of meat together and falling into some crosse words before they had tasted a bit of it and having both good stomacks A poore man came to the doore to begg an Almes for Gods sake The man not knowing which way more to vexe his wife cald to his Servant and cutting the meat in the middle laid one halfe upon his Trencher and said here take this and carry it to the poore man and bid him pray for the soule of my former Wife which seeing shee said nothing but when the Servant was returned she tooke the other halfe that was in the Dish and gave it unto him saying and I pray thee carry this to the poore man and desire him to pray for the soule of my first Husband by which meanes both themselves and their Servants were forced to goe to bed supperlesse Now here the blame nor burden could be great because it was borne upon equall shoulders but you as in all the rest make the woman onely to Raile and the men like so many silly Sots to make no reply at all as if wee were all mad they milke-sâ—ps and mecockes wee froward they foolish we either sheepish or shrowish and they onely simple and sottish which how false it is and farre from any probability of truth common experience can testifie for whosoever shall observe his stile and method shall finde that what hee so much boasts off hee hath borrowed from the basest of our Sexe as being in all his Tinkerly tearmes more foule-tongu'd than a Fish-wife and more open mouth'd than any Oysterwench A word or two more concerning the vertue and Chastity of Women there was never any man could generally compare with Women to speake of the best and most blest the one and onely Virgin Mother she that was at one time Maid Mother Wife Child Sister to her Son she that most happily was elected from all Eternity to be the blessed bringer forth of a Saviour for all repenting and true beleeving sinners she was so fully fill'd and replenish'd with grace that shee is justly stiled blessed amongst women and for a further proclaiming of her happinesse All Generations shall call her Blessed Shee was the Worlds onely wonder and most rare and soveraigne mirrour of chastity Many thousands more are mentioned for that onely famous vertue of Continency in Divine and prophane Histories whose honourable and Venerable memories shall out-live time and flourish in Glorious Eternity Besides as there have bin and are innumerable of our noble Sexe that have liv'd and dyed Virgins so likewise millions of them who have bin married and after marriage became Widowes they have bin so inclined to the love of chastity that they would never bee wonne to accept of a second marriage and for an inimitable example of a worthy Matron it is Recorded that Anna the Prophetesse was but seven yeares a married wife but that after her Husband was dead she lived a Widow fourescore and foure yeares an example above any you men can shew Moreover women were so chast thaâ— though they did marry and were married it was more for propagation of Children than for any carnall delight or pleasure they had to accompany with men they were content to be joyned in Matrimony with a greater desire of Children than of Husbands they had more joy in being Mothers than in being Wives for in the old Law it was a curse upon Women to be Barren and surely if there had beene any lawfull way for them to have had Children without Husbands there hath beene and are and will bee a numberlesse number of Women that would or will never be troubled with wedlocke nor the knowledge of man Thus good and modest Women have bin content to have none or one man at the most all their whole life-time but men have bin so addicted to incontinency that no bounds of Law or reason could restraine them for if we reade the Story of the Kings of Iuda there we may finde the wisest that ever raign'd Solomon had no fewer than three hundred Wives and seven hundred Concubines and that his Sonne Rehoboam had eighteene Wives and sixety Concubines by whom hee begat twenty eight Sonnes and threescore Daughters There have bin some good women that when they could have no Children they have bin contented that their Husbands should make use of their Maid-servants as Sara and Rachell and Leah did but I never heard or read of any man that though hee were old diseased decripit gowty or many and every way defective and past ability to be the Father of any Child that hath bin so loving to his wife as to suffer her to made a Teeming Mother by another man There was once a Law in Sparta amongst the Lacedemonians that if the husband were deficient for propagating or begetting of Children that then it was lawfull for the wife to entertaine a friend or a Neighbour but the women were so given to chastity that they seldome or never did put the said Law in practise and J am perswaded that that Decree is quite abolish'd and out of use and force all the World over The constant courage and fixed Pious and worthy resolutions of those women that are mentioned in the seventh of the second Booke of the Macabees is Transcendent and suparlative above all men that ever were either spoken of or Recorded in to which place I referre the Reader for larger Relations Holy Writ doth nominate 5. famous women of the name of Mary First the Blessed Virgin Secondly Mary the mother of Iames the lesse and Joseph and Salome and the wife of Cleophas the