\A/15 
 
 I ? OLj- 
 
 €mM\\ i;«tvemtg piliaicg 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 Henrg W. Sage 
 
 1891 
 
 }^..\S.H ^ ^U UJijcs' 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this bool< is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013127364 
 
WORKE FOR 
 CVTLERS 
 
PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
y-^-^qo ■?-< 
 
 <^ By the King. 
 
 
 ^ A Proclamation againfl: priuate Challenges and 
 
 Combats : With Articles annexed for the better dircftions to 
 be vfed tlierefn,and for the more iudiciall proceeding agamft Offenders. 
 
 Hcflaughterswiiicli Wcfindto hauc bene ftrangely multiplied and 
 
 enntafeixntDereiiitnHnies, b^tije bolDneCTeibtiuijmanf affl>utrubi(cts 
 tabc, tocttalmgeanf manintottic JFulD, toibacDs uoom tbercatf citt)et 
 gcuDgeo:man(eint6nrnitnDs,tinDcrtl)ep;eteictofIiiuufatnontop;ettnseo 
 iti;ongs,n)ftl)anc(mpliu(ngaiDentt)ecof ttje )latties,o;Cinn^agiStatejr; 
 batKiiiooueDil3,outofttiecmDetcartU)l)icl)nsetatitofi3[>nciovaU&ub> 
 Kcts Hues, to enter into fonic rpeenie toucfc fo; tl)e Qoppfng of a flame tbat 
 bleeos botl) uicclTantlp , anbtntbatblp. Jf 02 to fpcaiu ttuetl) ,to U>t)at put-- 
 portrccuettie !Laibe0of <SoD,tDep>auiGonail InQcnctfonsofnitn.anbtlje 
 coiitrcofo;bfnat(e3lulhceintl)eConinionn)ealcO (ttiDeidet usee teTpecttlie Court oFChurainr, 
 o; tl)eCii)iU Coarts, ) if it be free fo{ Sinbfctts outofti)eDilleniper of tijcirolbne biQempereO ton: 
 cnts,e(tf)er to rate tbequaiit; of die ib;ong fuppofeo.oiiOr Canflaaion tljat belongs to (t; 25eGbett, 
 it mere great pittictQat fo man; 3)nDgemcnts as (ti otQer tQtnge (beib granule anb moDetatfon, 
 n)oulb be fo Orangelp beiUitcDeb, anb as It mere entQanieb m tt)is buioe niitl) tlie berr bxgges of 
 Circcs Cup,(tran(ro;nimg tonGDetantin into panton.reafon Into appettte,anb men into beaUs )as 
 to tl) infte tbat aiif graine of notib of reputation o; true bonour, tan be b;atbnr out of an; ait tjjat 
 isabfoliittlr repugnant to all rncl)!LaU)es(afa)elia)iwnc as l)umane)a8ni)apbotb3CleUglong 
 anb tdoluf es. Soi as no niiin actonipts Ots armour of bigb p;oofe , befoje it 6aue bene tneb b? 
 dbotno mo)eate(0encienieueaeemcD fojtbeirbaiourbvtbcgreaterpartof gfbbie lenfonrs at 
 tl)is Dat>,tt)at oanenot ainioft afToone as tcer tan bolb a S>ibo;D In tbetr bano, put tbenilielnes bp« 
 on tbeir pjoofe, citbet m s.Gcorgcsfielbs, o; at Fmsbury.ibitbout tbe leaa rcfpett to tbr^nlHteortbe 
 gcounbtbatlbonlbmaaegoobtbeputriKto; euent oftbtquarrcll. 
 
 nse atenot (gnojantin ibbatbcgrccaangbtetsbpon pjluateCbailcnges an ranbcb b;tbe 
 9.an)es of tbe lanb, (bouifbeucr itiiuric be mabetbe madte) no; bolb earneftmanpbnOe petCons 
 arctonmftetbeit o)bneibiiiSiibrolutein (bmcpoint, (ince tiierbnoib notbp n)battalonro)p;e! 
 tente to tommanb m all , no; boib cunninglifromeargue fo; otnirc ofCbailenges.b; imputing 
 n)cRiicntire(astl)evn)oulouaueUsapp]ebeno) totbeUatbesanbSitatntesoftbelSeainu ; in 
 tbat tbcp ro;beatc eltb tt ou t of mreitribilitie o; neglen, to glue fntiRattion to Come tertaint tennes 
 anbrcp;ocbes,asro;erAnipletotbatoftbe3lpe,tbbltbtbttuaonieanbtonllmttfonoftbeDaves 
 m iDbitb ttiec Hue bath niattbcD ttiib tboft n);ongs ftat are rcputeb to be mod tro;bltant : f o; 
 ibougb no (ijinate eballtnsc to tbe peril of a lo^alldnbittts life,be eitbcr tttQ o; conipatteu Ibltb 
 
 Reduced Facsimile of frit page of King James Vs Proclamation A.D. 1613. {From 
 a photograph by Mr George Clinch, with permission of the Society of Antiquaries.) 
 
WORKE FOR CVTLERS 
 
 Or A Merry Dialogue betweene 
 Sword, Rapier and Dagger. 
 
 Acted in a Shew in the famous Universitie of Cambridge a.d. 1615. 
 Edited, with Historical Prologue and Glossarial Epilogue, 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT FORBES SIEVEKING, 
 
 F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S., S.S.C, and Author of "The Praise of Gardens." 
 With Introductory Note by 
 
 Dr a. w. ward, 
 
 Facsimiles of Proclamation of 1613, and Two Play Bills. 
 
 It.is a common practice nowadayes amongst a sort of shifting companions, that 
 runne through euery art, and thriue by none, to leaue the trade of Nouerint whereto 
 they were borne, and busie themselues with the indeuors of art. 
 
 Nash's Address prefixed to Greene's Arcadia or Menaphon. 
 
 London : 
 
 C. J. Clay and Sons, 
 
 Cambridge University Press Warehouse, 
 
 Ave Maria Lane 
 
 1904 
 
''I'h.- 
 
 \fTftn:^ 
 
 aonDon: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 
 
 AVE MARIA LANE. 
 
 ffilaagol!): so, WELLINGTON STREET. 
 
 tLeipjfs: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
 
 i^tlB lotk: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 IBomlas an* CtslcuttB: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 [AH nights reserved] 
 
 X^ 
 
TO THE GENTLEMEN STUDENTS OF THE FAMOUS 
 UNIVERSITIE OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 and to the Fellows of Trinity Hall and the Royal Historical Society, 
 who, as shewn in the two Play Bills, most hospitably welcomed 
 "Worlce for Cutlers" back to dramatic life. 
 
A sweet touch, a quick venew of wit, — snip snap, quick and home ! 
 
 Love's Labaur'i Lost. 
 
 Fungar vice cotis, acutum 
 Reddere quae femirn valet exsors ipsa secandi. 
 
 Horace. 
 
 Yet in writing this book, some men will marvel perchance, why that I, being an 
 unperfect Shooter, should take in hand to write of making a perfect Archer : the 
 same man, peradventure, will marvel how a whetstone, which is blunt, can make 
 the edge of a knife sharp. 
 
 Then in fence also, men are taught to go about that thing, which the best of 
 them all knoweth he shall never attdn unto. 
 
 Roger Ascham's Toxofhilus, 1545. 
 
AT TRINITT HALL, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 (by tht eeurUtp q^ tht Nattir and FtUom) 
 
 This present Thursday, July 23rd. 1903, at 4 o'clock 
 
 Will be Presented Tudor Sword-Play by Captain Alfred 
 
 HurroN, F.S.A,. and Mr T. H. Totnbee. 
 and will be Re-Presented WORKE FOR CVTLERS, a 
 Jacobean Dialogue (last " Acted in a Shew in the Famous 
 Universitie of Cambridge" a.d. 1615) revived by A. Forbes 
 SlEVBKINO, F.S".A 
 and will be Performed A Consort of Music by English 
 Composers of the Elizabethan period upon the Lute, the 
 Virgmals, and the Treble and Bass Viols, under the direction 
 
 of Mr A^OLD DOLUBTSCH. 
 
 1. Pavan and Galliard for the Treble Viol, Baas Viol and Viiginala: 
 
 " The Lord of SaHtbury" W^iam Byrd. 
 
 Treble Viol: Mr Arnold DolmOteh. 
 Bomb Viol: lUiu Mabel Johtuton. 
 VirginaU: Miaa Kdly. ■ 
 
 2. Broad Sword and Buckler. 
 
 3. Two Pieces for the Baas Tiol 
 
 accompanied by the Virginals: 
 I "A TuM." 
 
 iL "Hearts EcueT AnonymouM. 
 Mi8» Mahd Johnston at^ Mr 
 Arnold DolTnetteh. 
 
 4. Dagger v. Unarmed Man. 
 
 6. Two Pieces for the Lute: 
 
 I -The Bttffem." 
 
 ii " Canaries." AnonynunUi 
 Mr Arnold DolmeUeh. 
 Two Songs accompanied by tiie Lute: 
 
 i. "o waio wmo." 
 
 ii. " Have yo^t eeen but a whyte IMve grow' Anmynwtu. Words by 
 Ben Joniton. 
 Mias Van Wagner and Mr Arnold Dolmettfh, 
 
 Q. WOBKE FOR CTTLEBS : or a Meny Dialogue betweene 
 
 Sword Mr A. O. Rou. 
 
 Rapier Mr M. Compton Mackerme. 
 
 Dagger Mr A. Forbes Sieveking. 
 
 7. Two pieces for the Treble Viol accompanied by the Vbginals : 
 
 L " Fortune.' 
 
 U. "Green Steeves." Anonymous. 
 Mr Arnold Dolmetsch and Miss Mabd Johnston, 
 
 8. Case of Rapiers. 
 
 PafM : Bluten a ud V. B. Bnxnncs. 
 
 9. Two Fantazies for Two Viols: 
 
 L Fantazie. 
 
 "A^onso Coperario." 
 ii "La Cacda." 
 
 Thomas Morl^. 
 
 10. Bapler and Dagger. 
 
 11. A Song accompanied by Two 
 
 Viols and the Virginals: 
 " Mistress Mine." Anonymous. Words by Shakespeare, 
 Miss Van Wagner, Mr Arnold Dotm/etsch, Miss Mabel Johnston and 
 Miss Kelly. 
 
 DEUS SCRVET REOEM ET REGNUM 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Mr Forbes Sieveking's valuable contribution to a 
 field of litef-ary research which notwithstanding its 
 many attractions still remains relatively neglected needs, 
 I am sure, no commendation on my part. To begin 
 with, this scholarly edition, alike instructive and sug- 
 gestive, of a very curious and very creditable specimen 
 — shall I say of University wit or of wit suitable for 
 University consumption ? — will be welcomed by many 
 Cambridge readers as a pleasant reminiscence. Last 
 summer, the performance of Worke for Cutlers, when 
 Sword, Rapier and Dagger carried on their subtle 
 contention in the open, set the crown upon the pleasant 
 hospitalities of a Long Vacation afternoon spent in 
 the congenial surroundings of Trinity Hall. And, 
 remembering how near we were to Clare and Trinity 
 and St John's, some of us could not on the occasion 
 repress the wish that in these days, when there is so 
 much theatre of one kind or another, 'shews' bringing 
 to mind the polite recreations of our predecessors were 
 more frequent ; and that , the revival in loco of this 
 'merry dialogue' might lead to the reproduction of 
 some full-blown specimens of a far from insignificant 
 literary growth — our native academical drama. Worke 
 
12 Introductory Note 
 
 for Cutlers dates from a period in our University history 
 signally memorable in respect of its efforts in this 
 direction ; for it was printed in the very year of the 
 famous royal visit to Cambridge, during which among 
 other plays Ignoramus and Albumazar were performed ; 
 and, when one comes to think of it, Oliver Cromwell, 
 who is fabled to have filled a part in a much earlier 
 academical comedy, only came up a year or so too late 
 to have a chance of playing Sword. But the savour of 
 this dialogue is of Court and Town as well as of the 
 University ; or perhaps it might be said that its matter 
 is of the former, though its manner makes special 
 appeal to the kind of trained intelligence necessarily 
 abounding in the Universities and in the Inns of Court. 
 Mr Forbes Sieveking has ventured on a highly ingenious 
 conjecture which suits both ingredients in the product ; 
 but though I have every reason for welcoming any 
 addition to the literary reputation of Thomas Heywood, 
 I must for the present be content with advising that 
 this Dialogue be placed in the Library of my College 
 as a 'doubtful' work of one of its worthies. Thomas 
 Heywood would have been capable of this tour de force, 
 no doubt; for his range was wide, and his versatility 
 was part, though not the most characteristic part, of 
 himself. 
 
 The historical value of this little piece is by no 
 means trifling; for, as Mr Forbes Sieveking has made 
 clear. King James I.'s Edict against Duels gives its point 
 to the discussion, and this Edict marks' an important 
 stage in the gradual evolution of a social reform for 
 which there is reason enough to bless the Pacific King's 
 
Introductory Note 13 
 
 name. The literary characteristics of the dialogue are 
 on the surface, but they deserve attention for their own 
 sake. Just as so large an amount of professorial insight 
 into the entire philosophy and art of the practice of 
 single combat was sure sooner or later to lead to its 
 ultimate suppression as a national institution or custom 
 — so an excess of verbal wit which overlaid everything 
 with its too well-meant efforts could not but stifle what 
 dramatic possibilities there lay in such a dialogue. In 
 truth it is best enjoyed in print; and to do itself full 
 justice, it needs the expenditure of technical and anti- 
 quarian lore which it has been fortunate enough to 
 receive at the hands of its present editor. 
 
 A. W. WARD. 
 
 Peterhouse Lodge, 
 March, 1904. 
 
9Xo^al ^i0torual ^ocietp. 
 
 At the Sail of tha Honourable Society of Gray'* Inn, 
 
 By ptrmiaion of tht Tnatvrer, Edward Diaji, Eiq., CJB^ and 
 WatUn 0/ thx Bench 
 
 On Thureday, January 7th, 1904, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 
 
 A Concert of Seventeenth Century English Music wiB be performed 
 
 by Mr. W. A, BozAU. and Mr. W. SoTCtipra (Violins), Mr. J. 
 
 Amsell (Viola), Mr. B. Pattebsoh Pabkes (Violoncello), and 
 
 Miss Enid Qabeu. (Singer) ; 
 Tudor Snord-Flay will be presented by Captain CiBiL 0. R. 
 
 Matihet, FSA., and Mr. T. H. Totnbee; 
 And a Jacobean Dialogue, entitled WORKE FOB CUTLEES, 
 
 first acted at the University of Cambridge a.d. 1615, irill be 
 
 revived under the direction of Mr. A. Foebes Sietekuio, F.S.A., 
 
 F.R.Hi8t.S> 
 
 1. Music from the Masque 
 "Cupid and Death," by 
 Matthew Locke (1628- 
 1677). 
 
 II. firoali Jitoorti anii Bucltltr, 
 
 agafnst Broali Stoorl) 
 anh Saggtr, as taufbt 
 bp (jCtorst Mlbn in 
 bit "^aratorxof m> 
 
 Untt," 1599* »*M Juob Snlor'i '■ KfloiUlohci FMbtboah," iei> 
 
 III. Ayre, Corant, and Saraband, by John Jenidns {15Q2-1678). 
 
 IV. Miss Enid GabeU: 
 
 (a) "Dear, thy face ii Heaifn tome." 1 Henry Lawes, 
 
 {b) " Go, young man, let my heart alone." ] 1658. 
 
 V. a Cadt of Ktifine (right ant Itft bants) anartlng to Vlnttntia 
 
 dablolo. ble ^ractlst. i!9s. 
 
 VI. Music from " Cupid and 
 
 Death," by Matthnr 
 Locke. 
 VII. Pieludio, and Song-Tune 
 composed for the 
 Lute by Henry Pur- 
 cell, 1658-1699, and 
 "Canaries" (Anon.). 
 Vin. Sa])itr ant Sagger. 
 
 IX. WORKE FOR CUTLERS, or a Merry Dialogue 
 
 (Ascribed to Thomas Heywood), 
 
 Sword Mr. A. G. Rosa. 
 
 Rapier Mr. Edward G. Eliot. 
 
 Dagger. JIfr. A. Forbea Sievdang. 
 
