If fortune should please but to take such a crotchet,
  (To thee I apply, great Smedley’s successor,)
To give thee lawn sleeves, a mitre, and rochet,
  Whom wouldst thou resemble?  I leave thee a guesser. 
But I only behold thee in Atherton’s[2] shape,
For sodomy hang’d; as thou for a rape.

Ah! dost thou not envy the brave Colonel Chartres,
  Condemn’d for thy crime at threescore and ten? 
To hang him, all England would lend him their garters,
  Yet he lives, and is ready to ravish again.[3]
Then throttle thyself with an ell of strong tape,
For thou hast not a groat to atone for a rape.

The dean he was vex’d that his whores were so willing;
  He long’d for a girl that would struggle and squall;
He ravish’d her fairly, and saved a good shilling;
  But here was to pay the devil and all. 
His troubles and sorrows now come in a heap,
And hang’d he must be for committing a rape.

If maidens are ravish’d, it is their own choice: 
  Why are they so wilful to struggle with men? 
If they would but lie quiet, and stifle their voice,
  No devil nor dean could ravish them then. 
Nor would there be need of a strong hempen cape
Tied round the dean’s neck for committing a rape.

Our church and our state dear England maintains,
  For which all true Protestant hearts should be glad: 
She sends us our bishops, our judges, and deans,
  And better would give us, if better she had. 
But, lord! how the rabble will stare and will gape,
When the good English dean is hang’d up for a rape!

[Footnote 1:  “DUBLIN, June 6.  The Rev. Dean Sawbridge, having surrendered himself on his indictment for a rape, was arraigned at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench, and is to be tried next Monday.”—­London Evening Post, June 16, 1730.  “DUBLIN, June 13.  The Rev. Thomas Sawbridge, Dean of Fernes, who was indicted for ravishing Susanna Runkard, and whose trial was put off for some time past, on motion of the king’s counsel on behalf of the said Susanna, was yesterday tried in the Court of King’s Bench, and acquitted.  It is reported, that the Dean intends to indict her for perjury, he being in the county of Wexford when she swore the rape was committed against her in the city of Dublin.”—­Daily Post-Boy, June 23, 1730.—­Nichols.]

[Footnote 2:  A Bishop of Waterford, sent from England a hundred years ago, was hanged at Arbor-hill, near Dublin.—­See “The penitent death of a woful sinner, or the penitent death of John Atherton, executed at Dublin the 5th of December, 1640.  With some annotations upon several passages in it”.  As also the sermon, with some further enlargements, preached at his burial.  By Nicholas Barnard, Dean of Ardagh, in Ireland.

“Quis in seculo peccavit enormius Paulo?  Quis in religione gravius Petro? illi tamen poenitentiam assequuti sunt non solum ministerium sed magisterium sanctitatis.  Nolite ergo ante tempus judicare, quia fortasse quos vos laudatis, Deus reprehendit, et quos vos reprehenditis, ille laudabit, priminovissimi, et novissimi primi.  Petr.  Chrysolog.  Dublin, Printed by the Society of Stationers, 1641.”]