[Footnote 152:  draggle-tails.]

[Footnote 153:  hatched.]

[Footnote 154:  houghs.]

[Footnote 155:  slut.]

[Footnote 156:  scolding, brawling.]

[Footnote 157:  burgh towns.]

[Footnote 158:  scoffs.]

[Footnote 159:  cleanse.]

BISHOP JOSEPH HALL.

(1574-1656.)

VII.  ON SIMONY.

This satire levels a rebuke at the Simoniacal traffic in livings, then openly practised by public advertisement affixed to the door of St. Paul’s.  “Si Quis” (if anyone) was the first word of these advertisements.  Dekker, in the Gull’s Hornbook, speaks of the “Siquis door of Paules”, and in Wroth’s Epigrams (1620) we read, “A Merry Greek set up a Siquis late”.  This satire forms the Fifth of the Second Book of the Virgidemiarum.

  Saw’st thou ever Siquis patcht on Pauls Church door
  To seek some vacant vicarage before? 
  Who wants a churchman that can service say,
  Read fast and fair his monthly homily? 
  And wed and bury and make Christen-souls?[160]
  Come to the left-side alley of St. Paules. 
  Thou servile fool, why could’st thou not repair
  To buy a benefice at Steeple-Fair? 
  There moughtest thou, for but a slendid price,
  Advowson thee with some fat benefice: 
  Or if thee list not wait for dead mens shoon,
  Nor pray each morn the incumbents days were doone: 
  A thousand patrons thither ready bring,
  Their new-fall’n[161] churches, to the chaffering;
  Stake three years stipend:  no man asketh more. 
  Go, take possession of the Church porch door,
  And ring thy bells; luck stroken in thy fist
  The parsonage is thine, or ere thou wist. 
  Saint Fool’s of Gotam[162] mought thy parish be
  For this thy base and servile Simony.

[Footnote 160:  baptize.]

[Footnote 161:  newly fallen in, through the death of the incumbent.]

[Footnote 162:  Referring to Andrew Borde’s book, The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham.]

VIII.  THE DOMESTIC TUTOR’S POSITION.

This satire forms the Sixth of Book II. of the Virgidemiarum, and is regarded as one of Bishop Hall’s best.  See the Return from Parnassus and Parrot’s Springes for Woodcocks (1613) for analogous references to those occurring in this piece.

  A gentle squire would gladly entertain
  Into his house some trencher chapelain;
  Some willing man that might instruct his sons,
  And that would stand to good conditions. 
  First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed
  Whiles his young master lieth o’er his head. 
  Second that he do on no default
  Ever presume to sit above the salt.