My life was worn with serving you and you,
And death is my reward, and welcome too:
Revenge destroying but itself. While I
To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.
Examples preach to th’ eye—care, then, mine says,
Not how you end, but how you spend your days.
(Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 1243.)
As to Thomas Harrison, fifth-monarchy enthusiast, firm to the end in his adversity, he who had been ruthless in prosperity, we have already briefly referred to his closing hours in our Introduction to Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. xxix.
John Hewson, Cobbler and Colonel, who had sat in the illegal mockery of Judgment on King Charles, was for the after years ridiculed by ballad-singers as a one-eyed spoiler of good leather. He escaped the doom of Tyburn by flight to Amsterdam, where he died in 1662. In default of his person, his picture was hung on a gibbet in Cheapside, 25th January, 1660-61. (See Pepys’ Diary of that date.) His appearance was not undignified. One ballad specially devoted to him, at his flight, is “A Hymne to the Gentle Craft; or, Hewson’s Lamentation”:—
Listen a while to what I shall say