Virgin Maries owne Sister Thirdly the Mother of Iohn and Iames the Sonnes of Zebedoe Fourthly the Mother of Iohn Marke and Mary Magdalen who was the Sister of Lazarus these were all women who were hardly to be equall'd in goodnes and vertue by men they were the loving Hand-maides of the highest And it would bee tedious and needlesse to name those worthy women in this poore Pamphlet who are already Recorded in the never ending Booke of immortallity Susannaes chastity Lidias dilligent piety the bounty and charity of Dorcas and the painefulnesse of Pheabe all these and many more are remembred in everlasting blessed Volumnes Thus have I truely and impartially proved that for Chastity Charity Constancy Magnanimity Vallour Wisedome Piety or any Grace or Vertue whatsoever Women have alwayes bin more than equall with men and that for Luxury Sarquedrin obscenity prophanity Ebriety Impiety and all that may be called bad wee doe come farre short of them Now we thinke it meete onely to tell them a little of one fault which we are sure they doe know already and that our Repetition of it will bee no meanes to Reforme it yet to shew the World that Women have great cause to finde fault and bee discontented with their odious generall vice of Drunkennes We will relate unto you the dellicate dainty Foppish and rediculous conceites of Sir Seldome Sober with
Cases p. 18 First in the Nomnative Secondly in the Genative and so in all the rest of the Cases p. 20 He is no Poet p. 21 He is found guilty of detraction p. 27 The womens sharpe Revenge OR An Answer to Sir Seldome Sober that writ those scandelous Pamphlets called the Iuniper and Crab-tree Lectures AS from several causes proceed sundry effects so from several actions arise sundry honours with the addition of Names and Titles annexed unto them neither need wee stand to prove that by argument which wee finde by dayly experience As for example some are raised for their wealth others for their worth some by the Law others by their learning Some by Martiall Discipline and by your favour too others for malicious detraction as thinking to rise by others ruines and by supplanting others to support themselves In which number wee must ranke you Master Satyrist the passionate Author of those most pittiful pamphlets called the Juniper Lectures and Crab-tree Lectures who by your meere Knavery ambitious to purchase Knight-hood to adde a sir-reverence to your name are now arrived to the height of your Aime and from plaine Seldome Sober are now come to the Title of Sir Seldome Sober who wee terme so for he is ashamed to set his name to bookes a Name fitting his Nature and well complying with his condition And as there have beene formerly by your meanes Sir Seldome Sober many railing bitter invective Pasquills and Scurrilous Libels some written some printed and all disperst and scattered abroad all of them made and forg'd on purpose to callumniate revile despight jeere and flout women and now lately one or two of the sonnes of Ignorance have pen'd three severall sweet filthy fine ill-favoured Pamphlets which are Printed and out of the most deepe shallownesse of the Authors aboundant want of Wisedome they are called Lectures as the Juniper Lecture the Crab-tree Lecture the Worm-wood Lecture wherein they have laid most false aspersions upon all women generally some they have taxed with incontinency some with uncivility some with scolding some with drinking some with backbiting and slandering their neighbours some with a continual delight in lying some with an extraordinary desire of perpetuall gossipping in a word we are each of us accused and blazed to bee addicted and and frequently delighted with one grievous enormity or other wherein although it be true that we are all the daughters of Eve in frailty yet they might have remembred that they likewise are all the sons of Adam in failing falling offending We are not so partial in the defence of all Womens vertues that we thereby doe hold none to be vicious Some are incontinent by Nature or inheritance from their Mothers some through extreame want and poverty have beene forced to make more bold with that which is their owne then to begge steale or borrow from others Some by the harsh usage of their too unkinde husbands have beene driven to their shifts hardly some having had the hard fortune to match with such Coxecombes as were jealous without a cause have by their suspitious dogged and crabbed dealing towards their wives given too often and too much cause to make their jealousie true And whereas a Womans reputation is so poore that if it be but so much as suspected it will belong before the suspition will be cleared but if it be once blemished or tainted the staines and spots are of such a tincture that the dye of the blemishes will sticke to her all her life time and to her Children after her But for the man hee takes or assumes to himselfe such a loose liberty or liberty of licentious loosenesse that though he be as they call it a Common Towne Bull or a runner at sheepe though hee passe the censures of spirituall courses or high Commissions yet by custome his disgrace will be quickly worne out and say it was but a tricke of youth for the shame or scandall of a whore-master is like a nine dayes wonder or a Record written in sand or like a suit of Tiffany