile.

Verily, such men are unhappy, and they do not a little also neglect these
Pleasures; when they, forsooth, think that by the putting on of the breeches, must be
understood that they are over Lorded, and that the Hen crows louder then the Cock. O
miserable man, if your head be possest with this kind of frenzy, and can’t be
removed! Verily, if you had but seen the Plate of the Women fighting for the
Breeches, you would be of another judgement. For in those daies the man was glad to
be rid of them, if he could but get the lining
untorn or indamaged; for he saw perfectly that the World was at that time so full of
those pretty Beldams, that there was begun a most bloody War between the better sort
of Gentlewomen, and the meaner degree of Women, for the gaining of the Breeches,
wherein Ketels and Pans, Tongs and Fireshovels, Spinning-wheels, Brooms and Maps were
all beaten out of fashion. And it may very well be thought, that if the Woman had put
them on at first, and so have helpt him to have kept them, this wonderfull and
destructive War would never have risen to that fury. Therefore it is no small
prudence of the Women in these daies, who are descended from that family, to take
care, at the very first, for the good of their husbands, that the Breeches may be
well preserved.

But let’s be serious, and pass by all these kind of waggeries; if we consider the
husband as Captain, and the Wife as Lieutenant, is it not in the highest degree
necessary, that she should have also a part of the masculine knowledge and authority?
Besides, women must be silent in Politick and Church-government, why should not they
have somthing to say in those places where they are houswives? We see certainly, that
the men, for the most part, cannot tarry at home, and will be going hither or thither
to take the air, or for his pleasure, or to smoke a pipe of Tabacco; as is shew’d you in the Fifth Confession; if
then, in the mean while, the Woman, through occasion of some Customers in the Shop,
or in the government of the Men and Maid-servants should not in some measure shew
that she had in part the Breeches on, and that she could in the absence of her
Captain, take care of his Command; how is it possible that the Trading should be kept
in order, and the Children and Servants well governed? I will not so much as mention
that there are several men, who are so dull-brain’d, and so excessive careless, that
if they had not had the good fortunes to get notable sharp-witted young women to
their Wives; they of themselves would have been quickly out of breath, and might now
perhaps be found in the Barbado’s or Bermoodo’s planting Tabacco.

O stout Amazonians, who thus couragiously, take the Weapons in hand, to defend and
protect your Husbands, Children, Servants and houskeeping; why should not you have as
great commendations given you, as those noble Souls of your Sex had in former times?
and who would not rather ingage in the imbracing of you, then any waies to affront or
bespatter you?

I know wel enough there will come some times a whiffling blade, that will be
relating one or other long-nosed story, how like a drunken Nabal, he was well
instructed by his prudent and diligent wife; and how little that he would obey or listen to the commands of so brave a
Captain; but they will very seldom or never say any thing what grounds or
provocatives they have given her for so doing.

Nevertheless my intent is, not so much to flatter the evil or bad natured women,
as if their throwing out their ire upon their husbands, had alwaies a Lawfull excuse
or cause. Just as Xantippe did, who was Socrates’s wife, think that she had reason
enough on her side to scold, brawl at, and abuse that wise and good natured
Philosopher, and to dash him in the face with a whole stream of her hot Marish piss.
Or that it did any waies become that hot-ars’d whorish Faustina, to govern that sage
and understanding Emperor Marcus Aurelius. By no means, for then that hot-spirited,
and high minded sex would prick up their Peacocks-tails so much the higher. But happy
would all these hair-brain’d houswives be, if they had such Tutors to their husbands,
as Aurelius was; ’tis most certain, that then that corrupt seed, would be cropt in
the very bud and not be suffered to come to perfection.

Yet you new married Couple, are both in heart and mind concordant, and all your
delight is to please each others fancy: you have no difference about the Supremacy;
for the Authority of the one is alwaies submitted to the other; and so much the more
because your husband never commands you as if you were a Maid; but with the sweetest and kindest expressions, saith, my
Dearest, will you bid the Maid draw a glass of Beer or Wine, or do this or that,
&c. Oh if you could but both keep your selves in this state and posture, how
happily and exemplarily would you live in this World! But it happens many times, that
the Women through length of time, do take upon them, and grow to be so free, that
they will be solely and totally Master; and if their husbands through
kind-heartedness have given them a little more then ordinary liberty, they will have
the last word in spight of fate.

So have I seen one who could by no means keep her self in that first and
Paradice-like life; who observing her husbands good nature, thought her self wise
enough to govern all things, and to bring him to her Bow; which, by degrees, to his
great discontent, did more and more increase in matters of the housekeeping.

But it hapned once that the good man, went to the Market, and having bought a
delicate Capon, meets with a friend, whom he invited to be his guest; and going home
with it, his wife powts, maunders and mutters and looks so sowr that the guest saw
well enough how welcome he should be. The good man with fair and kind words sought to
remove this, which was in some measure done.

But a pretty while after, the goodman being in the market, buies a couple of
delicate Pullets, and sends them home with a
Porter; but the Wife told him she had made ready somthing else, and had no need of
them; therefore, let him say what he would, made him bring them back again: The good
man meeting with the Porter, and perceiving the cross-grainedness of his wife, sends
them to a Tavern to be made ready, and gets a friend or two along with him to
dispatch them, and dript them very gallantly with the juice of Grapes. At this, when
he came home, his wife grin’d, scolded, and bawl’d; yet done it was, and must serve
her for a future example. And she on the contrary persisting in her stif-necked ill
nature, made a path-road for the ruine of her self and family, because he afterwards,
to shun his wife, frequented more then too much Taverns and Alehouses, and gave the
breeches solely to his wife.

Not long ago, just in the like manner, there married an indifferent handsom
Gentlewoman, with a proper, handsom, honest and good natured Gentleman; but the
Gentlewoman imagining her self to be as wise as a Doctor, acted the part of a
Domineerer, controuling, grumbling and chiding at all whatsoever he did; insomuch
that all his sweet expressions could no waies allay her; but rather augmented her
rage; yea insomuch that at last she saluted him with boxes and buffettings. But he
seeing that no, reasons or perswasions would take place, and that she grew the longer
the more furious, locks the dore to, and catches
her by the coif, instructing her with such a feeling sence, that at last she got open
a window and leaps out, thereby escaping the remaining part of that dance. Away she
flies immediately to her Father and her Brother, but they, very well knowing her
ill-natured obstinacy, both denied her houseroom. Yet the next day, through the
intercession of others, there was a pacification made and a truce concluded on, which
did not long continue so. For she, beginning again her former wicked actions, made
him run to the Tavern there to allay his disturbed sences, leaving her to wear the
Breeches. But now they are rid of mony, credit, respect, and every thing else.

Another Gentlewoman of late daies, seeing that she had married a good mild-natured
husband, that was not guilty of any vice, exercised her authority and wickedness so
much the more over him; yea so far, that in the presence of several neighbors she
oftentimes knockt, thumpt, and cudgelled him; that at last she was called by every
one The incarnate Divel. But he, after some years of suffering this martyrdom,
hapning to dy, there comes another Lover very suddenly to cast himself away upon this
Hellish peece of flesh; but she had of him, being a just punishment, such a beloved,
that he thunderd her three times as bad about, as she did her first husband; and then
flew Pots, Kans and Glasses ringling and gingling along the flore, and she on the top of them, well and warm
covered with good thumps and fisty-cuffs, and somtimes traild over the flore by the
hair of the head. O miserable terrors of such a horrible State and condition! Who can
but shake and quiver, yea with fear start back, when they begin to feel the least
motion to the same in their bodies? and so much the more, because that we see that
this present World is so mightily replenished with such numbers of monstrous, wicked
and unhappy women, who hide their wickedness and ill natures under their powdered
locks, and flattring looks; and like a Camelion, in their Maiden estate, will be
agreeable to all things that are propounded to them; but being married, they abandon
all rationality, make their own passions their masters, and cannot understand by any
means the pleasures of their husbands. Though they certainly know, and have daily
experience, that there is nothing under the Sun, which hath a bewitchinger power upon
the hearts of their husbands, then the friendliness and kind compliance of their
Wives. This hath in ancient times done a thousand wonders and is as yet the most
powerfull to drive all stuborn and ill-natured humors out of the heads of men; and
can lead them, as it were by the hand, in to the paths of Reason, Equity and
Love.

O happy Women, who, in this manner have the
hearts of men in your hands, and can bring the same to your obedience where you will;
what means and waies ought you not to indeavour by dallyings and kind actions to gain
the same on your side! you certainly know, that the main Butt which is aim’d at by
all mankind, is to pass through this short life of ours with pleasure and quietness:
But alas! what life, what rest, what pleasure can he possess in this World, who hath
hapned upon a scolding, and no waies friendly wife?

