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[ There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age on the chimney money. I will give a specimen or two:
"The good old dames whenever they the chimney man espied,
Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide.
There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through,
But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two."
Again:
"Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door,
And make a distress on the goods of the poor.
While frighted poor children distractedly cried;
This nothing abated their insolent pride."
In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the
same subject and in the same spirit:
"Or, if through poverty it be not paid
For cruelty to tear away the single bed,
On which the poor man rests his weary head,
At once deprives him of his rest and bread."
I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging most grateful the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicemaster of Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable collections of Pepys.]
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[ My chief authorities for this financial statement will be found in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9.]
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[ See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum.]
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[ Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.]