or Cobweb Lawne soone worne out but the faults of a weake Woman are a continuall alarum against her they are ingraven in brasse and like a suit of Buffe it may be turn'd and scour'd and scrapt and made a little cleanly but it lasts the whole life time of the wearer But to come to the worke in hand as you you have a Title bestowed upon you by your backe friends and we thinke deservedly So wee have knowne some who have arrived to that Worshipfull Title through favour also rather than desert and more by voyces than their vertues meerely by the mad sufrage of the many headed monster Multitude which consisteth of Man yet upon better advice and more Mature Consideration when their merits and misdemeanours have been more narrowly sifted and looked into being well compared together they have not onely beene disgrac'd but degraded so that now that worshipfull worke for which you have beene so much magnified by the Masculines being now called into question by a Feminine Jury of women It is thought after a true and just examination thereof to bee meerely villified and that it is nothing but a meere scandalous report and therefore most justly condemned by the unanimous assent of all our Sexe before whom your Bartholmew Faire Booke and most lying Lectures hath not onely beene convented but arraigned lawfully convicted and most justly condemned Now because no equall and indifferent censure shall any way justly except at the Iury that went upon the cause they were these Twelve good women and true which will give you in order The fore-woman who had the first and prime voyce who gave up the Verdict was Sisley set him out Sarah set on his skirts Kate call him to account Tomasin Tickle him Prudence pinch him Franke firk him Besse bind him Christian Commit him Parnel punish him Mall make him yeeld Beterish banish him Hellen Hang him Now if this be not a competent Iury not to bee excepted at and a legall Triall no way to be revoked we appeale unto you men our greatest adversaries and most violent abaters of our injuries And yet further to make the cause more plaine and evident of our sides wee thought it good in our better consideration not onely to publish unto the world the calumnies and slanders asperst upon us But our just Articles objected against him and by comparing them together to distinguish so betwixt them that the truth may grow apparent But first touching the person who put these foule and and calumnious aspersions upon us If hee were a Tailer most sure he was a womans Tailer or if so no good Artist because not being able to take the measure of a womans body much lesse was he powerfull to make a true dimension of her minde and therein you are gone Master Tayler nay what Artist soever you were for in one I include all
whose good name hee seeketh to take away not considering that Nature hath bestowed upon us two eares and two eyes yet but one tongue which is an Embleme unto us that though we heare and see much yet ought wee to speake but little They that can keepe their Tongues keepe their friends for few words cover much Wisedome and even fooles being silent have past for wise men But the Proverbe is that even those that but listen or give encouragement to scandall or mis-report deserve to lose their hearing if not their eares And therefore gentle Reader beleeve not every smooth Tale that is told neither give too much credit to the Plaintiffe before you heare the Defendant Apology for himselfe lest through light trust thou bee deceived and by thy too easie beliefe manifestly deluded But it is the fashion of all these calumniating Coxecombes to bite those by the backe whom they know not how to catch by the bellies The third thing objected and proved upon him is palpable lying against which the Aegyptians made a Law that who so used it should not live The like did the Scithians the Garamants the Persians and the Indians Now how much hee hath belyed the worthinesse of our Sexe I appeale to any understanding Reader who hath purused his Bookes if hee have not branded us with many a false and palpable untruth as shall bee made more apparent hereafter when we come to the enrowling of his Books and anatomizing his Lectures But it is an old said Saw and a true We cannot better reward a Lyer then in not believing any thing that he speaketh so odious is the very name that in the opinion of many a Thiefe may be preferred before him for it is his property to take upon him the habite and countenance of Honesty that he may the more secretly insinuate and more subtilly deceive by his Knavery He was indited also of Heresie and false opinion which hath power to make men arme themselves one against another and all of them against us It is borne of Winde and fed by imagination never judging rightly of any thing as it is indeed but as it seemes to bee making what is probable improvable and impossibilities possibilities nay it is of such force that it overthroweth the love betwixt man and wife Father and Child Friend and Friend Master and Servant nay more it is as the Spring and Fountaine of sedition and who knowes not but all sedition is evill how honest soever the ground be pretended And last of perjury in making breach of that oath which he made when he was first marryed for in the stead of taking his Wife to have and to hold for better and worse with