Oh if all Lovers knew this so well, they would never suffer themselves to be led
away captive by the jettish eys, and marble-like breasts, or strangle themselves in
the curled locks of women; but would imbrace their kind naturedness to be the
surpassingest beauty.

But the carnal desires, and covetousness of mony, blindeth the eys of so many,
that oftentimes for the satisfaction thereof, they will, contrary to all
exhortations, run headlong, and cast themselves into a pit of infinite horrors and
vexations of Spirit: chusing rather a proud, finical, blockheaded Virgin with two
thousand pound, then a mean, kind-hearted, understanding one, with ten thousand
Vertues.

This was that which the prudent King Lycurgus sought to prevent, when he gave out
his commands that no Parents should give any portions with their Daughters in
marriage, or might leave them any thing for an inheritance; because he would not have them to be desired in marriage by any,
but for their beauty and vertues; in those daies the vitious remained, just as now
doth the poor ones, most of them unmarried, and cast aside, and every Maid was hereby
spur’d up, that her Vertues might in brightness and splendor surpass others.

Happy are you, O Father of the Family, who without the least thoughts of Lycurgus,
have made so good a choice and have gotten a Wife that is beautifull, rich, good
natured, and vertuous; you learnt first to know her well, that you might the better
woe her, and so be happy in marriage. Make this your example, O all you foolish and
wandring Lovers, who are so desirous to tast of the Pleasures and sweetness of
marriage; and are somtimes so disquieted and troubled till you cast your selves upon
an insulting, domineering Wife, who perhaps hath the Breeches already on, and will
vex you with all the torments imaginable in the World. Do but use these few remedies
for your squandered brains, and be assured they will bring you to have good fortune
and tranquility.

If these things be observed by you innocent and wandring Lovers, they will much
assist you in your choice, but not preserve you from being a slave; because the
Gentlewoman whom you have chosen, hath till this time be past, had one or other ill
condition, which she knew how to hide and dissemble with, that you never so much as
thought of, or expected from her. Cornelius
Agrippa knew this in his daies, when he said, men must have and keep their wives,
e’en as it chanceth; if they be (saies he) merry humored, if they be foolish, if they
be unmannerly, if they be proud, if they be sluttish, if they be ugly, if they be
dishonest, or whatsoever vice she is guilty of, that will be perceived after the
wedding, but never amended. Be therefore very vigilant, you wandring Lovers, and sell
not your liberty at so low a price, which cannot be redeemed again with a whole Sea
of repentances.

And you, O silent Gentlewomen, methinks you long to know whether there be no
remedies for you to be had, that you may also be as well arm’d against the rigid
natured, subtle and dissembling Lovers, as well as they have against the vitious
Gentlewomen; take notice, that since you have subjected your selves to that foolish
fashion of these times, never of your selves to go a wooing; but with patience will
expect who will come for you, that rule must be first observed, and regard taken of
him that cometh, then it is the time to consider, principally.

In so doing, you will have, as well as our new-married Couple, the expectation of
a happy match; which though it falls out well, yet is subject to severall accidental
corruptions; as you will perceive in the further Confession of the insuing Pleasures,
even as if they were a Looking-glass.

The Seventh Pleasure.

The bad times teaches the new married Couple. Makes them brave housekeepers.
They take in Lodgers, and give good examples to their Children.

It was formerly very pleasant living, when Trading and Merchandizing flourished so
nobly, that every evening people were fain to carry a whole drawer full of mony out
of the Counter in to the Counting-house; and then the good woman had alwaies two or
three hours work to sort it, before they could so much as think of going to bed: but
it seems that destructive War, as being a scourge from Heaven, for our dissatisfied
Spirits; hath so lamentably humbled the Land of our Nativity, that there are very few
who have not now just causes enough to complain.

And you, O young people, shall be witnesses hereof, who have already, in that
short time that you have been married, experience that things do not alwaies run upon
wheels so merrily as was expected. ‘Tis true you possess the Pleasure of an
indifferent Trade, as well as the rest of your Neighbours; but it is not in any
measure to be compared with those golden daies that your Ancestors had, when they
could lay up so much wealth, and yet complained they had but little custom.

135
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

Verily, when I rightly consider it, methinks
you are happier then they were. For at that time all their delight was, by a covetous
frugality, to reap much riches together, and though that hapned very well, yet there
was never enough; for mony is no impediment to a covetous soul because it alwaies
yearns for more. But now on the contrary, it is esteemed to be very nobly done, and
people take an absolute delight in it, if they can but tell how to scrape so much
together, that they may keep the Dunners from their dores, bring up their children
indifferently well, and pay the taxations and impositions that are imposed upon them.
In good truth, they that can do this now, are worthy of as much credit and
reputation, as those were that prospered much in former daies; and their Pleasure
ought not to be lesser then the others before was.

O happy Successors, who through the contentment of your minds, possess now as
great Pleasure, as your rich Parents formerly did, in their plentifull daies. Verily,
your gain is comparatively better then theirs, because you are satisfied with so much
less; and by consequence when the hour of death approaches, you can so much the
easier depart from this World, by reason you shall not leave so many knives behind
you that may cut your childrens throats.

Therefore if your Trading should come to diminish more; and that you can hardly
tell how to keep both ends together; then
comfort your selves with this happiness; to the end that the Pleasures of your
marriage, may thereby not be eclipsed. For in bad times you must as diligently search
after the Pleasures of Marriage, as for gain and good Trading.

But it seems, as you imagine, that this Pleasure rather decreases then increases;
because that the small trading, is accompanied with bad paiment; and where ever you
run or go to dun, you find no body at home, but return back to your house with empty
pockets. For there is Master Highmind, and Squire Spightfull, who come every day in
their Velvet Coats to the Change, are not in the least ashamed that the Goods, which
they bought to be paid ready down, after the expiration of a full year, are not yet
paid. And Master Negligent, who is alwaies in an Alehouse, and seldom to be found in
his Counting-house or at the Change, thinks it is abundance too early in July, so
much as to look upon the reckoning of last New-year, much less to pay it.

Nevertheless others have their Creditors also, and this Bill of Exchange, and that
Assignment must be paid at their due times; yea, and the Winter is approaching, Wood
and Coals must be bought, the Cellar furnisht with Beer and Wine, and some Firkins of
Butter, and provision made for the powdring-tub to be filled, as well as several
other sorts of necessaries for the Family that
will be wanting. Insomuch that this affords but a very slight appearance of
concluding the year in Pleasure.

But, O carefull House Father, if you knew in what a happy age you live, you would
not go away so dissatisfied, but imbrace all these affairs very joifully for
extraordinary Pleasures.

Hitherto you have gone forward like one young and unexperienced, and have meant
with Master Dolittle, alias John the Satisfied, that things were to be done with
kissing, licking, dallying, and other fidle fadles; but now you are come to a more
sober, serious understanding, and to have mans knowledge, and the same prudent
conduct that your Parents and Friends had, when they were assembled together about
your Contract of Marriage, and then thought of all these things. Now you are grown to
be a Master of Arts in the University of Wedlock. And great Juno laught, that Venus
hath so long hoodwink’d you.

Come on then, these films being now fallen, from your eys, do but observe how
prudent carefull Time hath made you, and how circumspect and diligent you begin to be
that you may get through the World with honour, commendations, and good respect; how
like a care taking Father you are now providing for your Wife, Children, and whole
Family. Oh if your Father and Mother were now alive, how would they rejoice in this
your advancement; which are indeed the upright
Pleasures of Marriage. For all married people, draw the cares, here mentioned, along
with them; though they come with a bag full of mony about their necks in to the
World.

Do but see, till now you have had a brave and splendant house, paid great rent,
only for your self and family to live in; now you begin to consider with
understanding and Pleasure, whether a dwelling of less price would not serve as well,
in which you might have a Chamber or two that you could let out to some civil
Gentlemen, who might diet with you; it would help to pay the rent, and bring some
profit in besides; and it is all one trouble for boiling, roasting, and going to
Market: the day goes about nevertheless, and the Maid suits her work accordingly. And
moreover, you have good company of them in your house, and alwaies either one or
another at dinner begins to relate some kind of pretty discourse, that is continually
very pleasurable and delightfull to be heard.

Observe how glad your Wife is concerning this resolution! There hath not been
these three years any Proclamation published, which pleased her fancy better: for now
her husband will have some pastime, and good company at home, so that he needs not go
to seek it in the evening in Alehouses or other places. Well who cannot but see here
how one may learn through honest Time and
Experience, what Pleasures they are accompanied with?

