From the King’s Pamphlets, British Museum.—(A. D. 1655.)
To the tune of “An Old Courtier of the Queen’s.”
More ballads!—here’s a spick and span new supplication,
By order of a Committee for the Reformation,
To be read in all churches and chapels of this nation,
Upon pain of slavery and sequestration.
From fools and knaves in our Parliament free,
Libera nos, Domine.
From those that ha’ more religion and less conscience than their fellows;
From a representative that’s fearful and zealous;
From a starting jadish people that is troubled with the yellows,
And a priest that blows the coal (a crack in his bellows);
From fools and knaves, etc.
From shepherds that lead their flocks into the briars,
And then fleece ’em; from vow-breakers and king-tryers;
Of Church and Crown lands, from both sellers and buyers;
From the children of him that is the father of liars;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From the doctrine and discipline of now and anon,
Preserve us and our wives from John T. and Saint John,
Like master like man, every way but one,—
The master has a large conscience, and the man has none;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From major-generals, army officers, and that phanatique crew;
From the parboil’d pimp Scot, and from Good-face the Jew;
From old Mildmay, that in Cheapside mistook his queu,
And from him that won’t pledge—Give the devil his due;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From long-winded speeches, and not a wise word;
From a gospel ministry settled by the sword;
From the act of a Rump, that stinks when ’tis stirr’d;
From a knight of the post, and a cobbling lord;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From all the rich people that ha’ made us poor;
From a Speaker that creeps to the House by a back-door;
From that badger, Robinson (that limps and bites sore);
And that dog in a doublet, Arthur—that will do so no more;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From a certain sly knave with a beastly name;
From a Parliament that’s wild, and a people that’s tame;
From Skippon, Titchbourne, Ireton,—and another of the same;
From a dung-hill cock, and a hen of the game;
From fools and knaves, etc.
From all those that sat in the High Court of Justice;
From usurpers that style themselves the people’s trustees;
From an old Rump, in which neither profit nor gust is,
And from the recovery of that which now in the dust is;
From fools and knaves, etc.