THOMAS (LORD, ALIAS COLONEL) PRIDE;*

BEING TOUCHED IN CONSCIENCE

FOR HIS INHUMAN MURDER OF THE BEARS IN THE BEAR-GARDEN,

WHEN HE WAS HIGH-SHERIFF OF SURREY.

TAKEN IN SHORT-HAND, BY T. S.

LATE CLERK TO HIS LORDSHIP'S BREW-HOUSE.
London, printed for C. W. 1680. Quarto, containing twelve pages,

MY GOOD FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS,

YOU

OU are come (I thank you) to see me die, and let me request you to take my last breath; I'll make no set speech; the long-parliament loaded you with those (so many speeches, as, if orderly burnt, would brew two-hundred quarters of malt) and had sat speaking still, if his late highness had not bid me unhouse them. I spake none, neither in the commons, nor in the other house; and yet I must either now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold my peace.

My conscience! it is my conscience speaks; and the first thing that is upon my spirits, is the killing of the bears; for which the people bait me, and call me all the names in the rain-bow. But, did not David kill a bear? Did not the lord-deputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill five bears, and five fidlers? May bears be killed in Nottingham, in Leicester, and not in Surrey? You know I was high-sheriff of the county, and, if I might not kill a few bears, why was I made sheriff? I thought it our interest to let nothing live that would fight; and, therefore, we made an act against cock-matches. Others have killed far greater things with less commission. But, perhaps they will say, I struck at the prerogative; for kings and protectors have a privilege, when they find a good mastive-dog, to clap their collar upon him, and use him for the game; and so, if kill the bears, hang the dogs; no bear, no dog. But think you the prerogative would reach to bears? Or that Great Britain were the isle of dogs? Are we, like St. Mallows, guarded by mastives? The French have ever made us

Was originally a drayman, or brewer's servant; but by the faction in the great rebellion, being advanced to the degree of a parliament-man, was at last thought a proper instrument to sit as a judge against his majesty K. Charles the First.

their apes, and must we follow their dogs too? If an English mastive get whelps in France, they all prove curs : (I wish our English soldiers there may never turn French.)

Can we forget that horrid accident, when major-general Skippon came in a horse-litter wounded to London? When he passed by the brew-house near St. John's-street, a devilish mastive flew (as at a bear) at one of his horses, and held him so fast by the stones, that the horse grew mad as a mad dog: the soldiers so amazed, that none had the wit to shoot the mastive; but the horse-litter, borne between two horses, tossed the major-general like a dog in a blanket. Thus your dogs use horse and man. And for women, remember how Swash, the abominable mastive, took a dispensation with an elder's maid. Nay, not a sow in the streets, by night, but the watchmen's dogs steal privately to her; which makes your London pigs have such round heads. And when I myself had my first brew-house (which was at Pye-corner) I heard a pig bark, whereby I knew it was a city pig.

Here is a sweet stir with bears and dogs, able to make a wise man mad: For, first, they pretend to preserve their dogs, yet rail at me for shooting the bears that kill those dogs; and then tax me for killing the bears, yet set their dogs to tear the bears in pieces: Yes, and the man, that owned the bears, now sues me for destroying his goods.

But what the devil are bears good for? They brag of a weaponsalve, made, forsooth, of the fat of bears killed in the act of genera tion (though bears never generate but by night, when none can know it:) My sword hath made some wounds, let them anoint the blade of my sword, and try how many cavaliers it will cure. The devil has a hand or a foot in this salve, if it comes from bears: For you know, the beast with seven heads, and ten horns, had the foot of a bear; whence people say, a bear has the devil's foot. You think I mean the bear at the bridge-foot (for God sends meat, and the devil sends cooks ;) I mean, a limb of the devil: And is it a sin to destroy the devil? George was sainted for killing a dragon (saints of old, like honest George, used to kill beasts, but now saints commonly kill men ;) the dragon and bear are the pictures of the same; for the devil hath divers sutes to put on: He wears not only the beast (a red dragon, an otter, a bear) but a very man, a woman, in silks, in buff, in a long mourn. ing-cloke, to hide his cloven foot, and too often a saint or angel of new light; yet then so like as one devil to another.