But stay a little, and to be serious with you, when you get such guests, you’l see
how they will plague you; for the general imaginations of such Gentlemen are, that
all the monies they spend, is pure gain, and that the Landlord and Landlady alwaies
ought to provide such sort of diet as they have most a mind to: and though it be
never so well drest, yet there shall hardly come one dish to the Table, but they will
be finding fault that this hath too much pepper in it, and that too much salt,
&c. Besides all this, both Maids and Men, and all what’s in the house, must be at
their commands; nay be readier and nimbler to serve them then their Master and
Mistriss. And that’s more, you are deprived of the whole freedom of your house and
table. It happens also many times, that they have so many visiters, and runners after
them, that they require more attendance; and the maid hath more work with them alone,
then the whole house-keeping besides.

This is the general course of all fellow Commoners; I will not say any thing of a
worser sort, which are many times amongst them; who run in the mornings to
Strong-water Shops, and in the afternoon to Taverns; where they so disguise
themselves, that one must be ashamed for honest people who are in the Shop, or
standing upon the flore, that sees them either
come in a dores or down from their Chambers, hardly able to stand; besides they value
not if they tarry out late at nights; and, if it be possible, they will intice the
good man of the house to debauch with them. And then again they are seldom free from
private chatting and pratling with the Maid and Men servants.

But perhaps you may light of a better sort, which Time, who is the mother of all
things, will make appear. Let it be as it will, here is alwaies pleasure and delight
to be expected for the good man, because the good woman by this means increaseth to
more knowledge of housholding affairs; and therefore is alwaies busie, like a prudent
mother, in educating, governing, and instructing her children.

Yea, if you, O Father of the Family, will go a little further, and behold with
clear eys, how far your wife, through these bad times, is advanced in understanding
and knowledge; I do assure you, you will find your self as ravisht with joy; because
this is as great a transformation as ever Ovid writ of. For whereas at the beginning
of your marriage, all her cogitations were imploied for the buying of large Venetian
Looking-glasses, Indean Chainy, Plush Stools and Chairs, Turkish Tapistry, rich
Presses and Tables, yea and whatsoever else was needfull for neatness and gallantry;
we see now, that all her sences are at work, where ever they may or can be, to save
and spare all things, and to take care that
there may not so much as a match negligently be thrown away.

Formerly, your good wife used, by reason of her youth, and want of knowledge, to
walk very stately, hand in hand with you, along the streets, finically trickt up with
powdered locks, and a laced Gorget and Gown, and had commonly need of, at the least,
three hours time, before she, with the help of two serviceable assistants, could be
put to her mind in her dress; and then again all her discourse was of walking or
riding abroad, and of junketting and merriment; whereas now on the contrary, seeing
the small gain, she is sparing of all things, and ordring it to the best advantage
for the family; without so much as setting one foot out of her House or Counter
unnecessarily. Never thinking more of gadding abroad, to take pleasure; but finds all
her delight by being busie in her houskeeping, amongst her children and servants.
Here you may behold her driving the maid forwards, and setting her a spinning, to
keep the sleep out of her eys; and with this intent also that she may have the
delight to get yarn enough ready towards Winter, to let a brave Web of Linnen be
woven for the service of the Family. Yea, and here she shews you, that though before
she was but a Bartholomew Baby, that she is now grown to be a brave houswife. And
that, if need requires, she can put a hand to the plough stoutly.

O happy man, who in such a sad and troublesom time, can find out so many Pleasures
of Marriage, and who art already so well instructed in that most illustrious
School!

‘Tis true, you will meet with some jeering prattle-arses, that will say, is this
that brave couple, that there was such a noise made of when they were married! Is
this the Gentlewoman that used to go so costly in her Gorgets and Gowns! Goes she now
with a plain wastcoat! alas and welladay! doth her feathers begin to hang thus! Well,
is this the Gentlewoman that used alwaies to keep two maids! Can she now make a shift
with a little wench that earns her wages with spinning, and her diet with doing the
house work? it must certainly ly very nastily and sluttishly at her house.

‘Tis very true, this might happen to you, and it would seem to eclipse the Sun of
your Pleasures of Marriage very much; if you had not now, O well matcht Couple,
through the instruction of the winged Time, gotten such prudent eys that you can
easily see through such vain and simple Clouds.

But now you apprehend, to your great joy and comfort, that this arrow comes out of
the Quiver of such as are indebted to every body, and suffer themselves daily to be
durrid; who are continually pratling with the Neighbors, and gadding along the
streets; they take notice of every dore that
opens, and neglect their own houskeeping having no understanding to govern it; the
dishes, pots and pans are alwaies standing in the middle of the flore; and Benches
and Stools are all covered and ly filled with the Childrens dirty clouts, and the
Windows are so thick with dirt, that the Sun can hardly shine through them. Whose
first word is, when any body comes into their house, What! by reason of these sad
times a body hath neither joy nor delight in their houskeeping. If we wash the glass
windows, they are in danger of breaking, and at present we cannot bear with any
losses. And these ordinarily have more pratling and felling then any other women, and
no body knows any thing better then these sworn tittletattlers; they are seldom to be
found with a pin-cushion upon their laps; and are the occasion that their houses,
children and Maids stink of filth and sluttishness, with their cloaths out at the
elbous, and their stockins out at the heels. Whilest their husbands sit in the
Alehouses, and seek by drinking, domineering and gaming to drive these damps of the
sad times out of theire brains; which continueth so long, till that all is consumed,
and they both fly damnably in debt to their Creditors.

Well then, you worthy and faithfull Houskeepers, you see now the unhappy state and
condition of these venomous controulers of others: And on the contrary, you may
perceive how happy the bad times, like a prudent
Instructor, makes you; what a quantity of understanding and delight it imparts unto
you; whilest you both, with joint resolution, diligent hands and vigilant eys,
indeavor the maintenance and setting up of your Family. Be assured, that this care
and frugality will so root it self in your very bones, that although the times
changed and grew better, you would reserve a stedfast delight in the promoting the
good and benefit of your houskeeping; and withall leave to your children such riches
and good examples, that they will follow your footsteps of carefulness with delight,
and lay a hand to the plough, thereby to demonstrate that they were of a good
extraction: which if it so happen, you will inherit one of the greatest and desiredst
Pleasures that is to be found in the Married estate.

251
Published by The Navarre Society, London.

The Eighth Pleasure.

The Parents would bring up their son in their way of Trade, but he hath no
mind to’t. He is put to School out of the City. Grows a Scholler, commits much
mischief. Is apprehended and informed what a Schollerlike life is.

Uds life, now I thinke on’t, amongst the Pleasures of Mariage, this is none of the
least, when one sees their children feed well, and grow up healthfully and merrily;
and their stomacks in a morning are as soon open as their eys; then at noons they can
claw it away at a good dish, as well as persons of full growth and years; and about
four of the clock their appetites are again prepared for an afternoons lunchion;
insomuch that they can eat you into poverty, without making their teeth bleed. O it
is such a delight to see that they continually grow up so slovenly and wastfully in
their cloaths, that they must needs have every half year almost a new suit, and that
alwaies a little bigger; whereby the Father sees that he shall in short time have a
son to be his man in the shop, and the mother a daughter to be her caretakester and
controulster of the Kitchin.

Thus we advance in the estate of Mariage, from one pleasure to another. O how
happy you’l be, if your children be but pliable and courteous, and grow up in
obedience, and according to your example! But we
see in the generality, that as their understanding increases, that also their own
wills and desires do in like manner not diminish.

Perhaps you meet with some such symptoms as these are in your own son; for having
been some years learning the Latine Tongue at Pauls or Merchant Tailors School; he is
then inveagled by some of the neighbors sons to go with them to learn the Italian or
French language; to which purpose they know of a very delicate Boarding school a
little way out of the City; and then they baptize it with the name, that he hath such
a longing and earnest desire to learn it, that he cannot rest in the night for
it.

What will you do? The charge there of, the bad times, and the necessity you have
for him at home, makes you perswade him from it, and to proffer him convenient
occasions in the City; but what helps it, the fear of drawing the child from that
which he has so much a mind to; and may be, that also, wherein his whole good fortune
consists, causes you to take a resolution to fullfill his desire. Away he’s sent
then, and agreed for. And then there must be a Trunk furnisht, with all manner of
linnen and cloaths, with other toys and sweet meats, and mony in his pocket to
boot.

Having been some small time there he sends some letters for what he wants. Which
is, with recommendations of being saving and diligent, sent unto him. And it is no small pleasure for the
Parents, if they do but see that he is an indifferent proficiant. All their delight
and pleasure is, when time will permit, to go to their son, and to shew him their
great love and affection.

But the Daughter, which goes along with her Mother, is kindled with no small
matter of jealousie to see that her Brother puts her Parents to so much charge, gets
what he pleases, and that their minds are never at rest about him. When she, on the
contrary, being at home, is thrust by her Mother into the drudgery of the house, or
kept close to her needle. Yet these are pacified with a fine lace, a ring, or some
such sort of trinkom trankoms; and then with telling them into the bargain, when your
brother comes home he shall keep the shop.

