Audley knew mankind practically, and struck into their humours with the
versatility of genius: oracularly deep with the grave, he only stung the
lighter mind. When a lord borrowing money complained to Audley of his
exactions, his lordship exclaimed, "What, do you not intend to use a
conscience?" "Yes, I intend hereafter to use it. We moneyed people must
balance accounts: if you do not pay me, you cheat me; but, if you do,
then I cheat your lordship." Audley's moneyed conscience balanced the
risk of his lordship's honour against the probability of his own
rapacious profits. When he resided in the Temple among those "pullets
without feathers," as an old writer describes the brood, the good man
would pule out paternal homilies on improvident youth, grieving that
they, under pretence of "learning the law, only learnt to be lawless;"
and "never knew by their own studies the process of an execution, till
it was served on themselves." Nor could he fail in his prophecy; for at
the moment that the stoic was enduring their ridicule, his agents were
supplying them with the certain means of verifying it. It is quaintly
said, he had his _decoying_ as well as his _decaying_ gentlemen.

The arts practised by the money-traders of that time have been detailed
by one of the town-satirists of the age. Decker, in his "English
Villanies," has told the story: we may observe how an old story contains
many incidents which may be discovered in a modern one. The artifice of
covering the usury by a pretended purchase and sale of certain wares,
even now practised, was then at its height.

In _Measure for Measure_ we find,

"Here's young Master Rash, he's in for a commodity of _brown
paper and old ginger_, nine score and seventeen pounds; of
which he made five marks ready money."

The eager "gull," for his immediate wants, takes at an immense price any
goods on credit, which he immediately resells for less than half the
cost; and when despatch presses, the vender and the purchaser have been
the same person, and the "brown paper and old ginger" merely
nominal.[74]

The whole displays a complete system of dupery, and the agents were
graduated. "The Manner of undoing Gentlemen by taking up of
Commodities," is the title of a chapter in "English Villanies." The
"warren" is the cant term which describes the whole party; but this
requires a word of explanation.

It is probable that rabbit-warrens were numerous about the metropolis, a