 Pftgea Muten F. B. 8«dgwiok uid C«oil Sprigge 
 
 X. Aire and Centre Dense, by Heniy Purcell 
 
 Music from " Cupid and Death," by Matthew Locke. 
 XI. Miss Enid GabeU . 
 
 (a) When I am laid in earth. 
 
 From " Dido and Aeneas." 
 <fr) Kind Fortune snake. 
 Xll. God Save the King, by Dr. John Bull (IS6a-1628). 
 
 Henry "PurceU, 
 1675. 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 The following reprint of what, taking a hint from Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, may be called a Combat of " Wit at several Weapons," or, 
 in still earlier language, a " Wappenschaw " — is from one of the rarest 
 of early English plays, if so minute an opuscule may assert a claim to 
 so dignified a title. My attention being drawn to Worke for Cutlers 
 in the modernised version of the Harleian Miscellany (lo vols. 4°, 
 1808 — 13)', I at first naturally accepted the current belief that the 
 only known copy of the original (of which this is an exact line-for-line 
 and word-for-word reproduction) was the one in the British Museum. 
 
 But the bibliographical curiosity of my friend, Mr M. Compton 
 Mackenzie of Magdalen College, Oxford, discovered another example 
 in the Library of Worcester College, and the courtesy of its Librarian, 
 Mr H. A. Pottinger, has enabled me to identify a twin copy, alike in 
 all respects. — The first reprint with modernised spelling was given in 
 vol. X. of the Harleian Miscellany under the editorship of Thomas 
 Park, with the following brief introduction : — 
 
 That punning species of gladiatorial wit, with which the following dramatic 
 dialogues abound, is likely to have procured them academical admirers, in the time 
 of our first James, when scarce a word — 
 
 "to royal favour had pretence 
 But what agreed in sound, and clashed in sense." 
 
 The particular occasion which introduced these pieces as parts of a University 
 shew does not appear : but they are curious specimens of the taste of a former age in 
 its scholastic entertainments. 
 
 1 It is not in Oldys's original edition in 8 vols., 4", 1744 — 6. 
 
1 6 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 It was next, I believe, reproduced (evidently from the copy of 1615) 
 by Mr Charles Hindley with other tracts, under the general title of 
 Miscellanea Antiqua Anglkana and the better known sub-title of The 
 Old Book Collector's Miscellany^ 3 vols. (Reeves and Turner). In vol. 2 
 is also given another Merry Dialogue on precisely similar lines, evidently 
 from the same hand, or some other deliberately imitating it — the very 
 turns of the sentences and the expressions and phrases bearing a close 
 resemblance. Its full title is as follows : — " A Merry Dialogue between 
 Band, Cuffe and RuiF. — Done by an excellent wit, and lately acted in a 
 Shew in the famous Universitie of Cambridge. London, printed by 
 W. Stansby for Miles Patrick and are to be sold at his Shop neare Saint 
 Dunstone's Churchyard in Fleet Street, 1615" (11 pp.). This is also 
 contained in the same vol. of the Harleian Miscellany^. 
 
 But between these two issues oi Worke for Cutlers^ allusion had been 
 made to it in an able and original article in the Retrospective Review^ as 
 follows : — 
 
 The Returne/rom Parnassus was called by its Author a Shoiv. In 1615 another 
 was performed, entitled Worke for Cutlers. .Ms author is unknown, and the interlude 
 itself almost equally so ; it may be classed among the very scarcest of the early 
 English dramas^. 
 
 The title may have been inspired by Thomas Dekker's Worke for 
 Armor ours : or The Peace is broken (1609), from which I take the 
 following extract bearing upon our subject : 
 
 " Cutlers and Armorers have got more by them (the Hollander and 
 
 1 The Second Edition (also in 1615) is called '■'■Exchange Ware and the Second 
 Hand, viz. Band Ruffe and Cuffe, lately cut, and now newly deamed up, or a 
 Dialogue, acted in a Shew in the Famous Universitie of Cambridge. The Second 
 Edition. London. Printed by W. Stansby for Myles Patrick, and are to be sold 
 at his Shop, neere Saint Dunstanes Church Yard, in Fleet Street. 1615. 
 
 * The Retrospecti-ve Revieiv, 1825. Vol. XII. p. i, Art. "The Latin Plays acted 
 before the University of Cambridge." (For this reference, and for several other 
 valuable ones, I am indebted to Mr J. Bass Mullinger, the latest and most 
 philosophical historian of the University, whose chapter on the Academic Drama 
 is, like the rest of the work, fiiU of original research and critical insight.) 
 
Prologue 1 7 
 
 the Spaniard) within these few yeares, then by any fowre Nation 
 (besides them) in Christendome all their whole Hues." 
 
 A few words of speculation in regard to the unknown author may 
 perhaps be allowed me. Having no reputation for historical scholarship 
 to jeopardise, I venture to hazard the daring opinion that this Merry 
 Dialogue may be from the pen of no less a dramatist than Thomas 
 Heywood himself. So much for irresponsible free-lancedom in dogmatic 
 criticism — credo, ergo est. Having, however, a certain respect for 
 what amongst lawyers is called " the weight of evidence " (with 
 whatever levity of argument it may be adduced), I feel it desirable to 
 give my sparse reasons as concisely as possible for the faith that is 
 in me. 
 
 X. There is evidence that Thomas Heywood was at one time a 
 resident at Cambridge ; and it is probable that he was a member of 
 Peterhouse. Wm Cartwright says definitely that he was a Fellow of 
 that College. 
 
 By Heywood's own confession, (in the Prefiice to the English 
 Traveller), he had a hand in no less than 220 plays. "This tragic 
 comedy, (being one reserved amongst 220) in which I had either the 
 entire hand or at least a main finger, coming accidentally to the press." 
 Moreover he was notoriously careless of his own fame, living or 
 posthumous, although he is unwilling to let the play in question pass as 
 '■^Filius Populi — a Bastard without a father." He continues, " True it is that 
 my plays are not exposed to the world in Volumes, to bear the title of 
 works (as others)" — Charles Lamb comments "he seems to glance at Ben 
 Jonson " — one reason being that " many of them by shifting and change 
 of companies, have been negligently lost — others of them are still 
 retained in the hands of some actors who think it against their peculiar 
 profit to have them come in print, and a third that it never was any 
 great ambition in me to be in this kind voluminously read." 
 
 Upon this, Charles Lamb, who first threw open to us moderns the 
 gates of the rich and royal domain of Elizabethan drama, makes this 
 further remark : — 
 
 SI. 2 
 
1 8 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Of the xio pieces which he here speaks of as having been concerned in, only 25, 
 as enumerated by Dodsley, have come down to us, for the reasons assigned in the 
 pi-eface. The rest have perished, exposed to the casualties of a theatre. Haywood's 
 ambition seems to have been confined to the pleasure of hearing the players speak his 
 lines while he lived. It does not appear that he ever contemplated the possibility of 
 being read by after ages. What a slender pittance of fame was motive sufficient to 
 the production of such Plays as the English Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and 
 the Woman Killed luith Kindness ! Posterity is bound to take care that a writer 
 loses nothing by such a noble modesty. 
 
 Heywood, indeed, seems to have regarded it almost as a dishonest 
 act to print his plays as well as to act them ; for in the Preface to his 
 Rape of Lucrece (fourth impression 1630) he makes the following 
 explanation : 
 
 Though some have used a double sale of their labours, first to the stage, and 
 after to the press, for my own part, I here proclaim myself ever faithful to the first, 
 and never guilty of the last; yet since some of my plays have, unknown to me, and 
 without any of my direction, accidentally come into the Printers hands, and therefore 
 so corrupt and mangled, copied only by the ear, that I have been as unable to know 
 them, as ashamed to challenge them. 
 
 And in the Prologue to a play of his, entitled If you know not me^ you 
 know nobody^ (1623 edition), Heywood has the following lines : 
 
 'Twas ill nurst 
 And yet receiv'd as well perform'd at first, 
 Grac'd and frequented; for the cradle age 
 Did throng the seats, the boxes, and the stage, 
 So much, that some by stenography drew 
 The plot, put it in print, scarce one word true: 
 And in that lameness it has limp'd so long. 
 The author now, to vindicate that wrong. 
 Hath took the pains upright upon his feet 
 To teach it walk, so please you sit and see it. 
 
 2. In Heywood's Apologiefor Actors dated 1612 we read in book i : 
 
 In the time of my residence in Cambridge I have seen tragedyes, comedyes, 
 historyes, pastorals, and Shelves publicly acted in which the graduates of good place 
 and reputation have been specially parted. 
 
 ' See p. 45 for ' Nobody ' tvrice. 
 
Prologue 1 9 
 
 (Note that he uses the very word Shewe applied to this Merry 
 Dialogue.) 
 
 3. Hey wood was the author of a play called Cutting Dick now 
 lost (see Epilogue, p. 62). 
 
 In the text (page 42) Rapier says " Did you nere heare of Cutting- 
 Dicke, this is the very same man." 
 
 This, I contend, has very little point, unless Heywood was either 
 the author of Worke for Cutlers, the player of the part of "Sword" — 
 or both, 
 
 4. As Heywood was one of Her Majesty's (Queen Anne's) Players, 
 in which capacity he attended her funeral, nothing is more probable 
 than that he may have been in James I.'s train, when he visited 
 Cambridge in 1615 ; and if he were the author of the play (which in 
 certain respects may be regarded as a " skit " upon James I.'s Edict 
 against Duels), there would be every reason for his not acknowledging 
 the authorship ; and the possible suppression of copies when printed after 
 the performance would account for their rarity. 
 
 5. In others of Hey wood's few extant works I find several of the 
 puns and expressions recurring — e.g. that on " Matches " in his play If 
 you know not me, you know nobody, 1605. 
 
 I think I have met with a better commodity than Matches, and my master 
 cannot say but he hath met with his match. 
 
 And later on in the same play the word "match" is again punned upon. 
 
 6. ''Sfoot and God's foot are fevourite oaths with Heywood, whereas 
 Shakspeare, I believe, only once employs this form of strong speech *. 
 
 7. The Dagger in Cheap is not of frequent mention in the 
 contemporary dramatic literature, but I do find it spoken of elsewhere 
 by Heywood: e.g. 2nd Prentice in If you know not me &c. (1605). 
 p. 76 post. 
 
 1 I owe this instance (not given in Littledale's edition of Dyce's " Glossary " 
 1902) to Mr F. G. Fleay, who from memory referred me to Troilus and Cressida 
 Act II. Sc. 3, Thersites, " 'S foot, I'll learn to conjure and raise devils." 
 
20 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 The "Dagger" in Holborn was a far better known hostelry and more 
 often alluded to. In the notes I give my reasons for believing that 
 " the Dagger in Cheap " was not in " Cheapside " itself as usually 
 asserted by later commentators, but in Foster Lane, Cheapside (though 
 in Farringdon Ward) ; and I fancy that " Cheap " is always, or nearly 
 so, used as a district or ward, and not as an individual street. 
 
 8. I seem to trace in Hey wood's earlier extant works an 
 enthusiasm for the sword and the exercise of arms (notably in his 
 Fmre Prentises of London^ first printed in 1632 but written 15 or 
 16 years before, thus bringing it very near the date of our Dialogue) 
 which is in keeping with this supposed authorship : thus for instance : 
 
 Eustace. " I am a Grocer : Yet had rather see 
 
 A faire guilt sword hung in a velvet sheath 
 Than the best Barbary Sugar in the world " 
 or : — 
 
 "I would fast from meate and drinke a Summers day 
 To see Swords clash, or view a desperate fray " 
 or again : — 
 
 " I am no sooner got into the Fencen-Schoole, 
 To play a venew with some friend, I bring ; 
 But Eustace, Eustace, all the street must ring." 
 
 I admit that the aggregate of these crumbs of collateral argument 
 does not form a solid crust of proof; but as the great Charles Darwin 
 once said to me (when I told him that a certain Doctor was com- 
 monly regarded as a Dane, because he was appointed physician to the 
 Princess of Wales on her first coming to England) : — " The world 
 accepts many things of greater importance on more slender evidence'." 
 
 As an instance of this, I find it stated in Fleay's Chronicle of the 
 English Drama (1559 — 1642) that the &iege of London is assumed to be 
 
 1 As I have no desire to figure in however distant a manner as a follower of the 
 fanatics, who by means of cyphers set common sense and literary conscience at 
 naught, I confess frankly that I do not detect any cryptic sign in the play confirming 
 my contention. 
 
Prologue 2 1 
 
 Heywood's by Collier, Halliwell, the BiograpMa Dramatica and Gildon — 
 " I know not why," comments Mr Fleay, " unless it be that in Sc. ii. 
 Hobs the Tanner says : ' Dost thou not know me ? then thou knowest 
 nobody '." 
 
 With the further remark that the following entry of the publication 
 of the Dialogue is to be found in the Stationers' Registers — 
 
 4°. Julii. 1 6 15. 
 
 Richard Meighen. Entred for his copie under the handes of Master 
 Tavernor and Master Leake Warden a little thing called Worke 
 for Cutlers \]d. 
 
 and that its printer, Thomas Creede, was also the printer of the first 
 Quartos of Richard III. (1598), Romeo and Juliet (1599) and Henry V. 
 (1600), his name being found frequently in the Stationers' Register 
 between the years iS93 and 1616' — I now leave this part of my subject 
 to the credulity and criticism of my readers. 
 
 I should have liked to adduce a few more historical and enlightening 
 facts in regard to the ancient City Gild or Company of Cutlers ; but 
 it is well known that its records, owing chiefly to the Great Fire, are 
 not capable of yielding a very fertile crop of information as to its early 
 history and connection with the Dramatis Personae of the dialogue. 
 There is the well-known passage in Stow's Survey : — 
 
 In Horsebridge Street is the Cutler's Hall. Richard de Wilehale 1195 confirmed 
 to Paul Butelar this house and edifices in the Parish of St Michael &c.... paying 
 yearly one clove of Gereflowers (gilliflowers) at Easter. They of this Company 
 were of old time divided into three arts or sorts of workmen : to wit, the first were 
 smiths, forgers of blades, and therefore called bladers, and divers of them proved 
 wealthy men. ...The second were makers of hafts, and otherwise gamishers of blades. 
 The third sort were sheathmakers, for swords, daggers and knives. In the loth of 
 Henry IV. certain ordinancies were made betwixt the bladers and the other cutlers, 
 and in the 4th of Henry VI. they were all three Companies drawn into one fraternity 
 or brotherhood by the name of Cutlers. 
 
 1 I have in my library a folio translation of Macchiavelli's Florentine History by 
 Thomas Bedingfield (the translator of Claudio Corte's Book 0/ Horsemanship) printed 
 by Thomas Creede for William Ponsonby, 159J. 
 
2 2 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 I subjoin a few more early references to them from H. T. Riley's 
 Memorials of London : — 
 
 Also, — in order to avoid deceit of the people in this behalf, be it ordained that 
 no handle of wood, except digeon shall be coloured." 
 
 Ordinances of the Cutlers from the Norman- 
 French. 3 Richard II., a.d. 1380. 
 
 Every knife is prepared separately by 3 different crafts, first the blade by Smiths 
 called Bladsmythes, the handle and the other fitting wrork by the Cutlers, and the 
 sheath by the Sheathers. 
 
 A joint petition of Cutlers and Bladesmiths shovsring that foreign 
 folk from divers parts of England counterfeited and forged the 
 marks of the Bladesmiths free of the City. 
 
 And in the same year the Articles of the Bladesmiths declared 
 
 that every person of the said trade who is a worker or maker of lance-heads, 
 swords, daggers or knives must make the points and egges thereof hard throughout 
 to stand the assay ; on pain of forfeiture thereof; also that every master shall put his 
 own mark upon his work. 10 Henry IV., a.d. 1408. 
 
 In a letter dated 28th April, 1580, from William, Lord Burleigh, to 
 the Lord Mayor, we read how : 
 
 He had caused search to be made among the Cutlers in Westminster for swords 
 and daggers exceeding the length limited by her Majesty's Proclamation. 
 
 Finding some disorders there in having blades in their shops contrary to the said 
 Proclamation, the Cutlers had excused themselves, alleging that others of the same 
 trade in London sold both swords and daggers exceeding the length prescribed. 
 He requested that search should be made, and no one permitted to have any blades 
 in their shops not reformed according to the before mentioned Order (Remembrancia 
 of the City of London) ^. 
 
