ons)
by peaching his partner; and being extremely forward to bring him to
the gallows, Jack* was accused as the contriver of all the roguery. And,
indeed, it happened unfortunately for the poor fellow, that he was
known to bear a most inveterate spite against the old gentlewoman; and,
consequently, that never any ill accident happened to her but he was
suspected to be at the bottom of it. If she pricked her finger, Jack, to
be sure, laid the pin in the way; if some noise in the street disturbed
her rest, who could it be but Jack in some of his nocturnal rambles?
If a servant ran away, Jack had debauched him. Every idle tittle-tattle
that went about, Jack was always suspected for the author of it.
However, all was nothing to this last affair of the temperating,
moderating powder.

* All the misfortunes of the Church charged upon the Puritan
party.

The hue and cry went after Jack to apprehend him dead or alive, wherever
he could be found. The constables looked out for him in all his usual
haunts; but to no purpose. Where d'ye think they found him at last? Even
smoking his pipe, very quietly, at his brother Martin's; from whence
he was carried with a vast mob at his heels, before the worshipful Mr.
Justice Overdo. Several of his neighbours made oath,* that of late, the
prisoner had been observed to lead a very dissolute life, renouncing
even his usual hypocrisy and pretences to sobriety; that he frequented
taverns and eating-houses, and had been often guilty of drunkenness and
gluttony at my Lord Mayor's table; that he had been seen in the company
of lewd women; that he had transferred his usual care of the engrossed
copy of his father's will to bank bills, orders for tallies, and
debentures:** these he now affirmed, with more literal truth, to be
meat, drink, and cloth, the philosopher's stone, and the universal
medicine;*** that he was so far from showing his customary reverence
to the will, that he kept company with those that called his father a
cheating rogue, and his will a forgery; that he not only sat quietly and
heard his father railed at, but often chimed in with the discourse, and
hugged the authors as his bosom friends;**** that instead of asking for
blows at the corners of the streets, he now bestowed them as plentifully
as he begged them before.*** In short, that he was grown a mere rake;
and had nothing left in him of old Jack except his spite to John Bull's
mother.

* The manners of the