ntlemen bid them gude-day,
Without reverence they slide away...
Without their faults be soon amended,
My flyting,[156] sir, shall never be ended;
But wald your Grace my counsel tak,
Ane proclamation ye should mak,
Baith through the land and burrowstouns,[157]
To shaw their face and cut their gowns.

Women will say this is nae bourds,[158]
To write sic vile and filthy words.
But wald they clenge[159] their filthy tails
Whilk over the mires and middens trails,
Then should my writing clengit be;
None other mends they get of me.

[Footnote 149: sweep.]

[Footnote 150: be annoyed.]

[Footnote 151: curse or cry out.]

[Footnote 152: draggle-tails.]

[Footnote 153: hatched.]

[Footnote 154: houghs.]

[Footnote 155: slut.]

[Footnote 156: scolding, brawling.]

[Footnote 157: burgh towns.]

[Footnote 158: scoffs.]

[Footnote 159: cleanse.]

BISHOP JOSEPH HALL.

(1574-1656.)

VII. ON SIMONY.

This satire levels a rebuke at the Simoniacal traffic in livings,
then openly practised by public advertisement affixed to the door
of St. Paul's. "Si Quis" (if anyone) was the first word of these
advertisements. Dekker, in the _Gull's Hornbook_, speaks of the
"Siquis door of Paules", and in Wroth's _Epigrams_ (1620) we read,
"A Merry Greek set up a _Siquis_ late". This satire forms the Fifth
of the Second Book of the _Virgidemiarum_.

Saw'st thou ever Siquis patcht on Pauls Church door
To seek some vacant vicarage before?
Who wants a churchman that can service say,
Read fast and fair his monthly homily?
And wed and bury and make Christen-souls?[160]
Come to the left-side alley of St. Paules.
Thou servile fool, why could'st thou not repair
To buy a benefice at Steeple-Fair?
There moughtest thou, for but a slendid price,
Advowson thee with some fat benefice:
Or if thee list not wait for dead mens shoon,
Nor pray each morn the incumbents days were doone:
A thousand patrons thither ready bring,
Their new-fall'n[161] churches, to the chaffering;
Stake three years stipend: no man asketh more.
Go, take possession of the Church porch door,
And ring thy bells; luck stroken in thy fist
The parsonage is thine, or ere thou wist.
Saint Fool's of Gotam[162] mought thy parish be
For this thy base and servile Simony.

[Footnote 160: baptize.]

[Footnote 161: newly fallen in, through the death of the incumbent.]

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