one of the deepest clerks of his time What a rare man and of heavenly speculations was Io de sacro bosco the Author of the sphaere which remaines yet engraven upon his tomb in Paris some ages after these the world of learned men did much esteem Reginald Poole Iohn Colet William Lillie Linacre Pace Cardinall Fisher Bishop of Rochester Sir Thomas More Latimer Tindall Baleus Tunstall men inferior to none as well for sanctimony of life as for rare erudition and knowledg Toby Matthew Archbishop of York another Chrysostom Thomas Stapleton Nic. Wotton Iewell Cheek Humphreys Grindall Whitgift Plowden Ascham Cooke Smyth Whitaker Perkins Mountagu those great speculative Lords Baeon and Herbert Andrews Usher that rare Primat Selden who knows as much as both the Scaligers Camden the English Strabo Owen another Martiall with divers excellent Dramatique Poets and it is a great wrong to the Common-wealth of learning that their works are not made intelligible in a larger toung then that Insulary Dialect Add hereunto that for Physicians and Lawyers both Civill and Common there are as profound spirits there as any on earth And as for learning so for prowess and magnanimity the Inhabitants of Great Britain have been and are still very celebrous And though there hath been alwayes an innated kind of enmity twixt the French and the English yet they have extorted prayses out of their enemies mouths witnes Comines Froissard and Bodin who write so much in honor of the English Nor do they herein complement or flatter a whit What a bold Britain was Brennus who liv'd long before the English took footing there what notable feates did he perform in Italy Greece and Asia so that the old Britains or Welsh in honor of that Heroe call a King after his name to this day viz. Brennin and there is a Castle in Wales of his name to this day How manfully did the ancient Britains tugg with the Romans who receav'd fowler defeats there then in any other Region which one of their Poets seemes to confesse when he saith Invictos Romano Marte Britannos The Silures who are a peeple but of a few small shires in Wales viz. Monmouth Brecknock and others being animated by the courage of their King Cataracus and provok'd by the menaces of the Emperour Claudius who threatned to extinguish the very names of them met his army in open field and cutting off an auxiliary Regiment which was going to recreut the Emperour under Marius Valens they utterly routed him In so much that Ostorius the propraetor of Britanny for the Romans resenting this dishonor died out of a sense of grief Charles the Great had to doe with them in three battailes wherein there was such a slaughter of his men that he cryed Si vel semel tantùm cum illis adhuc depugnandum foret ne unum quidem militem sibi superfuturum If he were to encounter the Britains but once more he should not have a soldier left him a saying proceeding from such a man as Charlemain that tends much to the reputation of the Britains But the Gaules are they whom the Britains galld having in so many victories left their arrowes in their thighs in their breasts and some sticking in their hearts which makes Bodin complain Gallos ab Anglis in ipsa Gallia clades accepisse ac pene Imperium amisisse That the French receaved many overthrowes in France herself by the English and had almost lost their Kingdom whereupon the Poet sings wittily Anglorum semper virtutem Gallia sensit Ad Galli cantum non fugit iste Leo. For how often have the French Kings with their Nobles been routed defeated and discomfited by the English Gray-goose-wing how often hath it pierc'd the very center of the Kingdom what notable rich returnes have the English made from France And what pittifull looks must France have when Edward the fourth got such a glorious victory at Cressy where above thirty thousand perish'd among whom the King of Bohemia was found among the dead bodies ten Princes eighty Barons twelve hundred Gentlemen and the flower of the French fell that day and King Philip of Valois did hardly escape himself to a small town which being ask'd at the gate who he was qui va la answer'd la Fortune de France the Fortune of France This made France weare black a long time But in another battail she had as ill luck wherein her King Iohn and David King of Scots where taken prisoners and attended the prince of Wales to England yet such was the modesty of that prince though conquerour that he waited upon King Iohn bareheaded at table this was such a passage as happen'd in King Edgars raign who had foure Kings to row him upon the river Dee hard by Westchester viz. Kennad Kind of the Scots Malcolm King of Cumberland Maconus King of Man and another Welsh King The English reduc'd France to