The Claret-Drinker's Song.

But a Health to Good-fellows shall still be my care,
And whilst wine it holds out we no bumpers will spare;
I'le subscribe to Petitions for nothing but Claret,

That this may be cheap here's both my hands for it:
'Tis my Province, and with it I only am pleas'd,

1

647

With the rest, scolding Wives let poor Cuckolds appease. 48
No doubt 'tis the best of all Drinks, or so soon
It ne'r had been chose by the Man in the Moon;
Who drinks nothing else both by night and by day,
But Claret, brisk Claret, as most people say:

Whilst Glasses brim-full to the Stars they go round,
Which makes them shine brighter, with red juice still crown'd.
For all things in nature does live by good Drinking,
And he's a dull Fool, and not worthy my thinking,
That does not prefer it before all the Treasure
The Indies contain, or the Sea without measure :

'Tis the life of Good-Fellows, for without it they pine,
When nought can revive 'um but Brimmers of Wine.

I know the refreshments that still it does bring,
Which have oftentimes made me as great as a King;
In the midst of his Armies, where 'ere he is found,
Whilst the Bottles and Glasses I've muster'd 'round:
Who are Bacchus's Warriors a Conquest will gain,
Without the least Bloodshed of wounded or slain.
Then here's a good health to all those that love Peace,
Let Plotters be puшep, and all Quarrels now cease;
Let me but have Wine, and I care for no more,
'Tis a Treasure sufficient, there's none can be poor

That has Bacchus to 's friend, for he laughs at all harm,
Whilst with high-proofed Claret he does himself warm.

[By John Dldham, or Tom Brown.]

Finis.

Printed for J. Jordan, at the Angel, in Guilt-spur-street.

60

66

72

[Black-letter. Two cuts, one on p. 530; the other will be in "Merry Boys of Europe," in our next volume's Second Group of Ballads on the Duke of Monmouth.]

1 The allusion in line 50 of text is to the earlier ballad, Mad Tom of Bedlam. The Man in the Moon drinks Claret,

Eats powder'd beef, turnip and carrot, etc.

W. Onley's copies were adorned by a spirited woodcut of this gallant Cavalier, holding a claret jug in one hand and a tall thin glass in the other. The ballad was reprinted from a Roxburghe Collection exemplar (Roxb. Ballads, ii. 261); as it was a different issue, the woodcut was not given. We add it on p. 666.

State Cases put to Jack Presbyter.

"Let's all turn Presbyterians, and serve the good Old Cause,
For such are now the Men that rule our country, Queen, and Laws;
Then to Meetings we will go, will go, to Meetings we will go."

-Political Merriment, Part III. p. 8, 1715.

WE gain the following satirical poem from the British Museum

collection of folio single sheets (P. Mark, 1872, a 1, fol. 97 verso). We leave until a later volume Dr. Walter Pope's "Old Man's Wish' (Roxb. Coll., II. 386), beginning, "If I live to grow old, for I find I grow down;" cf. p. 313: another parody is the loyal song entitled

Jack Presbyter's Wish.

If the Whigs shall get up, and the Torys go down,
May I have an Estate in country or town,
Of Crown or Church-lands, of considerable worth,
And a Sister of sixteen, to whom I'll hold forth.

May I trample on Princes with an absolute sway,
And grow prouder and higher and richer than they,
Still advancing my self as my Rulers decay.

7

To furnish my Table, I'll make my Cooks dish up
For breakfast a Papist, for dinner a Bishop;

At last, for my supper, no daintier thing

Than the flesh of a Duke, and the blood of a King. [York and Charles.

May I trample on Princes with absolute sway, &c.

14

May the groans of th' afflicted be the rest of my food;
May I sport in an ocean of Innocent Blood;

May I stick at no mischief that Hell can afford,
While I boast that I'm "doing the work of the Lord!"
May I trample on Princes with absolute sway, &c.

With Luther and Calvin, and many Saints more,
I'll boast of Religion, denying its power;
With countenance distorted, and feign'd whining Zeal,
I'll preach and teach Monarchy into Commonweal.

May I trample on Princes with absolute sway, &c.
May all my Plots prosper, both old ones and new ones,
No shiftings of Sham-Plots, no trusting of True-ones;
May ages hereafter in History tell-

Jack Presbyter rampant has twice borne the Bell.

May 1 trample on Princes with absolute sway,
And grow prouder and higher and richer than they,
Still advancing my self as my Rulers decay.

On our p. 445, we have already mentioned Captain Alexander "Radcliffe's Ramble," of which the tune is used for the following lampoon on Jack Presbyter. No tune is marked on the broadside.