This the Father is in expectation of. And the son being come home, gives a great
Pleasure to his Father and Mother, by reason he speaks such good Latin and Italian,
and is so gentile in his behaviour: but to look to the shop, he hath no mind to. Say
what they will, talk is but talk. All his desire and mind is to go to the University
either of Oxford or Cambridge. And although the Father in some measure herein yeelds
and consents; the Mother, on the other side, can by no means resolve to it; for her
main aim was, that her son should be brought up in the shop; because that in the absence, or by decease of her husband, he might
then therein be helpfull to her. Besides that, it is yet fresh in her memory, that
when her Brother studied at Oxford, what a divellish deal of mony it cost, and what
complaints there come of his student-like manner of living. Insomuch that there was
hardly a month past, but the Proctor of the Colledge, or the Magistracy of the City
must have one or other penalty paid them.

Now they try to imploy the son in the shop, who delights in no less melody then
the tune of that song: letting slip no occasion that he can meet with to get out of
the shop; and shew himself, with all diligence, willing to be a Labourer in the
Tennis Court, or at the Bilyard Table; and is not ashamed, if there be hasty work, in
the evening, to tarry there till it be past eleven of the clock. What a pleasure this
vigilance is to the Father and Mother, those that have experience know best.
Especially when they in the morning call their son to confession, and between Anger
and Love catechize him with severall natural and kind reproofs.

‘Tis but labour lost, and ill whistling, if the horse won’t drink. What remedy?
turn it, and wind it so as you will.

The son his mind to study is full bent,
Or else will live upon his yearly rent.

Here must be a counsell held by wisdom, prudence, love and patience. Here also the
imaginations of incapableness or want of monies
must be conquered; for to constrain a son to that he hath no mind to, is the ready
way to dull his genious, and perhaps bring him to what is worser, to wit, running
after whores or Gaming. And to teach him how to live upon his yearly means, the tools
are too damn’d costly. So that now the Parents have true experience of the old
Proverb.

The Children in their youth, oft make their Parents smart,
Being come to riper years, they vex their very heart.

Nevertheless, after you have turn’d it and wound it so as you will, the sending of
him to the University of Oxford bears the sway; and there to let him study Theology
being the modestest Faculty, by one of the learnedst and famousest Doctors. And
verily, he goes forward so nobly, that, in few months, before he half knows the
needfull Philosophy, he is found to be a Master of Arts in Villany. And moreover, the
Parents were by some good friends informed, that lately he was acting the domineering
student, and being catcht by the watch, was brought into the Court of Guard; but
through the extraordinary intercession of his own and some other Doctors, they
privately let him go out again.

A little longer time being expired, he sends Post upon Post dunning letters; his
quarter of the years out, his Pockets empty, and
the Landlady wants mony; besides there are severall other things that he wants, both
of Linnen and Woollen; all which things yield an extraordinary Pleasure, especially,
if the mony which is sent, without suffring shipwrack, be imploied and laid out for
those necessaries.

For some students are so deeply learnt, that they consume the monies they get in
mirth and jovialty, and leave their Landladies, Booksellers, Tailors, Shoomakers, and
all whom they are indebted to, unpaid. Nay, his own Cousin, that studied at
Cambridge, knew very learnedly how to make a cleaver dispatch, with his
Pot-Companions, at Gutterlane, of all the mony that was sent him by his Parents, for
his promotion; and under the covert of many well studied lies desired more.

But who knows, what wonderfull students tricks, before he is half so perfect, your
son will have learnt, to make his Father and Mother merry with; for, as I have heard,
he hath gotten so much aquaintance, that he hath the Bookseller to be his friend, who
sets down the prizes of the Books he delivers, three times as much again as they are
worth; and for the overplus, he, with some other students, are bravely merry
together.

Yea, he’s come so far himself, that he doth, to get mony, know how to sell his
best Authors; and sets in place of them some
Blocks very neatly cut and coloured like gallant Books. And if any one comes that
will lay their hands upon them; he saith immediately, eat, drink, smoke and be merry
to your hearts content; but whatsoever you do, touch not my books; for that’s as a
Medean Law and an inviolable statute in my Chamber; as it doth, to the same purpose,
stand written thus before my Chamber of Books:

Be jolly, sing, and dance; command me with a look,
One thing I do forbid, you must not touch a Book.

The old Proverb saith, it must bend well, before it can make a good hook. But it
is easie to be perceived by the beginning, what may be expected from the flexibility
of this precious twig. O extraordinary and magnificent pleasure for the Parents, when
they see that their son, in so short a time, is so damnably advanced! And so much the
more, a little while after, there comes one and tells them by word of mouth, that
there were several Schollars, which were playing some antick tricks in the night; and
amongst some others both their Son and their Cousin were apprehended, and at this
very present sad accusations were brought in against them. In the mean while, the
Chancellor, having heard that they are all persons of good Parentage, and that there
will be brave greasing in the case, laughs in his fist because such things as those are generally moderated and assopiated by the
means and infallible vertue of the correcting finger hearb.

This brings the Parents a fine Bartholomew Baby to play with; and if there ly
loosely in a corner a fifty pound bag they will go nigh to see how they may make use
of it. And this gives a horrible augmentation to the Pleasures of Marriage! But let
them turn it and wind it which way they will, the Parents must go thither, and seek
by all means possible according to their ability, to pacific the matter.

As they are upon their journy, they hear in every Town where they come, how
debauched and wicked lives the Students leads, not only concerning that which was
lately done at Oxford, but at other places also. Which makes them be in no small
fear, whether their son, perhaps may not be guilty only of this, but some worser
misdemeanor, and is therefore at present clapt up.

Here Master Truetale begins to relate, that lately there were four Students, who
for some petulancy, had been at Confession by the Mayor, and he with their vomiting
up some Guinies, gave them their absolutions; but they perceiving that hereby their
purses were cruelly weakned, and that the return of monies did not come according to
expectation, took a resolution to get some revenge of him for it. And he having built
a new house, caused it, by a curious Workman, to
be neatly painted on the outside: which these four Students seeing, they took a good
quantity of Tar, and did so damnably bedawb it, that it looked as if old Nick had
been there with his rubbing brush. Which the Mayor seeing in the morning, seemed to
be little troubled at it; but said, certainly some body hath done this, that I have
taken too little mony of, and therefore in gratitude have, for nothing, thus
bepainted my delicately painted house.

But nevertheless the Mayor sends in the evening five or six Spies abroad into
those Taverns and Alehouses where the lightest Students generally frequented; who
were smoking and drinking there, and amongst other discourses related, how it tickled
their fancies, that the covetous Mayor was served such a delicate trik, &c.
Whereupon some of them hearing that the action was so much commended, and that the
Mayor made no search about it, saies, that was my work with James Smith the Londoner,
Jack Dove the Kentishman, and Sanny Clow the Scotch man. Upon this they were all four
apprehended in the night, and very cleaverly clapt by the heels, &c.

Hereupon Mistriss Credit, said, There are no such wicked inventers of mischief, as
moniless Students; of which we had lately a new example, for some of those Blades
wanting mony, were resolved to act this trick, viz. Some few daies before there was a malefactor hanged, and one of
them between eleven and twelve of the clock at night, gets hard by the Gallows where
he hung, and feigned to be the spirit of the malefactor; sometimes appearing, and
then again vanishing; in the mean while the rest of his companions, all separate from
each other, as if they had been strangers, placed themselves not far from it. Each of
them seemed to be frightned, and shewed unto all the passers by that there was the
spirit of the malefactor that was executed. This run forward like wild fire, in
somuch that the number of the spectators increased abundantly. And whilest every one
was so busie in beholding it, the moniless Students were as serious in picking of
their Pockets, cutting the silver buttons off their cloaths, which no body perceived,
till the Spirit was vanished, and they were gotten home. So did I know, saith Master
Mouth, two necessitous Students, who at a Fair-time, observed that a Country man,
having sold some commodities that he brought to Market, had received five or six
Crown pieces for them; and went amongst the Booths to buy somthing, but feared in the
throng one or another might steal them from him; therefore would not trust them in
his Pocket, nor with his Purse in the breast of his doublet; but puts them in his
mouth; saying, No body I’m sure can take them from thence, and walks into the Booths,
there cheapning a hat; in the mean while, one of
these Students goes to the very next Booth, buies some pedling thing, and pulling
mony out of his Pocket to pay, saith what a pox is the meaning of this? Just now I
had several Crown pieces, and now I have nothing; and since that, there hath no body
else been near me, but this Country fellow; and begins to catch him by the shoulders;
saying, hark ye Squire, I miss several Crown pieces which I had but just now. This so
amazed the Country man, that he began to mumble with the Crown pieces in his mouth;
whereupon the Student said, I verily beleeve the villain hath them in his mouth. The
Country man answered thereupon, those that I have in my mouth are my own, I received
them just now for some commodities; But let the Country man say what he would, it was
not beleeved; he was lamentably beaten, his Crown pieces taken from him, and given to
the Student.

