Clerks and other subordinate Officers, and Foot-men go, (not
a man to enter there except the word, which is Queen Mary) they
give no Money at entrance, but only Cross themselves on their
Foreheads, in a mock to the sign in Baptisme, and so they enter,
and for Three pence a Jigge, may use as many as they will;
and all this under Prides very Nose, yet un-controul'd, so that
Pride and Lust liveth together. Three Citizens Wives (pretending
other business) were lately taken coming out of the Mopping
School by their Husbands, who discovered this to me; but
for their Names I have promised them to conceal.
Thus in base Lust and loathsome vile excess
They spend the Kingdoms wealth in wickedness:
Whilst the poor Commons labour, but in vain
Vile Luxury and Whoredome to maintain.
Neither will all their Assessments, Taxes, Robberies, Thefts,
or Plunderings they can invent satisfie them; they are at this
very instant in as great want and necessity as ever, new inventions
studying still to wrack the poor Commons, that let a poor
man work, labour, and take paines to earn his living all his life
long, all the gaines must come into the Committees purses,
who can Build, Purchase, Revel, Whore, Drink, and yet become
very rich men; so that now Parliament-men, Committee-men,
Souldiers, and Sequestrators, have all the Wealth of the Kingdom
in their hands, and all other are but meer slaves and vassals
to work and Labour for these idle Drones and wicked Catterpillers
that have eate God out of his House, the King out of his
Court, the Noblemen out of their Mannors and Lordships, the
Gentry out of their Habitations, nay the poor Commons out of
their Cottages; and yet like Tharashs lean Kine, though they
have eat up the fatt, are as hungry as ever, and are now bartering
and making Markers of the Kings Goods; Summerset-house being
their New Exchange, where that Houshold-stuffe which my
Lady Cromwel and Fairfax have refused, is set to Sale for the
State: the other day was brought into this Parliament. Out-Cry
Five Crowns of the Kings of England, two from the Regalia,
and three from the Tower, where Mistris Pride, Mistris Cromwel,
Mistris Ireton, and some other of the Commanders Wives had
the honor to break everyone a Crown, and had the Jewels that