themselves did wear Actaeon's
badge; how many Caesars might I reckon up together, and what a catalogue of
cornuted kings and princes in every story? Agamemnon, Menelaus, Philippus
of Greece, Ptolomeus of Egypt, Lucullus, Caesar, Pompeius, Cato, Augustus,
Antonius, Antoninus, &c., that wore fair plumes of bull's feathers in their
crests. The bravest soldiers and most heroical spirits could not avoid it.
They have been active and passive in this business, they have either given
or taken horns. [6180]King Arthur, whom we call one of the nine worthies,
for all his great valour, was unworthily served by Mordred, one of his
round table knights: and Guithera, or Helena Alba, his fair wife, as Leland
interprets it, was an arrant honest woman. _Parcerem libenter_ (saith mine
[6181]author) _Heroinarum laesae majestati, si non historiae veritas aurem
vellicaret_, I could willingly wink at a fair lady's faults, but that I am
bound by the laws of history to tell the truth: against his will, God
knows, did he write it, and so do I repeat it. I speak not of our times all
this while, we have good, honest, virtuous men and women, whom fame, zeal,
fear of God, religion and superstition contains: and yet for all that, we
have many knights of this order, so dubbed by their wives, many good women
abused by dissolute husbands. In some places, and such persons you may as
soon enjoin them to carry water in a sieve, as to keep themselves honest.
What shall a man do now in such a case? What remedy is to be had? how shall
he be eased? By suing a divorce? this is hard to be effected: _si non
caste, tamen caute_ they carry the matter so cunningly, that though it be
as common as simony, as clear and as manifest as the nose in a man's face,
yet it cannot be evidently proved, or they likely taken in the fact: they
will have a knave Gallus to watch, or with that Roman [6182]Sulpitia, all
made fast and sure,

"Ne se Cadurcis destitutam fasciis,
Nudam Caleno concumbentem videat."

"she will hardly be surprised by her husband, be he never so wary." Much
better then to put it up: the more he strives in it, the more he shall
divulge his own shame: make a virtue of necessity, and conceal it. Yea, but
the world takes notice of it, 'tis in every man's mouth: let them talk
their pleasure, of whom speak they not in this sense? From the highest to
the lowest they are thus censured all: there is no remedy then but
patience. It may be 'tis his own f