such a poverty at that time that she was forc'd to coin leather money In divers other battailes in the raignes of Charles the fift sixt and seventh and Lewis the elevenths time the English did often foyl the French untill the war pour le bien public begun by the Duke of Burgundy Such a large livery and seifin the English had taken in France that for three hundred and fifty years they were masters of Aquitain and Normandy Nay Henry the sixt of England was crowned King of France in Paris And so formidable were the English in France that the Duke of Britany when he was to encounter the French army in the field thought it a policy to cloth a whole Regiment of his soldiers after the English mode to make them more terrible to the French What shall I say of that notable Virago Queen Elizabeth who did such exploits again Spain by taking the united provinces of the Low Countreys under her protection How did she ply the Spaniard and bayt him by Sea and Land how did she in a manner make him a Bankrupt by making him lose his credit in all the banks of Europe And all that while Spain could do England no harme at all touching the strength of which Kingdom you may please to hear what a judicious Italian speaks of it Il Regno d'Ingliterra non há bisogno d'altri per la propria difesa anzi non solo é difficile mà si può dir impossible se non é divisione nel Regno che per via de force possa esser conquistato The Kingdom of England stands in no need of any other for her own defense so that it is not only difficult but a thing impossible unlesse there be some intestin division to make a conquest of that Countrey Philip offer'd very fairly for her in the year eighty eight when he thought to have swallowed her with his Invincible Fleet which was a preparing three yeers she consisted of above 150. saile 8000. Mariners 20000. foot besides voluntiers she carried 1600. Canons of brasse 1000. of iron
was one law enacted in Canutus time Omnis homo abstineat a Venerijs meis super poenam vitae Upon pain of life let every man refrain from my deer and my hunting places The Swainmote Courts have harsh punishments and amercements and for the poor Husbandman ther 's no remedy for him against the Kings dear though they lye all night in his corn and spoile it Sarisburiensis a reverend and authentic Author comprehends all this in a few words when he speaks of the exorbitancies of England in this kind Quod magis mirere ait pedicas parare avibus laqueos texere allicere nodis aut fistula aut quibuscunque insidijs supplantare ex edicto saepe fit genus criminis vel proscriptione bonorum mulctatur vel membrorum punitur salutisque dispendio Volucres coeli pisces maris communes esse audieras sed hae Fisci sunt quas venatica exigit ubicunque volant manum contine abstine ne tu in poenam laesae majestatis venantibus caedas in praedam Anovalibus suis arcentur Agricolae dum ferae habeant vagandi libertatem illis ut pascua augeantur praedia subtrahantur Agricolis sationalia insitiva Colonis cùm pascua armentarijs gregarijs tum alvearia a floralibus excludunt ipsis quoque apibus vix naturali libertate uti permissum est But that which is more to be wondred at saith Sarisburiensis is that to lay netts to prepare trapps to allure birds by a whissle or to supplant them by any kind of wile becomes oftentimes a kind of crime by the Edicts of England and is punish'd either by amercement or some corporall punishment whereas in other climes the birds of the Air and the fish of the Sea are common but not in England they belong to the Fisk or some particular person you must hold your hand and refraine for fear of comitting treason The Yeoman is hunted away from his new plowd fields while wild beasts have liberty to wander in them at pleasure nay sometimes cattle are kept from pasture and the Bees are scarce permitted to use their naturall liberty of sucking flowers But the English tyranny doth not terminat onely in the King but it difuseth it selfe further among the Nobles In so much that as Camden relates there were in King Stephens raigne as many tyrants in England as there were Castellans or Governors of Castles Stephani Regis temporibus tot erant in Anglia tyranni quot Castellorum Domini Who arrogated to themselves regall rights and prerogatives as coyning of money marshall law and the like For now there is no Kingdom on earth Naples excepted where there have been more frequent insurrections then in England for as the Kings have been noted to be Tyrants so the subjects are branded for devills In the Civill warrs that happen'd in Comines time there were above fourescore that were slain by the fortune of war and otherwise of the blood Royall besides the Kings themselves that perish'd Whereupon