Enter Conscience, with brooms, singing as followeth:—

New broomes, green broomes, will you buy any?
Come maydens, come quickly, let me take a penny.
My brooms are not steeped,
But very well bound:
My broomes be not crooked,
But smooth cut and round.
I wish it would please you,
To buy of my broome:
Then would it well ease me,
If market were done.
Have you any olde bootes,
Or any old shoone:
Powch-ringes, or buskins,
To cope for new broome?
If so you have, maydens,
I pray you bring hither;
That you and I, friendly,
May bargin together.
New broomes, green broomes, will you buy any?
Come maydens, come quickly, let me take a penny.
Conscience speaketh.
Thus am I driven to make a virtue of necessity;
And seeing God Almighty will have it so, I embrace it thankfully,
Desiring God to mollify and lesson Usury’s hard heart,
That the poor people feel not the like penury and smart.
But Usury is made tolerable amongst Christians as a necessary thing,
So that, going beyond the limits of our law, they extort, and to many misery bring.
But if we should follow God’s law we should not receive above what we lend;
For if we lend for reward, how can we say we are our neighbour’s friend?
O, how blessed shall that man be, that lends without abuse,
But thrice accursed shall he be, that greatly covets use;
For he that covets over-much, insatiate is his mind:
So that to perjury and cruelty he wholly is inclined:
Wherewith they sore oppress the poor by divers sundry ways,
Which makes them cry unto the Lord to shorten cut-throats’ days.
Paul calleth them thieves that doth not give the needy of their store,
And thrice accurs’d are they that take one penny from the poor.
But while I stand reasoning thus, I forget my market clean;
And sith God hath ordained this way, I am to use the mean.
Sings again.
Have ye any old shoes, or have ye any boots? have ye any buskins,
or will ye buy any broome?
Who bargins or chops with Conscience? What will no customer come?
Enter Usury.
Usury.
Who is that cries brooms? What, Conscience, selling brooms about the street?
Conscience.
What, Usury, it is a great pity thou art unhanged yet.
Usury.
Believe me, Conscience, it grieves me thou art brought so low.
Conscience.
Believe me, Usury, it grieves me thou wast not hanged long ago,
For if thou hadst been hanged, before thou slewest Hospitality,
Thou hadst not made me and thousands more to feel like Poverty.

By another old comedy by the same author as the preceding one, which he entitles:—“The pleasant and Stately Morall of the Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. With the great Joye and Pompe, Solemnized at their Marriages: Commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall observations, and other important matters of due regard. By R. W., London. Printed by R. Ihones, at the Rose and Crowne, neere Holburne Bridge, 1590,” it appears that woodmen went about with their beetles and wedges on their backs, crying “Have you any wood to cleave?” It must be borne in mind that in consequence of the many complaints against coal as a public nuisance, it was not in common use in London until the reign of Charles I., 1625.

There is a character in the play named Simplicity, a poor Freeman of London, who for a purpose turns ballad-monger, and in answer to the question of “What dainty fine ballad have you now to be sold?” replies:—“I have ‘Chipping-Norton,’ ‘A mile from Chapel o’ th’ Heath’—‘A lamentable ballad of burning of the Pope’s dog;’ ‘The sweet ballad of the Lincolnshire bagpipes;’ and ‘Peggy and Willy: But now he is dead and gone; Mine own sweet Willy is laid in his grave.’”

SHAKESPEARE’S LONDON.

“City of ancient memories! Thy spires
Rise o’er the dust of worthy sons; thy walls,
Within their narrow compass, hold as much
Of Freedom as the whole wide world beside.”