the Son is bound to exercise his Parents occupation so that no pretense almost is left for Wonderers and briefly as far as humane Laws can provide all other vain occasions for mis-expence of time are taken off for within the Cities no stews are allow'd or lewd persons to withdraw them Adultery is punished with death but yet they have liberty to take many Wives one they keep at home the rest are disposed of abroad where they best please Their Marriages they chiefly solemnize at the New Moon and for the most part in March which begins their year For their Religion they are Gentiles but have a confused knowledge of God Heaven and the Creation When they would decipher their great God they express him by the first Letter in their Alphabet and in their Devotions they worship him as their chief but not only preserver for they have their prayers to the Sun Moon Stars and to the Devil himself that he would not hurt them Their Priests are distinguished into the black and White Friers as we call them for they much resemble Friers in their course of life some are cloathed in White their heads shorn and their Victuals in common others in black long hair and live apart neither are marryed but both take their liberty to live obscurely as the debauchest swaggerers The chief of the Cities is Paquin where the King hath his continual Residence his Pallace here is compassed with a Triple wall carrys the bulk and face of a fair Town for indeed his retinue are no fewer then might well people a large City among the rest he hath 16000 Eunuchs daily attending such as their own Parents have emascul'd in their Infancy to make them capable of this Court preferment The seat Imperial was heretofore at Nanquin where still remains a Golden testimony of her past glory It is a fair City thirty miles in compass seated nine leagues from the Sea upon a fair Navigable River where there Rides commonly at least 10000. of the Kings ships besides Merchants it hath three brick walls the streets are six miles in length of a proportionable breadth and trimly paved The Metropolis is Quinsay or Suntien the largest City in the world for it contains 100 miles in compass it is seated in a low and Fenny ground is subject to floods and hath been forced in very many places to erect bridges for free passage from one street to another there are in all 12000. built of stone and most of them so high that a good ship may strike under them with full sail each of them hath its ten for a night guard The Inhabitants of this City live luxuriously especially their Women who are much more comely then their men yet all of them almost eat both Horse and Dogs flesh Toward the South part of the City there is a great lake about 24 miles in circuit in the midst stand two Islands whither the chief Nobilty repair and invite their friends to Solemnize their Marriage and have in each a stately Pallace erected furnished sufficiently with all fitting Ornaments for a Wedding jollity In many parts of the City there are publick places of Receipt for such as sustain any misfortune by fire there they may lodge their Goods safe upon a suddain casualty till they can make better provision In each Province the Cities stand so thick and are so populous that they all seem to be as one one as well for their continued building almost as their fashion of building for they all observe the same form and dispose their streets alike two broad crossing each other in the middle in so strait a line that the eye may reach clean from one end to the other The Revenues of the whole Empire and number of Inhabitants are not easily to be reckoned Yet this in brief he hath subject under him 70 Crowned Kings gathers up yearly 120 Millions of Crowns stirs not into the field without 300000 foot and 200000 horse Out of the Description of the Kingdom of TARTARY THese Tartaryans for brutish Customs were grown odious to the more civil parts of the World and as Herod in his fourth Book of Histories delivers were wont to sing their Parents to the Grave invite their best Friends to Feast with their Fathers flesh and use his Scull as a cup to drink in at their lascivious banquets Who more the Axiaca who quenched their thirst with the bloud of him whom they first slew as it gushed warm from his wounds who more foolish proud than the Agathyrst who were used to mend their beauty by a deformed painting and ugly staining of their bodies with motly colours You shall have here their Character which is given by most that describe them to have ill fashioned bodies answerable to their rude minds fit houses for so unclean guests Their Stature is different The most part have large shoulders a broad face with a crooked nose deformed countenance swarthy colour hollow eyes hairy and untrimmed beard and head close shaved Their speech is boisterous and clamorous their noise in singing like the yell of Wolves and endurance of hunger thirst heat cold and watching equals them in strength of body to the most able beast