A Book of Scoundrels eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 200 pages of information about A Book of Scoundrels.

A Book of Scoundrels eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 200 pages of information about A Book of Scoundrels.

As became a gentleman-adventurer, Captain Hind was staunch in his loyalty to his murdered King.  To strip the wealthy was always reputable, but to rob a Regicide was a masterpiece of well-doing.

A fervent zeal to lighten Cromwell’s pocket had brought the illustrious Allen to the gallows.  But Hind was not one whit abashed, and he would never forego the chance of an encounter with his country’s enemies.  His treatment of Hugh Peters in Enfield Chace is among his triumphs.  At the first encounter the Presbyterian plucked up courage enough to oppose his adversary with texts.  To Hind’s command of ‘Stand and deliver!’ duly enforced with a loaded pistol, the ineffable Peters replied with ox-eye sanctimoniously upturned:  ’Thou shalt not steal; let him that stole, steal no more,’ adding thereto other variations of the eighth commandment.  Hind immediately countered with exhortations against the awful sin of murder, and rebuked the blasphemy of the Regicides, who, to defend their own infamy, would wrest Scripture from its meaning.  ‘Did you not, O monster of impiety,’ mimicked Hind in the preacher’s own voice, ’pervert for your own advantage the words of the Psalmist, who said, “Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron”?  Moreover, was it not Solomon who wrote:  “Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry”?  And is not my soul hungry for gold and the Regicides’ discomfiture?’ Peters was still fumbling after texts when the final argument:  ’Deliver thy money, or I will send thee out of the world!’ frightened him into submission, and thirty broad pieces were Hind’s reward.

Not long afterwards he confronted Bradshaw near Sherborne, and, having taken from him a purse fat with Jacobuses, he bade the Sergeant stand uncovered while he delivered a discourse upon gold, thus shaped by tradition:  ’Ay, marry, sir, this is the metal that wins my heart for ever!  O precious gold, I admire and adore thee as much as Bradshaw, Prynne, or any villain of the same stamp.  This is that incomparable medicament, which the republican physicians call the wonder-working plaster.  It is truly catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to the Jesuit’s powder, but more effectual.  The virtues of it are strange and various; it makes justice deaf as well as blind, and takes out spots of the deepest treason more cleverly than castle-soap does common stains; it alters a man’s constitution in two or three days, more than the virtuoso’s transfusion of blood can do in seven years.  ’Tis a great alexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and those that use them.  It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors.  ’Tis a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone.  In a word, it makes wise men fools, and fools wise men, and both knaves.  The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling.  If it be properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and a competent dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evils of humanity crave.’  Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses of Bradshaw’s coach, and went contemptuously on his way.

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A Book of Scoundrels from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.