About two or three months after the happy Revolution, all persons who possessed any employment, or office, in Church or State, were obliged by an Act of Parliament, to take the oaths to King William and Queen Mary:  And a great number of disaffected persons, refusing to take the said oaths, from a pretended scruple of conscience, but really from a spirit of Popery and rebellion, they contrived a plot, to make the swearing to those Princes odious in the eyes of the people.  To this end, they hired certain women of ill fame, but loud shrill voices, under pretence of selling fish, to go through the streets, with sieves on their heads, and cry, “Buy my soul, buy my soul;” plainly insinuating, that all those who swore to King William, were just ready to sell their souls for an employment.  This cry was revived at the death of Queen Anne, and, I hear, still continues in London, with great offence to all true Protestants; but, to our great happiness, seems to be almost dropped in Dublin.

But, because I altogether contemn the displeasure and resentment of high-fliers, Tories, and Jacobites, whom I look upon to be worse even than professed Papists, I do here declare, that those evils which I am going to mention, were all brought in upon us in the worst of times, under the late Earl of Oxford’s administration, during the four last years of Queen Anne’s reign. That wicked minister was universally known to be a Papist in his heart.  He was of a most avaricious nature, and is said to have died worth four millions, sterl.[178] besides his vast expenses in building, statues, gold plate, jewels, and other costly rarities.  He was of a mean obscure birth, from the very dregs of the people, and so illiterate, that he could hardly read a paper at the council table.  I forbear to touch at his open, profane, profligate life; because I desire not to rake into the ashes of the dead, and therefore I shall observe this wise maxim: De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

This flagitious man, in order to compass his black designs, employed certain wicked instruments (which great statesmen are never without) to adapt several London cries, in such a manner as would best answer his ends.  And, whereas it was upon grounds grievously suspected, that all places at Court were sold to the highest bidder:  Certain women were employed by his emissaries, to carry fish in baskets on their heads, and bawl through the streets, “Buy my fresh places.”  I must, indeed, own that other women used the same cry, who were innocent of this wicked design, and really sold their fish of that denomination to get an honest livelihood; but the rest, who were in the secret, although they carried fish in their sieves or baskets, to save appearances; yet they had likewise, a certain sign, somewhat resembling that of the free-masons, which the purchasers of places knew well enough, and were directed by the women whither they were to resort, and make their purchase.  And, I remember very well, how oddly it looked, when we observed many gentlemen finely dressed, about the Court end of the town, and as far as York Buildings, where the Lord Treasurer Oxford dwelt, calling the women who cried “Buy my fresh places,” and talking to them in the corner of a street, after they understood each other’s sign:  But we never could observe that any fish was bought.