for it exceeds the common power of a man Their lust is without Law for they except no kindred but their own Mothers Daughters and Sisters No species for they mix with beasts nor sex for they are unsatiate Sodomites and yet take liberty for as many Wives which they can maintain which contrary to our civil courses they buy of their Parents instead of receiving Dowries Their meat is the raw flesh of horses without regard how they were killed or what diseases they dyed sometimes they suck bloud from the living to appease their hunger and thirst if in a journey they be distressed for want of food Cities they have but few nor houses other then moveable Tents made of Beasts skins which they pitch up by great multitudes in the form of a Town and those are called hordes when the Grass is once eaten bare and the ground yields not meat for their Cattel they trudge with bag and baggage to another quarter and so in course they wander through the vast Desarts unsetled and indeed impatient to be setled or rather imprisoned as they take it within any bounded compass having the wide world to roam in Their chief Arms are Bow and Arrows which they use most on Horse-back for their most speedy flight and have them commonly strongly poysoned for the more sure mischief to the foe their stratagems are downright fraud and breach of truce for they keep no faith with an Enemy regard not any compact made upon terms of peace but follow their own sense and commit what out-rages they can with least danger to themselves Their Religion is answerable to their vile customs Some are Pagans others Mahometans yet will not be called Turks but Bersemany and their chief Priest Seyd whom they reverence more then their Maker and
then the hangman having a pan of Coals near him with red hot pincers nip'd of the nipple of one breast then he took a knife and gives him a slash or cut down the back on one side from the shoulder to the waste and presently gave him such another slash three inches from the first then on the top he cut the slashes into one and presently taking pincers took hold of the cross cut and tore him down like a Girse below the middle letting it hang down behind him like a belt after which he took his burning pincers and pluck'd off the tops of his fingers of one hand then passing to another place of the Town his other nipple was plucked off the other side of his back so cut and mangled which they call by the name of rimming his other fingers nip'd off then passing further all his Toes were nip'd off with the burning pincers after which he was inforced to come out of the Cart and go on foot up a steep hill to the Gallows where he was broken with a wheel alive one bone after another beginning at his leggs and ending with his neck and last of all quartered and laid on the Wheel on a high post till Crows Ravens or consuming time consume him This was the manner of both their executions but I speak of the greatest murther particularly because it is reported that all these torments never made him once to change countenance or to make any sign or action of grief to call to God for mercy or to intreat the people to pray for him but as if he had been a sensless stock or stone he did most scornfully and as it were in disdain abide it whilst the other Villain did cry rore and make lamentation calling upon God often The difference was not much in their lives and manner of their deaths but the odds may be great in their dying In the City of Prague is said to be of Churches and Chappels 150. I was there at four several sorts of divine exercise viz. at good Sermons with the Protestants at Mass with the Papists at a Lutherans preaching and at the Jews Synagogue three of which I saw and heard for curiosity and the other for Edification The Jews in Prague are in such great numbers that they are thought to be of Men Women and Children betwixt 50 or 60000. who do all live by Brokage and Usury upon the Christians and are very rich in Money and Jewels so that a man may see 10 or 12 together of them that are accounted worth 20 30 or 40000 l. a piece and yet the slaves go so miserably attired that 15 of them are not worth the hanging for their whole ward-ropes The City of Hamburgh The priviledges of their grand hang-man YOu must understand that this fellow is a Subsidy Hangman to whom our Tyburn Tatterdemallion or our Wapping winde-pipe stretcher is but a Raggamuffin not worth the hanging The priviledges of this Grand haulter-master are many as he hath the emptying of all the Vaults or draughts in the City which no doubt he gains some favour by Besides all Oxen Kine Horses Dogs or any such beasts if they dye themselves or if they be not like to live the hang man must knock them on the head and have their skins and whatsoever Inhabitant in his jurisdiction doth any of these things aforesaid himself is abhorred and accounted as a Villain without Redemption So that with hangings headings breakings pardoning and killing of Dogs flaying