About that time that the terror of the world and fever quartan of the French, Henry the Eighth (the only true subject of chronicles) advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Tournay and Terouanne, and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland & Brabant as mercenary attendants on his full-sailed fortune, I, Jack Wilton (a gentleman at least) was a certain kind of an appendix or page belonging or appertaining in or unto the confines of the English court, where what my credit was, a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify; Coelum petimus stultitia, which of us all is not a sinner? Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peruse my story, that I followed the court or the camp, or the camp and the court, when Terouanne lost her maidenhead, and opened her gates to more than Jane Tross did. There did I (soft, let me drink before I go any further) reign sole king of the cans and black- jacks, prince of the pygmies, county palatine of clean straw and provant, and, to conclude, lord high regent of rashers of the coals and red herring cobs. Paulo maiora canamus. Well, to the purpose. What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an egregious infant of my years might enact? You will say it were sufficient if he slur a die, pawn his master to the utmost penny, and minister the oath of the pantofle artificially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of In grace and virtue to proceed. Oh, but Aliquid latet quod non patet, there's a further path I must trace; examples confirm; list, lordings, to my proceedings. Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp understands that in it be many quarters, and yet not so many as on London bridge. In those quarters are many companies; much company, much knavery, as true as that old adage, Much courtesy, much subtlety. Those companies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff; the corn are cormorants, the chaff are good-fellows, which are quickly blown to nothing with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily, and by my troth, so I did; the prince could but command men spend their blood in his service; I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends; though I was prince of their purses, & exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance as any Kaiser in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had, the king must lose his right; want cannot be withstood; men can do no more than they can do. What remained then but the fox's case must help, when the lion's skin is out at the elbows?
There was a lord in the camp, let him be a Lord of Misrule if you will, for he kept a plain ale-house without welt or guard of any ivy-bush, and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came (at the very name of cider I can but sigh, there is so much of it in Rhenish wine now-a-days). Well, Tendit ad sydera virtus, there's great virtue belongs (I can tell you) to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea it is aqua coelestis, but that's neither here nor there; if it had no other patron but this peer of quart- pots to authorize it, it were sufficient. This great lord, this worthy lord, this noble lord, thought no scorn (Lord, have mercy upon us) to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor, & yet he was an old servitor, a cavalier of an ancient house, as might appear by the arms of his ancestors, drawn very amiably in chalk on the inside of his tent door.
He and no other was the man I chose out to damn with a lewd moneyless device, for coming to him on a day as he was counting his barrels and setting the price in chalk on the head of them, I did my duty very devoutly, and told his aly Honour I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him, if it pleased him to grant me private audience. With me, young Wilton, qd. he; marry, and shalt. Bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into the Three Cups here, wash the pot; so into a back room he led me, where after he had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three motes off his old moth-eaten velvet cap, and sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his ill-favoured goat's beard, he bade me declare my mind, and thereupon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance, alias a cunning shift of the seventeens, and discoursed unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out of mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and provident respect he had of poor soldiers, that, whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply of drink or of victuals) might humble them to some extremity, and so weaken their hands, he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp (a rare example of magnificence and honourable courtesy), and diligently provided that without far travel every man might for his money have cider and cheese his belly-ful; nor did he sell his cheese by the wey only, or his cider by the great, but abased himself with his own hands to take a shoemaker's knife (a homely instrument for such a high personage to touch), and cut it out equally, like a true justiciary, in little pennyworths that it would do a man good for to look upon. So likewise of his cider, the poor man might have his moderate draught of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat as the rich man for his half-sou or his denier. Not so much, quoth I, but this tapster's linen apron, which you wear to protect your apparel from the imperfections of the spigot, most amply bewrays your lowly mind. I speak it with tears, too few such noblemen have we that will draw drink in linen aprons. Why, you are every child's fellow; any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good-fellow, you will sit and bear company to the last pot, yea, and you take in as good part the homely phrase of Mine host, here's to you, as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of forgetfulness, have moved me, in ardent zeal of your welfare, to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels. At the name of dangers he start up, and bounced with his fist on the board so hard that his tapster, overhearing him, cried, Anon, anon, sir, by and by, and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have stricken his tapster for interrupting him in attention of this his so much desired relation, but for fear of displeasing me he moderated his fury, & only sending for the other fresh pint, willed him look to the bar, & come when he is called, with a devil's name. Well at his earnest importunity, after I had moistened my lips to make my lie run glib to his journey's end, forward I went as followeth. It chanced me the other night, amongst other pages, to attend where the King, with his lords and many chief leaders, sat in council; there, amongst sundry serious matters that were debated, and intelligences from the enemy given up, it was privily informed (no villains to these privy informers) that you, even you that I now speak to, had – (O, would I had no tongue to tell the rest; by this drink it grieves me so I am not able to repeat it). Now was my drunken lord ready to hang himself for the end of the full point, and over my neck he throws himself very lubberly, and entreated me, as I was a proper young gentleman, and ever looked for pleasure at his hands, soon to rid him out of this hell of suspense, and resolve him of the rest; then fell he on his knees, wrung his hands, and I think, on my conscience, wept out all the cider that he had drunk in a week before; to move me to have pity on him he rose & put his rusty ring on my finger, gave me his greasy purse with that single money that was in it, promised to make me his heir, and a thousand more favours, if I would expire the misery of his unspeakable tormenting uncertainty. I being by nature inclined to mercy (for indeed I knew two or three good wenches of that name), bade him harden his ears, and not make his eyes abortive before their time, and he should have the inside of my breast turned outward, hear such a tale as would tempt the utmost strength of life to attend it and not die in the midst of it. Why (quoth I), myself that am but a poor childish well-willer of yours, with the very thought that a man of your desert and state by a number of peasants and varlets should be so injuriously abused in hugger-mugger, have wept all my urine upwards. The wheel under our city bridge carries not so much water over the city as my brain hath welled forth gushing streams of sorrow; I have wept so immoderately and lavishly that I thought verily my palate had been turned to Pissing Conduit in London. My eyes have been drunk, outrageously drunk, with giving but ordinary intercourse, through their sea-circled islands, to my distilling dreariment. What shall I say? That which malice hath said is the mere overthrow and murder of your days. Change not your colour; none can slander a clear conscience to itself; receive all your fraught of misfortune at once.
