e same malicious
design he used to lay chairs and joint-stools in their way, that
they might break their noses by falling over them. The more young and
inexperienced he used to teach to talk saucily, and call names. During
his stay in the family there was much plate missing; being caught with a
couple of silver spoons in his pocket, with their handles wrenched off,
he said he was only going to carry them to the goldsmiths to be mended:
that the said Timothy was hated by all the honest servants, for his
ill-conditioned, splenetic tricks, but especially for his slanderous
tongue; traducing them to their mistress as drunkards and thieves: that
the said Timothy, by lying stories, used to set all the family
together by the ears, taking delight to make them fight and quarrel;
**particularly one day sitting at table, he spoke words to this effect:
"I am of opinion," quoth he, "that little short fellows, such as we are,
have better hearts, and could beat the tall fellows; I wish it came to a
fair trial; I believe these long fellows, as sightly as they are, should
find their jackets well thwacked."

* Betraying the interests of the Church when got into
preferments.

** The original of the distinction in the names of Low
Churchmen and High Churchmen.

A parcel of tall fellows, who thought themselves affronted by the
discourse, took up the quarrel, and to it they went, the tall men and
the low men, which continues still a faction in the family, to the great
disorder of our mistress's affairs. The said Timothy carried this frolic
so far, that he proposed to his mistress that she should entertain no
servant that was above four feet seven inches high, and for that purpose
had prepared a gauge, by which they were to be measured. The good old
gentlewoman was not so simple as to go into his projects--she began
to smell a rat. "This Trim," quoth she, "is an odd sort of a fellow;
methinks he makes a strange figure with that ragged, tattered coat
appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest
of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't
like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and
an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly
understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease."
The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights,
and went abroad often at unseasonable hours; and it w