AN ECHO TO THE CAVALIER’S COMPLAINT.
I marvel, Dick, that having been
So long abroad, and having seen
The world as thou hast done,
Thou should’st acquaint mee with a tale
As old as Nestor, and as stale
As that of Priest and Nunne. [100]
Are we to learn what is a Court?
A pageant made for fortune’s sport,
Where merits scarce appear;
For bashfull merit only dwells
In camps, in villages, and cells;
Alas! it dwells not there.
Desert is nice in its addresse,
And merit ofttimes doth oppresse
Beyond what guilt would do;
But they are sure of their demands
That come to Court with golden hands,
And brazen faces, too.
The King, they say, doth still professe
To give his party some redresse,
And cherish honestie;
But his good wishes prove in vain,
Whose service with his servants’ gain
Not alwayes doth agree.
All princes (be they ne’er so wise)
Are fain to see with others’ eyes,
But seldom hear at all;
And courtiers find their interest
In time to feather well their nest,
Providing for their fall.
Our comfort doth on time depend,
Things when they are at worst will mend;
And let us but reflect
On our condition th’ other day,
When none but tyrants bore the sway,
What did we then expect?
Meanwhile a calm retreat is best,
But discontent (if not supprest)
Will breed disloyaltie;
This is the constant note I sing,
I have been faithful to the King,
And so shall ever be.
London, printed for Robert Crofts, at the Crown, in Chancery Lane, 1661.
A RELATION.
Of Ten grand infamous Traytors, who, for their horrid murder and detestable villany against our late soveraigne Lord King Charles the First, that ever blessed martyr, were arraigned, tryed, and executed in the moneth of October, 1660, which in perpetuity will be had in remembrance unto the world’s end.
This is one of the Six Ballads of the Restoration found in a trunk, and sent by Sir W. C. Trevelyan to the British Museum. “No measure threw more disgrace on the Restoration,” says Mr Wright, “than the prosecution of the regicides; and the heartless and sanguinary manner in which it was conducted tended more than any other circumstance to open the eyes of the people to the real character of the government to which they had been betrayed.” Pepys observes on the 20th Oct., “A bloody week this and the last have been; there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
The tune is “Come let us drinke, the time invites.”
Hee that can impose a thing,
And shew forth a reason
For what was done against the King,
From the palace to the prison;
Let him here with me recite,
For my pen is bent to write
The horrid facts of treason.
Since there is no learned scribe
Nor arithmaticion
Ever able to decide
The usurp’d base ambition,
Which in truth I shall declare,
Traytors here which lately were,
Who wanted a phisitian.
For the grand disease that bred
Nature could not weane it;
From the foot unto the head,
Was putrefacted treason in it;
Doctors could no cure give,
Which made the squire then beleeve
That he must first begin it.
And the phisick did compose,
Within a pound of reason;
First to take away the cause,
Then to purge away the treason,
With a dosse of hemp made up,
Wrought as thickly as a rope,
And given them in due season.
The doctors did prescribe at last
To give ’um this potation,
A vomit or a single cast,
Well deserved, in purgation;
After that to lay them downe,
And bleed a veine in every one,
As traytors of the nation.
So when first the physicke wrought,
The thirteenth of October, [101]
The patient on a sledge was brought,
Like a rebell and a rover,
To the execution tree;
Where with much dexterity
Was gently turned over.