r lived; and a church, wherein he never
preached, observes the characterising Fuller, who knew him
when Fuller was young. In one of the pamphlets of the time I
have seen, it is mentioned that being reproached with beating
his wife, he replied, "I do not beat Mrs. Brown as my wife,
but as a curst cross old woman." He closed his life in prison;
not for his opinions, but for his brutality to a constable.
The old women and the cobblers connected with these Martin
Mar-Prelates are noticed in the burlesque epitaphs on Martin's
death, supposed to be made by his favourites; a humorous
appendix to "Martin's Monthminde." Few political conspiracies,
whenever religion forms a pretext, is without a woman. One
Dame Lawson is distinguished, changing her "silke for sacke;"
and other names might be added of ladies. Two cobblers are
particularly noticed as some of the industrious purveyors of
sedition through the kingdom--Cliffe, the cobbler, and one
Newman. Cliffe's epitaph on his friend Martin is not without
humour:--

"Adieu, both naule and bristles now for euer;
The shoe and soale--ah, woe is me!--must sever.
Bewaile, mine awle, thy sharpest point is gone;
My bristle's broke, and I am left alone.
Farewell old shoes, thumb-stall, and clouting-leather;
Martin is gone, and we undone together."

Nor is Newman, the other cobbler, less mortified and pathetic.
"The London Corresponding Society" had a more ancient origin
than that sodality was aware.

"My hope once was, my old shoes should be sticht;
My thumbs ygilt, that were before bepicht:
Now Martin's gone, and laid full deep in ground,
My gentry's lost, before it could be found."

Among the Martin Mar-Prelate books was one entitled "The
Cobbler's Book." This I have not seen; but these cobblers
probably picked up intelligence for these scandalous
chronicles. The writers, too, condescended to intersperse the
cant dialect of the populace, with which the cobblers
doubtless assisted these learned men, when busied in their
buffoonery. Hence all their vulgar gibberish; the Shibboleth
of the numerous class of their admirers--such as, "O, whose
_tat_?" John _Kan_k