And you shall win me to your will, if you can deceitfully swear.
. . . . . . .
Lucre. Then, Signor Mercatore, I am forthwith to send ye
From hence to search for some new toys in Barbary and in Turkey;
Such trifles as you think will please wantons best,
For you know in this country ’tis their chiefest request.
Mercatore. Indeed, de gentlewomans here buy so much vain toys
Dat we strangers laugh-a to tink wherein dey have their joys.”
The suppressing of the Religious Houses produced, for a time, a great deal of hardship and difficulty. For not only were the friars turned out into the streets, but all the people living upon the monasteries were deprived of their daily bread; many of these unfortunates took to the road and became tramps, vagabonds, masterless men and thieves; many took refuge in those parts of London which were outside the jurisdiction of the City. London, indeed, was the place which the masterless man regarded as a veritable Paradise. They flocked up to London from all quarters; they were constantly being turned out and as constantly coming back again. When Queen Elizabeth once drove out to the country cottage of Islington, she was mobbed by a gang of vagabonds who accosted her with clamours; they harboured in the brick kilns there. In some parts close to London, as Hyde Park Corner and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, no one would venture after dark. Men took arms into their bedrooms at night, ready for use. Generally it seems that they hung a drawn sword at the bedside. The ’prentices, however, were the best protectors to a house. They slept in the shop, if there were a shop; or if there were no shop they slept somewhere on the ground floor, as is evident from the edifying revelations of “Meriton Latron,” in which it is shown how easily the ’prentices could get out at night for these riotous and profligate meetings and drinkings. I suppose it matters nothing that this writer belongs to the next century. In such small matters the world is conservative. According to this authority, it was common for ’prentices to rob their masters, exchanging with each other or holding a kind of auction in their taverns at night. The time when the City was most free from crimes was when the men had been called out to follow the flag and fight. The worst time was after the war, when they all came back again to their old haunts, thirsting for their old amusements and more disinclined for work than ever.