 And the following passage from Greene's A Quip for an upstart 
 Courtier (1592) shows that the average Cutler's morality was not beyond 
 suspicion : 
 
 And you, cutler, you are patron to ruffians and swash-bucklers, and will sell 
 them a blade that may be thrust into a bushel ; but if a poor man, that cannot 
 
 ' For this and another reference I am indebted to Mr Charles Welch, the Guild- 
 hall Librarian, and Member of the Court of the Cutlers' Company. 
 
Prologue 23 
 
 skill of it, you sell him a Sword or a rapier new overglazed, and swear the blade 
 came either from Turkey or Toledo. 
 
 Let us now pass to the consideration of the state of duelling in 
 England prior to and at the period of our Dialogue, and the weapons by 
 which an appeal to arms in private quarrels was decided. 
 
 The duel, as is well known, sprang out of the ancient "Trial by 
 Combat," in which the weapons appointed were " Gleyve, long-swerd, 
 short-swerd and Dagger'." According to Dugdale', after the bill of 
 challenge is delivered with a gauntlet to the Court by the appellant and 
 the defendant has accepted the gauntlet and denied the point of the 
 bill, the place is appointed, and the lists and counter lists (for the 
 marshals) are set up. The appellant appeared at the east gate of the 
 lists, " where he is admitted to enter by the Marshall himself, together 
 with his Arms, Weapon, Victual, and also his Councel with him: and 
 then is brought to a certain place within the lists, where he attends the 
 coming of the Defendant." The marshal then measures the weapons, 
 administers the oaths, the lists are cleared, and the constable and 
 marshal, sitting at the King's feet, pronounce these words with a high 
 voice: Lesses (Laissez) les aller ; Lesses les alter ; Lesses les alter et faire 
 teur devoir*. 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIII. (a.d. 1540) we find first mention of 
 a corporation of the Maisters of the Science of Defence : but there is 
 a MS. in the British Museum* forming a Chronicle (believed to have 
 been compiled under Elizabeth, but commencing in the reign of 
 Edward VI.) of a recognised and chartered body, consisting of 
 
 1 Ex vetustate Codice MS. in Biblioth. Seldeniana, 
 
 2 Origtnes luridiciales, chap, xxvi., Trial by Combat in cases Civil, and chap, xxviii. 
 in cases Criminal ; and Selden, The Duello or Single Combate, 1610. 
 
 3 From a MS. book, sometime belonging to Sir Edward Wyndham, Kt, 
 Marshal of the Camp to King Henry the Eighth. 
 
 * Sloane mss., No. 2530. I was arranging for the transcription of this, in the 
 belief that only extracts had hitherto been made, when I found on referring to The 
 Sivord and the Centuries (Bk IV., chap, xxv.) that my friend. Captain Alfred Hutton, 
 had already made practically the whole accessible to his readers. 
 
24 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Masters, Provosts and Scholars, who formed a sort of College or Gild 
 of Arms, bound by indentures, oaths, " ruills and constitucons." This 
 Gild conferred degrees of proficiency upon its members after a system 
 of practical examinations, tested by competitions at each stage of their 
 professional careers. 
 
 The pardon craved for a " Scholar's Prize," in the tag at the 
 conclusion of the Dialogue, undoubtedly alludes to "the Order for 
 playinge of a Scholler's Prize," which consisted in his competing with at 
 least six scholars at the long-sword and back-sword "for a tryall or 
 proofe," before his admission as " a free Scholar " — and 7 years later he 
 was qualified to play his Provost Prize, for which promotion he had to 
 show proficiency with the two-hand sword, the back-sword and staff 
 "with all manner of Provosts," — the final degree for a Master's Prize 
 being conferred upon his showing mastery of the two-hand sword, 
 the bastard sword (sometimes now called the "hand and a half sword"), 
 the pike, the back-sword, and the rapier and dagger. The last entry 
 in the book is dated 1583, soon after which date a proclamation of 
 Elizabeth dissolved the gild, in the interests of the peace and " good 
 manners." 
 
 To take these weapons in their order of priority in the Dialogue. 
 
 The word Sword, besides its present generic meaning, implied in its 
 earlier specific sense a heavy edged weapon used almost entirely for 
 cutting or hacking, and generally wielded, or, in the case of the lighter 
 bastard sword, capable of being wielded, by two hands : and i-t is clear 
 from several passages in the text of the Dialogue, that even as late as 
 the year 161 5 the old conservative view of a two-handed sword being 
 the genuine British weapon still prevailed, and that the pointed rapier 
 was looked upon in the dubious light of a foreign parvenu. I am 
 indebted to Mr Edwin Ward' for an analysis of the Dialogue from 
 this point of view, and I venture to quote his letter at length, as it helps 
 
 1 Whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making while he was engaged in 
 cataloguing and arranging the interesting Noel Paton collection of Arms and 
 Armour in the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. 
 
Prologue 2 5 
 
 to a better understanding of the relations of the two disputants (Sword 
 and Rapier) and their umpire (Dagger) : 
 
 The very existence of this work proves what a popular topic was the relative 
 merits of these weapons at this period. In the Dialogue, I presume "Dagger" 
 represents the general public opinion, and though he acknowledges the good points of 
 both weapons, yet he evidently had strong leanings towards the classic two-handed 
 sword as representing the king of arms with a noble pedigree, though confessing 
 " Rapier is a Souldier, and a Man as well armed at all poynts as anie one." The 
 only detrimental statement Dagger makes with regard to Sword is "Away Sworde, 
 the Time was indeed when thou wast a notable Swashbuckler, but now thou art 
 growne olde Sword." I take this to mean that about the time 1615, duels or 
 contests, fought out with the large knightly two-handed sword, were of far less 
 frequent occurrence than in the previous century, owing to the handy rapier 
 having usurped the duties of the noble sword in this respect. Dagger seems to 
 regret this from a sentimental point of view; his regard for Sword comes out 
 later on in "Sworde, by the very sounding of his name, should bee the better 
 Gentleman &c.," and in the same breath "Rapier hath but one arme," meaning 
 to contrast this fact with the two hands of the sword, which he does in plain 
 words later on. This comparison, however, viz., " You know you are two- 
 handed Sworde, and Rapier has but one hand,... and yet youde have him go 
 into the Fieldes with you," seems to be the beginning of the peroration or 
 judgment of Dagger, who wishes to bring the discussion to an amicable 
 settlement in favour of the sword, and thus magnifies the discrepancy between the 
 two arms to please Sword, intending afterwards to easily "square" the tricky 
 parvenu Rapier, by telling him since duels are put down (implying of course that in 
 these he was of consequence) that he can assume the role of an elegant ornament and 
 rest in peace, but that after all for serious fighting in warfare, the sword was "the 
 weapon." One could almost imagine cheers from the ultra-conservative portion of 
 the "house" greeting this statement. The most impartial statement made by 
 Dagger is " Your both of one blood, only thers this difference, that Sword comes of 
 the elder brother, and you Rapier of the younger." I consider this statement 
 important, as Dagger admits a connection of Rapier with the true sword, two- 
 handed even, and does not look on him as a rank outsider. 
 
 I venture to endeavour to trace this suggestion in two expressions elsewhere in 
 the Dialogue, viz., first words of Rapier...." Nay Backe-Sword" and also " Alas I 
 haue knowne you beare a Basket Sword," Rapier of course means to be insulting, 
 but yet the word "sword" is coupled with Backe- and Basket as if usual expressions, 
 and Rapier further in these expressions insinuates that even the great Sword family 
 stepped down sometimes from their high pedestal of " two-handedness " (if this 
 
26 JVorke for Cutlers 
 
 Erinism may be permitted) to adapt themselves to the more handy form of a 
 Backsword or Basket sword; is this the transition from the science of simple 
 sweeping strokes to the intricate one of fencing? 
 
 Without laying any weight on the above statements, I think the word " sword " 
 was evidently used to designate the cutting weapon, either two-handed, or back or 
 basket variety, the firet most legitimately; the rapier, though possibly indirectly 
 connected with the parent sword, was so far removed as to Ise considered a distinct 
 weapon (thrusting being its essential point) and therefore incorrectly or loosely 
 named, when called a sword. I consider you establish a fresh point in bringing into 
 prominence the prestige of the large two-handed weapon, which seems to be 
 generally thought of as something abnormal, and not as it appears to have been, the 
 recognised standard arm of the soldier of Elizabethan and previous times. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, the Sword was personal and personified. The 
 sword of Charlemagne was called foyeuse, that of Roland Durandal, that 
 of Renaud Flambaud, that of Oliver Hauteclaire. Roland addresses his 
 sword at Roncevaux, so does Bayard after being knighted by Francis I. 
 and the Cid in the Romancero. 
 
 " La grande 6p6e a mains brille au croc de la selle, 
 La hache est sur le dos, la dague est sous I'aisselle." 
 
 Victor Hugo, Eviradnus. 
 
 The first introduction of the Rapier into England is attributed, on 
 the authority of Camden, to Rowland Yorke in the year 1587^ 
 
 1 A.D. 1579. The long fencing rapier is described in BuUein's Dialogue betiveen 
 Go'vernesse and Chirurge as a new kind of instrument. (See note in Wheatley's 
 Ben Jonson's Every man in bis Humour.) 
 
 It is "probable that Diez's solution (rejected by Littre) is right and that rapiere is 
 for raspiere, a name given in contempt, meaning a rasper or poker. Hence also 
 a proking-spit of Spaine = a Spanish rapier (Nares). Cp. Span, raspadera a raker from 
 raspar to rasp, scrape." Skeat. 
 
 In Q^I. of Hamlet, a propos the fencing scene, we find (Dowden's Edition), 
 " Mary, Sir, that yong Laertes in twelve venies (venues = bouts or thrusts) 
 At Rapier and Dagger do not get three oddes of you." 
 
 But, by the date of the following edition, the fashion had changed, foils are 
 introduced, and a " Bragart Gentleman" has developed into the Euphuistic " Water- 
 Hy " Osric. 
 
Prologue 2 7 
 
 This Yorke is commonly regarded as a traitor for having deserted 
 and fought on the Spanish side in the Low Countries, surrendering 
 a fort of which he was governor near Zutphen to the enemy. 
 Camden's account may be read in two versions, either in that of 
 Abraham Darcie's translation from the French of P. D. B. in the 
 1625 edition of Camden's Annals of Queen Elizabeth, or in the 1688 
 edition of his History of Princess Elizabeth, and I select the former for 
 quotation for the sake of its more vigorous English : — 
 
 "This Torie, borne in London, was a man most negligent and lazy, but desperately 
 hardy; he was in his time most fiimous among those who respected Fencing, having 
 been the first that brought into England that wicked and pernicious fashion to fight 
 in the Field in Duels, with a Rapier called a Tucke', onely for the thrust: the 
 English having till that very time, used to fight with Backe-swords, slashing and 
 cutting one the other, armed with Targets or Bucklers, with very broad weapons, 
 accounting it not to be a manly action to fight by thrusting and stabbing, and chiefly 
 under the waste." 
 
 As early as 1590 we find Sir John Smythe, in his Discources on matters 
 Militarie, inveighing against the preference shown by "armed men 
 Piquers " (Pikemen) who " rather weare Rapiers of a yard and a quarter 
 long the blades or more, than strong short arming Swords and Daggers... 
 which they cannot with any celeritie draw, if the blades of their swords 
 be so long." 
 
 Thus it seems clear that Sir Frederick Pollock is in the right when 
 he traces the parentage of the two-edged rapier to the " military sword 
 of all work in the form it had assumed in the first half of the i6th 
 century, lengthened, narrowed and more finely pointed''." 
 
 In introducing the fescinating and perfidious dagger, (of which the 
 author last quoted thinks the thrusting-sword is only the extension, but 
 I venture to submit that its etymology proves it an abbreviation from a 
 longer weapon), I cannot deny myself the pleasure of trying to repro- 
 
 1 "The little rapier cal'd a tucke." Verdun. To tucke= trousser (I'll "truss" 
 or skewer you). Randle Cotgrave's Diet. i6jo. 
 
 " Espee Espagnole. A Rapier or Tucke." Ibid. 
 
 2 The forms and history of the Sword. Blackwood, 1883. 
 
2 8 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 duce that fine piece of inlaid and polished prose, in which Paul de Saint 
 V ictor* eulogises this most incisive and penetrating of weapons : 
 
 "The dagger, which is a shortened glaive, or a lengthened poignard, 
 was called in the 14th century Misericord^ because, thrust at the throat 
 of an overthrown adversary, it forced him to ejaculate its name. In 
 the 1 6th century, the dagger no longer goes to war; it becomes a 
 duelling arm — terrible and traitorous; now parrying the rapier-thrust, 
 anon insidiously insinuating itself into the openings of fence, to deal the 
 adversary a 'coup de Jarnac': sometimes the dagger, naked and smooth to 
 the eye, hid within itself a trident : two little lateral blades, incorporated 
 with the central one, bifurcated under pressure of a spring hidden in 
 the shoulder. 'Twas a viper protruding its triple tongue of venom." 
 
 A very difFerent type this poignard or stiletto from the 
 
 "Long heauie Daggers, with great brauling Ale-house hilts (which were never 
 used but for private fraies and braules, and that within less than these fortie yeres 
 (i.e. 15J0 — 1590) since which time through long peace, we have forgotten all orders 
 and disciplin Militarie) they doo no waies disallow, nor find fault withall, but rather 
 allowe them for their Souldiers to weare, than short arming Daggers of convenient 
 forme and substance, without hilts, or with little short crosses, of nine or ten inches 
 the blades, such as not onely our braue Ancestors, but al other Warhke Nations, 
 both in War and peace did weare, and use*." 
 
 In conclusion, we have to say something as to the strong attitude 
 which James I. took up against duels. By constitution James was no 
 friend to steel and its uses; for although it may be an exaggeration 
 to contend that the &shion of bombastic trunks and quilted doublets 
 was entirely due to his ever-increasing fear of assassination, there is 
 reason to believe that he did not always carry out his own admonition 
 to his son in the Basilikon Doron " to wear no ordinarie armour with 
 your clothes but such as is knightly and honourable ; I mean rapier, 
 
 1 Anciens et Modernes. (Le Musee d'Artillerie.) 
 
 2 " Certain Discources written by Sir John Smythe, Knight : concerning the formes 
 and effects of diuers sorts of Weapons and other verie important matters Militarie,... 
 and chiefly of the Mosquet, the Caliver and the Zo«^-Ao<u;...and wonderful effects of 
 Archers.'''' 
 
Prologue 29 
 
 swordes and daggers " — although he certainly has the sense to include 
 fencing amongst the exercises he ' would have ' him ' to use.' As early 
 as 16 1 2 he had allowed one of his Scottish nobles to be sentenced to 
 death, (a sentence duly carried out,) for the murder of a fencing master; 
 and the measure of the King's earnestness is shown in the Proclamation 
 issued on the 13th May, 16 12, offering ;^500 for the person of the said 
 Lord Sanquir living or ;^300 for his person dead; whereas the body of 
 Robert Carlisle, a Scottish Borderer and the instrument of murder, was 
 assessed at ;^ioo living or his carcase at ;^50, so that evidently at that 
 time one Scottish Baron was equivalent to five or six Scottish Borderers: 
 but something may have been added for his being a handsome fellow, 
 and a few pounds again deducted for a " hair-scarre or cut on his lippe 
 up to his nose, which made him snuffle in his speech," whereas the 
 Lord Sanquir was " of a reasonable tall stature, pale-faced of a sallow 
 colour, a small yellowish beard, one glasse or false Eie," the outcome 
 (or the ingoing) of the rapier or dagger of the murdered man Turner. 
 Proclamation Book (Record OfKce). 
 
 The case is reported in the State Trials as 
 
 "The arraignment and Confession of the Lord Sanquire, (who being a Baron 
 of Scotland, was arraigned by the name of Robert Creighton Esqre) at the King's- 
 bench Bar, in Westminster Hall, the 27th of June, for procuring the Murder of 
 John Turner, a Master of Defence, whom he caused to be shot with a Pistol, (eunt 
 pulvere bombardico et glanditu plumbed) by one Carliel, a Scottish-man, for thrusting 
 out one of his Eyes in playing at Rapier and Dagger. 10 James I., a.d. 1612I." 
 
