able sums, duly recorded in Exchequer
documents, but not so duly paid.

In the troublous times of the Commonwealth the "Devil" was the favourite
haunt of John Cottington, generally known as "Mull Sack," from his
favourite beverage of spiced sherry negus. This impudent rascal, a sweep
who had turned highwayman, with the most perfect impartiality rifled the
pockets alternately of Cavaliers and Roundheads. Gold is of no religion;
and your true cut-purse is of the broadest and most sceptical Church. He
emptied the pockets of Lord Protector Cromwell one day, and another he
stripped Charles II., then a Bohemian exile at Cologne, of plate valued
at L1,500. One of his most impudent exploits was stealing a watch from
Lady Fairfax, that brave woman who had the courage to denounce, from the
gallery at Westminster Hall, the persons whom she considered were about
to become the murderers of Charles I. "This lady" (and a portly handsome
woman she was, to judge by the old portraits), says a pamphlet-writer of
the day, "used to go to a lecture on a week-day to Ludgate Church, where
one Mr. Jacomb preached, being much followed by the Puritans. Mull Sack,
observing this, and that she constantly wore her watch hanging by a
chain from her waist, against the next time she came there dressed
himself like an officer in the army; and having his comrades attending
him like troopers, one of them takes off the pin of a coach-wheel that
was going upwards through the gate, by which means it falling off, the
passage was obstructed, so that the lady could not alight at the
church door, but was forced to leave her coach without. Mull Sack,
taking advantage of this, readily presented himself to her ladyship, and
having the impudence to take her from her gentleman usher who attended
her alighting, led her by the arm into the church; and by the way, with
a pair of keen sharp scissors for the purpose, cut the chain in two, and
got the watch clear away, she not missing it till the sermon was done,
when she was going to see the time of the day."

[Illustration: INTRODUCTION OF RANDOLPH TO BEN JONSON AT THE "DEVIL"
TAVERN (_see page 40_).]

The portrait of Mull Sack has the following verses beneath:--

"I walk the Strand and Westminster, and scorn
To march i' the City, though I bear the horn.
My feather and my yellow band accord,
To prove me courtier; my boot, spur, and sword,
My smoking-pipe, scarf, garter, rose on shoe,
Show my