HONESTY.
Ay, but your grace sees you are deceived.
But will your grace grant me one boon?
KING.
What's that, Honesty?
HONESTY.
That I may have the punishing of them,
Whom I have so laboured to find.
KING.
With all my heart, Honesty: use them as thou wilt.
HONESTY.
I thank your grace. Go fetch the other two.[322]
Now to you, Cutbert Cutpurse the Coneycatcher:
Thy judgment is to stand at the market-cross,
And have thy cursed tongue pinn'd to thy breast,
And there to stand for men to wonder at,
Till owls and night ravens pick out thy cursed eyes.
CONEYCATCHER.
Good Honesty, be more merciful.
HONESTY.
You know my mind, O Walter that-would-have-more, and you shall have
judgment I mean, which is: to be carried into a corn-field, and there
have your legs and hands cut off, because you loved corn so well, and
there rest till the crows pick out thine eyes.—
But now to you, that will do nothing,
Except the Spirit move you thereunto.
You shall, for abusing the blessed word of God,
And mocking the divine order of ministry,
Whereby you have led the ignorant into errors,
You, I say,
As you were shameless in your shameful dealing,
Shall, to your shame, and the utter shame of all
Bad-minded men, that live as thou hast done,
Stand in Finsbury fields, near London,
And there, as a dissembling hypocrite, be shot to death.
PRIEST.
Good Honesty, be more favourable than so.
HONESTY.
Truly, no; the Spirit doth not move me thereunto.—
But who is next? what, Perin, a courtier and a cosener too!
I have a judgment yet in store for thee:
And for because I will use thee favourably,
I'faith, thy judgment is to be but hanged.
But where? even at Tyburn, in a good twopenny halter:
And though you could never abide the seas,
Yet now, against your will, you must bear your sail, namely, your sheet,
And in a cart be tow'd up Holborn-hill.
Would all men living, like these, in this land,
Might be judged so at Honesty's hand.
KING.
Well, Honesty, come, follow us to court,
Where thou shalt be rewarded for thy pain.