 Lord Sanquhar (Sanquire or Sanchar) in his defence said : 
 
 "The first motive of this fatal accident was that Turner playing with me at 
 foils, now about seven years past at my Lord Norris's House in Oxfordshire put out 
 one of my eyes, and that (as my Soul and Conscience was over-persuaded) willingly 
 and of set purpose. At the taking up of the foils I protested unto him I played but 
 as a Scholar, and not as one that would contend with a master in his own pro- 
 fession... the order whereof... is to spare the fece...I request that the king may be 
 fairly informed of the sincerity of my confession. 
 
 Sir Francis Bacon (S. G.). I conceive you have sucked those affections of 
 
 * See Wilson's account in 2 Kennett, 688. 
 
30 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 duelling in malice rather out of Italy and outlandish manners. His Majv hath shown 
 himself God's true lieutenant and that he is no respecter of persons, but English, 
 Scots, nobleman, fencer, (which is but an ignorant trade) are all to him alike in 
 respect of justice." 
 
 In 1613 we have James's famous Edict against Duels (annexed to 
 the Royal Proclamation, of which the Society of Antiquaries possesses a 
 copy' and the State Paper Office none), which Isaac Disraeli declares 
 " exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand." Indeed 
 we have James's own word for this in his later Proclamation of 25 March 
 1616 "against Steelets, Pocket Daggers, Pocket Dagges and Pistols," 
 wherein he speaks of "Our Edict proceeding from our pen" having 
 " put down and in good part mastered that audacious custom of Duellos 
 and challenges " ; but, curiously enough, he does not include the Edict 
 in the folio of his own works published in the same year. 
 
 The Proclamation plunges straightway into "The Slaughters which 
 we find to haue been strangely multiplied and encreased in these later 
 times by the boldnesse which many of Our subjects take to challenge 
 any man into the Field." The royal remedy for "the stopping of a 
 Vaine that bleeds both incessantly and inwardly " was that the striker 
 should " condemn under his own hand the saucy paradox which gives 
 liberty to gentlemen with their own swords to revenge their wrongs." 
 He was further to promise solemnly to the Lords never to offend again, 
 and be bound over for 6 months to good behaviour, during which time 
 he was to be banished from the Court : and he was moreover to be 
 subject to an action of Battery at common law: the things being "cumu- 
 lative rather than privative." — ^We give in the Epilogue (pp. 83 — 85) 
 samples of the royal argument and its expression, but it is with con- 
 
 1 "A Publication of His Ma"« Edict and Severe Censure against Private Com- 
 bats... Whether within his Highnisse Dominions or without. With the Seconds, 
 Accomplices and Adharents. Imprinted Anno 1613, at London by Robert Barker, 
 Printer to the King's most Excellent Majestie." 
 
 I desire to express my acknowledgments to the Society for permission to make, 
 and to Mr George Clinch, the Clerk to the Society, for his kindness in taking, the 
 photograph of the Proclamation reproduced. 
 
Prologue 3 1 
 
 siderable logical shrewdness that James questions why Englishmen, who 
 had imported the fashion of duelling from foreign states, were not con- 
 sequent in following their precedents, which were now turned against 
 duels'. The 'Action of Battery' finds a distinct echo in the text of 
 the Dialogue. 
 
 But it was not merely in Proclamations and Edicts that James's 
 strenuous determination to eradicate the duelling propensity showed 
 itself. At the sitting of the Starchamber, on 26th Jan., 1615, with 
 a bench consisting of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chan- 
 cellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord High Admiral, the Lord 
 Chamberlain, the Bishop of London, the Treasurer, the Comptroller 
 and the Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, the Lord Chief Justices of 
 England and the Common Pleas and the Chancellor of the Exchequer — 
 the grave question of a challenge to fight at single rapier, the length of 
 which was shown on a stick, came before the Court, which " with one 
 consent did utterly reject and condemn the opinion that the private duel 
 in any person whatsoever had any grounds of honour ; as well because 
 nothing can be honourable that is not lawful, and that it is no magna- 
 nimity or greatness of mind but a swelling and tumour of the mind 
 when there faileth a right and sound judgment^." 
 
 This case is perhaps less memorable for all the weight of intellect 
 upon the Bench, than for the fact that the charge was delivered by 
 Sir Fi-ancis Bacon, the King's Attorney General, and may be found 
 reported in Vol. 11. of his works : and from this I extract the following 
 specimens of his forensic eloquence and argument : — 
 
 " The proceedings of the great and noble commissioners martial 
 
 I honour and reverence much, and of them I speak not in any sort. But 
 
 1 In the Reeueil des Edits, Declarationi, Arrests et autres pieces concemant les Duels 
 et Rencontres, Paris, 1687, kindly lent me by Captain Cyril Matthey, F.S.A. (the 
 editor of Silver's Paradoxes of Defence), I find that in 1599 the French Court of 
 Parliament published a Judgment against Duels, followed by two edicts of the king, 
 Henri IV., in i6oi and 1609, a Declaration of Louis XIII. in 1611, another in 1613, 
 and many more in following years. 
 
 2 Cobbett's Collection of State Trials, Vol. II., p. 1046, "Case of Duels." 
 
3 2 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 I say the compounding of quarrels, which is otherwise in use by private 
 noblemen and gentlemen, it is so punctual, and hath such reference and 
 respect unto the received conceits, what is before-hand, and what is 
 behind-hand, and I cannot tell what, as without all question it doth, in 
 a fashion, countenance and authorize this practice of duels, as if it had 
 in it somewhat of right." 
 
 " But, my Lords, the course which we shall take is of far greater 
 
 lenity, and yet of no less efficacy ; which is to punish, in this Court, all 
 the middle acts and proceedings which tend to the duel, which I will 
 enumerate to you anon, and so to hew and vex the root in the branches, 
 which, no doubt, in the end will kill the root, and yet prevent the 
 extremity of law. 
 
 But for a difference to be made in case of killing and destroying 
 
 man, upon a fore-thought purpose, between foul and fair, and as it were 
 between single murder and vied murder, it is but a monstrous child of 
 this latter age, and there is no shadow of it in any law divine or human. 
 
 And of this kind was that famous example in the wars of 
 
 Naples, between twelve Spaniards and twelve Italians, where the 
 Italians bare away the victory; besides other infinite like examples 
 worthy and laudable, sometimes by singles, sometimes by numbers. 
 
 Therefore now to come to that which concerneth my part; 
 
 I say, that by the favour of the king and the court, I will prosecute in 
 this court in the cases following. If any man shall appoint the field, 
 though the fight be not acted or performed. If any man shall send any 
 challenge in writing, or any message of challenge. If any man carry 
 or deliver any writing or message of challenge. If any man shall accept 
 or return a challenge. If any man shall accept to be a second in a 
 challenge of either side. If any man shall depart the realm, with 
 intention and agreement to perform the fight beyond the seas. If any 
 man shall revive a quarrel by any scandalous bruits or writings, 
 contrary to a former proclamation published by his majesty in that 
 behalf. 
 
 Nay, I hear there be some Counsel learned of Duels, that tell young 
 men when they are before-hand, and when they are otherwise, and 
 
Prologue 3 3 
 
 thereby incense and incite them to the duel, and make an art of it. 
 I hope I shall meet with some of them too : and I am sure, my lords, 
 this course of preventing duels is nipping them in the bud, is fuller of 
 clemency and providence, than the suffering of them to go on, and 
 hanging them with their wounds bleeding as they did in France^" 
 
 We also read in a MS. letter from John Chamberlain, preserved in 
 the State Paper Office, dated 26th Feb. 1626, and addressed to the 
 Rt. Hon. Sir Dudley Carleton, Bt., Ambassador to the United Provinces 
 at the Hague : 
 
 The King was expected at the Star Chamber, whether he went the day after 
 the Terme (13 Feb.) and there is a case of Challenge twixt two youths of Ynnes of 
 Court, Christmas and BelUngham, tooke occasion to make a Speach about Duells 
 wherein he was observed to bestowe many goode words on the Spanish nation, and 
 to gall the French more, w* he since interprets to be only touching that point. I 
 heare no certaintie yet whether we shall have yt in print, the issue of all was that the 
 gentlemen (who could say little or nothing for themselves) were fined at a 1000 £ 
 apeece and imprisonment in the towre during pleasure. 
 
 And here, abruptly enough, breaks oiF my Prologue. Duels are 
 'violent delights,' which — sometimes — "have violent ends." How 
 otherwise were Baudelaire's phrase, bizarre comme le duel, or James I.'s 
 Bewitching Duels so full of felicity ? 
 
 Should any reader resent and challenge this want of ceremony, I 
 must retain a far greater lawyer — the learned Selden — who in one of 
 his many 'Titles of Honor' — The Duello — pleaded: — 
 
 1 THE CHARGE OF SIR FRANCIS Bacon KNIGHT, HIS Maiesties 
 Attoumey generall, touching Duells, vpon an informarfo« in the Star-chamber against 
 Priest and Wright. With The Decree of the Star-chamber in the same cause. 
 Printed for Robert Wilson, and are to be sold at Graies Inne Gate, and in Paules 
 Churchyard at the Signe of the Bible. 1614. 
 
 See also Spedding's Life of Bacon, Vol. iv., pp. 396 — 416, and Dalrymple's 
 Memorials and Letters, (1762). Spedding did "not know where a copy of the 
 King's Proclamation (Oct. 1613) is to be found'" (See Frontispiece.) 
 
 SI. 3 
 
34 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 " Reader, I open not a Fence-school, nor shall you here learn the 
 skill of an Encounter, or advantageously in the lists to traverse your 
 ground " — nor, I trust, the ground of my lowly Argument. 
 
 And if at all the Manes of Heywrood become dimly conscious of a 
 literary dvi^arf clambering on to the dramatic giant's shadowy shoulders; 
 or (to shift my figure for his own) fathering upon him a base-born 
 Filius Populi, let him too remember that by not signing his multifarious 
 writings, he has become an accessory before the fact to many a later 
 literary larceny — and also let him recall the final words of one of his 
 own signed Prologues " Read perfectly. Examine strictly, but Censure 
 charitably " — 
 
 whereof I desire 
 To make my pen tV adoptive sire. 
 
 I have tried to set my poor wits upon the best strops at hand, 
 and while I dare not hope that this " Worke," even if accepted as 
 sharpened and pointed on Heywood's whetstone, will strike out as 
 many sparks of popularity or make as much noise in the world 
 as the wheel of Canning's "Needy Knife-Grinder" — a "Jeu d^ Esprit of 
 a similar temper of cultured cutlery — ^at least it is possible that one or 
 two Master Grinders may appreciate the labour, (may be, the merit,) 
 of the Cos exsors ipsa secandi. 
 
 A. F. S. 
 
 i» Seymour Street, 
 
 PORTMAN SaCARE. 
 
 Juljr, 1904. 
 
WORKE FOR 
 CVTLERS. 
 
 OR, 
 
 A MERRY DIA- 
 LOGVE BETWEENE 
 
 Sword, 
 Rapier, 
 
 and 
 Dagger. 
 
 Adted in a Shew in the famous 
 Vniuerjitie of Cambridge. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Printed by Thomas Creede, for Richard 
 
 Meighen and Thomas lones; and are to 
 
 be sold at S. Clements Church without 
 
 Temple-barre. 1615. 
 
WORKE FOR 
 
 CVTLERS : or, a merry Dialogue 
 betweene 
 
 Swordy \ 
 Rapier, f 
 and C 
 <■ Dagger. / 
 
 Enter Sword, 
 
 Sword. 
 
 Ay Rapier, come foorth, 
 come forth I say, He giue 
 thee a crowne, though its 
 be but a crackt one : what 
 wilt not? art fo hard to 
 be drawne forth Rapier? 
 Enter 
 
38 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Enter Rapier. 
 
 10 Rapier. S'foot thou fhalt know that Rapier 
 dares enter : nay Backe-Sword. 
 
 Enter Dagger, he holds Rapiers 
 hands hehinde him. 
 
 Rapier. Whofe this behinde me? 
 
 Dagger. Tis Dagger fir; what will you 
 neuer leaue your quarrelling? 
 
 Rapier. Well Sword, Dagger hath defen- 
 ded you a good many times ; but tis no mat- 
 ter, another time fhall seme : fhall I get 
 20 you out Sword alone, that I may haue you 
 Single-fword. 
 
 Sword. Yes if youle be fingle Rapier too. 
 
 Dag. Nay Sword, put the Cafe of Rapiers 
 afide, that there were two of them, I hope 
 you were able to buckle with them. 
 
 Sword. He tell you what, if I goe into the 
 Field with him, hang Sword vp if I doe not 
 cut Rapiers poynts, and lafh him when I haue 
 done : nay, you fhall finde Sword mettle to 
 30 the very backe : 's foot, my teeth be an edge 
 at him. 
 
 Dag. If you ofFer but to thruft towards 
 
 him 
 
Worke for Cutlers 39 
 
 him Rapier, He ftrike you downe. 
 
 Sword. Hang him, I defie him bafe Spa- 
 niard. 
 
 Rap. Defie me ? firrha Sword, Rapier fpits 
 i' thy face : dar'ft meete mee i' the fields, cra- 
 uenly Capon ? 
 
 Sword. Capon ? 
 
 Rapier. I Capon, fo I fay fir. 40 
 
 Dagg. Why any man may fee that thou 
 art well caru'd Sword; and yet mee thinks 
 that Rapier fhould not fpeake of that, for it's 
 an hundred to one if he be not gilt too. 
 
 Sword. Well Rapier, if thou goeft into 
 the fields with me, He make a Capon of you 
 before I haue done with you, you fhall nere 
 come home vncut He warrant you. 
 
 Dagger. Nay, you fhall finde Sword a 
 notable Cutter. 50 
 
 Rapier. He a Cutter ? alas he nere went 
 into the fields yet,' but he was foundly hackt 
 before he came out. 
 
 Sword. Nere talke you of hacking, for 
 it's a hundred to one if you haue not the 
 Foyle-Rapier. 
 
 Rapier. 'S foot if you be fo Short-Sword, 
 Rapier nere feares you : come a long. 
 
 Dagger. Nay nere goe, for if you doe, 
 
 He 
 
40 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 60 He fende one after you, which fhall fcowre 
 you both. The Cutler can doe it. I haue feene 
 him handle you both brauely. 
 
 Sword. The Cutler^ Alas wee are the beft 
 Friends hee has, and if it were not for vs, 
 the Cutler might foone fhut vp his fhoppe. 
 
 Dagger. Alas Sword, you need not talke 
 of his fhutting vp of Shoppe, and if it had 
 not beene for him, you had broken by this 
 time Sword, Nay, nere talke : For you know 
 70 hee can holde your nofe to the Grind-ftone, 
 when hee lift. 
 
 And as for you Rapier, you knowe hee 
 brought you vp firft, and if you had ftayed 
 with him ftill, it might haue bene better for 
 you. 
 
 Rapier. Better for mee ? Alas hee knewe 
 not how to vfe mee. 
 
 Dagger. Hee vfde you too well indeede : 
 for when you were with him he furnifht you 
 80 with Siler and euery thing, but now you are 
 worne out of all fafhion. You are euen like 
 a Lapwing, you are no fooner Hatcht Ra- 
 pier, but you runne abroade prefently from 
 him. 
 
 Rapier. Yet I fcorne to runne away from 
 him. 
 
 Sword. 
 
Worke for Cutlers 4 1 
 
 Sword. But it were more wifedome then 
 to ftand : For the Cutler is a man as well Ar- 
 med as any man I knowe, and has as good 
 skill ins weapons. 90 
 
 Rapier. Ha Sworde, is the winde in that 
 Doore ? Faith nowe I fee which waye you 
 ftand bent Sworde, you had rather fleepe 
 in a whole skinne, then goe into the Fields 
 to trye your felfe. 
 
 Sword. Syr, Sword has been proou'd be- 
 fore now, and yet heele prooue himfelfe a- 
 gaine with you, if you dare follow him. 
 
 Dagger. Doe you heare Sworde ? If you 
 goe, looke for Dagger at your backs prefent- 100 
 lie ; For I am a luftice of Peace, and am 
 fworne to keepe and defend the Peace. 
 
