In another, “The Lamentations of a New Married Man, briefly declaring the sorrow and grief that comes by marrying a young wanton wife”:—
| “Against that she is churched, a new Gowne she must have, A daintie fine Rebato about her neck to brave;” |
In “Loyal Subject,” by Beaumont and Fletcher, act iii., sc. 5, we find that in the reign of James I., potatoes had become so common, that “Potatoes! ripe Potatoes!” were publicly hawked about the city.
Potatoes! ripe Potatoes.
Orlando Gibbons,—1583-1625—set music in madrigals to several common cries of the day. In a play called “Tarquin and Lucrece,” some of the music of the following occur,—“Rock Samphire,” “A Marking Stone,” “Bread and Meat for the poor Prisoners,” “Hassock for your pew,” “Lanthorne and Candlelight,” &c.
In the Bridgewater library (in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere) is a series of engravings on copper thirty-two in number, without date or engraver’s name; but called, in the handwriting of the second Earl of Bridgewater, “The Manner of Crying Things in London.” They are, it is said, by a foreign artist, and probably proof impressions, for on the margin of one of the engravings is a small part of another, as if it had been taken off for a trial of the plate. Curious and characteristic they certainly are, and of a date anterior to 1686; in which year the second Earl of Bridgewater died. The very titles kindle old recollections as you read them over:—
1. Lanthorne and a whole candell light: hang out your lights heare!
2. I have fresh cheese and creame.
3. Buy a brush or a table book.
4. Fine oranges, fine lemons.
5. Ells or yeards: buy yeard or ells.
6. I have ripe straw-buryes, ripe straw-buryes.
7. I have screenes, if you desier to keepe yr butey from ye fire.
8. Codlinges hot, hot codlinges.
9. Buy a steele or a tinder box.
10. Quicke peravinkells, quicke, quicke.
11. Worke for a cooper; worke for a cooper.
12. Bandestringes, or handkercher buttons.
13. A tanker bearer.
14. Macarell new: maca-rell.
15. Buy a hone, or a whetstone, or a marking stone.
16. White unions, white St. Thomas unions.
17. Mate for a bed, buy a doore mate.
18. Radishes or lettis, two bunches a penny.
19. Have you any work for a tinker?
20. Buy my hartichokes, mistris.
21. Maribones, maides, maribones.
22. I ha’ ripe cowcumber, ripe cowcumber.
23. Chimney sweepe.
24. New flounders new.
25. Some broken breade and meate for ye poore prisoners; for the Lord’s sake pittey the poore.
26. Buy my dish of great smelts.
27. Have you any chaires to mend?
28. Buy a cocke, or a gelding.
29. Old showes or bootes; will you buy some broome?
30. Mussels, lilly white mussels.
31. Small cole a penny a peake.
32. What kitchen stuff have you, maides?
The figures, male and female, in the engravings, are all three-quarter lengths, furnished with the implements of their various trades, or with the articles in which they deal. The Watchman (one of the best) is a fine old fellow, with a broad brim to his hat, a reverential beard, a halberd in one hand, and a lanthorn in the other (after the manner of the one we have given at [page 46]). But perhaps the most curious engraving in the set is the “cry” called “Some broken breade and meate for ye poore prisoners: for the Lord’s sake pittey the poore.” This represents a poor prisoner with a sealed box in his hand, and a basket at his back—the box for alms in the shape of money, and the basket for broken bread and meat. There is also preserved a small handbill printed in 1664, and entitled, “The Humble Petition of the Poor Distressed Prisoners in Ludgate, being above an hundred and fourscore poor persons in number, against the time of the Birth of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “We most humbly beseech you,” says the handbill “(even for God’s cause), to relieve us with your charitable benevolence, and to put into this Bearers Boxe, the same being sealed with the house seale as it is figured on this Petition.”