By this you may perceive, saith Master Otherway, that the Proverb is true,
Poverty is subtle. I was lately told of some poor troublesom Students, who
had, a little way off the City, caused a dainty Feast to be made ready for them; and
knowing that the Landlord had a brother, whom he extreamly loved, which lived about
five and twenty miles off; write a Letter to the Landlord, and therein acquaint him
that his Brother was very desperately sick,
oftentimes calling for him; therefore if he would see and speak with him alive, he
must with all possible speed immediately come thither, &c.

Then they found out such a cleaver contryvance to have this Letter delivered into
the hands of the Landlord, that he had not the least distrust of a cheat; but away he
rides immediately. In the mean while, these Students committed much sauciness and
wantonness with the Mistriss and the Maid; till at last locking them both up in a
Chamber, away they went without paying.

To this a Miller that sate close by, relates, that lately, not far from his house,
two Students laid violent hands upon a woman, and bound her to a Post.

‘Tis a Wonder, saith Master Demure, proceeding forward, that since they commit
such wicked and so many base actions, more of these Students are not apprehended.
When I dwelt at my Country house, there came a parcel of these drunken blades, that
were expresly gone abroad to play some mad tricks; they pulled down the pales of my
neighbors Garden; and one among them that served for Chief, commanded pull off these
planks, tear up this Post, &c.

In the mean time, a poor Country man coming by with his empty Wagon; begs of this
commander, that he would be pleased to bestow
upon him those old Planks and Posts for his winter firing, because he was so poor,
that he knew not where to get any: which this Gentleman granting him, he laies on a
lusty load upon his Wagon.

Being drove a pretty way of, the owner comes to the place, and sees in what a
lamentable condition his Garden lay; asks who had done it, and understands that they
were Students which had taken their march towards some of the adjacent Country Towns,
but that the Country man with his Planks, must needs be got very far from the City,
&c. Away runs the owner with all speed, makes his complaint, and gets an order to
arrest the poor Country man, his horse and Wagon. Who coming to be examined at his
triall, was condemned to be set in the Pillory, with two Planks set before him, upon
which must be written in great white Letters.

Garden-Theef.

These wicked Students stood together to behold this, and laught till they split,
to see that this poor innocent Country man, must suffer such shame and punishment for
his winter firing.

Just in the same manner, not long ago, some divellish Students, had taken a heavy
rail from before a house which was newly set there, but hearing that the Watch or
Bell man approched; they presently whept it before another mans dore, where there was none; and leaning all of them over
the rail; saluted the Watch with saying, Good night Gentlemen, Good night; and the
Watch the like to them again: But the Watch was no sooner gone then they fell to
breaking of it all in peeces, and run away as fast as they could drive.

Those people are unhappy, saith Master Talkon, especially such as live in Country
Towns, that are near to Cities where there are Universities; for many times one or
another must be a sufferer from these roguish natured Students; and they imagine in
themselves that all what the Country people possess must be at their pleasure and
disposition. Whereby it happens, in the Summer, that for their wicked pastime, they
go to rob the Orchards of the best fruit, and to steal Hens, Ducks, and Pigeons; and
then again to destroy the Fields of Turnips, Carrots, Parsnips, Beans and Pease,
&c. Tearing up such multiplicities, that it would be incredible if we should
relate it all. But it is common for them to destroy ten times as much as they can eat
or carry away.

And when the Summer is past, that there are no fruits either in Orchards or
Fields; then their whole delight and recreation is to commit insolencies in the
Streets of the City by night; and if they can but any waies put an affront upon the
Watch; that is laught at, and esteemed to be an heroick act.

It hapned lately, that some Students walking
out of Town, saw a little boy in the Fields, that was holding the cord of an
indifferent Kite, which was in the Air, in his hand; they laughing at him, said, The
Kite is bigger than the Boy; come let us ty the cord about the Boy, then they will
not lose one another. And immediately catching hold of the Boy, they forced the cord
from him, and bound it fast about his middle in a great many knots, then went their
way.

Whilest the Boy was very busie and indeavouring to unty the knots, the Wind grew
high, insomuch that the Boy used all his strength to hold back the cord; but his
strength failing him, he was with a furious blast snatcht up by the Kite from the
ground, and presently after let fall again into a pretty deep ditch, where the poor
innocent Boy was unhappily drowned.

It would be sempiternal for us here to make a relation of all the petulancy and
wickedness of Students, whereof these and other Parents, each in their particular,
are miserably sensible of. For every one acts his own part, but it tends altogether
unto wickedness, lavishness, and troublesomness.

Here you may see Master Empty-belly takes the greatest delight in the World, nobly
to treat some Northern Gentlemen of his acquaintance and Pot-companions, and then
again to be treated by them: where there is an absolute agreement made, that when any one of them gets mony from their
Parents, he shall give the company a treat of five Guinnies. And though they
generally observe, that before they part, one quarrel or other arises, and the Swords
drawn; yet this Law is inviolabler, than ever any Statutes of Henry the VIII. were.
Which continued so long till one of them be desperately wounded or killed, and he
that did it apprehended; and to the great greef of his Parents tried for his life, or
else flies his Country, to save it.

Others we may see, that have no greater pleasure then to sit whole nights with
their Companions playing at Tables; and there game away Rings, Hats, Cloaks and
Swords, &c. and then ply one another so close with whole bumpers of Sack and old
Hock, that they are worse then senceless beasts, feeling and groping of the very
Walls, and tumbling and wallowing to and fro in their own nastiness. And esteem it to
be a Championlike action if one can but make the t’other dead drunk by his voracity
of sucking in most. As if they intended hereby to become learned Doctors.

Some again are most horribly addicted to frequent the pestilential Bawdy-houses;
of which they are never satisfied, till mony, cloaths, books, and their own health of
body is consumed; and then come home to their Parents soundly peppered.

Some there are that oftentimes so deeply
ingage themselves with their Landlords daughters, that they can answer to her
examination without the knowledge either of their Parents or Doctors, and are fit for
promotion in the Art of Nature. But if the Landlady hath never a daughter of her own,
there’s a Neece or Neighbors daughter, which knows how to shew her self there so
neatly, that with her tripping and mincing she makes signals enough, that at their
house Cubicula locanda is to be had. And these are the true Divers, that know
infinitely well how to empty the Students Pockets.

Thus doth every one act their parts. Whilest the Parents are indeavouring to
gather and scrape all together that they can, that their Son, who is many times the
onliest or eldest, may go forward in his study, and become perfect in one Faculty.
And the more, because they see that he is sharp-witted, and according as his Doctor
saith, a very hopefull young man. Little thinking that he makes as bad use of those
natural benefits, as he is lavish of his mony.

But it is a common saying that the London-youths must have their wills. Which
oftentimes occasions, that when they have studied a long time in Divinity, they
finally turn to be some Inns of Court Gentlemen; fearing that their wild Students
life, might in any other vocation, be cast in their teeth.

Yet somtimes it also happens, that from the very first they behave themselves modestly, and advance so
gallantly in their Studies, that it is a comfort for their Parents, and great benefit
for themselves. But nevertheless, though they obtain their Promotion with
commendation, reputation, and great charges; yet it is all but fastidious, unless
their Parents can leave or give them some considerable means; or that they through
their brave behaviours, perfections, and sweet discourses, can inveagle themselves in
to a rich match. For many years are spent before they can get a Parsonage or
Benefice, and when it doth happen in some Country Town, the means will hardly
maintain them.

If he be a Counsellor or Doctor of Physick, what a deal of time runs away before
he can come in to practice! especially if in the one he hath not the good fortune to
get the two or three first causes for his Clients; and in the other, not to make
satisfactory cures of his first Patients. Therefore, what a joy would it have been
for the Parents if their Son had spent his time in understanding Shop-keeping, and
been obedient to the exhortations of his Parents!

But though some do this, and are therein compliant to their Parents; yet we
perceive that this also is subject to many vexations, by reason that the children
through a contrary drift, many times disturb their Parents night rest; especially
when there are such kind of Maids in the house,
that will listen to their humors and fancies.

These will, for the most part, please their Master and Mistriss to the full; and
do all things so that their Mistriss shall be satisfied, and have no occasion to look
out for another: And yet, in the mean while, all their main aim is, to get and intice
the son, with their neatness, cleanliness, friendliness, and gentileness, to be on
their side. To that end knowing how, as well as their Mistriss, to Hood themselves,
curl their locks, and wantonly overspread their breasts with a peece of fine Lawn, or
Cambrick, that they seem rather to be finically over shadowed then covered, and may
the better allure the weak eys of the beholders.