 Rapier. Syr, wee will fight, and doe you 
 take it in Dudgeon Dagger if you pleafe : if 
 you once offer to hinder vs. He fo Pummell 
 you Dagger, that you were neuer better 
 Pummeld in your life ; And howfoeuer, 
 I hope theres Lawe againft you as well as o- 
 thers, and Rapier can put vp a Cafe againft 
 you. no 
 
 Dagger. Alas I care not if you were both 
 Plaintifes againft mee, you fhall finde Dag- 
 ger your Defendant He warrant you: 
 
 I, and 
 
42 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 I, and if neede bee, I could put vp an Action 
 of Batterie againft you. 
 
 Sword. What talke you of Law? Sword 
 fcornes to haue any other Law then MartiaU 
 law, and that vpon you Rapier. 
 
 Dagger. Away Sworde, the Time was in- 
 120 deed when thou waft a notable Swafh-buck- 
 ler, but now thou art growne olde Sword. 
 
 Rapier. I, you doe well, to excufe his 
 Cowardife. 
 
 Sword. Why Sir, tis well knowne that 
 Sword has ilourifht in his dayes. 
 
 Dagger. Flourifht ? yfaith Syr I, I haue 
 feene Sword hang with nothing but ScarfFes 
 ere now. 
 
 Rapier. With ScarfFes ? with a Halter, if 
 130 he had beene well feru'de. For hees a nota- 
 ble Theefe. Dagger. A Theefe ? 
 
 Rapier. I, a Thiefe. 
 
 Did you nere heare of Cutting-Dicie, this is 
 the very fame man. 
 
 Dagger. Nay Rapier, nere hit Sword ith 
 teeth with that : for you know you were both 
 Indited for treafon before now, and were in 
 danger to be hangd, and drawn too, and had 
 efcapt well if you had not bene quarterd. 
 140 Sword. I hope knows how to keep his quarters. 
 
 Dagger. You are a craftie Foxe Sword: It 
 
 were 
 
Worke for Cutlers 43 
 
 were well if you knewe howe to keepe your 
 friendfhip too, for Gentlemen and Friendes 
 fhould not fall out. 
 
 Sword. Rapier a Gentleman ? 
 
 Rap. A Gentleman ? and has Armes. 
 
 Dag. But mee thinkes Sworde by the very 
 founding of his Name fhould bee the better 
 Gentleman, and has the better Armes too : 
 for if the truth were well known e, Rapier hath 150 
 but one arme. 
 
 Rapier. Sword beare Armes ? Hees a bafe 
 companion. Alas I haue knowne you beare a 
 Basket Sword. 
 
 Dag. If you looke ith booke of Armorie., He 
 warrant you, you fhall finde Sworde of more 
 antiquitie then you Rapier: Hee deriues his 
 Pedigree from Morglay^ Beuis of South-hamp- 
 tons fword ; and that from S. George his fword, 
 that killd the Draggon. 160 
 
 Rapier. I, the draggon in Sussex, the other 
 day : But He warrant you Rapiers of as good 
 a blood as hee for his hart. 
 
 Dag. Byth maffe, I thinke indeed, you are 
 both we'll fanguind. Your both of one blood, 
 only thers this difference, that fword coms of 
 the elder brother, & you Rapier of the yoger. 
 
 Rapier. And oftentimes the younger bro- 
 ther prooues the better Souldier. 
 
 Dag. 
 
44 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 170 Dagger. Nay, Dagger will defende you 
 both for good Souldiers. 
 
 Sworde. Rapier a Souldier? When did 
 you ere knowe Rapier fight a Battell ? 
 
 Dagger. Yes Rapier is a Souldier, and a 
 Man as well Armed at all poyntes as anie 
 one. 
 
 Sword. No, no, its Sworde that's the no- 
 table Souldier; Why, theres none of all you 
 Captaines could doe anie thing in Warre 
 180 without him. 
 
 Rapier. I hope Rapier hath not beene at 
 Fencing-Schoole all this while for nothing. 
 
 Dagger. Alas there's none Maifter of De- 
 fence but Dagger: But yet if you fpeake of 
 Souldiers, the'rs Bow, Bill, and Gunne, worth 
 twenty fuch as wee are. 
 
 Rapier. Indeed they fay that Bow has bin 
 an olde Souldier. 
 
 Sword, Yet hees not fit for a Souldier, 
 190 any man may bende him as hee lift. 
 
 Rapier, And as for Bow-ftring, I dare vn- 
 dertake to whip him my felfe. 
 
 Sword. Then let mee alone to tickle Bowes 
 ownes nocke yfaith. 
 
 Dagger. But what fay you to BillP hees a 
 notable fturdy villai'ne. 
 
 Sword. 
 
Worke for Cutlers 45 
 
 Sword. Bill, He pay him foundly, if ere 
 I reach him. 
 
 Dagger. Its more then you can doe, Ime 
 afFraide ; For Bill's a Tall-fellow ons hands, 200 
 and will quickly be Wood : and then theres 
 Gunne, fuch another Bouncing-fellow too. 
 
 Rapier. Gunne, Alas hees No-body : any 
 little Boy will make him roare. 
 
 I haue made him goe off 'oth Fieldes, a 
 good many times my felfe. 
 
 Dagger. Well, is Gunne No-bodie ? Ime 
 fure heel giue fome blowes fometimes. 
 
 Sword. Its' nere but when Powder ouer- 
 charges him, then indeed heel be fomewhat 210 
 hote oth matter. 
 
 Rapier. I think that Powder is a vile brag- 
 ger, he doth nothing but cracke. 
 
 Dagger. Faith I knowe not what Souldi- 
 er hee is, but they fay, Hees an excellent pol- 
 litician. 
 
 Rapier, Hee a PoUitician ? 
 
 Dagger. Why, hee has an excellent wit? 
 
 Sword. Pifh, Its nothing but a flafh. 
 
 Dagger. Ime fure I can remember fince 220 
 he was a Parlement-man. 
 
 Rapier. Hee a Parlement-man : For what 
 Shyre ? 
 
 Dag. 
 
46 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Dag. Nay ber-lady, it was for the whole 
 Countrey. 
 
 Sword. I wonder they fhould chufe him : 
 Why he does euery thing on the fudden. 
 
 Dag. Oh he plottes fhrevvdly. If they had 
 not look't too it, Hee had vndermined the 
 230 whole parlement-houfe. 
 
 Sword. I but hees No-body now-»dayes, 
 Hees blovvne vp long agoe. 
 
 Dagger. Well, if eyther you, or any body 
 elfe fhuld meete with Powder, yet its a hun- 
 dred to one, if he meete not with his match. 
 
 Rapier. Nay, you fhould let him alone 
 Dagger, and you fhould fee that Swords' as 
 notable a bragger as Powder. He thinks hee 
 fhall nere be matcht too : but hee fhall, and 
 240 ouer-matcht too, by Rapier ; I warrant him. 
 Come Sworde, after your long Parley, Dare 
 you goe into the Fieldes ? 
 
 Sword. Dare I ? You fhall foone fee that : 
 Goe, and He follow you. 
 
 Dag. Well faide, defperate Dicke, Sword, 
 You may be afham'd to offer it. You knowe 
 you are t\vo-Ya.nisA-Sworde, and Rapier has 
 but one hand (vnleffe I helpe him) to do any 
 good withall, and yet youde haue him go in- 
 250 to the Fieldes with you. Come, theres ney- 
 ther of you fhall goe. Doe not you knowe 
 
 that 
 
Worke for Cutlers 47 
 
 that Duells are put downe ? 
 
 Youle bee bound to'th Peace euer heere- 
 after, if you ftrike but one ftroke. Therefore 
 you had beft let me decide your controuerfie 
 for you. 
 
 Sword. Why, you are a backe-Friend to 
 vs both Dagger. 
 
 Dagger. Nay, you knowe Ime equally al- 
 lyed to you both, and therefore fhall proue 260 
 an impartiall ludge : How fay you, will you 
 be rulde by me ? 
 
 Rapier. Nay let him choofe. Rapiers at a 
 good poynt, whether he will or no. 
 
 Dagger. Why are you fo long Sword 
 before you fpeake ? 
 
 Sworde. Are duells put downe ? Then 1 
 am forc'de to be Friends : Speake then. 
 
 Dagger. Then in briefe it fhall bee thus. 
 Sworde, you fhall beare Chiefe force ith 270 
 Campe, and be made Generall of the Field, 
 to beare fway euery where. As for you Ra- 
 pier , fince Duells are put downe, you fhall 
 liue quietly and peacablie heere 'ith Court, 
 and goe euery day in Veluet : You fhall be 
 Frendes with euerie one, and bee on euery 
 ones fide, that if occafion ferue, and Sworde 
 be absent, fo that matters are driuS to a pufh. 
 
 Rapier 
 
48 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Rapier fhall be the onely man to performe a 
 280 Combate : And I my felfe will backe you 
 both, as occafion fhall feme. 
 
 How fay yee, are yee content ? 
 
 Rapier. Wee are. 
 
 Dagger. Then goe before to my Houfe, 
 to the Dagger in Cheape: and there weele 
 conclude all. 
 
 Rapier. A Long-Sword. 
 
 Exeunt^ Sworde and Rapier. 
 
 Dagger. 
 
 290 Our weapons drawne., and yet no hurt yee finde. 
 Did Dagger then defend vnto your minde? 
 Hee that defended others not long fence. 
 At laft hee dares not ftand ins owne defence ; 
 But this hee hopes, with you it will fuffize. 
 To craue a pardon for a Schollers Prize. 
 
 FINIS 
 
GLOSSARIAL EPILOGUE. 
 
 {TAe numbers bracketed indicate the lines of the Dialogue on pf. 37 — 48.) 
 
 Cracked Crown (5). 
 
 "Ingenioso. I may chance, indeed, give the world a bloody nose, but 
 it shall hardly give me a crack'd crown, though it gives other poets 
 French Crowns." The Returne from Pernassus^ or the Scourge of Simony, 
 publiquely acted by the Students of St John's Cambridge, 1606. 
 
 Pummel! (105). "The tang (or tongue of the sword), which is of 
 many shapes. . .ends in the pommel or ' little apple ' {le pommeau, ilpomolo, 
 der Knauf or Knopf) into which it should be made fast by rivets or 
 screws. The object of this globe, lozenge, or oval of metal is to 
 counterpoise the weight of the blade, to prop the ferient of the hand, 
 and to allow of artistic ornamentation." Burton's Book of the Sword, 
 p. 124. Its further object was for use like the butt-end of a musket, to 
 " pummell " your adversary. 
 
 Dagger at your backs (lOo). It was for some time the fashion to 
 wear the dagger hanging at the back, cf. : 
 
 "This dagger has mista'en, for lo his house 
 Lies empty on the back of Montague." 
 
 Romeo and Juliet v. 3. 
 According to Nares, the rapier and dagger were usually worn side by side. 
 " His sword a dagger had, his page, 
 That was but little for his age : 
 It was a serviceable dudgeon 
 Either for fighting, or for drudging : 
 When it had stabb'd, or broke a head, 
 It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread." 
 
 Hudibras i. i. 375. 
 
 SI. 4 
 
50 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Also: 
 
 "Thou must wear thy sword by thy side, 
 And thy dagger handsumly at thy back." 
 
 The longer thou livest &c., 1570. 
 
 Dudgeon (104). See Nares's " Glossary." A peculiar kind of handle 
 to a dagger, made of the root of box — the Cambridge Dictionary of 1693 
 has "A dudgeon-haft — manubrium appiatum or buxeum"; see too 
 Gerard's Herbal, in Johnson's edition, under Box-Tree: "Turners and 
 Cutlers... doe call this wood dudgeon, wherewith they make dudgeon- 
 hafted daggers." Also Macbeth 11. i : 
 
 "I see thee still. 
 And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood." 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb v. i : 
 
 "A dudgeon-dagger will serve him to mow down sin withal." 
 
 161 1. "Dague a roElles — a Scottish Dagger — a Dudgeon haft 
 dagger. Cotgrave." (Murray.) 
 
 The root of the box-tree was also called dudgeon from being 
 curiously marked, "the root (of box) is dudgin or full of work." 
 Holland's Pliny B. xvi. c. 16. (Skeat.) 
 
 Evelyn does not mention the dudgeon haft, but speaking of Beech 
 he says : "Of the thin Lamina or Scale of this wood (as our Cutlers call 
 it) are made Scabards for Swords." Sylva, chap. v. 2. 
 
 Mr Guy Francis Laking writes to me h propos of the hilts of the 
 daggers (nos. 1324 and 1334) in the Wallace Collection "To the best 
 of my belief the grips of the daggers you name in the Wallace 
 Collection are of box-wood." 
 
 Francis Junius in his Etymologicum Anglicanum (ed. by Lye, Oxon. 
 1743) has the following: 
 
 '■'■Dudgeon haft. Manubrium apiatum [Dudgeon, Pugiuncula k 
 Teut. Dolch Pugio q.d. Dolkin vel k Degen, Gladius. Skin.]." 
 
 Pugio, a dagger, hence It. pugnale, Fr. poignard. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 51 
 
 "O plumbeum pugionem." O leaden dagger, i.e. O weak argu- 
 ment. Cicero. 
 
 1380. Ordinance for Cutlers. "Lond. in Letter Book H. — cf. 
 cxviii., ' Qe nulles manches darbre forsqe digeon soyent colourez ' 
 (tr. in Riley, Mem. London, 1868), see Arnold's Chronic. (18 1 1), 245." 
 Murray's Dictionary. 
 
 1687. "With Dudgeon Dagger at his back" (Cotton's Poet. 
 Works). 
 
 Dagger. 
 
 1375. Fragm. Vetusta xxiv. in Sc. Acts (1844). 
 " Habeat equum...ensem et cultellum qui dicitur dagare." 
 1562. See Act 5 Eliz. c. 7, § 3 as to "Dagger-blades, handles" 
 &c. "The Devil may buy us even dagger-cheap." 
 
 Bishop Andrews' Sermon. 
 " The stilleto-beard, oh ! it makes me afeard, 
 It is so sharp beneath, 
 For he that doth place a dagger in's face 
 What wears he in his sheath ? " 
 
 The Ballad of the Beard. 
 Le Prince d' Amour, 1660. ? Earlier than Charles I. Satirical 
 Songs and Poems on Costume, F. W. Fairholt (Percy Soc), 1849. 
 See pamphlet by J. A. Repton, F.S.A. 
 
 1592. "All you that will not...weare ale-house daggers at your 
 backes." Nashe, P. Penilesse (Shaks. Soc), 40. 
 
 ■Dagger-Ale and Dagger vein-piercing. " I will stab him that will 
 not pledge your health, and with a dagger pierce a vein to drink a 
 full health to you " (see note 39 to Honest Whore). 
 
 " From stabbing of arms, flap-dragons &c. good Mercury defend us." 
 
 Cynthia's Revels, Act v. Sc. 2. 
 
 Backsword (11). A sword with only one cutting edge. 
 161 1. Cotgrave. "5ai!/«/««Ve, a short and broad Back Sword." 
 
 4—2 
 
5 2 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 1750. Bolingbroke. Pol. Tracts, 214. "The backsword of 
 Justice which cuts only on one side." 
 
 2. A stick with a basket-hilt used instead of a sword in fencing, a 
 single-stick. 
 
 1699. " I'n™ much in love with fencing, but, I think, backsword is 
 the best play." Farquhar, Love and a Bottle, 1728. 
 
 1672. "To the Back-Swords of London." 
 
 Davenant, Siege of Rhodes. 
 1597. "I knew him a good Back-Swordsman." 
 
 2 Henry IF. ill. 2. 70. 
 1857, " The great times for back-swording." 
 
 Hughes, Tom Brown, 
 (Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888.) 
 " The chief modern varieties of the curved blade are the Broad- 
 sword, the Backsword, the Hanger and the Cutlass, the Scymitar and 
 Dtlsack, the Yataghan and the Flissa." 
 
 Burton's Book of the Sword, p. 123. 
 Vide Egerton Castle's Schools and Masters of Fence, chap, xiii., and 
 Captain Hutton's The Sword and the Centuries, chap, xxvi., for full 
 historical accounts of "back-swording." 
 "His metamorphosis behold 
 From Glasgow frieze to cloth of gold ; 
 His back-sword, with the iron hilt, 
 To rapier, fairly hatch 'd and gilt." 
 
 The Reformation. 
 (Quoted by Scott in Fortunes of Nigel. ) 
 "Yet I confesse, in old times, when blowes were only used with 
 short Swords and Bucklers and back Sword, these kind of fights were 
 good and most manly, but now in these daies fight is altered." 
 