An author of ours said, the beast's ten horns are the kings of Europe; which may be the reason why the members, that voted against the king, were so hot for decimation: Those members were not the major part, but the major-general part. I confess, that author wrote after the king was beheaded, when our liberties stood committed to several keepers: and yet I would know that member's name, that would not be a king: Every creature, above and below, hath a monarch in his belly. The devil would fain have been king of heaven, and Adam scorned not to be king of the earth; and each of his sons would be king of all the rest. And, to speak my conscience, if the state should vouchsafe to name me king, I think I should not question the election; no, though it were, as I hear the Persians once chose a king, by the neighing

of a horse. But he, that hath horse, may soon be a king, and therefore I love to save my horse; but why, with a vengeance, should we save bears, that feed upon horse-flesh? My physician says, that an old fellow, one Pliny, told him, that a piece of bears-flesh will grow bigger by boiling; which shews the devil and his dam is in bears; for all things else will boil away to nothing: Had all my beer had a good sound boiling, I had not died worth a pound of hops. Are these your beasts of game? I profess I hate gaming; there is an act against it, though some of our own play deep as any; and the gamesters made dice of some of their bones that made that act: (O, who can tell how a man is used, when once he comes to be a dry bone!) Something there is, that dice run now more than ever, that so many new curses follow these bones. Perhaps the bears come not within the ring of the act against gaming; yet both dog and bear are within the lists of the act against duels. And, though they are out of the act of oblivion, yet some new justices brought them within the act for marriages. It is confessed they fight, but not for us; they are no part of the militia, and never paid so much as pole-mony. They never, with lions, were admitted into the Tower, nor shewed at Westminster among the fine sights: nor ever reckoned among the crown-jewels. There were propositions for bringing in plate, money, and horse, but not for bears; And yet now, must England turn Greenland? The war has made it Red-land, and funerals make it Black-land, and our ministers make it Blue-land. But, if I never answer for killing any thing but bears, I shall do well enough.

Were I arraigned, it could not be murther, but bear-slaughter: Nay, I killed them in my own defence, for they would have killed me; which was more than can be said, for putting many a thousand to death. O, but they say, I killed them not fairly, but shot them dead in cold blood: And am I the first that did so ? Have we not done it over and over? I kill them, as we killed Lucas and Lisle, two as brave men as the king had any. What, would they have me bait them to death? Do I look like a bear-ward? Or should I knock them in the head like an ox? There is a major-general can do that better than I. I remember one, now a great lord, who, speaking against Strafford, said, beasts of prey ought to have no law: Shall we grant that to bears, which we denied to Strafford? A cavalier told me, that this was but a quibble upon the word law; for there is, said he, no law for beasts, but that a man may kill them for his use; and the more sudden, and less pain, the better: And if a hare, or stag, have law, that is, liberty to run, it is not for their, but for our sakes, to prolong our sport in their de sruction.

However, that quibble was seasonable then, and did our work upon Strafford and Canterbury; but mark how both sides plead for me! The one says, beasts of prey must have no law; the other says, there is no law for beasts: So both say, it is lawful for me to kill the bears. No matter how, hang them, shoot them, chop off their heads, send them to Jamaica, any way is best. For can there be beasts more malignant than bears? I looked but in my almanack, and there I found two dogs and two bears among the stars; and those, I dare say, are

malignant stars, for, within two lines, the great bear is called Charles

wain.

By this you will imagine malignants are in heaven; but we and they shall scarce meet in one place; for else it were madness in us to kill them, because thereby we send them to be happy. But they, as well as we, would fain live, and would have good estates, as they had before, and as we have now. It is in our power whether they shall live, but not whether we ourselves shall die; for, though our army be as strong to-day as yesterday, yet our own bodies draw near death.

Behold it in me, and remember Naseby, which made us what we are; how the king's best men, when the victory was theirs, took a bottomless fancy of running all away, having done the like at MarstonMoor. I have known six thousand, and no cowards neither, fly all like bedlams, when no enemy was within seventeen miles; and, if they were all examined upon oath, they could not tell why. And they say, that one poor wooden horse at Troy did more than all our army in the Indies. It is certain, no woman is so fickle as an army. I speak not for myself, for it is well known I have done my part; sure I have killed better things than bears, and killed them as men should be killed, either in the field, or in a high-court of justice; the best cavalier among them all, the king himself, judged to the block; my Lord Hewson is my witness, for he sat next to me. Perhaps, they think my Lord Hewson and I not fit to be judges, because of our trades; but let them shew me one text of Scripture, where brewers and shoemakers are forbidden to be judges. I confess, in juries of life and death, we except against a butcher, as blooded in slaying of sheep and calves; but, if he only kil bears and men, he may be either a juror or a judge. I knew a judge did use to mend stockings, I spare his name, because he did a business for me, and it is as lawful to mend shoes as stockings; and, if a judge may be a cobler, a cobler may be a judge.