State Cases put to Jack Presbyter.

Rabies amavit Iambo.1

[TUNE OF Captain Alexander Ratcliffe's Ramble.]

JAC

Ack, if you have one Grain of Sence,
That's free from Pride and Impudence,
Say something in your own Defence,
But LYE NOT.

Why dost thou make our Blood recoyl,
With noise of Plots and Popish Guile,
Whilst you're the Traitor all the while,
And Bygot?

Why dost thou brood upon the Plot,
To hatch the mischiefs Rome could not,

And play the old Game? but we've caught
Ye Napping.

Why did the little Dorset-Eele,2

To make the brain-sick Croud rebel,
Sad stories in the City tell,

And Wapping?

What did the Western Progress mean,3
When a fine Duke did march between
Lord G[rey] and Tommy to be seen
O' the Women?

How country Protestants did run

"God bless him! or we're quite undone

To gaze upon a Royal Son,

For Freemen !"

24

1 Sic. = Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo. Hor. De Arte Poetica, 79. 2 Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset.

The Duke of Monmouth's first Western Progress, in 1680. See p. 623.

Ford Lord Grey, and Thynne, "Tom of Ten Thousand." Cf. pp. 591 and 624. The Appeal from the Country to the City: for the preservation of his Majesty's person, liberty, property, and religion: by Robert Ferguson, or by Charles Blount, was published by Benjamin Harris and J. Hindmarsh, the libellouspamphlet publishers, 1679. Cf. Bagford Ballads Index, and next volume.

• Probably Ben Harris. See pp. 55, 173, 214, 496, 621, and previous note. "The Speech of a Noble Lord (Shaftesbury), December, 1680. See our p. 663.

See the extracts given in next vol., from Informations tendered to Jenkins. 2 We suspect this to refer to John Rouse (servant of Shaftesbury), who thus escaped in December, 1681, to get into fresh trouble later in the Rye-House Plot. 3 Richard Janeway and Langley Curtis, anti-Court party pamphleteers, already mentioned on pp. 109, 158, 173, 663. See next vol., A Satyr upon Coffee. For Henry Care (who became nevertheless a Romanist convert) see pp. 173, 174, 300. 4 The History of Popery; or, Pacquet of Advice from Rome, to vol. iv. printed for Care, sold by Langley Curtis, at the sign of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey's Head.

Roger L'Estrange, the Licenser, whose serial comments in the Observator and Heraclitus Ridens galled the Whig revolutionists and Protestant Boys. The caricature portrait of him, with pen and inkhorn, is on p. 257.

LONDON: Printed for J[onah] D[eacon]. 1681.

[In white-letter. No woodcut. Date, probably, December 1681.]

651

80

The Loyal Litany.

"Lay by your reason, Truth's out of season,
Since Treason 's Loyalty, and Loyalty is Treason.

Tony the Jealous, Sidney the zealous,

Contriv'd the Nation's fall, yet both were Loyal Fellows!
With Patience [Ward], 'Narrations,' and ASSOCIATIONS,
Lord, what ado there was for Teckley's Reformations.

They Plotted, and lotted, and sotted, and voted;

And never will have done, till their Heads are all promoted.

"With Insurrections, lawless objections,

They study to promote the Commonwealth projections;
Monarchy-haters, ASSOCIATORS,

Did swear into a League with Rascals, Whigs, and Traytors;

They venture Indenture, in Bond they do enter,

Whilst at the Royal Pair their malice still did center:

THESE

They Plotted, and lotted, and sotted, and voted,

And never will have done, till all the Tribe's promoted."
The Newcastle Associators, 1684.

HESE political Litanies are too illustrative of the time for us willingly to dispense with them. From either side, Court or City, they were used as missiles. Several allusions, to the illegitimacy and popularity-hunting of Monmouth, make this "Loyal Litany" especially important in the present Group. As it was answered by another, a still rarer broadside, "The Protestant Dissenter's Letany,' which we add, the belligerents thus admit that Loyalty and Political Dissenters are on opposite sides. Which no body can deny. So had it been found on the Parliament's coin, in Oliver's time, regarding the two boastful inscriptions "God with us" and "The English Commonwealth," as shown by the picture on our p. 525.

The allusion to the Duke of Monmouth as Absalom, in the seventh verse, by no means indicates that The Loyal Litany was necessarily later in publication than Dryden's poem of Absalom and Achitophel (Nov. 1681); for the suggestive analogy had been set forth elsewhere, in prose, before that immortal satire appeared. See next volume.