[105] A pottle was half a gallon.
[106] He means that he wishes he had insured his return, as he would as willingly be at the Bermudas, or (as it was then called) "The Isle of Devils." In a note on "the still vexed Barmoothes" ("Tempest," act i. sc. 2), it is shown that the Bermudas was a cant name for the privileged resort of such characters as Whorebang and his companions.
The notions entertained by our ancestors of the Bermudas is distinctly shown in the following extract from Middleton's "Anything for a Quiet Life," 1662, act v.; [Dyce's edit., iv. 499.] Chamlet is troubled with a shrewish wife, and is determined to leave England and go somewhere else. He says—
"The place I speak of has been kept with thunder,
With frightful lightnings' amazing noises;
But now (the enchantment broke) 'tis the land of peace,
Where hogs and tobacco yield fair increase. . .
Gentlemen, fare you well, I am for the Bermudas."
[107] "The jack, properly, is a coat of mail, but it here means a buff jacket or jerkin worn by soldiers or pretended soldiers."
[108] These words have reference, perhaps, to Middleton and Rowley's curious old comedy of manners, "A Faire Quarrel," 1617 and 1622. The second edition contains "new additions of Mr Chaugh, and Trimtram's roaring." These two persons, empty pretenders to courage, set up a sort of academy for instruction in the art and mystery of roaring or bullying, and much of the piece is written in ridicule of it and its riotous professors. Whorebang calls these playmakers observers, as if suspecting that Welltried and Feesimple came among them for the purpose of making notes for a play. In Webster and Rowley's "Cure for a Cuckold," 1661, act iv. sc. 1, there is another allusion to the "Faire Quarrel," where Compass uses the words Tweak and Bronstrops, adding, "I learnt that name in a play." Chaugh and Trimtram, in the "Faire Quarrel," undertake also to give lessons in the cant and slang of the time. In other respects, excepting as a picture of the manners of the day, that play possesses little to recommend it.
[109] In both the old copies this remark is erroneously given to Tearchaps.
[110] Patch and fool are synonymous in old writers. Feesimple alludes also to the patch on the face of Tearchaps.
[111] That is, his soul lies in pawn for employing the oath.
[112] [The hero of an early heroic ballad so called. See Hazlitt, in v.]