when the Queen of Scots heard of the fatall sentence that was pronounc'd against her with an intrepid and undaunted heart she said as an Author of credit hath it Angli in suos Reges subinde caedibus saevierunt ut neutiquam novum sit si etiam in me ex eorum sanguine natam itidem saevierint If the English have been often so cruell in the slaughter of their own Kings it is no new thing then that they have grown so cruell to me that am descended of their blood What a horrid and destructive conjuration was that subterranean plot of the Gunpowder Treason so bloody a designe no age can parallell It was like the wish of Caligula who wish'd the peeple of Rome had had but one neck that he might cut it off at one blow He had it onely in wish but these had a reall attempt to blow up not onely the blood Royall but all the Nobility and chief Gentry of the Kingdom And Guido Faux who was to set fire to the powder did shew so little sign of feare and repentance that he boldly said It was none but the great Devill of Hell who had discovered the plot and hindred him from the execution of it that God Almighty had no hand in the discovery and prevention of that meritorious work Which if it had taken effect one of the Conspirators sayd it would have satisfied for all the sins of his whole life had he liv'd a thousand yeers after And whereas my Noble Baron you travelled in your highstrain'd and smooth Oration through all the Shires of England and pointed at some things extraordinary in every one of them you shall find that they have as many blemishes as they have blessings When you extoll the Province of Cornwall so much you should also have made mention of their Pyrrhocoracas their Sea-theeves and Pirates which are so thick as choughes among them And whereas you magnifie Drake so much he was no better then a Corsary or a Skimmer of the Seas and an Archpyrate who notwithstanding there was an Ambassador here resident from Spain and a firm peace twixt the two Crownes yet was he permitted to steal and robb by land as well as by Sea among the subjects of the King of Spain Nor did he exercise cruelty on the Spaniards and Indians only but upon his own Countrymen as for example when he landed at Port San Iulian and finding a Gallowes there set up by Magellan he hang'd up by his own power a gentleman better then himself which was Mr. Iohn Doughty meerly out of envy because he might not partake of the honor of his Expeditions You praise Devonshire and the Town of Exeter especially about which there growes nothing but thin Oates and eares without grains in many places but you should have remembred that whereas Henry Duke of that City had married Edward the fourths Sister yet in tattered raggs and barefooted he was forc'd to begge his bread up and down in Flanders Whereas you speak also of Dorsetshire you should have call'd to mind the tyranny of King Henry the third against de Linde for killing one of his Dear which was made a Hart in White Forrest for which he was not onely amerc'd in a great sum of money but the Tenants of those Gentlemen that hunted with him were condemn'd to pay every year such a tax call'd White heart Silver every year to the Exchequer You passe also over Portland a poor naked Iland without Woods or any kind of Fuel but the ordure of beasts which they use for fyring For Somersetshire what huge tracts of wast grounds are found there up and down without Inhabitants which makes it so subject to theeves and Robbers Touching Hampshire what a large act of sacriledge did King William commit there by demolishing divers Churches and takeing away the Glebes from God and men the space of thirty miles and upwards making it a wild Forrest to plant and people the Country with bruite beasts useful only for
Paraphrastically thus in English Whether thy choice or chance thee hither brings Stay passenger and wayle the fate of Kings This little stone a gâ—…eat Kings heart doth hold Who rul'd the fickle French and Polaques bold Whom with a mighty warlike host attended With fatal steel a couled Monster ended So frayl are even the highest earthly things Go passenger and wayle the happ of Kings Now though that nefarious conjuration of the Ligue was partly dissipated by the fortitud and felicity of Henry the 4th yet this inundation settling it self so long upon the fair continent of France left a great deal of scruffy odd dreggish stuff behind it as it happens often when the pestilence ceaseth the infection may a long time continue in beds and clothes For though it happen'd 22. yeers after yet it was by one who was impell'd by the Genius of the old Ligue and he must needs go whom the devil drives that Henry the fourth was kill'd by Ravillac so in revolution of