my body I the worship with all my wordly goods I thee endow c. hee hath runne a course cleane contrary to all this in taunting and scoffing baiting and abusing rayling and reviling at all our Sexe in generall from which number even his wife to whom hee vowed all the former and who nightly sleepeth or ought to sleepe in his bosome is not excluded or say that she was of a perverse and turbulent spirit a crabbed or curst condition or a dissolute and divellish disposition Say that she was given to gadding and gossipping to revelling or royoting so that hee might very well sing I cannot keepe my Wife at home or say that not without just cause she might make him jealous what is this to the generality of the Female Gender one Swallow makes not a Summer nor for the delinquency of one are all to be delivered up to censure As there was a Lais so there was a Lucrece And a wise Cornelia as there was a wanton Corina And the same Sexe that hath bred Malefactors hath brought forth Martyrs An this is an argument which we might amplifie even from the Originall of all History nay and would not spare to doe it had wee but the benefit of your breeding But it hath beene the policy of all parents even the beginning to curbe us of that benefit by striving to keep us under and to makes us mens meere Vassailes even unto all posterity How else comes it to passe that when a Father hath a numerous issue of Sonnes and Daughters the sonnes forsooth they must bee first put to the Grammar schoole and after perchance sent to the University and trained up in the Liberall Arts and Sciences and there if they prove not Block-heads they may in time be book-learned And what doe they then read the Poets perhaps out of which if they can picke out any thing maliciously devised or malignantly divulged by some mad Muse discontented with his coy or disdainfull Mistris then in imitation of them he must divise some passionate Elogy and pittifull ay-me and in the stead of picking out the best Poets who have strived to right us follow the other who doe nothing but raile at us thinking he hath done his Mistris praise when it may bee hee hath no Mistris at all but onely feignes to himselfe some counterfeit Phillis or Amarillis such as had never any person but a meere ayery name and against them hee must volly out his vaine Enthusiasmes and Raptures to the disgrace and prejudice of our whole Sexe When we whom they stile by the name of weaker Vessells though of a more delicate fine soft and more plyant flesh and therefore of a temper most capable of the best Impression have not that generous and liberall Educations lest we should bee made able to vindicate our owne injuries we are set onely to the Needle to pricke our fingers or else to the Wheele to spinne a faire thread for our owne undoings or perchance to some more durty and deboyst drudgery If wee be taught to read they then confine us within the compasse of our Mothers Tongue and that limit wee are not suffered to passe or if which sometimes happeneth wee be brought up to Musick to singing and to dancing it is not for any benefit that thereby wee can ingrosse unto our selves but for their own particular ends the better to please and content their licentious appetites when we come to our maturity and ripenesse and thus if we be weake by Nature they strive to makes us more weake by our Nurture And if in degree of place low they strive by their policy to keepe us more under Now to shew wee are no such despised matter as you would seeme to make us come to our first Creation when man was made of the meere dust of the earth the woman had her being from the best part of his body the Rib next to his heart which difference even in our complexions may bee easily decided Man is of a dull earthy and melancholy aspect having fallowoes in in his face and a very forrest upon his Chin when our soft and smooth Cheekes are a true representation of a delectable garden of intermixed Roses and Lillies We grant it for a truth that as
or if hee labour and take paines it is in hope of his hire If the Merchant hazard his purse and person by Sea it is in the expectation of some great gaine and profit and can you wise men take toyle and travell wake and watch rise early and goe to bed late spend your time wits and money vow and protest sweare and forsweare ingage your fortunes and indanger your lives and all these for wily wanton wayward wicked women by gaining whom you can but loose your selves and to purchase them cannot be without your so great prejudice Most sure if this cause shall come before a just Iudge and have the benefit of a considerate Censure but we so much reproved and reviled shall bee acquit by Proclamation and you Sir Seldome Sober with the rest of your rayling Society bee found sole guilty of Calumny scandall and most palpable Contradiction Your intimations and intents your proposition and your purpose your method your meaning having no coherence or correspondence the one to the other And therefore we weak women stand up against you mighty men for so you thinke your selves when alas wee know by proofe that when you brave Masculines are at any time incountered by our Femenine Sexe even in the first assault you are as soone tam'd as talkt with and can scarce really tell us you love us but you are as ready to turne tayle and