OLD MAN.
God bless your honour! God save the good Lord Cobham
And all his house!
SOLDIER.
Good your honour, bestow your blessed alms
Upon poor men.
COBHAM.
Now, sir, here be your Alms knights. Now are you
As safe as the Emperour.
HARPOOLE.
My Alms knights! nay, th’ are yours.
It is a shame for you, and I’ll stand too ’t;
Your foolish alms maintains more vagabonds,
Than all the noblemen in Kent beside.
Out, you rogues, you knaves! work for your livings!—
Alas, poor men! O Lord, they may beg their hearts out,
There’s no more charity amongst men than amongst
So many mastiff dogs!—What make you here,
You needy knaves? Away, away, you villains.
SECOND SOLDIER.
I beseech you, sir, be good to us.
COBHAM. Nay, nay, they know thee well enough. I think that all the beggars in this land are thy acquaintance. Go bestow your alms; none will control you, sir.
HARPOOLE. What should I give them? you are grown so beggarly, you have scarce a bit of bread to give at your door. You talk of your religion so long, that you have banished charity from amongst you; a man may make a flax shop in your kitchen chimneys, for any fire there is stirring.
COBHAM. If thou wilt give them nothing, send them hence: let them not stand here starving in the cold.
HARPOOLE. Who! I drive them hence? If I drive poor men from your door, I’ll be hanged; I know not what I may come to my self. Yea, God help you, poor knaves; ye see the world, yfaith! Well, you had a mother: well, God be with thee, good Lady; thy soul’s at rest. She gave more in shirts and smocks to poor children, than you spend in your house, & yet you live a beggar too.
COBHAM. Even the worst deed that ere my mother did was in relieving such a fool as thou.