not much above half an age ther were 3. Henries all Kings of France died violently two by knifes and the first by the splinter of a Lance all contemptible instruments the first was kill'd on horseback the second in his closet the third in his coach Now as all is not gold that glisters no more was the last Henry so Peerles a Prince as he is cryed up to be we know well how he shrunk from that Religion he had professed nere upon forty yeers how it was his common practise to lye 'twixt other mens sheets what a nomber of known natural children he left behind besides those that were father'd by others We know how he repudiated his first wife of better Extraction then himself and being all gray maried a young Princesse to whom he mought have bin a granfather for age We know also how he wrought Birons head to be chop'd off and others who were the chief that put the French Crown upon his head How he broke with Queen Elizabeth of England in the performance of many promises who had done him such signal courtesies c. I will conclude this period of my discourse with a proverb worth the knowledg Quand Italie sera sans poison Angleterre sans trahison Et la France sans guerre Lors sera le monde sans Terre When Italie doth poyson want And Traytors are in England scant When France is of Commotions free The World without an Earth shall be I com now most noble Auditors to the third Eryâ—…nis or Furie of France Injustice Injustice and this fury compar'd to the first may change places with her and take the precedency ther is nothing so great an opposit and profess'd enemy to the Queen of Vertues as Injustice she is covetous revengeful and ambitious in the superlatif degree yet she goes commonly under the holy and wholsom name of Justice wherwith she doth vayl and varnish all her actions and yet while she palliats her proceedings she doth perpetrat a world of mischiefs of rapine of tyrannical exactions and extorsions with a thousand villanies more she spares the nocent and so wrongs the innocent nay she spils the bloud of the guiltlesse oftentimes and swallowes bribes by gobbets Her brain is alwaies at work to find new Monopolies new projects new devices to rack and rend money to grind the face and excoriat the poor peasan that she leaves him neither eyes to bewayl nor toung to bemoan his misery This Henry the 4th found to be true for he observ'd that ther was a double tribute us'd to be payed one to the King the other to his Officers but the first was made intolerable by the second so that it was impossible but that both Prince and peeple â—…hold be abus'd wherof in the last civil warrs ther was a notable instance happen'd in a president of Normandy who being inordred to raise 30000. Crowns upon the Reformists it was discover'd that he had levied 300 thousand crowns in lieu of the 30. But among other ocasions and bayts of Injustice in France the nundination and sale of Judiciary offices which lye prostant for him who gives most is one of the greatest and dishonorablest for it is lawful for him who buyes to sell again Insomuch that it often falls out that they who buy by detayl do sell again in grosse Others clean contrary do buy in grosse and sell by detayl as Butchers use to do in buying a beast for the slaughter whom they afterwards cut into parts and haply make one quarter to pay for the whole It is recorded by a modest Author that in the compasse of 20. yeers ther came to the Kings coffers above 26. millions of crownes this way And they wold justifie this by the example of the Venetians who to support the war they had against Lewis the twelfth they rais'd 5. millions by selling Offices by outcry under a spear to the highest bidder and by this way they were said to have levied 100. millions since to preserve S. Marks bank from breaking But the rate of Offices in France is mounted now to its highest pitch La vente des Offices aujourdhuy est montés a sa periode A President 's or Attorney Generals place is valued at about 20000. franks 2000. l. sterling which the poor client in a short time payes treble again It was a brave law of Theodosius and Valentinian that none shold be promoted to publique honors or Magistracies for money but for merit and that the party advanc'd shold be liable to an oath that he came to his place with clean hands without gratuity price or compromise directly or indirectly Now as Covetousnesse is sedulous so she is ingenious as appeers by the Edict of the Paulette wherby it is enacted that if the Officer doth not transmit it to another 40. daies before he dies the Office returns to the King therfore to be free of this casualty they either give the more at first or they give an annual pension wherby most of the places of Judicature