I’ll present them in their order.  And first as a whiffler before the show enter Stamford, one that trod the stage with the first, traversed the ground, made a leg and exit.  The country people took him for one that by order of the Houses was to dance a morrice through the west of England.  Well, he’s a nimble gentleman; set him upon Banks his horse in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question which part of the Centaur shows better tricks.

There was a vote passing to translate him with all his equipage into monumental gingerbread; but it was crossed by the female committee alleging that the valour of his image would bite their children by the tongues.

This cubit and half of commander, by the help of a diurnal, routed his enemies fifty miles off.  It’s strange you’ll say, and yet ’tis generally believed he would as soon do it at that distance as nearer hand.  Sure it was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same removes.  But the squib is run to the end of the rope:  room for the prodigy of valour.  Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller’s knight-errantry; and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig to set off his story.  These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always worshipped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at the head, the other scores up at the heels.

Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other strikes up as the saints-bell.

I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hopton took the lease of his body.

First Stamford slew him, then Waller outkilled that half a bar; and yet it is thought the sullen corpse would scarce bleed were both these manslayers never so near it.

The same goes of a Dutch headsman, that he would do his office with so much ease and dexterity, that the head after execution should stand upon the shoulders.  Pray God Sir William be not probationer for the place; for as if he had the like knack too, most of those whom the diurnal hath slain for him, to us poor mortals seem untouched.

Thus these artificers of death can kill the man without wounding the body, like lightning, that melts the sword and never singes the scabbard.

This is the William whose lady is the conqueror; this is the city’s champion and the diurnal’s delight; he that cuckolds the general in his commission; for he stalks with Essex, and shoots under his belly, because his Excellency himself is not charged there:  yet in all this triumph there is a whip and bell; translate but the scene to Roundway Down, there Hazelrig’s lobsters turned crabs and crawled backwards, there poor Sir William ran to his lady for an use of consolation.

But the diurnal is weary of the arm of flesh, and now begins an hosanna to Cromwell; one that hath beat up his drums clean through the Old Testament; you may learn the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment; the muster-master uses no other list but the first chapter of Matthew.