Bishop Pudsey’s memory must always be dear to the inhabitants of the county of Durham, as probably no man ever conferred greater service on the county. It was he who, in order to supply the deficiency of Doomsday-book, caused a general survey to be made of all the demesne lands and possessions in his bishopric. This survey is recorded in a small folio of twenty-four pages, written in a bad hand, and called “Bolden Buke,” now in the archives at Durham. It contains inquisitions, or verdicts of all the several tenures of lands, services, and customs; all the tenants’ names of every degree; how much each of them held at that time, and what rents were reserved for the same. This book has been produced, and read in evidence on several trials at law, on the part of the succeeding bishops, in order to ascertain their property.
Garrick Plays.
No. XI.
[From “Jack Drum’s Entertainment,” a Comedy, Author unknown, 1601.]
The free humour of a Noble Housekeeper.
Fortune (a Knight). I was not born to be my cradle’s drudge,
To choke and stifle up my pleasure’s breath,
To poison with the venom’d cares of thrift
My private sweet of life: only to scrape
A heap of muck, to fatten and manure
The barren virtues of my progeny,
And make them sprout ’spite of their want of worth;
No, I do wish my girls should wish me live;
Which few do wish that have a greedy sire,
But still expect, and gape with hungry lip,
When he’ll give up his gouty stewardship.
Friend. Then I wonder,
You not aspire unto the eminence
And height of pleasing life. To Court, to Court—
There burnish, there spread, there stick in pomp,
Like a bright diamond in a Lady’s brow.
There plant your fortunes in the flowring spring,
And get the Sun before you of Respect.
There trench yourself within the people’s love,
And glitter in the eye of glorious grace.
What’s wealth without respect and mounted place?
Fortune. Worse and worse!—I am not yet distraught,
I long not to be squeez’d with my own weight,
Nor hoist up all my sails to catch the wind
Of the drunk reeling Commons. I labour not
To have an awful presence, nor be feared.
Since who is fear’d still fears to be so feared.
I care not to be like the Horeb calf,
One day adored, and next pasht all in pieces.
Nor do I envy Polyphemian puffs,
Switzers’ slopt greatness. I adore the Sun,
Yet love to live within a temperate zone.
Let who will climb ambitious glibbery rounds,
And lean upon the vulgar’s rotten love,
I’ll not corrival him. The sun will give
As great a shadow to my trunk as his;
And after death, like Chessmen having stood
In play, for Bishops some, for Knights, and Pawns,
We all together shall be tumbled up
Into one bag.
Let hush’d-calm quiet rock my life asleep;
And, being dead, my own ground press my bones;
Whilst some old Beldame, hobbling o’er my grave,
May mumble thus:
‘Here lies a Knight whose Money was his Slave.’
[From the “Changes,” a Comedy, by James Shirley, 1632.]
Excess of Epithets, enfeebling to Poetry.