 Silver's Paradoxes of Defence, 1599. 
 Single-Sword: Single Rapier (21). "At the Single Sword, Sword 
 and Dagger and Sword and Buckler, they forbid the thrust, and at the 
 single Rapier and Rapier and Dagger they forbid the blow " (i.e. cut). 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 53 
 
 ...If the thrust be best why do we not use it at the single Sword... 
 If the blow be best, why do we not, use it at the single Rapier, Rapier 
 and Poingard .' " Ibid. 
 
 Raper. Philip Stubbes in The Anatomie of Abuses says "Swordes 
 Daggers and rapers of bare iron and steel were as handsome as they, 
 and much more conducive to that ende whereto swordes and rapiers 
 should serve." 
 
 The Buckinghamshire Rapers originally spelt their name Rapier. 
 
 Memoirs of a Highland Lady. 
 
 Case of Rapiers (23). " The case of Swords as it was termed in 
 England, implied a right and left handed sword that were worn together 
 in the same Scabbard. Giacomo di Grazzi, the Fencing Master, writing 
 in 1570 speaks of their use with enthusiasm. The fight with the case of 
 Swords much resembled that of the Sword and Dagger, with the exception 
 that the longer weapon in the left hand made its action more offensive. 
 It was taught by the Masters Agrippa and Marozzo in the middle of the 
 i6th Century." 
 
 Guy Francis Laking, F.S.A., Catalogue of Armour in Wallace 
 Collection, and Egerton Castle and Captain Hutton passim. 
 
 Rapier and Dagger. "I have seen it disallowed that a gentleman 
 chalenged to fight with rapier and dagger should present himselfe in the 
 equipage of a man at Armes ; or that another should offer to come with 
 his cloake instead of a dagger." Florio's Montaigne, 11. 26. 
 
 Rapiers at a good poynt (263). "But whan a man perceiveth that he 
 is entred so farre that hee can not drawe backe without a burdeyne, hee 
 muste, bothe in suche thinges he hath to doe before the combat and also 
 in the combat be utterlye resolved with hymselfe, and always shewe a 
 readineses and a stomake^ And not as some dooe, passe the matter in 
 arguing and pointes\ and having the choise of weapon, take suche as 
 
 1 Surely the origin of Polonius's 
 
 " Beware of entrance to a quarrel " etc. 
 ' An unconscious pun, like Rapier's intentional one. 
 
54 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 have neyther poynte nor edge^. And arme themselves as thoughe they 
 shoulde goe against the shotte of a Cannon." 
 
 The Courtier (Sir T. Hoby's Translation). 
 "Let us be at a poynt what is best to be done." 
 
 Macbeth iv. 3. 135. 
 
 Buckle (25)=engage in close fight : Shakespeare, i Henry VI. i. 2. 95 ; 
 V. 3. 28 too strong for me to buckle with, iv. 4. 5; 3 Henry VI. i. 4. 50. 
 '■^Lambert. And, Serlsby, I have there a lusty boy, 
 
 That dares at weapon buckle with thy son." 
 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Sc. xiii. 
 
 Cut Rapiers poynts (28) and Points. "Foresleves of velvet, called in 
 those days poignettinge of a doublette." Institucion of a Gentleman. 
 
 " Then he brought him to a Mercers shop, and said to the Mercer 
 let me see of your best silken pointes, the Mercer did presently show 
 him some of seaven groates a dozen... then he said to the Maister of 
 Defence, there is one dozen for you, and here is another for me." 
 
 Silver's Paradoxes. 
 
 "Laces or ties frequently having ornamental tags and as often used in 
 the i6th and 17th centuries, so profusely employed to secure different 
 parts of dress, as to form a trimming, sometimes to make quite a fringe." 
 
 Draper's Dictionary. 
 
 Like their supersessors, pins, they were chiefly manufactured at 
 Bristol, " Bristowles great trade is the making of points, and that was 
 the chief mystery that was exercised in the town." 
 
 Stafford, Compendious Examination fcff., 1581. 
 
 Shakespeare also puns upon the word in Twelfth Night — 
 
 " Clown. But I am resolved on two points. 
 
 Mar. That if one break, the other will hold ; or if both break your 
 gaskins will fall." 
 
 "Truss my points, Sir." Eastward Hoe, 1605. 
 
 1 Cp. Cyrano de Bergerac's thoroughly gallant, euthanasian and Mercutian 
 maxim : 
 
 " Mourir la pointe au coeur, en meme temps qu'aux levres." Rostand. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 55 
 
 Lash (28). " Ouerlashing in apparel is so common a fault, that the 
 very hyerlings of some of our Players, jet under gentlemen's noses in 
 sutes of silke " &c. Stephen Gosson, School of Abuse ^ IS79- 
 
 ^&foot (10 and 57). " One sware me God from top to toe with one 
 breath... the other... sware me by the flesh of God, that if swearing were 
 to help him but one ace, he would not leave one piece of God unsworn, 
 neither within nor without." Ascham's Toxophilus. 
 
 "I know a man that will never swear but by Cock and p^e, or 
 mouse-foot. I hope you will not say these be oaths." 
 
 The Plaine Mori's Pathway to Heaven. By Arthur Dent 1601. 
 
 " By the Mouse-foot, some give him hard words." 
 
 T. Heywood's First Part of K. Edward the Fourth. 
 
 "This infamous custom of Swearing I observe reigns in England 
 lately more than any where else ; though a German in highest puff of 
 passions swears a hundred thousand Sacraments, the Italian by the W...e 
 of God, the French by his Death, the Spaniard by his Flesh, the Welshman 
 by his Sweat, the Irishman by his Five Wounds, though the Scot commonly 
 bids the Devil hale his soul; yet for variety of Oaths the English Roarer 
 puts down all." James Howell, Familiar Letters, Aug. i, 1628. 
 
 We here see the origin of three of the oaths familiar on the stage, 
 viz. 'sfoot, od's Fish (Charles II.) and Zounds, are clearly " God's foot," 
 « God's Flesh " (« How art thou Fishified ! "), and " God's Wounds," 
 
 " God's body, God's body, my Lord Chancellor (Sir Thomas More), 
 a parish clerk, a parish clerk ! " Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More. 
 
 The Duke of Norfolk used " vain repetitions, as the Heathen do." 
 
 " Dick Bowyer. 's hart, and I lye, call me Jebuzite. 
 
 Peter. Bowyer a Captayne ? a Capon, a button mould, a lame 
 haberdine (salt cod), a red-beard Sprat, a Yellow-hammer. . .a very 
 Jackdaw with his toung slit. 
 
 Bowyer. Zounds, what a Philistine is this." 
 
 The Tryall of Chevalry. 
 
 Jeremy Collier in his Short view of the Immorality and Profaneness of 
 the English Stage (4th ed. 1699) has this upon 'Commuted' Oaths: 
 
5 6 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 " Sometimes they mince the matter ; change the Letter, and keep . 
 the Sense, as if they had a mind to steal a Swearing, and break the 
 Commandment without Sin. At another time, the Oaths are dipt 
 but not so much within the Ring, but that the Image and Superscription 
 2lX& visible. . .Shakespeare is comparatively sober, Ben Johnson is still more 
 regular; And as for Beaumont and Fletcher in their Plays, they are 
 commonly Profligate Persons that Swear, and even those are reprov'd 
 for it." 
 
 There seems no doubt that much of the mincing and " clipping " of 
 oaths such as " '^ foot " etc. was due to the Statute against Swearing 
 (3 Jac. I. c. 21) "for the preventing and avoiding of the great abuse of 
 the holy Name of God in Stage-plays, Enterludes etc," which enacted a 
 forfeit of £10 for each offence. 
 
 Base Spaniard (34). Cf. Ben Jonson's The New Inn, Act 11., Sc. v. 
 
 " lip. Your Spanish Host is never seen in Cuerpo, 
 
 Without his Paramento's Cloak and Sword. 
 F/y. Sir, he has the Father 
 
 Of Swords, within a long Sword : Blade cornish stil'd of Sir Rud 
 Hughdebras. 
 Tip. And with a long Sword, bully Bird, thy sence ? 
 Fly, To note him a tall Man, and the Master of Fence. 
 Tip. But doth he teach the Spanish way of Don Lewis} 
 Fly. No, the Greek Master he. 
 Tip. What call you him ? Fly. Euclid. 
 Tip. Gi' me the Moderns. Fly. Sir, he minds no Moderns, 
 
 Go by, Hieronimo ! Tip. What was he ? Fly. The Italian 
 
 That plaid with Abbot Antony i' the Fryers, 
 
 And Blinkin-sops the bold. Tip. V marry, those 
 
 Had Fencing Names, what's become o' them } 
 Host. They had their times, and we too say, they were. 
 
 So had Caranza his : so had Don Lewis, Sec." 
 
 See also Act iv. Sc. 2, passim. 
 
 "Don Lewis of Madrid is the sole Master now of the World." 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 57 
 
 "A dainty spruce Spaniard, with hair black as jet, 
 
 Long Cloak with round Cape, a long rapier and poignard 
 
 A haughty high German of Hamborough town, 
 
 A proper tall gallant, with mighty mustachoes, 
 
 He weeps if the lass upon him do but frown; 
 
 Yet he's a great fencer, that comes to o'ermatch us. 
 
 But yet all his fine fencing could not get the lass &c." 
 
 Blew-Cap for me, see Evans' Old Ballads, 
 vol. III. p. 255, from a black letter copy 
 printed by T. Lambert. 
 
 F. W. Fairholt, Songs and poems on Costume. 
 Percy Society (24, 1849). 
 
 Spaniard (34), " We like degenerate sonnes, haue forsaken our fore- 
 fathers vertues with their weapons, and haue lusted like men sicke of a 
 strange ague, after the strange vices and deuises of Italian French and 
 Spanish Fencers." G. Silver's Paradoxes of Defence (1599). 
 
 " This is the maner of Spanish fight, they stand as braue as they 
 can with their bodies straight upright, narrow spaced, with their feet 
 continually mouing, as if they were in a dance, holding forth their 
 armes and Rapiers verie straight against the face or bodies of their 
 enemies : and this is the only lying to accomplish that kind of fight." 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Spanish and French Duellist, " Your French-man is much the fairer 
 Duellist, for when hee goeth to the Field, he commonly puts ofF his 
 doublet and opens his breast ; the Spaniard cleane contrary, besides his 
 shirt, hath his doublet quilted, his coat of maile, his cassock, and strives 
 to make himself impenetrable." 
 
 James Howell's Instructions for Forraine Travell. 1642. 
 
 " Place three Frenchmen in the deserts of Libya, and they will never 
 live one moneth together without brawling, falling out and scratching 
 one another." Florio's Montaigne 11. 27. 
 
5 8 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Enter the Englishman and Spaniard. 
 Spa. The wall, the wall! 
 Eng. 'Sblood! Spaniard, you get no wall here, unless you would have your head 
 
 and the wall knocked together. 
 Spa. Signor Cavaliero d'Ingleterra, I must have the wall. 
 
 Eng. I do protest, hadst thou not enforced it, I had not regarded it; but, ance 
 you will needs have the wall, I'll take the pains to thrust you into the 
 kennel. 
 Spa. Oh, base Cavaliero. My sword and poinard, well-tried Toledo, shall give 
 
 thee the imbrocado. 
 Eng. Marry, and welcome, sir, come on. 
 
 (They fight: he hurts the Spaniard. 
 Spa. Holo, holo! thou hast given me the canvisado. 
 Eng. Come, sir; will you any more? 
 
 Spa. Signor Cavaliero, look behind thee. A blade of Toledo is drawn against thee. 
 
 (He looks back: he kills him. 
 Thomas Heywood's If you kno<w not me you knoiu nobody, or The troubles of 
 Queen Elizabeth, 1605, ed. by J. P. Collier. 
 
 Short Sword (57). "If we will have this true Defence, we must 
 seeke it where it is, in short Swords, short Staues, the halfe Pike, 
 Partisans, Glaues (Glaives) or such like weapons of perfect legths, not 
 in long Swords, long Rapiers, nor frog pricking Poiniards." 
 
 Silver's Paradoxes of Defence (Matthey's edition). 
 
 Gilt (44). (^Equivoque gelt.) "To these haue they their rapiers, 
 swordes, and daggers, gilt twise or thrise ouer the hikes with good 
 angell golde, or else argented ouer with Siluer both within and without ; 
 and if it be true, as I heare say it is there be some hikes made all of 
 pure siluer it selfe, and couered with golde. Othersome at the least are 
 damasked (damascened) varnished and ingrauen meruilous goodly ; and 
 least any thing shoulde be wanting to set forth their pride, their 
 scaberdes and sheathes are of velvet, or the like ; for leather, thoughe 
 it'se more profitable and as seemely, yet wil it not carie such a porte or 
 countenaunce as the other." 
 
 P. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses (ed. Wm B. 
 D. D. TurnbuU, F.S.A.S., Pickering 1836, 
 from the 3rd edition 1585). 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 59 
 
 T. Lionell, A Capon. Reginald, Geld the Rascall. Heywood's 
 The English Traveller, 
 
 Scower (Scowre) (6o). " O' my conscience this Morning I beat 
 twenty Higling-Women, spread their butter about the Kennel, broke 
 all their Eggs, let their sucking Pigs loose, flung down all the Peds with 
 Pippins about the Streets, scower'd like Lightning, and kick'd Fellows 
 like Thunder: ha, ha, ha." Shadwell's Scowrers, Act iv. Sc. i. 
 
 "But it becommethe a gentleman (saye they) to be a Royster, 
 whyche worde I doe not well understand onles it signifie a ruffian... 
 And if sundrye things myght haue one name, then myghte a hatchet 
 bee called a spade... for if a Gentleman haue in hym any humble 
 behauour then Roysters do cal suche one by the name of a Loute, 
 a Clynchepope, or one that knoweth no fecions." 
 
 " A Ruffian and an unquiet man, geuen to quarels, such one as we 
 cal a Roister." 
 
 The Institucion of a Gentleman 1568 (reprint 1839). 
 In one of Marston's satires, Reactio (printed with his Pigmalion's 
 Image, 1598), upon Bishop Joseph Hall, himself one of the earliest 
 (if not the first after Skelton) and greatest of English satirists, we find 
 " Come, manumit thy plumy pinion. 
 And scower the sword of elvish champion." 
 The words in italics are said by Hall's editor T. W. Singer (1824) 
 to be a paraphrase of Hall's own words in A Defiance to Envy. 
 (Marston was Hall's Cambridge rival.) 
 
 ^^ Ralph. ' I'll scour you for a goblet.' A slang term for chastise. 
 
 Dr A. W. Ward's Dr Faustus. 
 'I'll scour you with my rapier.' 
 
 Nym to Pistol. Hy. V. 11. i. 60." 
 
 The Scourers were the "Mohocks" or "Rufflers" of their day. 
 Their name forms the title of one of Shadwell's plays, wherein an old 
 rake thus boasts of his early exploits — "I knew the Hectors, and before 
 
6o Worke for Cutlers 
 
 them the Muses, and the Tityretu's ; they were brave Fellows indeed ! 
 In these dalys, a man could not go from the Rose Garden to the Piazza 
 once, but he must venture his life twice, my dear Sir Willie." 
 
 Scott's note to The Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
 "The bravo of the Queen's day... had, since the commencement 
 of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of Sworders, who used 
 the rapier and dagger instead of the far less dangerous sword and 
 buckler. " Introduction to F. of N. 
 
 " Duels in every street were maintained : divers sects and peculiar 
 titles passed unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of The Roaring Boys, 
 Bonaventers, Bravadors, Quarterors and such like." 
 
 History of the First Fourteen Years of King James's Reign. 
 Somers's Tracts, ed. by W. Scott, vol. ii. p. 266. 
 
 Sir Thomas Overbury has the " Character " of " A Roaring Boy." 
 
 '■'■ludicio. Methinks he is a ruffian in his style 
 
 Withouten bands or garter's ornament : 
 
 He quafFs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon 
 
 Then roister doister in his oily terms 
 
 Cuts, thrusts and foins at whomsoever he meets." 
 
 The Returne from Pernassus 1 606 : 
 first acted at St John's College Cambridge 1604. 
 
 Broken by this time. Sword (68). The Equivoque may partly turn 
 upon the recollection of the Sword-Breakers {hrise-ipies) mostly of the 
 fifteenth century, of which Sir R. Burton gives four illustrations on 
 p. 138 of his Book of the Sword. They were made with a toothed or 
 indented edge, found in Arab, Indian and other Eastern weapons. (See 
 Wallace Collection.) 
 
