"So I will," returned Humphreys; "but I hate your new laws, and your taxing men, and your arrays and assessments, which take your horses out of your team, and your money out of your pocket, and nobody knows what for. I believe Master Davies is no better than a worldling, for he talked yesterday about raising my rent, and if that's his humour, I'll be even with him; for I'll go and hear Priggins directly."
"Priggins," said one of the by-standers, "is a fine man, with a good voice, and tolerable action; but he is nothing to the serjeant-major of Sir William Brureton's rangers, who preached at the drum-head at Bolton, and made the whole town declare against Lord Derby."
"Tell me of no serjeants-majors nor Prigginses," said Dame Humphreys, "we shall never edify under any body as we did under the good old Doctor."
This conversation passed among the villagers, after the Beaumonts, with dejected but submissive hearts, had taken their silent departure from Ribblesdale.
[ [1]] Many of these circumstances are copied from Bishop Hall's "Hard Measure." He greatly leaned to the Puritans in doctrine; and, in discipline was a noted opposer of Archbishop Laud.
[ [2]] This list is taken out of a much more numerous one cited by Lord Cobham.
O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!
Whilst lions war, and battle for their dens,