“The gull-groper was generally an old gambling miser,
who frequented the ordinary to save the charge of housekeeping, under the pretext of meeting with travellers and seeking company, and carried in his pouch some hundred or two hundred pounds in twenty-shilling pieces. By long experience he knew to an ace how much the losing player was worth, and as he scratched his head and paced uneasily up and down the room, as if he wanted the ostler, he takes him to a side window and tells him that he was, forsooth, sorry to see so honest a gentleman in bad luck, but that ‘dice were made of women’s bones and would cozen the wisest,’ and that for his father’s sake, Sir Luke Littlebrain (he had learned the name from the drawer), if it pleased him he need not leave off play for a hundred pound or two. The youth, eager to redeem his losses, accepted the money ordinarily with grateful thanks. The gold was poured upon the table, and a hard bond was hastily drawn up for the repayment at the next quarter-day, deducting so much for the scrivener’s expense at changing the pieces. If he lost, the usurer hugged his bond, and laughed in his sleeve. If Sir Andrew won, the gull-groper would then steal silently out of the noisy room to avoid repayment. The day that the bond became due, Hunks was sure not to be within, and if seen, in some way contrived to make the debtor break the bond, and then transformed himself into two sergeants, who clapped the youth in prison. From thence he usually escaped shorn of a goodly manor or fair lordship, worth
three times the money, and which was to be entered upon by Hunks three months after his young friend came of age—an unpleasant thought, when the ox was roasting whole, the bells ringing, and the tenants shouting.”[159]
SEA-MELLS.
Not only was the person duped called “a gull,” but the trick itself was also known as “a gull,” just as we now-a-days term it “a sell.”
“Benedick. I should think this ‘a gull,’ but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.”—Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 3.
But it is not always synonymously with “fool” that Shakespeare employs the word “gull.” Caliban, addressing Trinculo, says,—
“Sometimes I’ll get thee
Young sea-mells from the rock.”
Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 2.