Then, as his visitor would take no more of the strong brown ale, he rose.
PICKERING CUP, BELONGING TO THE BURGESSES OF WESTMINSTER.
“Let us sally forth,” he said, “and I will show thee this Sanctuary or Common Sink of all rogues. Here,” he said, as he stood before the Double Chapel, “is the place where, morning and evening, we must hear matins and vespers. So sayeth the Rule; but who is there to examine and find out whether the Rule be kept or not? ‘Tis a dark and gloomy place, built for the better admonition of sinners and the exhorting to repentance. But of repentance is there little or none.
THE SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF THIEVING LANE, A. D. 1800.
I repent me only that I made not my verses the stronger, so that my Lord Cardinal should feel them, day and night, pricking him like a hair shirt. But these rogues are full of sin; they think all day long of iniquity; Sanctuary is wasted upon them. Look now at yonder company”—they were some of the men noticed before as whispering to each other; they had now got a flask of wine, and were drinking about, but with no merriment—“those are murderers, house breakers, cutters of purses, common thieves, who come in to save their necks, and all day long plot new crimes, which by night—stealing out privily—they commit, bringing hither their stolen goods. Then there are the unthrifts, who, when they have spent their all, buy things for which they cannot pay, and bring them here to live merrily upon them while they last. The wife comes here laden with her husband’s plate, saying that the good man beats her, so that to live with him is intolerable. Then she sells the plate, and God knows what manner of life she leads here. Honest work there is none; but all alike lie idle and unprofitable. Those who have money quickly lose it, paying at a monstrous rate for all things—monks are ever unreasonable askers; those who have none pig it as best they can. Sir, believe me, there is no life worse for man than the idle life. St. Benedict wisely ordained that the hours of rest from prayer should be hours of work with the hands. Alas! In Sanctuary that Rule is clean forgotten.”
Thus discoursing, they drew near to the Gate House, which opens to Tothill Street and Tothill Fields beyond.