SIR THOMAS MORE
Page: 3

hearts dare not strike a stranger, yet women beat them down, ere
they bear these abuses.

BARDE.
Mistress, I say you shall along with me.

DOLL.
Touch not Doll Williamson, least she lay thee along on God's dear
earth.--And you, sir [To Caveler], that allow such coarse cates to
carpenters, whilst pigeons, which they pay for, must serve your
dainty appetite, deliver them back to my husband again, or I'll call
so many women to mine assistance as will not leave one inch
untorn of thee: if our husbands must be bridled by law, and forced
to bear your wrongs, their wives will be a little lawless, and
soundly beat ye.

CAVELER.
Come away, De Barde, and let us go complain to my lord
ambassador.

[Exeunt Ambo.]

DOLL.
Aye, go, and send him among us, and we'll give him his welcome
too.--I am ashamed that freeborn Englishmen, having beaten
strangers within their own homes, should thus be braved and
abused by them at home.

SHERWIN.
It is not our lack of courage in the cause, but the strict obedience
that we are bound to. I am the goldsmith whose wrongs you talked
of; but how to redress yours or mine own is a matter beyond our
abilities.

LINCOLN.
Not so, not so, my good friends: I, though a mean man, a broker
by profession, and named John Lincoln, have long time winked at
these wild enormities with mighty impatience, and, as these two
brethren here (Betts by name) can witness, with loss of mine own
life would gladly remedy them.

GEORGE.
And he is in a good forwardness, I tell ye, if all hit right.

DOLL.
As how, I prithee? tell it to Doll Williamson.

LINCOLN.
You know the Spittle sermons begin the next week: I have drawn a
bill of our wrongs and the strangers' insolences.

GEORGE.
Which he means the preachers shall there openly publish in the
pulpit.

WILLIAMSON.
Oh, but that they would! yfaith, it would tickle our strangers
thoroughly.

DOLL.
Aye, and if you men durst not undertake it, before God, we women
would. Take an honest woman from her husband! why, it is
intolerable.

SHERWIN.
But how find ye the preachers affected to our proceeding?