of Beasts emptying of Vaults and such privy Commodities his whole Revenue sometimes amounts to four or five hundred pounds a year And he is held in that regard and estimation that any man will converse and drink with nay sometimes the Lords of the Town will feast with him and it is accounted no impeachment to their honours for he is held in the rank of a Gentleman or a rank Gentleman and he scorns to be clad in the cast weeds of executed offenders no he goes to the Mercers and hath his Sattin his Velvet or what stuffe he pleases measured out by the Yard or the Ell with his Gold and Silver Lace his silk Stockings laced spangled Garters and Roses Hat and Feather with four or five brave Villains attending him in Livery Cloaks who have stipendary means from his ignominious bounty Their manner of executing Thieves and Murtherers upon the Wheel I shall name one for a president A Poor Carpenter dwelling in the Town who having stoln a Goose and plucking it within his doors a little Girl his Daughter-in-law went out of his house and left the door open by which means the owner of the Goose passing by espyed the wretched thief very diligently picking what he before had been stealing to whom the owner said Neighbour I now perceive which way my Geese use to go but I will have you in Question for them and so away he went the Caitiff being thus reproved grew desperate and his Child coming into his house ye young whore quoth he must ye leave my door open for folks to look in upon me and with that word he took a hatchet and with a cursed stroak he clove the Childs head for the which murther he was condemned and judged to be broken alive upon the wheel Upon the day of Execution about the hour of 12 at Noon the people of the Town in great multitudes flocked to the place of Execution which is half a mile English without the Gates the Prisoner came on foot with a Divine with him all the way exhorting him to repentance and because death should not terrifie him they had given him many Rowses and Carowses of Wine and Beer for it is a custom there to make such poor wretches drunk whereby they be made sensless either of Gods mercy or their own misery but being pray'd for by others they themselves may die resolutely or to be feared desperately But the Prisoner being come to the place of death he was by the Officers delivered to the hang-man who entring his strangling fortification with two grand hang-men more and their men to assist their Hamburghian brother in this great and weighty work the Prisoner mounted on a mount of Earth built high on purpose that the people about may see the execution a quarter of a mile round about four of the hang-mens men takes each of them a small halter and by the hands and the feet they hold the prisoner extended all abroad lying on his back then the Arch-hang-man or the great Master of this mighty business took up a wheel much about the bigness of one of the fore wheels of a Coach and first having put off his Doublet his Hat and being in his shirt as if he meant to play at Tennis he took the wheel and set it on the edge and turn'd it with one hand like a Top or Whirly-gig then he took it by the Spoaks and lifting it up with a mighty stroke he beat one of the poor wretches legs in
then you will be more sorrowful and less dainty poor Jerusalem had once Beauty Strength Riches spacious Buildings Authority and honour yet these availed them nothing wrong trode down right and Justice was quite forgotten which was their chiefest their greatest their only earthly good But now one little piece of bread they reckoned more upon then ever before they did of bags of Gold Scraps parings and fragments c. which your full sed Corps did usually fling away with them had been a ransom for a King the loathsome garbage which our dogs refuse had been amongst the Jews a dish of state Whilst within Famine plaid the Tyrant the Romans Army strived to win the Walls their Pioners and all their Engines were at work to batter and assault the Wall Now note Jerusalem had three strong stone Walls and long it was ere the Romans could get one but the dearth so spread and death of the sword as that in the streets the living trod upon the dead the Carkasses which the Seditious kill'd fill'd many great houses so that with the stinck of bodies putrefied there dyed a number numberless of people for burial they afforded none but where they fell they let them lye stink and rot yet very unsensible were they of the sad condition of each other by hundreds and thousands then did the souldiers throw their liveless Corpses over the Walls upon this and their dis-uniting the Romans had high advantages and could with more security batter and scale the Walls When the Romans saw their dismal fall from the Walls they told it to Titus which when he perceived he wept and lifted up his hands to Heaven and called on God to witness with him this These flanghters saith he were no thoughts of mine neither was it my fault Indeed those wretches