in France are not onely vendible but hereditary This was the device of one Monsieur Paulet at first therfore when one hath bought an office he useth to say j'ay Paulette or j'ay payé la Paulette Besides this institory and marchandising way of handling Justice 't is incredible what multitudes of gown'd cormorants ther are in France as Advocates Proctors Scribes Clerks Solliciters who prey upon the poor Client and suck his vital spirits they are call'd the souris de Palais the mice of the Court and the Judges the ratts they are as thick as gnats and able to corrupt ten worlds Stephen Paschasius recordeth and he was a man of great ingenuity and integrity that the King of France might raise an Army of 200 thousand Scribes or Chicanears as they term common Barretors and Clerks and VVolfangas Prisbachius thinks ther are more of those in Paris alone then in all Germany which is estimated to be two parts in three larger then
and a hundred and twenty thousand granados of all sorts The Fleet stood the King in every day thirty thousand Duckets insomuch that Bernardin Mendoza the Spanish Ambassadour in France being in a private conference one day with King Henry the fourth assured him that viis modis that Fleet had stood his Master in above tenne Millions first and last from the time that she set sayl from Lisbon This Fleet look'd like a huge Forrest at Sea as she made her way Good Lord how notably did that Masculine Queen bestirre her self in viewing her Armies in visiting her Men of Warre and Ships Royall in having her Castles and Ports well fortified in riding about and in the head of the Army her self in discharging the Office of a true Pallas wearing a Hat and Feather in lieu of a Helmet Henry the fourth of France sent her seasonable notice hereof so that most of the Roman Catholiques up and down were commanded to retire to the I le of Ely a fenney place and others were secured in Bishops houses till this horrid cloud which did threaten the destruction of England should be overblown But this prodigious Fleet being come to the British seas how did the little English vessels pelt those huge Gigantick Galeons of Spain whereof those few which were left for all the rest perisht were forc'd to fetch a compass almost as far as Norway in 62. degrees and so got to Spain to bring the sad tidings what became of the rest There were Triumphs for this not onely in England but all the United Provinces over where a Medal was coyn'd bearing this Inscription on the one side Classis Hispanica The Spanish Fleet on the other side Venit â—…vit fuit She came she went she was But had the Duke of Parma come out of Flanders with his Land Army then it might have prov'd a black day to England and herein Holland did a peece of Knight-service to England for she kept him from comming forth with a squadron of Men of Warre How gallantly did the English take Cales the Key of Spain and brought home such rich plunder How did they infest the Indies and what a masse of Treasure did Drake that English Dragon bring home thence he made his Sailes of Silk and his Anchors of Silver Most noble Princes you have heard something though not the tyth that might be said of the early Piety and Devotion of the exquisite Knowledge and Learning of the Manhood and Prowesse of Great Britain but these praises that I give her is but a bucket of water cast into her Seas Now touching both King and people it is observ'd that there is such a reciprocation of love betwixt them that it is wonderfull the one swayes the other submits obeyes and contributes to the necessities and preservation of the honour and majesty of the King for which he receives protection and security Touching the Regall Authority and absolute Power and Prerogatives of the Kings of Great Britain it is as high and supreame as any Monarchs upon Earth They acknowledge no Superior but God himself they are not feudetary or homageable to any they admit no forraign jurisdiction within the bounds of their Kingdomes and herein they have the advantage of the Kings of France and Spaine yea of the Emperour himself who is in a kind of vassalage to the Pope and may be said to divide authority with him in their own Dominions No they have long time shaken off that servitude and manumitted the Crown from those immense sums which were erogated and ported from England to pay for First fruits for Indulgences for Appeales Palls and Dispensations and such merchandises of Rome How many hundred of years did England pay Tribute though it went under the name of Peter-pence to Rome think you no less than near upon a thousand from the reign of King Inas the Saxon to Henry the eighth From the Power of the Kings of Great Britain let us goe to their Justice