Har. [reading.] You may remember we did endamage the English East-India Company the value of five hundred thousand pounds, all in one year; a treaty is now signed, in which the business is ta’en up for fourscore thousand.—­This is news indeed:  would I were upon the castle-wall, that I might throw my cap into the sea, and my gold chain after it! this is golden news, boys.

Van Her. This is news would kindle a thousand bonfires, and make us piss them out again in Rhenish wine.

Har. Send presently to all our factories, acquaint them with these blessed tidings:  If we can ’scape so cheap, ’twill be no matter what villanies henceforth we put in practice.

Fisc. Hum! why this now gives encouragement to a certain plot, which I have been long brewing, against these skellum English.  I almost have it here in pericranio, and ’tis a sound one, ’faith; no less than to cut all their throats, and seize all their effects within this island.  I warrant you we may compound again.

Van Her. Seizing their factories I like well enough, it has some savour in’t; but for this whoreson cutting of throats, it goes a little against the grain, because ’tis so notoriously known in Christendom, that they have preserved ours from being cut by the Spaniards.

Har. Hang them, base English starts, let them e’en take their part of their own old proverb—­Save a thief from the gallows; they would needs protect us rebels, and see what comes to themselves.

Fisc. You’re i’the right on’t, noble Harman; their assistance, which was a mercy and a providence to us, shall be a judgment upon them.

Van Her. A little favour would do well; though not that I would stop the current of your wit, or any other plot, to do them mischief; but they were first discoverers of this isle, first traded hither, and showed us the way.

Fisc. I grant you that; nay more, that, by composition made after many long and tedious quarrels, they were to have a third part of the traffic, we to build forts, and they to contribute to the charge.

Har. Which we have so increased each year upon them, we being in power, and therefore judges of the cost, that we exact whatever we please, still more than half the charge; and on pretence of their non-payment, or the least delay, do often stop their ships, detain their goods, and drag them into prisons, while our commodities go on before, and still forestall their markets.

Fisc. These, I confess, are pretty tricks, but will not do our business; we must ourselves be ruined at long run, if they have any trade here; I know our charge at length will eat us out:  I would not let these English from this isle have cloves enough to stick an orange with, not one to throw into their bottle-ale.

Har. But to bring this about now, there’s the cunning.

Fisc. Let me alone awhile; I have it, as I told you, here; mean time we must put on a seeming kindness, call them our benefactors and dear brethren, pipe them within the danger of our net, and then we’ll draw it o’er them:  When they’re in, no mercy, that’s my maxim.