 Furnisht you with Siler (80). See Note to Gilt, p. 58. 
 
 Fashion (81). "Fencing (Right honorable) in this new fangled age, 
 is like our fashions, euerie daye a change, resembling the Cameleon, who 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 6i 
 
 altereth him selfe into all colours saue white : so Fencing changeth into 
 all wards saue the right." 
 
 George Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, 1599. 
 Silver (80). 
 
 " A Gull is he which while he proudly weares 
 
 A silver-hiked rapier by his side, 
 
 Indures the lyes and knocks about the eares 
 
 Whilst in his sheath his sleeping sword doth bide." 
 
 Sir John Davies's Epigram. 
 
 Lapwing (82). " This Lapwing runs away with the shell on his 
 head." Hamlet, v. 2. 
 
 " As the Lapwing runneth away with the shell on her head, as soon 
 as she is hatched." Mere's tFii's Treasury. 
 
 Hatcht (82). " Hatching " was the term for engraving and inlaying 
 the hilts of weapons : and still survives as a technical term of engraving. 
 " His rapier and dagger richly hatcht with gold." 
 
 Tou stand bent Sworde (93). " As the sword of the best tempered 
 metal is most flexible, so the truly generous are most pliant and cour- 
 teous in their behaviour to their inferiors." 
 
 Thos. Fuller, The holy State (The True Gentleman). 
 
 See Shakespeare, Much Ado, 11. 3. 232, iv. i. 188. Twelfth Night, 
 II. 4. 38. Hamlet, 11. 2. 30, in. 2. 401. 
 
 Is the Winde in that door (91) or, as we now say, "Sits the wind 
 in that quarter ? " Cf. Gifford's note to " Is the wind there " in Ben 
 Jonson's Bartholomew Fair : — " A proverbial expression. ' Is it so ? ' 
 ' Have I found you out ? ' " 
 
 " Philologe. What handling belongeth to the weather ? 
 
 Toxophilus. Knowing of his wind with him, against him, side wind, 
 full side wind, side wind quarter with him, side wind quarter against 
 him and so forth." Ascham. 
 
62 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Scarf {i2']). "First mentioned as an article of dress in the time 
 of Elizabeth." Draper's Dictionary. 
 
 " Then must they haue their silk scarfs cast about their faces, and 
 fluttering in the wind with great lapels at every end, either of gold or 
 silver or silk, which they say they wear to keep them from sun-burning." 
 
 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses. 
 
 "The scarfed bark," Merch. of Venice. 
 
 Cutting-Duke (133) seems to have been a lost play by Heywood. 
 
 F. G. Fleay {Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama 1559— 
 1642, vol. I., p. 290) has this entry : " 1602, Sep. 2. Additions to 
 Cutting Dick £1. This play must have been written before Worcester's 
 men joined Henslow." Also in his History of the Stage (1559 — 1642) 
 p. 155. "Cutting Dick, i.e. Dick Bowyer, the same as 7T>e Trial of 
 Chivalry " (by Heywood and another), i.e. The History of the Tryall of 
 Chevalry with the Life and Death of Cavalier Dick Bowyer, 1 604, 
 reprinted in Bullen's Old Plays. 
 
 Cutting Dick, so '■'■Vol. Cutting — a Roarer or Bully," one of the 
 dramatis personae in Bartholomew Fair. 
 
 Cf. also Stephen Gosson's The Schoole of Abuse (1579, ed. Arber). 
 "The skil of Logicians is exercysed in caueling, the cunning of Fencers 
 applied to quarrelling: they thinke themselues no Scholers, if they bee 
 not able to finde out a knotte in every rushe;... Every Duns will be a 
 Carper, every Dick Swash a common Cutter." (Here Duns may be 
 Duns Scotus or Dunce, and Dick Swash may be the original of our 
 Cutting-Dicke.) 
 
 Cutting and Cutter (50). " A certain Justice of Peace with a swagger- 
 ing companion called Cutting Tom, who in a braverie took the wall 
 of Mr Justice." 
 
 Jack of Dover (from a copy in Bodleian Library), 1604, 
 Wm Firebrand, Percy Society, Vol. vii. 
 Gabriel Harvey in his ^'■Foure Letters and Certain Sonnets, especially 
 touching Robert Greene" (1592) makes one of his accusations, "his 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 63 
 
 employnge of Ball (surnamed Cuttinge Ball) till he was intercepted 
 at Tiborne." 
 
 Cf. Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street. 
 
 " Cutter " signifies swaggering bully : a cutpurse (A. W. Ward). 
 See How a man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, Act V. Sc. I : 
 "Sir, do you not pink doublets?...! took you for a Cutter, you are of 
 a great Kindred." — Roger North, in his Lives of the Norths, vol. ii. 
 p. 57 (ed. 1826), says of Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester (the 
 "Lory" of Dryden's The Toung Statesmen), that one of his infirmities 
 was "passion, in which he would swear like a cutter." (A. W. Ward's 
 History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. iii. ch. ix. p. 327 note.) 
 It would be an interesting sociological problem to trace the evolution of 
 " cutting " through literature down to its modern sense. Cf. The Art 
 of Cutting (eiLrly 19th century). 
 
 Haue not the Foyle (56). So in Ben Jonson's Discoveries, where he 
 says "the multitude commend Writers, as they do Fencers, who if 
 they come in robustiously...are received for the Braver-fellows... vrhtn 
 a slight touch of their Adversary gives all that boisterous Force, the foil." 
 " The fame of a gentleman that carieth weapon, yf it once take a 
 foile in any little point through dastardlines or any other reproche, 
 doeth evermore continue shameful in the worlde." 
 
 The Courtier, Sir T. Hoby, 1561. 
 " Emperor. Bestir thee Jaques, take not now the foil 
 
 Lest thou dost lose what foretime thou didst gain." 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Sc. ix. 
 Also / Henry VI. v. 3. 23. 
 To foil is from the O.Fr. affhler, Ital. affpllare to press hard. 
 
 A. W. Ward, Note to Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 
 " But gentle thoughts when they may give the foyle 
 Save them that yield, and spare where they may spoil." 
 Prologue to Woman Kilde with Kindnesse. 3rd edition 1617. 
 
 Foxe (141). "The wolf-mark of the Passau sword-smiths was 
 borrowed from the city arms, which consist of 'Or, a wolf figure, 
 
64 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 statant gardant.' Later, and especially in the i6th century, this mark 
 was adopted in other places, and especially by Solingen smiths. These 
 blades were known as 'foxes,' in England, doubtless from the 'wolf 
 inscription." 
 
 R. C. Clephan, The Defensive Armour and Weapons and 
 Engines of War (ifc, p. 172. 
 
 "Passau and Solingen were celebrated at a very early time for 
 making blades of weapons, the quality of which was as highly esteemed 
 
 as those of Toledo Another very usual mark is a wolf, which is 
 
 believed to have been granted by the Archduke Albert in 1349 to the 
 Armourers' Guild of Passau: it is also to be seen on some of the 
 earlier arms made at- Solingen, in which city the armourers Clement 
 Horn and Johann Stopp flourished at the commencement of the 
 sixteenth century." 
 
 Auguste Demmin, History of Arms and Armour, Bohn, p. 548. 
 
 A reproduction of the wolf-badge is given by Demmin, p. 551. 
 Those who have seen the rude outline of the wolf in question will 
 easily understand its metamorphosis into an English fox. 
 
 Fox{i^i). "No more truth in thee than in a drawn fox," i Henry 
 I v.. III. 3. 129. Dyce's Glossary (1902) misses the double meaning. 
 
 (Nares) "O what blade is it, 
 
 A Toledo or an English Fox ? 
 Old foxes are good blades." 
 Browne, English Moor 11, 2, Webster's White Devil vi. 370. 
 
 Defendant (113). A word now passed into the peaceful lists of 
 the law-court, but quite common amongst the Elizabethans, as e.g. : 
 " All which arriv'd at the evenest piece of earth 
 The field afforded, the three challengers 
 Turn'd head, drew all their rapiers and stood rank'd. 
 When face to face the three defendants met them. 
 Alike prepar'd, and resolute alike. 
 
 George Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 65 
 
 Action of Battery {i\^. "Assault and Battery be for the most part an 
 accomplishment of that which menace did threaten, and a performance 
 by deedes of which the other fore-warned by words, that is to say, 
 a violent and forcible abusing, or attempting to abuse by blowes and 
 stripes the person of another, contrary to the peace of the realme. . .the 
 law hath devised a quiet and peaceable course, to reduce him again to 
 order, in punishing him by an action of Trespass of Assault and Batterie, 
 wherein being convicted, hee shall satisfie the party grieved his damages 
 and pay to the King a fine, and his bodie shall be committed to prison 
 untill hee hath satisfied it." 
 
 Pulton's De Pace Regis et Regni 1623 (Black Letter). 
 
 Martial Law (117). See Edict against Duels (in Prologue p. 83 
 and post). 
 
 Swash-buckler or Swinge-huckler (120). 
 
 "He has ne'er a sword and buckler-man in his Fair." 
 Induction to Bartholomew Fair. 
 Swash-buckler. "A vain-glorious Sword-player or Fencer; a meer 
 Braggadochoe, a vapouring fellow." 
 
 To swash, "to make fly about; to clash, or make a noise with 
 Swords." Ed. Phillips' New World of Words, 1657. 
 
 "To Swash it in apparell." 
 
 Antony Wood, i. 423 (ed. 1706). (A. Clark.) 
 
 Basket-Sword ( 1 54). The basket-hilt was first introduced in the Vene- 
 tian Schiavona for the Schiavoni or Doge's guards of the sixteenth century. 
 R. C. Clephan writes : " Scottish broadswords with practically this hilt. . . 
 are often erroneously called 'claymores,' while, as a matter of fact, the 
 Scottish weapon so called was a long two-handed sword, with quillons 
 usually bending diagonally upwards,... and it is considered questionable 
 by some authorities whether any basket hiked sword whatever was in 
 general use in Scotland long before the i8th century began." 
 
 Basket Hilts is the name of one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 
 Tale of a Tub, and Puppy meeting him in "The Fields near Pancras," 
 
 SI. S 
 
66 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 and retorting upon a threat of his "school-dagger 'bout your costard," 
 says: — "Tie up your brended bitch there, your dun rusty, Pannier-hilt 
 poniard." 
 
 Basket-Sward (154). "What would you have sister, of a fellow 
 that knows nothing but a basket-hilt and an old fox in it ? " 
 
 Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair 11. 6. 
 
 (See note on Fox, p. 64.) 
 
 "...as flat as a basket-hilt dagger." 
 
 Nat, Field, Amends for Ladies, 
 
 Basket hilt is one of the characters in John Cooke's Greenes Tu 
 Quoque or the Cittie Gallant, published by his friend Thos. Heywood, 
 1614, 4°. 
 
 Morglay (158). "It is the most fortunate weapon that ever rid on 
 poor gentleman's thigh. Shall I tell you. Sir ? You talk of Morglay, 
 Excalibur, Durindana, or so ; but ! . . .this a Toledo ! Pish ! . . . A Fleming, 
 by heaven ! I'll buy them for a guilder apiece." 
 
 Captain Bobadil; Ben Jonson, Every Man In His Humour, 
 Act III. Sc. 2. 
 
 "The name Morglay was often given to a sword in general. 
 Mr D. P. Fry suggests that mor-glay is merely an inverted form 
 of Clay-more, the Celtic for hig sword." 
 
 H. B. Wheatley (note to Every Man In His Humour). 
 " And how fair losian gave him (Sir Bevis) Arundel his steed 
 And Morgley his good Sword." Drayton's Polyolbion. 
 
 Beuis of Southampton (158). For this famous Romance see Ellis's 
 Specimens and the Publications of the Early English Text Society. 
 "There is as much difference betwixt these two kind of fights, as 
 there is betwixt the true picture of Sir Beuis of Southampton and Sir 
 Beuis himself, if he were living." Silver's Paradoxes. 
 
 The Draggon in Sussex, the other day (161) refers to "A strange and 
 monstrous Serpent or Dragon," the subject of a pamphlet by A. R. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 67 
 
 (printed at London, by John Trundle, 1614, and reprinted by 
 Mr Charles Hindley in The Old Book Collectors' Miscellany, vol. 11.) 
 describing the appearance "in Sussex, two miles from Horsam, in a Woode 
 called 'St Leonard's Forrest,'" August 1614, of a serpent "reputed to 
 be nine feet, or rather more, in length and shaped almost in the form of 
 an axle tree of a cart, a quantity of thickness in the midst, and somewhat 
 
 smaller at both ends He will cast his venom about four rod from him, 
 
 as by woful experience it was proved on the bodies of a man and woman 
 coming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poisoned and 
 very much swelled, but not preyed upon." The story is certified by 
 John Steele and Christopher Holder, and the carrier of Horsham, who 
 lieth at the White Horse, in Southwark, but they do not disclose the 
 name of the Sussex St George. 
 
 Gentleman, y/rwj (149). TheBookeofArmorie{i^^). I have looked 
 through Dame Juliana Berners' (Bernes or Barnes) "ryght noble Treatise 
 of the Lygnage of Cot Armour " (1496), John Feme's Blazon of Gentrie 
 (1586), W. Wyrley's True Use of Armory (1592), John Guillim's 
 Display of Heraldrie (16 10), Robert Glover's Catalogue of Honour 
 (1610), and Edmund Bolton's Elements of Armory (1610), and am 
 inclined to believe that Gerard Legh's The Accedens of Armory (1562) 
 is the Booke of Armorie referred to in the text — unless it be the 1595 
 edition of The Book of St. Albans revised and much altered by Gervase 
 Markham and re-issued as The Gentleman's Academie &c. 4°. At any 
 rate the following excerpts from Legh are "germane to the matter" 
 of "the better Gentleman" — since he differentiates nine "genera": — 
 
 There are nine gentlemen of fundry callinges The firft is a 
 
 gentleman of aunceftrie, which muft nedes he a gentlema of blood. But if 
 
 he dye withoute ifsue, the whole cote armour is loft, The fecond, is a 
 
 getleman of blood, and not of aunceftry. As, when he is the fecounde in 
 degree, difcended from the firft of that name. The third is a gentleman 
 of cote armour, and not of blood. That is to faye, a gentleman of cote 
 armour of the kinges badge, as the kinges deuife geuen hym by an 
 Herehaughte The fourth is alfo a getlema of cote armour, and not 
 
 S— 2 
 
68 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 of blood, as this. The king geueth a lord/hip by patent, to him and his 
 
 heyres for euer. He may beare the cote of that hrdjhip The fift, is a 
 
 yeoman, a chriftian man. If he (/ say) in the feruice of god and his prince, 
 kill an heathen gentleman, of what degree foeuer he he {a knight baneret 
 excepte) he fhall beare the armes, and v/e his atchieuemet without any 
 
 differece, fauig only y word of y fame mifcreant getlema The Jixt is, 
 
 if a king do make a yeoma a knight, he is the as a getleman of blood, by y 
 royaltie of y king, and knighthod. The feueth, is a getleman fpirituall. 
 This, if he be a chorles fine, and is aduaUced to any fpiritual dignitie, 
 he is the a getlema, but not of blud. But if he be a doctor of y Ciuil lawe, 
 he is a getlema as of blood, and his cote is perfit at y firft bearing. The 
 eight, is called a gentlemU vntrial, and fuch is he, as being brought vp in an 
 
 Abbey, or w* a biffhop The nynth, hath ben of olde called a gentilma 
 
 Appocrifate. This is fuche a one, as ferueth a prince. And at his begyn- 
 nyng, is a page, and groweth vp by his diligence, to be a grome, and fo hyer. 
 
 "There was never gentleman nor churle ordained but hee had 
 father and mother : Adam and Eve, had neither father nor mother and 
 therefore in the Sonnes of Adam and Eve first issued one both gentleman 
 and churle " 
 
 (Noah to his son Japhet) : 
 
 "Adams Sonne, I make thee a gentleman, and thy renoune shall 
 streth through the west part of the world... and thy dominion shall be 
 called Asia, which is the countrie of gentlemen.... From the of-spring 
 of gentlemanly Japhet came Abraham, Moyses, Aaron and the Prophets 
 and also the king of the right line of Mary, of whom that only absolute 
 gentleman Jesus was born. . .and gentleman by his mother Mary princesse 
 of coat armour." 
 
