THE
HISTORY
OF THE
PROCEEDINGS in the CASE
OF
MARGARET,

Commonly called PEG, only lawful Sister to JOHN BULL, Esq;

The Second Edition.

Printed for W. Owen, near Temple Bar.
MDCCLXI.

THE
CONTENTS.

[Chap. I.] How John quarrelled with Lewis Baboon about dividing the West-common; and how instead of going to law, they came to blows, [16]
[Chap. II.] What sort of fellows John and Lewis were in use to employ to keep their orchards, and their poultry, [23]
[Chap. III.] How John got a terrible fright in his own house of Bull-hall, [36]
[Chap. IV.] How John’s affairs had like to have gone to the Devil, [48]
[Chap. V.] How John consulted with his friends about the method of retrieving his affairs, [59]
[Chap. VI.] How the Nurse dreamt that John Bull had banished all the weavers, [66]
[Chap. VII.] What happened after this conversation with the Nurse, [77]
[Chap. VIII.] Concerning sister Peg, [84]
[Chap IX.] How Lewis Baboon was belaboured and drubbed; and how Jowler behaved, [91]
[Chap X.] How sister Peg began to look about her; and how she wrote a letter to her brother John, [98]
[Chap XI.] How this letter was received by John, [114]
[Chap XII.] How Mrs. Bull’s attendants were prepared on this subject, [119]
[Chap XIII.] How Bumbo discoursed with John Bull’s Nurse, and found her not so great a fool as he thought her, [129]
[Chap XIV.] Showing how it was the fashion to harangue Mrs. Bull, [141]
[Chap XV.] How Mrs. Bull sat still and heard a great deal more on this subject, [152]
[Chap XVI.] How Bumbo gave his evidence, [164]
[Chap XVII.] How Mrs. Bull settled her stomach, [172]

THE
HISTORY
OF THE
PROCEEDINGS in the CASE
OF
MARGARET,
Commonly called PEG.

There being no history with which every learned reader is better acquainted in general, than that of John Bull, and his sister Peg, we shall spend very little time in preambles or introductions to the present story. John and his sister lived many a day, as every body knows, in the two adjoining houses which were left them by their father; and it matters not now to say, how much better John was lodged than his sister, and how many more improvements he had made on his farm. We never heard of any difference arising between them on this score, farther than some jeers and taunts between the blackguards or scullions of either house, who generally got themselves bloody noses upon the occasion. As for Peg herself, she was so far from complaining of her portion, that nothing could offend her more, than to be told out of doors, that she was not the richest heiress in the world.

It is not easy to say, whether it was Peg’s own temper, the badness of her subject, or the perpetual vexations she met with in her youth, that hindered her from minding her domestic affairs, so much as she should have done: but the truth is, that matters were often at sixes and sevens in her family; and her brother and she, to be sure, never could agree about any thing. All the world knows how long their affairs remained in confusion, merely because they would not employ the same attorney, and what an aversion they had to trust their affairs in common to any single person. Peg would say, “I’ll have nothing to do with John’s lawyers; whoever I employ must mind nobody’s affairs but mine. I have as good a right to be served as he; and if he pays more than I do, let it be for services done to himself, not for cheating me.” John again would swagger and swear, and said, that whoever Peg employed, must be a dirty lousy fellow; and would come to no terms, unless she would take a steward of his choosing.

It happened, however, at last, as every careful peruser of history knoweth, that every man of the law, within the reach almost of John’s knowledge, from the master down to the merest clerk-boy, died, or left the country, or disappeared some how or other, and John was obliged for once to put his papers in the hands of his sister’s lawyer, a very book-learned man, as many people affirm even unto this day. But be this as it will, Peg had the vanity to boast, that though her lawyer now lived in John’s own house, yet it was she who gave that clod-pated pock-puddened numskull the lawyer at last; and that this same man of the law, if he had any gratitude to the house where he was born and bred, would not let her be wronged, or forget her boys, when the stock came to be divided. She trusted too, that they would remember themselves, and if John or the attorney pretended to cheat them, she talked no less than of beating out both their brains. John was really at bottom a good-natured fellow, and knowing himself to be an overmatch for Peg, did not mind her peevish humours a rush; but he would not have liked her attorney for all that, if he had not expected to manage him, by keeping him in his own house, and by putting clerks about him, who never had any connexion with Margaret, or her hungry loons, from whom, the truth is, he expected no good.