a dear friend or near kinsman come as guest to his
house, to visit him, he will never let him be out
of his own sight and company, lest, peradventure, &c.
If the necessity of his business be such that he must
go from home, he doth either lock her up, or commit
her with a deal of injunctions and protestations to
some trusty friends, him and her he sets and bribes
to oversee: one servant is set in his absence
to watch another, and all to observe his wife, and
yet all this will not serve, though his business be
very urgent, he will when he is halfway come back in
all post haste, rise from supper, or at midnight,
and be gone, and sometimes leave his business undone,
and as a stranger court his own wife in some disguised
habit. Though there be no danger at all, no cause
of suspicion, she live in such a place, where Messalina
herself could not be dishonest if she would, yet he
suspects her as much as if she were in a bawdy-house,
some prince’s court, or in a common inn, where
all comers might have free access. He calls her
on a sudden all to nought, she is a strumpet, a light
housewife, a bitch, an arrant whore. No persuasion,
no protestation can divert this passion, nothing can
ease him, secure or give him satisfaction. It
is most strange to report what outrageous acts by
men and women have been committed in this kind, by
women especially, that will run after their husbands
into all places and companies, [6130]as Jovianus Pontanus’s
wife did by him, follow him whithersoever he went,
it matters not, or upon what business, raving like
Juno in the tragedy, miscalling, cursing, swearing,
and mistrusting every one she sees. Gomesius
in his third book of the Life and Deeds of Francis
Ximenius, sometime archbishop of Toledo, hath a strange
story of that incredible jealousy of Joan queen of
Spain, wife to King Philip, mother of Ferdinand and
Charles the Fifth, emperors; when her husband Philip,
either for that he was tired with his wife’s
jealousy, or had some great business, went into the
Low Countries: she was so impatient and melancholy
upon his departure, that she would scarce eat her meat,
or converse with any man; and though she were with
child, the season of the year very bad, the wind against
her, in all haste she would to sea after him.
Neither Isabella her queen mother, the archbishop,
or any other friend could persuade her to the contrary,
but she would after him. When she was now come
into the Low Countries, and kindly entertained by her
husband, she could not contain herself, [6131]"but
in a rage ran upon a yellow-haired wench,” with
whom she suspected her husband to be naught, “cut
off her hair, did beat her black and blue, and so
dragged her about.” It is an ordinary thing
for women in such cases to scratch the faces, slit
the noses of such as they suspect; as Henry the Second’s
importune Juno did by Rosamond at Woodstock; for she
complains in a [6132]modern poet, she scarce spake,
“But
flies with eager fury to my face,
Offering
me most unwomanly disgrace.
Look
how a tigress, &c.
So
fell she on me in outrageous wise,
As
could disdain and jealousy devise.”