Page:Pleasant history of Poor Robin, the merry sadler of Walden.pdf/8

8 he was fuddled or no: Whilst they were wrangling about paying the groat, the maid went up into the chamber to make the beds; but finding one of them in a pitiful pickle, she came chasing down, calling the man beastly fellow and nasty knave, with other Billingsgate language, such as dame first to her tongue's end. The man thought her mad, thus to scold for nothing, till at last she told him plainly he had beshit the bed. "Nay," quoth Poor Robin, "I will be judged by my lanlordlandlord [sic], which of us was most fuddled last night." "Truly," said the host, "I can judge no otherwise but that he was, or he would not have played such a nasty trick." Whereupon it was judged by all the company that the man should pay his grout, and Poor Robin got free.

CHAP. VI.

It happened on a time, during the late unhappy wars, that all the Essex Trainbands were assembled at Walden, to resist the King's forces, who, in a bravado, had made their excursions as far as Huntington. Amongst other military weapons of destruction, they brought a Drake,