These know that Dame Nature hath placed her best features in a City Maid, as well
as in a Lady at Court: And that there are no keener Swords, or stronger steels to
penetrate through the hearts of men, then the handsom bodiedness, comly and kind
behaviour of women.

This is oftentimes the occasion that the son hath more inclination towards her,
then he hath for a Gentlewoman of a good family and indifferent fortune; nay it
transports him so, that they finally make use of one bed; and the son (much
unexpected by the Parents) is come to be Father himself. But what an inestimable
Pleasure of Marriage this is for the new Grandfather and Grandmother, every one may
judge. Especially, if it happens, as I saw once,
that the Prentice lay with his Masters Daughter; and the Son with the Kitchin Wench;
and the Prentice run away with the daughter; and the Son would by all means marry
with the Kitchin Wench. Which was such a great grief for the Parents, that it might
be justly termed rather one of the Terrors than Pleasures of Marriage. So that we
see, although the Children be at home by their Parents, or in the shop, and remain
under their view and tuition; yet nevertheless, by one or other, never to be
expected, occasion, they fall in to evill courses; which every one that brings up
children hath such manifold and several waies experience of, that it would be
infinite and too tiresom to give you an account of all the Confessions. Therefore we
will pass by these (as if we were running a horse-race), and to shorten our journy,
return again to our well married Couple, from whom we are cruelly straied.

You see and observe then, O well married Couple, what strange tricks and actions
that children will play. If yours act then the part of a liberal Son, or wanton
Student, rejoice therein that you have not brought forth a dunce or blockhead; but
since his Doctor saith that he is sharp-witted, and a hopefull youth; doubt not, but
that you will, when he comes to his seriouser years, with delight and pleasure see
him to be a great man.

For it hath many times hapned, that those who
have been the maddest and wildest Students at the University, have afterwards come to
be noble Personages, Ministers of State, and learned Doctors. Of whom we could relate
unto you several examples, if we knew certainly that the revealing of that Confession
would not be ill taken.

Thrice happy are you, O noble Couple, that you are yet in possession of the
Pleasures of the first Marriage, and are not troubled with the contention of a
cross-graind Father-in-law, or Mother-in-law over your Children, nor with their
fore-children, or Children of the second bed. For whatsoever happens to you now,
comes from a Web of your own spinning, and your love to that, conquers and covers all
infirmities; because we know very well that that certainly compleats one of the
Pleasures of Marriage.

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Published by the Navarre Society, London.

The Ninth Pleasure.

Of base conditioned Maid-servants.

‘Tis true, it seems to fall both tart and bitter, when the children take such
lavish courses, and get such wild hairs in their nostrils; the sons acting the parts
of spendthrifts, and petulant Students, and the Daughters of light Punks; as long as
these things remain so, they appear to be but very sober Pleasures of Marriage. But when we perceive, that these thorns being past,
the pleasant roses appear, and that these light hearted Students finally come to be
gallant Practitioners; O that affords you the most satisfactory and largest Pleasure
of Marriage that ever could be expected.

So also, if you perceive that your Daughters are lively, active and airy; that
somtimes they would rather go to a Play, then to Church; or rather be merry of an
evening, than at Sermon in the morning, and grow to be altogether mannish minded; you
must then conclude these are natural instincts. If it happen to fall out, contrary to
your expectation, that she hath more mind to a brave young fellow that’s a Prentice,
whose parts and humor she knows, then she hath in a Plush Jacketted or gilt Midas;
then make your selves joyfull in the several examples that you have of others, who
being so married, have proved to be the best Matches; of which examples
multiplicities are at large prostrated to your view in the Theater of Lovers. So that
you do herein yet find the Pleasure of Marriage.

But it is much farther to be sought for among the vexations which house-keeping
people have not only from children, but from base-natured, lasie, tailing, lavish,
and ill-tongued servants; done unto them somtimes by their men, but generally by the
foolish and stifnecked Maids. These can make their Master totally forget his Base Viol and singing of musick, and their
Mistriss the playing upon the Virginals. It was a much less trouble for Arion and
Orfeus to charm all the senceless creatures both of Sea and Land in those daies; then
it is now for house-keepers to bring their servants to a due obedience.

Neither is this strange, because some Maids, when they see they have gotten a kind
natured and mild Gentlewoman to their Mistriss; immediately practice, by all means
possible, to rule and domineer over her; insomuch that whatsoever the Mistriss orders
or commands, she knows how, according to the imagination of her own understanding, to
order and do it otherwise. And dare many times boldly contradict them, and say,
Mistriss, it would be better if this were done then, and that so.

And if the Mistriss be so mild that she condescends and passes by this some times;
they are immediately, in their own conceits, as wise again as their Mistriss; and
dare, when they come among their tailing Gossips, brag that they can bend their
Mistriss to their Bow; and if their Mistriss bids them do any thing, they do it when
it pleases them, or at their own oportunity; for their Mistriss is troubled with the
simples, a Sugar-sop, &c.

But if it happen so that one of these Rule-sick Wenches, comes into a service
where the Mistriss is a notable spirited woman that looks sharply and circumspectly to the government of her Family, then
she’s damnably put to’t; and is troubled in spirit, that her Mistriss will not
understand it so, as she would fain have it, according to her hair-brain’d manner,
and gets this to an answer, Jane, do it as I command you, then it is well, though
it were ill done. Let your Mistriss command, its your duty to obey; or else, next
time you must hire your self out for Mistriss, and not for Maid, &c.

How pleasant this answer was to Jane, it appears, because she no sooner gets out,
but she runs to Goody Busie-body that hires out servants; where she makes no smal
complaint of her Mistresses insulting spirit; and asks whether she knows not of a
hire for her by some houskeeping Batchelor or Widower; because she understands the
ordring of her work very well, is a special good Cook, and loves Children, &c.
Then she would leave her Mistriss, and tell her that her Aunt was very sick and lay a
dying, and that she must go thither, &c.

Goody Busie-body is presently ready, because she sees here is a means to earn
double wages, the Maid must be provided with another service, and the Mistriss with
another Maid; so she begins, like a Broker, to turn and wind it about every way to
rid her self of the one, and then to recommend another in the place. Though it be
mighty inconvenient for the Mistriss, and troubles her, because she many times may be near her lying-in, or some other pressing
necessity, &c.

Whose merrier then Jane, for she hath gotten a new service by a Widower, and can
order and govern all things now according to her own mind; where she hath not the
name of a Maid, but of a Governantess. Nay, now she’s cunning enough to bridle in all
her ill conditions, and watches the very ey of her Master, keeping all things very
cleanly and neat in order; upon hopes that her Master might fall into a good humour,
and make a place also for her in his bed. For verily she loves Children so well that
she would be helping to get one her self. To which purpose she useth all inventions
imaginable, running too and again about the house bare-necked, and her breasts raised
up; or comes to his bedside all unlaced, or fains to sit sleeping by the fire side
with her coats up to her knees, against her Master comes home, with the key in his
Pocket, merrily disposed, from his Companions; or with a short Coat on, stoops down
very low in the presence of her Master, to take up somthing from, or clean the flore;
or climbs up a ladder to rub the glass windows; and knows of a thousand such manner
of inticements, of which there’s never a one of them, but, if the Master have any
flesh or blood in him, are sufficient to catch and insnare him. For this hapned to
her fellow Creature who having dwelt some indifferent time with a Widower, he came home one evening pretty merry, and jestingly
talked to her about her sweetheart; See there, Peggy, be carefull, and when you
come to marry, I will give you this bed that I ly on, with all that belongs to
it. Whereupon the Maid answered, Well Sir, if I shall have all that justly
belongs to it, I must have you also Sir, for it is yours, and you ly upon it. The
answer pleased the Master so well, that he catches Peggy in his arms, throws her upon
the bed, and lies down by her; till at last, in spite of all his relations, he made
his Maid his Wife: who being married, then began to discover her stifnecked,
cross-graind humors, that she had so long kept secret; but it was the occasion of
both their ruines.

But we will leave Jane and Peggy with their Widowers, and take a view what kind of
a Pleasure of marriage that our Mistriss possesseth with her new Maid; for Goody
Busie-body recommended her highly to be a very honest, vertuous Maid, of a good
family, and gave her self security for her fidelity.

