Some years before the cries last mentioned, the Duke of Savoy was reported to have made certain overtures to the Court of England, for admitting his eldest son by the Duchess of Orleans’s daughter, to succeed to the Crown, as next heir, upon the Pretender’s being rejected, and that son was immediately to turn Protestant.  It was confidently reported, that great numbers of people disaffected to the then illustrious but now Royal House of Hanover, were in those measures.  Whereupon another set of women were hired by the Jacobite leaders, to cry through the whole town, “Buy my Savoys, dainty Savoys, curious Savoys.”  But, I cannot directly charge the late Earl of Oxford with this conspiracy, because he was not then chief Minister.  However, the wicked cry still continues in London, and was brought over hither, where it remains to this day, and in my humble opinion, a very offensive sound to every true Protestant, who is old enough to remember those dangerous times.

During the Ministry of that corrupt and Jacobite earl above-mentioned, the secret pernicious design of those in power, was to sell Flanders to France; the consequence of which, must have been the infallible ruin of the States-General, and would have opened the way for France to obtain that universal monarchy, after which they have so long aspired; to which the British dominions must next, after Holland, have been compelled to submit, and the Protestant religion would be rooted out of the world.

A design of this vast importance, after long consultation among the Jacobite grandees, with the Earl of Oxford at their head, was at last determined to be carried on by the same method with the former; it was therefore again put in practice; but the conduct of it was chiefly left to chosen men, whose voices were louder and stronger than those of the other sex.  And upon this occasion, was first instituted in London, that famous cry of “FLOUNDERS.”  But the criers were particularly directed to pronounce the word “Flaunders,” and not “Flounders.”  For, the country which we now by corruption call Flanders, is in its true orthography spelt Flaunders, as may be obvious to all who read old English books.  I say, from hence begun that thundering cry, which hath ever since stunned the ears of all London, made so many children fall into fits, and women miscarry; “Come buy my fresh flaunders, curious flaunders, charming flaunders, alive, alive, ho;” which last words can with no propriety of speech be applied to fish manifestly dead, (as I observed before in herrings and salmon) but very justly to ten provinces, which contain many millions of living Christians.  And the application is still closer, when we consider that all the people were to be taken like fishes in a net; and, by assistance of the Pope, who sets up to be the universal Fisher of Men, the whole innocent nation, was, according to our common expression, to be “laid as flat as a flounder.”