let us descend from the Throne to the Tribunall Now such is the Divinitie of the Kings of Great Britain that they cannot doe any Injustice it is a Canon of their Common Law that the King can doe no wrong if any be done it is the Kings Minister the Judge Magistrate or Officer doth doe it and so is punishable accordingly such a high regard the English have of the honour of their King and such a speciall care the Kings of England have us'd to take for punishing of Injustice and corruption such a care as King Edgar had to free the Iland from Wolves and corrupt Officers are no better than Wolves which he did by a Tribute that he impos'd upon a Welsh Prince for his ranson which was to bring him in three hundred skinnes of Wolves every year this produced â—…o good effects that the whole race of Wolves was extirpated in a short time so that it is as rare a thing to see a Wolf now in England as a Horse in Venice Touching the care that the Kings of England us'd to have to enrich their subjects hath been us'd to be very great and to improve the common stock Edward the third that Gallorum malleus the hammer of the French he quell'd them so was the first who introduced the art of making of Cloth into England whereby the Exchequer with the publique and private wealth of the Kingdome did receive a mighty increment for Wooll is the Golden Fleece of England and the prime Staple-commodity which is the cause that by an old custome the Judges Masters of the Rolls and Secretaries of State in Parliament time doe use to sit upon Woolsacks in the House that commodum lanarum ovium non negligendum esse Parliamentum moneatur that they put the Parliament in mind that the commodity of Wool and Sheep be not neglected The Swede the Dane the Pole the German the Russe the Turk and indeed all Nations doe highly esteem the English cloth The time was that Antwerp her self did buy and vend two hundred thousand English cloths yearly as Camden hath it And great and antient are the priviledges that the English have in Belgium for since the year 1338 which is above three hundred yeares agoe when Lewis Malan Earl of Flanders gave them very ample immunities in the Town of Bruges since which time it is incredible how all kind of commerce and merchantile affaire did flourish among the Flemins for which they were first obliged to the English for the English Wooll hath been a Golden Fleece also to the Flemins as well as the English themselves because it was one of the principal causes of enlarging their Trade whereunto the Duke of Burgundy related when he established the order of the Golden Fleece Guicciardin makes a computation that the Traffique and Intercourse betwixt England and Flanders amounted to twelve millions yearly where of five was for woollen manufactures What an Heroique incomparable Princesse was Queen Elizabeth who wore the English Crown and
underneath Touching the large Province of York whereas you averre that Constantine and his Mother Helen were Britaines and born there Nicephorus makes a question of it and would have them to be of Bithynia Towards Richmond there are such squalid uncouth places and horrid Mountaines that the English themselves call them the Northern Alpes and there be such roaring streames of water which rush out of them that the inhabitants name them Hell-becks that is Infernal or Stygian Rivers Now for Scotland Good Lord what a pittifull poor Country is it It were no petty kinde of punishment to be banisht thither for it is a Country onely for those to dwell in that want a Country and have no part of the earth besides to dwell upon In some parts the soyl is such that it turns trees to stones and wheat to oats apples to crabbs and melons to pumpions In some places as you pass along you shall see neither bird in the aire nor beast on the earth or worm creeping on the ground nor scarce any vegetall but a black gorsie soyl a raw rheumatique air or some craggy and squalid wild disconselate hils And touching Woods Groves or Trees as Stephen might have scap'd stoning in Holland for want of stones so if Iudas had betrayed Christ in Scotland he might as one sayd have repented before he could have found out a tree to have hang'd himself upon And most noble Auditors you may make easie conjectures of the poverty of Scotland by the demeans of the Crown which scarce amount to a hundred thousand Dollars a year which you know is the ordinary Income of a German Prince and this both Boterus and Bodin do testifie who were Eagle-ey'd Inspectors into the Revenues of all Kingdomes and States And the answer which the Duke of Norfolk made Queen Elizabeth when she reprehended him for his presumption to marry the Queen of Scots doth verifie this Madam said he it