that escaped from out of the City and came amongst their foes in my Army found both relief and pity if any of those that fled to my Army had by the Seditious been caught they had without remorse strook them dead But another misery I must unfold unto you many Jews had swallowed store of Gold which they supposed in their need should help them but from this treasure did their bane proceed the Gold was the cause that many of them perisht amongst them all one unhappy poor creature went privately to do the needs of Nature and in his dung he looked for his Gold where being by the straggling souldiers took they ript him up and searched his Maw to find what Gold or treasure there remained In this sort was many a Man and Woman ript and slain for the gain of Gold that the souldiers gaped for In some they found Gold in many none but had they Gold or not it was all one with them they were unbowelled and searched most barbarously whither they had any or no. But my story briefly to conclude Vespasians Souldiers had subdued the walls his triumphant banner was displayed and that in the midst of the streets at which the Jews were all dismayed and upon which they desperately did retire to the Temple which with ungodly hands they set on fire which noble Titus with great care intreated them they would spare Oh save the house quoth he and I will spare you for the Temple sake quench the fire put out the flame Oh let not after-times report that you have burnt the worlds unmatchable glory For your own sakes your wives and your childrens if from Vespasians hands you expect grace if from Vespasians hands you expect your lives oh save your Temple Titus doth command you to save the Temple The Jews heard of the mercy they might have had but with hearts hard they refused the offer they refused mercy and themselves regarded not but in their madness they burned consumed and confounded to the ground King Solomons great Temple that Temple which did cost thirty Millions was in a moment lost and consumed The blest Sanctum Sanctorum the holiest place often blessed with Johovahs sacred grace where as the Text saith were 22000 Oxen slain and 12000 sheep besides dyed at the same time for an oblation That house of God whose glorious fame made all the World to wonder was burnt and ransackt and laid level to the ground which when it was seen by Vespasian and young Titus they cry'd kill kill those wretched Jews spare not to kill use speedy and Marshal Law the Roman souldiers then fell on and spared none they slew while they were weary of slaying and had no respect to Age or Sex the streets were drowned in bloud and slaughtered-Carkases did swim in in bloud the ablest men that were saved they carryed away for slaves John Simon and Eleazer as they deserved were brought to violent ends Now from that time that the Romans began their siege until the City was won by Sedition by the Sword Fire and Famine were deprived of their lives eleven hundred thousand besides one hundred thousand were taken as beasts and sold for slaves and from the time it was first erected till the Romans had takeâ— it it stood as appears in Histories twenty one hundred seventy and nine years But before Gods vengeance was showred down upon them what strange prodigious Wonders did he shew as warnings how they should avoid their destruction and cause them to repent the wicked evils they had done 1. The Firmament shewed them a Comet like a fiery Sword 2. Divers nights the Temple and the Altar were environed with bright burning lights 3. In the midst of the Temple though una Cow did bear a Lamb. 4. No Bolts or Bars could restrain the Temple-gates but they would fly open of themselves 5. In the Air assembled Armed men and Chariots the pondrous Earth quaked affrighted and trembled 6. To this sense a voice cryed in the Temple the people cry'd oh let us from hence depart These supernatural accidents foretold some fearful Judgment was to come but toyes they were accounted to the Jews or scar-crow-bugbears to fright children with and not minding them nor no way by them being affrighted they did in Jerusalem securely revell they thought these signs were against their foes and not them But when war when death when spoil when ruine had storm'd them appear'd the place so desolate as none could have known there had been a City Thus Juda and thus Jerusalem fell which Christ did foretell and was now fulfill'd that all their joys they should be bereft off and that one stone should not be left to stand upon another FINIS THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK SHeweth that in Asia did God begin his marvellous work of Creation and there was the first Church Collected also the Saviour of the World born and slain In this Asia abounds Myrrhe Frankinsence Nutmegs Pepper c. and it breeds Elephants and many other Beasts and Serpents page 1. 2 3 4. In the City Medina in Arabia is Mahomet Intombed in an Iron Chest supported by Art from falling to the ground 5 A brief