“‘Worshipful lady! honoured madam!
I at this present truly glad am
To have so fair an opportunity
Of saying I would be the man
To bind in wedlock Mistress Anne,
Living with her in holy unity.
“‘And for a jointure I will gi’e her
A good two hundred pounds a year
Accruing from my landed rents,
Whereof see t’other paper, telling
Lands, copses, and grown woods for felling,
Capons, and cottage tenements.
“‘And who must come at sound of horn,
And who pays but a barley-corn,
And who is bound to keep a whelp,
And what is brought me for the pound,
And copyholders, which are sound,
And which do need the leech’s help.
“‘And you may see in these two pages
Exact their illnesses and ages,
Enough (God willing) to content ye;
Who looks full red, who looks full yellow,
Who plies the mullen, who the mallow,
Who fails at fifty, who at twenty.
“‘Jim Yates must go; he’s one day very hot,
And one day ice; I take a heriot;
And poorly, poorly’s Jacob Burgess.
The doctor tells me he has pour’d
Into his stomach half his hoard
Of anthelminticals and purges.
“‘Judith, the wife of Ebenezer
Fillpots, won’t have him long to tease her;
Fillpots blows hot and cold like Jim,
And, sleepless lest the boys should plunder
His orchard, he must soon knock under;
Death has been looking out for him.
“‘He blusters; but his good yard land
Under the church, his ale-house, and
His Bible, which he cut in spite,
Must all fall in; he stamps and swears
And sets his neighbours by the ears—
Fillpots, thy saddle sits not tight!’
“The epitaph is ready:—
“‘Here
Lies one whom all his friends did fear
More than they ever feared the Lord;
In peace he was at times a Christian;
In strife, what stubborner Philistine!
Sing, sing his psalm with one accord.
“‘And he who lent my lord his wife
Has but a very ticklish life;
Although she won him many a hundred,
’T won’t do; none comes with briefs and wills,
And all her gainings are gilt pills
From the sick madman that she plundered.