leave us and yet are not ashamed to animate your selves in your owne assemblies and would make the world to beleeve that you the first Cowards are the sole Conquerours But forsooth when you faile in your prowesse you thinke to fit us in your Proverbes which you priviledge by their Antiquity but indeede they are so stale in their very Names that they stinke in our noses for example When the Mistris calls up her Apprentice shee saith if she be crost shee will make him leape at a Crust as if Citizens kept such penurious Houses that they were ready upon the least occasions to starve their Servants Nay that she taking her Husbands Authority out of his hands will beate her Boy the Rogue and bast the Kitchin-maid who rules the Roast till she make their bones rattle in their skinns and when shee hath gotten her will then Rattle Baby Rattle Then in your Lecture of the Wife to her Husband Is the house a wild-Cat to you and why a Wild-Cat you tame foole unlesse you study to set odds betwixt man and wife and to make them agree in a house like Dogs and Cats together Then comes in the Country Farmers Wife with her couple of Capons when all her shee neighbours dare take their Oathes that her Husband is a Cocke of the Game yet shee must call him Francis Furmity-pot Barnard Bagg-pudding or Bacon-face William Woodcocke Durty Dotterill or Dunstable Harry Horse-head Simon Sup-broath Ralph Rost a Crow Tom Turd in thy teeth and the like beastly and bastardly names meerely of your owne durty devising as knowing what belongs to your selves when wee cannot finde in our hearts to foule our mouthes with any such filthy Language But sure Sir Seldome or never Sober your Father was some Jakes-Farmer and your Mother a Midwife or hee some Rake-shame or Ragg-gatherer and shee the daughter of a Dung-hill that their Sonne is forc'd to patch out his Poetry with such pittifull Proverbes and cannot wee come upon you with the like and in tasking of your rudenesse tell you you should have talked under the Rose to punish your too much prating tell you Little said soone amended In terrifying you from the like troubling of your selfe That there is a day to come that shall pay for all and to restraine you within some regularity A man may bring his Horse to the water but hee cannot make him drinke In not sparing of your Spouse-breach There is False-hood in Fellow-ship When wee shall bury one untoward Husband and take another Seldome comes the better When you foole us with your flatteries you play with us at Wily beguile you And to conclude with that most learned Ballad song about the streetes and Composed by your fellow Poet M. P. O such a Rogue would be hang'd This wee could doe nay this wee much care not to doe unlesse you moderate your flying Muse and mend your manners Nay wee could Anatomize you into Atomes and dissect you into Demunitives to make you lesse than nothing but it it is the modesty of our Madam-ships and the patience that our Sexe professes to parley before we punish and to hang up a flagge of Truce before we offer to Tirannize but if you take heart and hold out and seeme not sorry at this our first Sommons wee will not onely beate you but batter you bumbast and bafle you Canvace and Cudgell you Brave you and Bastinado you but leave you to the terrible Trophies of our Victorious Triumph and the remarkeable memory of your most miserable and unpittied Massacre Yet in all this we doe not menace the men but their mindes not their Persons but their Penns the horridnesse of their humours and the madnesse of their Muses which indeed towards us have beene insupportable and intollerable Therefore be advised and let us heare either of your publicke acknowledgement or at the least your private recantation either to us all in generall or some in particular c. or we will make thy owne pen thy Ponyard thy Inke thy banefull potion thy Paper thy winding sheete thy Standish thy Coffin thy Sand-dust thy Grave-dust to bury thy shallow wit in with thy face downe-ward which if we doe not let us for ever beare the burthen with our faces upwards Now concerning your very passionate but most pittifull Poetry a question may be made whether you be a Land Laureate or a Marine Muse A Land Poet or a Water Poet A Scholler or a Sculler Of Pernassus or puddle Dock Of Jonia or Ivy Bridge But howsoever it is not in the compasse of our Reading that Mnemosyne ever lived at Milford Lane or Terpsichore at Trigg Stayers where they say the Divell once tooke water Nay more then all this a little further to magnifie our Sexe are not the foure parts of the world Asia Africa Europe and America Deciphered and described under the Persons of women and their Gender The nine Muses 〈◊〉 the Twelve Sibells were they not all women The Foure Cardinall Vertues Iustice Fortitude Prudence Temperance Women The three Graces the Hand-maids to Venus women The three Theologicall Vertues Faith Hope and Charity Women nay Wisedome it selfe is it not Sapientia and figured in the forme of a Woman Are not all the Arts Sciences and Vertues of what quality or condition soever Portrayed in the persons of women whether then I pray you Sir Seldome Sober were your wits wandeing or went a Wooll-gathering when you beate your braines about this poore and most pittifull Pamphlet Have wee claim'd this to our selves nay rather hath