Nevertheless, there are hardly three daies past, but the Mistriss perceives that
she is notably inclined to toss up her cup: but for the better certainty, the
Mistriss commands her to draw some Wine in a glass that was very clean rinsed; which
she no sooner brought back, but the Mistriss observed that greasy lips had been at
it; yet before she sent her the second time, she
takes a trencher and holds it over the smoke of a Candle to grow black, then with her
finger rubs that soot upon the edge or hollow part of the glass; and commanded her,
as she did before, to draw some Wine; but when she came back again, the Mistriss then
perceived that the round circle of the glass was impressed upon both sides of her
mouth and upon her forehead. Who can abstain themselves from laughter, when they see
such a marked sheep come out of the Wine Cellar? Who could imagine that a Maid in
three daies time should occasion so much pleasure of marriage! How much more mirth
will you receive from her, when she has taken a good bowsing cup to be jolly! You
have here a triall of her fidelity, that Goody Busie-body vaunted of. For the future
she may very well say, that she is mighty dexterous at smuckling of Wine; who knows
but she may get an Angel a year the more wages for it.

But whilest she pleases her Mistriss with this sight, the t’other causes her to
enjoy a new recreation: for she having gotten leave to go to Church in th’afternoon,
tarries out till seven of the clock in the evening, tho she knows there are friends
invited to supper, the children must be got to bed, and all things set in good order;
neither is it strange, for she thinks, I am now the eldest Maid, the t’other may
attend. When I hired my self, my Mistriss told me I should go on Sundaies to Church; and also, when occasion served, after
Sermon I should walk abroad for an hour or two; and now there is a very good
opportunity, because she hath another Maid at home, &c.

She keeps singing in this tune. And finally coming home, thinks that she has a
great deal of reason on her side, and is not ashamed to retort ten cross words for
one. ‘t Is no wonder neither, for she had been talking with Mistriss Sayall the
Cupster, who had Cupt her but the Sunday before, and then told her that she could
observe out of her physiognomy, and the course of her blood, several infallible
signs, that she should come to be a woman of good quality, and that she would not be
above a year unmarried. Also there came thither at the same time Dorothy and Margery,
whom Mistriss Sayall had in like manner prognosticated what was befallen them. These
did not a little admire, that she, being now the eldest Maid, earned such small
wages, and that her Mistriss did not raise it; because she deserved at the least
fifteen shillings a year more, and a better New years gift, and Fairing.

Thus they stuff one anothers pates full. And Mistriss Sayall, and Goody Busiebody,
seem to be as if they were sisters cast in one Mould; for the one knows how to blow
the simple wenches ears full; and the t’other, worse then a Bawd, makes them
cross-grain’d; and keep both of them a school
for ill-natured Wenches, and lazy sluts, to natter, to exhort, and to exasperate in;
yet these half Divel-drivers, carry themselves before the Mistresses like Saints; but
do indeed, shew themselves to be the most deceitfullest cheats, who carry alwaies
fire in one hand and water in the t’other.

These know how, very subtlely, many times, to fatten their carkasses, with meat
and drink out of the Mistresses Cellars and Butteries; keeping alwaies a fair
correspondence with the theevish Maids, which know many tricks and waies how to
convey it unto them; and scold and brawl against those whose stoln meat and drink
they thus idly and basely convey away. These use again all possible indeavours to
recommend them here or there to a sweetheart, and make their own houses serve as an
Exchange for this Negotiation; where they appear as precise at their hours, as a
Merchant doth at Change-time.

This it is, that makes them look like a Dog in a halter, when they cannot get
leave on Sundaies to go a gadding; and it is a wonder they do not bargain for it when
they hire themselves: though there are some that are not ashamed, (who dare not so
openly confess this) to bargain that they may go every Sunday to Church, as if they
were extraordinary devout, when it is really to no other end, then to set out their
gins, to catch some Tailor, Baker, Shoomaker,
Cooper, Carpenter, Mason, or such like journyman: which is hardly passed by to
satisfie their fleshly lusts, before they perceive that they have chosen a poor and
wretched for a plentifull livelihood; and are often, by their husbands, beaten like
Stockfish, though Lent be long past. But what delight they have, in being curried
with this sort of five-tooth’d Comb, the neighbours can judge by the miserable songs
they sing.

These find also the Pleasures of Marriage, at which they have so long aimed, and
so much indeavoured for; and would now gladly lick their fingers at that which they
have many times thrown away upon the Dunghills, or in the Kennels; falling many times
into deplorable poverty, or to receive Alms from the Churchwardens and charitable
people; of which there are vast numbers of examples, too lamentable and terrible to
be related.

By this small relation you may see what kind of points these sort of people have
upon their Compass. But to write the true nature and actions of such Rubbish, were to
no other purpose then to foul a vast quantity of paper with a deal of trash and
trumpery. For many are damnably liquorish tooth’d, everlasting Tattlesters, lazy
Ey-servants, salt Bitches, continual Mumblers out of their Pockets, wicked Scolds,
lavish Drones, secret Drinckers, stifnecked Dunces, Tyrants over Children, Stinking Sluts, Mouldy Brain’d trugs; hellish sottish
Gipsies; nay and sometimes both Whorish and Theevish; and must, therefore, not have
come into consideration here, if they did not so especially belong to the
disconsolations of Marriage; occasioning many times more troubles and disquiets in a
Family, then all the rest of the adversities that may befall it.

This is the reason that makes the Mistriss many times turn one after t’other out
of dores; and is afreard that a new one should come in again. And is also ashamed
that the Neighbors should see every foot a new Maid upon her flore; who by an evil
nature, are ready to beleeve the worst of their fellow neighbours, what is told them
by a tale-carrying, long-tongued Slut of a Maid; though they many times observe how
wickedly they are plagued with their own.

O super-excellent Pleasure of Marriage! where shall we make a conclusion, if we
should set all things down according to their worth and value! Certainly every one
would, to that purpose, want a Clark in their own Family.

The Tenth Pleasure.

An empty Purse, makes a sorrowfull Pate. The Husband grows jealous. And the
Wife also. The Husband is weary of his wife, and seeks to be divorced.

As continual prosperity giveth a great satisfaction to married people; and
congealeth their hearts more and more with a fervent Love; so, on the contrary, we
many times see, that when they are oppressed with bad Trading, Bankrupts, chargeable
housekeeping and Children, it occasions and raises a coolness in the affections;
insomuch that it disquiets their rest, and they consume the whole night many times
with flying fancies and cogitations, how such an Assignment, or that Bill of
Exchange, or the last half years rent shal be paid, &c. because the emptness of
their Purse, and the slow paiment of their Debtors too much impedes them. And their
yearly rents are so small and uncertain, that there runs away many times more in
reparations and taxations annually then the rents amounts to. This occasions
disquiet. From this it proceeds, that many times when they rise, their wits run a
wool-gathering, and they are more inclined to look crabbedly, grumble and mumble,
then to shew each other any signs of love and friendship: for an empty purse, makes a
sorrowfull pate. This gives no smal defeat to the Pleasures of Marriage. Now they
begin to observe that there is no state or condition in the World so compleat, but it
hath some kind of imperficiency.

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Published by the Navarre Society, London.

This kind of necessity may, by a man, in a
Tavern, with good company, be rinsed with a glass of Wine, but never thereby be
supplied: And the woman may with singing and dandling of her children, or controuling
and commanding of her servants, a little forget it, yet nevertheless when John the
cashier comes with the Bill of Exchange, and William the Bookkeeper with the
Assignment, they ought both to be paid, or else credit and respect ly at the stake.
This requires a great deal of prudence, to take care for the one, and preserve the
other.

The best sort of Matches have found this by experience to be true: And for that
reason they ofttimes stop a little hole to make a bigger. But because this can be of
no long continuance, some do measure their business smaller out at first, and dwell
at a lesser rent, hire out their Chambers and Cellars; and afterwards, make mony of
some movables, will not turmoil themselves with so much trade, and great trust; nay
sometimes also, take some other trade by the hand, the commodities whereof are of a
quicker consumption. And if this happen to people that are not so perfectly well
match’d, as our self-same-minded couple, and that the husband hath been a frequenter of company, you shall then seldom see that
the husband and the Wife are concordant in their opinions; for he generally will be
for trading in Wine and Tobacco, in which sort of commodities he is well studied; and
the woman is for dealing in linnen, stockings, gloves, or such like Wares as she
knows best how to traffick with. And verily it looks but sadly (although it
oftentimes happens) when a Man and his Wife do contend about this. Nevertheless some
men, because they imagine to have the best understanding, use herein a very hard way
of discourse with their wives, making it all their business to snap and snarl, chide
and bawl, nay threaten and strike also; which indeed rather mars then mends the
matter, little thinking that quietness in a family is such a costly Jewell, that it
seldom can be valued.

Others, on the contrary, take their greatest delight, when they know how, with
affableness to please their wives humour, and with plausible words can admonish them
what is best and fittest to be done; and rather to extoll those graces which are
found in them, than to reprove their deficiencies: According to the instructions of
the prudent Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who said, that men ought often to admonish their
wives, seldom reprove them, and never strike them.