As for me, it is true, I have borne a sling, which made a knave call me, Sir Thomas Slingsby; but I made the Slingsby's shorter for it by one, and that one shorter by the head; and had done as much for young Mordaunt, but that, having drank white-wine that morning, I stepped forth to the wall, and, before I could return, Mordaunt was quit. Thus the life of man is but a pissing-while. But what if I have borne a sling; did not David so too? The difference is, he laid by his sword and took up a sling, and I laid by my sling, and took up a sword.

L

Kings, lords, and gentlemen take money for their lands; others sow it, and sell the corn to us; we advance it to good beer and ale, and then sell the drink to those kings, lords, and gentlemen; and thus the cup goes round. They sell for money, and we sell for money; and, if a shilling had a tongue as well as a face, it would say, sir, I am but twelve-pence, whether you meet me in the brew-house or in the exchequer. It is true, there are divers sorts of shillings; some are brass, impudent rogues, who, when discovered, are nailed to a post; some are lead, heavy dull beasts that will not go; others are right metal, but clipped, poor decimated things, that would go and cannot. But brass is brass, and silver is silver, at court and at Pye-corner. I was as warm

in my leather-jacket as in my scarlet-cloke

It is strange, what an eye-sore that cloke was to some, as if the gar. ment itself could sin. Indeed, we had a man that used to hang his cloke in my brew-house, as country folks hang wool over pails of water to make it weight, and so, though not he, yet his cloke was a drun. kard. But, cloke and jacket, I was the same man; I never denied, but still kept my trade; and, if others had done so, a hundred thousand lives had been saved. At last I got to be brewer to the navy, and, if each man had drank like the whale of Greenwich, I could have filled them all; for I had three brew-houses, one at London, another at Kingston, and a third at Edinburgh. And why might not I have three brew-houses, as well as assembly-men three benefices? They were my livelihood, as theirs were their livings.

One of those fellows at Margaret's Westminster, who had four preferments given him by the state, would needs teach us now to live by a word. You will ask, said he, what word is that; it is faith; get faith, and I will undertake you may live gentlemanlike; but that rascal brake his own word with me, and died twelve pounds in my debt. I grant, he was the first that told me my sirname came from a King of Rome, called, as I remember, Turkquinius Suparbus (there were seven of those kings, but they are long since dead) and thence call me*, one of the seven deadly sins; they may as well call me one of the seven wisemen, or one of the seven planets, or seven wonders of the world. But, if we credit such as he, it is a very hard thing not to be a king. They will prove, if you pay them, that Rhombus and Remus, that founded Rome, were of English extraction; I know not whether we had the same mother, but it is said many of us had the same nurse; but I never cared three-pence for their praise: therefore, I pray ye vex not my corpse with a huge monument, which cannot protect itself, nor me; and many a man's bones had slept in quiet, if his prating tomb had not told where he lay.

And trouble not my ghost with any of their elegies, Latin or English; they make a man but laughed at, and are not worth a handful of grains. I do not mean Mr. George Withers, for he got the statueoffice by rhyming; he hath now sold that office, but when will he sell his verses? A statue lies upon them, so as no-body will buy them. It is not a month since one of the state's poets brought me an anagram for me and my wife; but I hear those anagrams should be all fetched into a court of wards; for, although they have not wit enough for lunaticks, they are dull enough for idiots. But now they will all at me : what a heap of paltry quibbles and clinches will they throw upon me? You will hear them cry, Now Pride hath a fall ;-now there are but six deadly sins.- sir, are you there with your bears? They but saw me stand, holding my crabtree-cudgel upright, and they cried, Lo, there is the bear and the ragged-staff!' How have they dragged my poor name, and set me back from P. to B. to make me born in Bride's churchporch? It is false, and nonsense, to call me Bride, though my wife was so, when I led her to church. I know they will tell you of my let ter to a friend, where, instead of my best beer, I wrote, I have sent my best bear. But all letters and books are false; there is none of them

*Because my name is Pride.