Page:The First Part of the True and Honorable Historie of the Life of Sir John Old-castle (1600).pdf/18

 And spend it freely in good fellowship. I haue as many shapes as Proteus had, That still when any villany is done, There may be none suspect it was sir Iohn. Besides, to comfort me, for whats this life, Except the crabbed bitternes thereof Be sweetened now and then with lechery? I haue my Doll, my concubine as t'were, To frollicke with, a lusty bounsing gerle. But whilst I loyter here the gold, may scape, And that must not be so, it is mine owne, Therefore Ile meete him on his way to court, And shriue him of it: there will be the sport.

1God help, God help, there's law for punishing, But theres no law for our necessity: There be more stockes to set poore soldiers in, Than there be houses to releeue them at.

Old manFaith, housekeeping decayes in euery place, Euen as Saint Peter writ, still worse and worse

4Maister maior of Rochester has giuen commaundement, that none shall goe abroade out of the parish, and they haue set an order downe forsooth, what euery poore houshol∣der must giue towards our reliefe: where there be some ceased I may say to you, had almost as much neede to beg as we.

1It is a hard world the while.

Old manIf a poore man come to a doore to aske for Gods sake, they aske him for a licence, or a certificate from a Iustice.

2Faith we haue none, but what we beare vppon our bodies, our maimed limbs, God help vs.

4And yet, as lame as I am, Ile with the king into France, if I can crawle but a ship-boorde, I hadde rather be slaine in France, than starue in England.

Olde manHa, were I but as lusty as I was at the battell of Shrewsbury, I would not doe as I do: but we are now come to the good lord Cobhams, to the best man to the poore that is