But many men whose understanding is turned topsie turvy in their brains, seek it
in a contrary place, and where the Bank is
lowest, the Water breaks in soonest. In such case the Women suffer cruelly. For if he
be foul-mouth’d, he is not ashamed openly before his servants and other people to
check, curb, and controul his wife lustily; and when they are in private together,
reprehends her so bitterly, that he would not dare to mention it in the ears of
honest people: because having seen that his Border, out of meer civility, cut many
times the best peece at Table and presented to his Wife, bilds thereupon a foundation
of jealousie, and an undoubted familiarity, which he privately twits her in the teeth
with; though in publick he is ashamed to let it appear that he is jealous; because
then he would be laught at for it; therefore he doth nothing but pout, mumble, bawl,
scold, is cross-grain’d and troubled at every thing; nay looks upon his Wife and all
the rest of his Family like a Welsh Goat, none of them knowing the least reason in
the World for it.

In the meanwhile he useth all possible means privately to attrap his wife; for to
see that which he never will see; and at which he is so divellishly possessed to have
a wicked revenge; nay which he also never can see though he had a whole boxfull of
spectacles upon his nose; because she never hath, or ever will give him the least
reason for it. In that manner violating loves knot, and laying a foundation of
implacable hatred.

Verily, if a woman be a little light-hearted
and merry humoured, it is a great delight and pleasure for her to be taking notice,
and every way to be scoffing, with all the foolish tricks and devices of such a
jealous Coxcomb. But otherwise there is no greater Hell upon Earth, then for an
honest Woman to dwell with a jealous husband; because in his absence she dare not in
the least speak to any one, and in his presence hardly look upon any body. This is
known to those, who have had experience of it, and it never went well with any Family
where this damned house-divel ever got an entrance.

‘Tis true, all men are not defiled with this dirtiness. But such Loggerheads many
times occasion, through their wicked folly and evill doings, that the Woman, who
before never thought of jealousie, now begins to grow jealous her self. For she,
considering that her husband is so without any ground or reason, looks so sour, and
ill-natured; and alwaies when he comes home every thing stands in his way; besides,
that the soothings and friendly entertainments, should differ so much from those of
former times, and especially from them of the first year; cannot imagine that the
small gain and the bad times are the occasion of it; therefore she thinks that there
is some other fine Gipsie, that puts him on to these base humors, or that he is led
away by some or other charming Punk.

And it is no wonder, because coming home
lately he said, that somewhere as he was walking home he had lost his Watch, which he
had just as he was coming out of the Tavern. And two or three weeks before came home
without his Cloak, saying, that some wicked Rascals had taken it from him in the
streets. Moreover she rememorates, how he related not long since, that he had been,
out of jest, one evening, with three or four others, in six of the most vile and
wickedest Bawdy houses in the City, though that he had committed nothing unhandsom
there, as he said; therefore she thinks that she hath more reason to suspect his evil
doings, then he hath of hers.

And having pondered upon all these things, this and t’other way, imagineth that
she hath a great deal of reason to suspect him. Nay, the daily grumbling and
mumbling, the lessening of the mony, his coming home late at nights, his cool
kindness, besides all the rest, seem to be sufficient proofs. So that here the
Pleasure of Marriage is so monstrously Clouded, as if there were a great Eclipse of
the Sun, and it will be a wonder to see with what kind of colour it will appear
again. For the Husband catechizes his Wife with such a loud voice, that it is
generally heard through the whole neighbourhood; and the Wife, to vindicate her
innocency, lets fly at him again with such a shrill note, as if she had gone to
school to learn it in Drury Lane, or Turnball
street. And it is a wonder that the first Chyrurgian is not sent for to cure this
Woman of her bad tongue.

Here you ought to come, O restless Lovers, to behold your selves in these two
darlings; you, who in your wooing are also possessed with jealousie, if you see that
another obtains access to your Mistriss; or who, perhaps as wel as you, doth but once
kiss the knocker of the dore, or cause an Aubade to be plaied under her Chamber
Window: Look sharply about you, and behold how these Aubades decline, or whether it
be worth your while to give your Rival the Challenge; or to stab, poison, or drown’d
your self, to shew, by such an untimely death, the love you had for her; and on your
Grave, bear this Epitaph, that through damn’d jealousie you murthered your self.
These married Couple, used to do so; but see now what a sad life they live together,
because jealousie took root in them so soon, and now bringeth forth such evill
fruits.

Oh that this, now senceless, married Couple, had here, like the Athenians, prudent
Umpires! how easily might they, perhaps, be united and pacified! For the Athenians
had constituted a certain sort of superiors, whom they intituled Pacificators of the
married people; whose Power was to appease all differences between married people;
and to constrain them that they must live in peace and unity with each other. In like manner at Rome a Temple was built, where
scolding married people, being reunited, came to sacrifice, and to live in better
tranquility.

But alas! it is now clear contrary, such contentious Couples, use all the means
and indeavours they possibly can rather to be divorced, then reunited; to that end
solliciting both the Majestical and Ecclesiastical Powers; to whom are related a
thousand sad reasons by each party, because either of them pretendeth to have the
greatest reason on their side; of which this Age imparteth us several examples,
wherewith the Magistracy, Ministry and Elders find no small trouble; especially, if
they be people of a brave extraction, good credit and reputation, who have procreated
severall children together. For this jealous and contentious house Divell, domineers
as well among people of great respect, as those of lesser degree; though there be
some which so order it, that they smother this fire within dores, and suffer it not
to burst out at the house top. Nevertheless it is impossible to hide this unkindness
from the eys of them that are in the Family. Therefore it is to be admired, that the
sister who dwelleth with this married Couple, and seeth and hears all this
unkindness, mumbling and grumbling, yet hath such an earnest desire to be set down in
the List of the great Company. Nay though she had read all the twenty Pleasures of
Marriage through and through, and finds by the example of her Brother that they are all truth; yet she is like a Fish, never at
rest till she gets her self into the Marriage-Net, where she knows that she never can
get out again: According to these following Verses, which she hath sung so many
times:

You may in sea lanch when you will, To see
the boistrous Main, Great storms, and wind, your sails will fill,
Fore you return again. The married state, is much
like this, O’rewhelm’d with many crosses, Yet
must be born, see how it is, With tauntings, toils, and
losses.

But I beleeve that the Sister makes flesh and blood her Counsellors, just as her
Brother did, who hath now totally forgotten these Verses; for since the flesh is
almost come to the very bone, all his designs and indeavours seem to bend now to the
being separated from Bed and Table: and, if fortune would favour it, he would rather
see it done by death, then any Civil Authority; for then he might look out again for
a new Beloved, and by that means get another new Portion; though it might lightly
happen to be some mendicant hous-divel, for a reward of his jealousie.

And perhaps he little thinks how that bawling and scolding, between him and his
Wife, is spread abroad. But it hath often hapned, that those who would be separated, very unexpectedly have been parted by
death; but not so neither, that they who most desired the separation, have just
remained alive.

Happy were those restless Souls, if they did like the wise and prudent
Chyrurgians, who will not cut off any member, before they have made an operation of
all imaginable means for cure and recovery thereof: And that they first learnt to
know their own deficiences perfectly, that they might the better excuse those of
their Adversary.

O how thrice happy are our well-matcht Couple! who like a Looking-glass for all
others, live together in love, pleasure and tranquility, and have banished that
monstrous beast jealousie out of their hearts and house; wishing nothing more then to
live long together, and to dy both at one time, that neither of them both might
inherit that grief to be the longest liver, by missing their second-selves. These do
recommend marriage in the highest degree to the whole World, as the noblest state and
condition; and despise the folly of those who reject it, imagining in themselves that
they have more knowledge and understanding then all the wise men of Greece ever had;
who by their marrying demonstrated, that they esteemed the married estate to be the
best and commendablest though some of them were married to women, who notably bore
the sway.

We may very well then contemn the chattering
of Epicurus that pleasurable Hoggrubber, who said, that no wise man would ever give
himself in to the Bands of Matrimony; because there is so much grief, trouble, and
misery to be found in it. For we see to the contrary, that the Wise men long to be in
it, and that the Sun of understanding appears more gloriously in them, when it is
nourisht and inlivened by marriage; especially, if they have got, like unto our
well-married Couple, good Matches. To this end, all those that are unmarried, ought
to look very circumspectly, for the getting themselves such a second-self, that they
would never desire to part with. And for the exhortation of every one to this, I will
break off and conclude with that faithfull warning given by that great Emperor and
Philosopher Marcus Aurelius: saying, Because the life of Man cannot remain without
Women, I do warn the young, pray the old, admonish the wise, and teach the simple,
that they should shun ill-natured Women as much as the Plague: for I say, that all
the venemous Creatures in the World, have not so much poison spread or contained in
their whole bodies; as one divellish-natured Woman alone hath in her tongue.

The End of the Second Part of the Ten Pleasures of Marriage.