But all he meets, that you have eat a snake,
And are grown young, gamesome, and rampant."
Ibid, Elder Brother, Act iv. Sc. 4.
JARLTZBERG.
LONG MEG OF WESTMINSTER.
Mr. Cunningham, in his Handbook of London (2nd edition, p. 540.), has the following passage, under the head of "Westminster Abbey:"
"Observe.—Effigies in south cloister of several of the early abbots; large blue stone, uninscribed, (south cloister), marking the grave of Long Meg of Westminster, a noted virago of the reign of Henry VIII."
This amazon is often alluded to by our old writers. Her life was printed in 1582; and she was the heroine of a play noticed in Henslowe's Diary, under the date February 14, 1594. She also figured in a ballad entered on the Stationers' books in that year. In Holland's Leaguer, 1632, mention is made of a house kept by Long Meg in Southwark:—
"It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a delicate river: there was many handsome buildings, and many hearty neighbours, yet at the first foundation it was renowned for nothing so much as for the memory of that famous amazon Longa Margarita, who had there for many yeeres kept a famous infamous house of open hospitality."