is no great presumption in me to attempt this for my Revenues are not much inferiour to the King of Scotlands This induced the Queen Elizabeth to give King Iames her Godsonne and Successor a Pension every year Nor were the Revenues of the Crown of England any thing considerable till of late years that Trade began to encrease so infinitely and consequently the Customes with Suits in Law since the demolition of Abbeyes and the alienation of Church-Lands to the Crowne with the First-fruits Fines and other perquisites by Offices and Courts of Justice I say before these additions to the Crown the Revenue of the Crown of England was but very contemptible in comparison of other Princes I must confesse indeed that in these late Wars the Wealth of England as well as the Strength thereof hath wonderfully appear'd for I believe on both sides there hath been above two hundred Millions consum'd And there is now coming into this new Republique I beleeve above twelve Millions of Crownes every year And for her Strength one may say England was like a Horse she knew not her own strength till now for who would have thought that England could have put forth a hundred thousand foot and forty thousand horse all arm'd besides her power at Sea I say who could have thought it Yet there were so many in number at least betwixt King and Parliament at one time But to reflect again upon Scotland as the Country is pittifully barren insomuch that long Keale and short Keale which is a kind of Cabbidge that they can dress twenty sorts of wayes is one of their principall food besides fish and some odde fowle as the Solan Goose which is their greatest Regalo yet the Eater must stop his nose when he takes a bit into his mouth the smell is so rank and strong I say as the Country is so steril so is the people sordid and subject to vermine Good Lord what nasty little huts and holes shall you finde there up and down what dirty courts and stables above the anckle deep cramm'd with dung The sight of an ordinary Scots woman is a remedy against Lust for they are as big as Cows in the middle Nature seems to make no distinction there between the two sexes but the women commonly are as bigge limb'd as the men These short commons at home drive the men commonly abroad to seek their fortunes in Swethland Denmark and Poland where they are in such multitudes that in case of necessity the King of Poland might put in the field thirty thousand Scots Pedlars though they passe by the name of Merchants for if one can come up to a horse and a pair of panniers he presently assumes that name unto him Now though abroad the Scots are kept under a strict discipline that they cannot steal yet at home they are notable theeves and indeed the Caledonians were ever so to a proverb they goe now under the names of Mossetroupers Hear I pray what their own Country man Iohn Lesley the Bishop of Rosse speaks of them Noctu turmatim per invia loca perque multos maeandros è suis finibus exeunt interdiu in prostitutis latibulis equos viresque suas recreant donec eò tandem per tenebras quo volunt perveniant Arrepta praeda similiter noctu per circuitus devia loca dunt axat ad sua redeunt Quò quisque peritior Dux per illas solitudines anfractus praecipitia media caligine tenebris esse potest is ut ingeniâ—… excellens majore in honore habetur tanta calliditate hi valeut ut rarissimè praedam sibi eripi sinant nifi canum odoratu quorum ductu rectis semper vestigiis insequentium ab adversariis non nunquam capiantur In the night time the Scots doe use to steal forth by troups through odde invious places and divers Meanders and windings they bait in the way in some odde nook or cave where they refresh themselves and their horses untill they come unto the places they aime at where they had intelligence there was booty for them which when they have got they return by some other devious passage wheeling about until they are come to their own home He who is the most cunning conductor through these unfrequented and craggy by-places in the dark is cried up to be a very knowing man and consequently he is held in greatest esteem And so cautious crafty they are in their art this way that their prey is seldome or never taken away from them unlesse they be pursued with Dogs But these Borderers or Mossetroopers which this description aimes at are far inferiour to the Highlanders or Redshankes who sojourne 'twixt craggs and rocks who in the art of Robbery go much beyond all other insomuch that it is a Law in Scotland St quis ex aliqua illorum gente damna intulerit quicunque captus fuerit aut damna resarciat aut capite luat When any of the Highlanders commit any Robbery let the next that is taken repair the losse or suffer death I