that he was not himself, thrusts him from his master's door, and in answer to Jenkin's sorrowful question—where his master and he were to dwell, replies,
"At the Devyll yf you lust, I can not tell!"
Ben Jonson being one night at the Devil Tavern, a country gentleman in the company was obtrusively loquacious touching his land and tenements; Ben, out of patience, exclaimed, "What signifies to us your dirt and your clods? Where you have an acre of land I have ten acres of wit!" "Have you so," retorted the countryman, "good Mr. Wise-acre?" "Why, how now, Ben?" said one of the party, "you seem to be quite stung!" "I was never so pricked by a hobnail before," grumbled Ben.
There is a ludicrous reference to this old place in a song describing the visit of James I. to St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday, 26th of March, 1620:
"The Maior layd downe his mace, and cry'd,
'God save your Grace,
And keepe our King from all evill!'
With all my hart I then wist, the good mace
had been in my fist,
To ha' pawn'd it for supper at the Devill!"