BARDE. Suffer it! mend it thou or he, if ye can or dare. I tell thee, fellows, and she were the Mayor of London’s wife, had I her once in my possession, I would keep her in spite of him that durst say nay.
GEORGE.
I tell thee, Lombard, these words should cost thy best cape, were I
not curbed by duty and obedience: the Mayor of London’s wife!
Oh God, shall it be thus?
DOLL. Why, Betts, am not I as dear t m husband as my lord Mayor’s wife to him? and wilt thou so neglectly suffer thine own shame?—Hands off, proud stranger! or, by him that bought me, if men’s milky hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women beat them down, ere they bear these abuses.
BARDE.
Mistress, I say you shall along with me.
DOLL. Touch not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee along on God’s dear earth.—And you, sir [To Caveler], that allow such coarse cates to carpenters, whilst pigeons, which they pay for, must serve your dainty appetite, deliver them back to my husband again, or I’ll call so many women to mine assistance as will not leave one inch untorn of thee: if our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced to bear your wrongs, their wives will be a little lawless, and soundly beat ye.
CAVELER. Come away, De Barde, and let us go complain to my lord ambassador.
[Exeunt Ambo.]
DOLL. Aye, go, and send him among us, and we’ll give him his welcome too.—I am ashamed that freeborn Englishmen, having beaten strangers within their own homes, should thus be braved and abused by them at home.
SHERWIN. It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the strict obedience that we are bound to. I am the goldsmith whose wrongs you talked of; but how to redress yours or mine own is a matter beyond our abilities.
LINCOLN. Not so, not so, my good friends: I, though a mean man, a broker by profession, and named John Lincoln, have long time winked at these wild enormities with mighty impatience, and, as these two brethren here (Betts by name) can witness, with loss of mine own life would gladly remedy them.