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“The Welshman is hanged, Who at our kirke flanged, And at the state banged, And brened are his buks. And though he be hanged, Yet he is not wranged; The deil has him fanged In his kruked kluks.” Weever’s Funerall Monuments, p. 56. Edit. 1631. |
Observe what different conclusions are drawn from the same fact by opposite writers. Heylin, arguing that Udall had been justly condemned, adds, “the man remained a living monument of the archbishop’s extraordinary goodness to him in the preserving of that life which by the law he had forfeited.” But Neale, on the same point, considers him as one who “died for his conscience, and stands upon record as a monument of the oppression and cruelty of the government.” All this opposition of feeling is of the nature of party-spirit; but what is more curious in the history of human nature, is the change of opinion in the same family in the course of the same generation. The son of this Udall was as great a zealot for Conformity, and as great a sufferer for it from his father’s party, when they possessed political power. This son would not submit to their oaths and covenants, but, with his bedridden wife, was left unmercifully to perish in the open streets,—Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, part ii. p. 178.
In Herbert’s “Typographical Antiquities,” p. 1689, this tract is intituled, “A Whip for an Ape, or Martin Displaied.” I have also seen the poem with this title. Readers were then often invited to an old book by a change of title: in some cases, I think the same work has been published with several titles.
Martin was a name for a bird, and a cant term for an Ass; and, as it appears here, an Ape. Our Martins, considered as birds, were often reminded that their proper food was “hempen seed,” which at length choked them. That it meant an Ass, appears from “Pappe with a Hatchet.” “Be thou Martin the bird or Martin the beast, a bird with the longest bill, or a beast with the longest ears, there’s a net spread for your neck.”—Sign. B. 5. There is an old French proverb, quoted by Cotgrave, voce Martin:—“Plus d’un ASNE à la foire, a nom Martin.”
Martin was a protégé of this Dame Lawson. There appear to have been few political conspiracies without a woman, whenever religion forms a part. This dame is thus noticed in the mock epitaphs on Martin’s funeral—
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“Away with silk, for I will mourn in sacke; Martin is dead, our new sect goes to wrack. Come, gossips mine, put finger in the eie, He made us laugh, but now must make us crie.” Dame Lawson. |