 " The Booke of Armorie, The Gentleman's Academic, or 
 The Booke of S, Albans... compiled by Juliana Bernes 
 (1496) and now reduced into a better method by 
 G(ervase) M(arkham)." London, 1595. 
 
 Maister of Defence (183). The Elizabethan name for a Fencing 
 Master : there was a Guild or Mystery of them (see Prologue, p. 23). 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 6g 
 
 " My profession said Vincentio (Saviolo ?) what is my profession. 
 Then said the gentleman, he is a Maister of the noble science of Defence." 
 "I speak not against Maisters of Defence indeed, they are to 
 be honoured, nor against the Science, it is noble, and in mine opinio 
 to be preferred next to Diuinitie ; for as Diuinitie preserueth the soule 
 from hell and the divell, so doth this noble Science defend the bodie 
 from wounds and slaughter." 
 
 " The Dagger serueth well at length to put by a thrust, and at the 
 halfe Sword to crosse the Sword-blade, to driue out the Agent, and put 
 him in danger of his life." Silver's Paradoxes of Defence. 
 
 The equivoque in the text (183) consists in the dagger being always 
 used to parry or ward off the blow. 
 
 Fencing School (182). "For of fence, almost in every town, there is 
 not only masters to teach it, with his provosts, ushers, scholars and 
 other names of art and school ; but there hath not failed also, which 
 hath diligently and favouredly written it, and is set out in print, that 
 every man may read it. 
 
 Philologe, But in learning of fence, I pray you what is that which 
 men most labour for ? 
 
 Toxophilus, That they may hit another, I trow, and never take 
 blow their self. 
 
 Phil. But was there ever any of them so cunning yet, which, at 
 one time or other, hath not been touched. 
 
 Tox. The best of them all is glad sometime to escape with a blow. 
 
 Phil. Then in fence also, men are taught to go about that thing, 
 which the best of them all knoweth he shall never attain unto." 
 
 R. Ascham, Toxophilus. 
 
 Fencing-Schoole. " Like him, who thought to come to bee a good 
 Fencer by looking on Agrippa's [or Don Luis de Nervins'] book- 
 postures only." 
 
 James Howell's Instructions for Forreine Travell 1642 (Arber). 
 
 " We travel into Italie to learne the art of fencing, and practise it at 
 
yo Worke for Cutlers 
 
 the cost of our lives before we know it ; it were requisite according to 
 the order of true discipline, we should preferre the theorike before the 
 practike. We betray our apprentissage." 
 
 Florio's Montaigne, ii. 37. 
 
 Prize (295). "You have play'd your Prize." 
 
 Titus Andranicus, i. x. 399. 
 "Like the Usher of a Fence-schoole, about to play his prize." 
 Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. 
 
 Archery (iS^). "Amongst all the English artillery, Archerie challengeth 
 the pre-heminence... first shewed to the English by the Danes, brought 
 in by the Normans, continued by their Successors to the great glory of 
 England, in atchieving honourable victories ; but now dispossessed by 
 gunnery, how justly let others judge. Much may be said for either." 
 
 Camden, Remaines concerning Britaine. 
 " Milice redoubtable : la fleur des archiers du monde." 
 
 Ph. de Comines on English Bowmen. 
 
 " In Praise of Archery. 
 Brave Archery, what rapture shall I raise 
 In giving thee thy merit, and due praise 
 So ancient, so divine, so nobly fam'd ; 
 (Yet for the bodie's health there's nothing nam'd.) 
 It is an Exercise (by proofe) we see 
 Whose practise does with nature best agree. 
 Obstructions from the liver it prevents. 
 Stretching the Nerves and Art'rys gives extents 
 To the spleenes oppilations, clears the brest 
 And spungy lungs: it is a foe profest 
 To all consumptions : More, what need I name ? 
 The State approves it for a lawful game. 
 What woon our honour, is now made our Sport, 
 Witness Poicteirs, Cressy and Agincourt." 
 
 Th. Heywood, Pleasant Dialogues and Drammas (1637). 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 71 
 
 "The posture of the Bow and Arrow.. .hath affinitie with the 
 Musquet and the postures of the Palizadoe, which is a good conduct 
 to the Pike." 
 
 " Now if I shall be questioned touching the mixture of these seuerall 
 weapons, the Pike^ the Musquet and the Bow, or in what sort they may 
 be imbattayled without disorder or hinderance of one weapon with 
 another; I answer...! conceive it may be done both easily and 
 profitably. 
 
 "In the days of Queen Eli%abeth of thrice happy and blessed 
 memory, when the use of the Musquet was newly brought from 
 beyond the Seas unto this Kingdome, and the vertue thereof found 
 and approved ; yet was the weapon so scarce to be had, workemen 
 so slow, and new alterations so unpleasant, that the State was compelled 
 to compound their Bands of three seuerall Weapons, the Fike^ Musquet^ 
 and the Harquebush or Calliuer, as I am able to shew by sundry lists." 
 Gervase Markham, The Art of Archerie. 
 
 Note. I would recommend to Toxophils the issuing a facsimile of this charming 
 little 3zmo with its old woodcut frontispiece of a Bowyer in action. 
 
 Bow^ Bill and Gun (185). " In like maner when occasion is ministred 
 to speak of shoting or archeri, we Englishmen may cal it the honour of our 
 Country... Therfore it shal become al gentlemen to use this our English 
 pastime of shoting for their greatest game and disport... Furthermore yf 
 wee compare the warres of tymes passed wythe those whiche haue beene, 
 synce the inuencion of the Gunne, we shall perceiue that the Valiency 
 of men touching right manhead hath bene nothing like unto that auncient 
 time." 
 
 The Institucion of a Gentleman, 1568. 
 
 Bow Bill. Invert the words and you have another pun 'Bilbow,' 
 a fine Spanish blade manufactured at Bilbao. 
 
 "When down their bows they threw 
 And forth their bilbows drew." 
 
 Drayton's Battle of Agincourt, 
 
72 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 " Scholar. What handling is proper to the instruments ? 
 Toxophilus. Standing, nocking, drawing, holding and loosing, where- 
 by Cometh fair shooting, which belongeth neither to wind, nor weather." 
 
 Ascham. 
 
 " For some shall maintain that a Turk can be hit at twelve score 
 pricks in Finsbury Fields. Ergo the bow and shafts won Boulogne; 
 others say that a pot-gun is a dangerous weapon against a mud-wall, and 
 an enemy to the Painter's work." 
 
 Taylor's Penniless Parliament of Thread-Bare Poets, 1608. 
 
 Any man may bend him as he list (190). "But again in stringing 
 your bow, you must look for much bend or little bend, for they be clean 
 contrary." Ascham's Toxophilus. 
 
 Nocke (194), cf. the ballad 5^ George for England by John Grubb, 
 M.A., 1688, wherein King Arthur's sword "y-cleped Caliburn" was 
 said to 
 
 "Split a man at single slash 
 From noddle down to nock." 
 
 Nocke stands for " breech " : which, the talk being of guns, might 
 be taken by the less vulgar-minded as an Academic a posteriori prediction 
 of the long delayed invention of the Breech-loader. 
 
 Nocking the Arrow is the time-honoured phrase for notching the 
 arrow, see Hansard's Book of Archery 1896, where the process of 
 "nocking" ("shifting your shaft-hand down to the nock") is fully 
 described. 
 
 " The nocke of the Shaft is diversly made, for some be great and 
 full, some handsome and little, some wide, some narrow, some deepe, 
 some shallow, some round, some long, some with one Nocke, some with 
 a double Nocke whereof euery one hath his seuerall property." 
 
 Ascham's Toxophilus copied by G.M. The Art of Archerie, 1634. 
 
 "First in putting the Nock betweene your two first fingers, then 
 bringing the Shaft under the String and over the Bow, then to set 
 the Shaft neither too high nor too low, but euen and straight ouer- 
 thwart the Bow." Ibid. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 73 
 
 5/7/ (195). "The Forrest Bill is a double weapon by reason of the 
 head, and therefore hath eight wardes, foure with the stafFe, foure with 
 the heade." 
 
 "The Welch hooke or Forrest Bill, hath advantage against all 
 maner of weapons whatsoever." 
 
 " The Halbard or blacke Bill, or such like weapons of weight, ap 
 perteining unto guard or battell." Silver. 
 
 "When English men used Hercules weapons, the bow and the 
 black bill, they fought victoriously with Hercules success : so I hope 
 they shall carry way no victory more happily now, when they adjoin to 
 those weapons of Hercules, love's thunder-bolt ; for so some now call 
 our greatshot." Camden's Remaines, 1605. 
 
 "The Bill (A.-S. hyll, Irish biail, securis, German Betl=Axe) was 
 introduced into England temp. Henry VI. about the fifteenth century, 
 when it was allied in form to the Halbard. Skinner considers it a 
 securis rostrata (beaked axe). It was long a favourite in Scandinavia, 
 and the illustration (Fig. loi) represents the weapon of Gunnar, the 
 Icelandic Champion, which sang before battle, as also did the Sword of 
 Sigard." Burton, Book of the Sword, p. 95. 
 
 Bill's a Tall-fellow ons hands (200). "As he lived in a ruffling time, 
 so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our Fathers were wont 
 to call men of their hands." 
 
 Sir Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia. 
 (Lord Hunsdon) 1641 (Arber's Edition). 
 
 Tall ■' , !■ hands, i.e. of his inches : hand = 4 in. 
 on s) 
 
 See also Nares' Glossary, Merry Wives of Windsor i. 4. 27 and 
 Winters Tale v. 2. 181. 
 
 "To know the perfect length of your short stafFe, or half Pike, 
 Forrest bil. Partisan or Gleue (Glaive)... you shall stand upright, holding 
 the stafie upright close by yo\ir body, with your left hand, reaching 
 with your right hand your stafFe as high as you can, and then allow 
 to that length a space to set both your hands, when you come to fight, 
 
74 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 wherein you may conueniently strike, thrust and ward, and that is the 
 just length to be made according to your stature." 
 
 Silver's Paradoxes of Defence. 
 
 Bill, lie pay him (197). 
 
 Ben Jonson has the same pun in The Staple of News upon the duns 
 of Pennyboy Canter : 
 
 " Do I not muster a brave troop, all billmen ?...Goqd bills, sufficient 
 bills, these bills may pass. {Puts them in his pockets.)" 
 
 " Argent, three Bils in Pale, Sable, name of Gibbes." 
 
 Gwillim's Display of Heraldrie, 1610. 
 
 "I abhor bills in a morning. 
 Pen. Your honour says true : 
 
 Their knavery will be discern'd by daylight; 
 But thou may'st watch at night with bill in hand 
 And no man dares find fault with it." 
 
 Nat. Field, A woman is a weathercock. 
 
 Will quickly be Wood (201). 
 
 " Cardinal Wolsey, I say, waxed so wood therewith, that he studied 
 to invent all ways of revengement against the Emperor." 
 
 William Roper : The Mirrour of Vertue in Worldly Greatness, 
 or the Life of Sir Thomas More Knight. 
 
 " Wood-, or in a rage, as the winde doth in the wood, ex Belg: woed, 
 woede, furor, rabies, insania : woeder quod vet. Sax : et Sicambr, pro 
 Tyranno." John Minsheu, The Guide into the Tongues. 1617. 
 
 (Francis Bacon was one of the Subscribers to this work, the first 
 which contained a printed list.) 
 
 Gunne (203). " The earliest mention of hand-guns occurs in con- 
 nection with Perugia as early as 1364 (Clephan). The first portable 
 fire-arm, or small hand-cannon, is of the same date as the breech-loading 
 cannon, both being invented at the beginning of the 14th century." 
 Demmin. (See note to Flash, p. 77.) 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 75 
 
 " Yet of all weapons, the best is, as Euripides doth say, wherewith 
 with least danger of ourself, we may hurt our enemy most. And that 
 is, (as I suppose) artillery. Artillery now-a-days, is taken for two 
 things, guns and bows." Ascham. 
 
 "And therefore banish not onely from your Court all traiterous 
 oiFensiue weapons, forbidden by the Lawes, as guns and such like... but 
 also all traiterous defensiue armes, as secrets, plade sleeves and such like 
 unseene armour'." James I., Basilikon Doron. 
 
 "Having names given them, some from Serpents or ravenous 
 birds, as Culverines or Colubrines, Serpentines, Basilisques, Faulcons, 
 Sacres ; others in other respects as Canons, Demi Canons, Chambers, 
 Slingis, Arquebuze, Caliver Handgun, Muskets, Petronils, Pistoll, Dagge 
 &c. and Petarvas of the same brood lately invented." 
 
 Camden's Remaines, 1605. (Artillerie.) 
 
 " True it is that Mosquets being in the hands of skilful Mosquettiers 
 are of great effect for divers purposes ; and that kind of weapon of that 
 length with restes, and so ranforced, was first used in Italie above 60 
 years past (i.e. circa 1530) as I have divers times heard auncient Captaines 
 of the Italian and Spanish Nation say." 
 
 He continues : " the Duke of Alva when Governor of the Low 
 Countries increased the number of Foot Musketeers to counteract the 
 effect of the Ratters " (? Reiters). 
 
 Sir John Smythe, Discourses etc. (see note on p. 28 for full title). 
 
 Bouncing (202). Ben Jonson of a woman : 
 
 "A very bona Roba and a Bouncer." 
 
 The New Inn, Act iii. Sc. 2. 
 
 " Is your Italian the finest gentleman ? — In the world, Signor. 
 Your Spaniard is a mere Bumbard to him : he will bounce indeed 
 but he will burst." Heywood's Four Prentices. 
 
 Here bounce signifies the recoil of a piece of ordnance (Bumbard), 
 much as in the text, and our modern " Bounder " may be derived from 
 the rebound or ' bounce ' of the Elizabethan gun. 
 
 1 See also Viscount Dillon, Archaologia, Vol. Ll., on Guns in the Tower. 
 
76 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Dagger in Cheape (285). 
 
 In a Descriptive Catalogue of the London Traders, Tavern, and 
 Coffee-House Tokens current in the 17th Century, by J. H. Burn, 
 1853, we find the following : — 
 
 '■^At the Dagar and (Pie). A Dagger ; magpie on point. Reverse : 
 Pye in Foster Lane (Cheapside). In the field M. H. D." 
 
 " Richard Smith, in his Obituary, Sloane ms. 886, records : 
 Deer. 22, 1657, Moses Dannet at ye Dagger in Foster Lane 
 buried." 
 
 I have come to the conclusion that the " Dagger in Cheape " (far 
 less frequently mentioned in Elizabethan literature than its namesake 
 in Holborn) must have been situate in Foster Lane, Cheapside : see 
 Notes on "Dagger," "Dagger Ale," &c. 
 
 " O gentle fellow-soldiers, then leave your controversies, if you love 
 a woman, for I will prove it that a mince-pie is better than a musket ; 
 and he that dare gainsay me, let him meet me at the Dagger in Cheape, 
 with a case of pewter spoons, and I will answer it." 
 
 Taylor's Pennilesse Parliament of thread-bare Poets, 1608. 
 C. Hindley's edition, 1872. 
 
 See also Hobson's fests, 1607. 
 
 " 2nd Pren. I must needs step to the Dagger in Cheap to send a 
 letter into the Country unto my Father. Stand by; you are the 
 youngest 'prentice, look you to the shop." 
 
 Thos. Heywood's If you know not me etc. 
 "...Ten pounds in a morning? here's the fruit 
 Of Dagger-pies and ale-house guzzlings." 
 "In Vol. 2 of Extracts from the Stationers' Registers, p. 171, is 
 mentioned the publication of A fancie on the fall of the Dagger in Cheap, 
 which may mean either that the house, or the sign which it bore, fell 
 down ; probably the latter, although the Editor, in his note on the entry, 
 supposed that the word 'fall' applied to the house." 
 
 J. P. CoUier's Note. 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 77 
 
 There was another " Dagger " in Holborn frequented by gamblers 
 and sharpers (Nares) celebrated for its Dagger-pies and Dagger-ale (see 
 B. Jonson's Alchemist i. i, Fulwell's Art of Flatterie, Witt's Recreation, 
 and Gascoigne's Del. Diet for Droonkards and Dekker's Satiromastix). 
 
 In Greene's Arcadia or Menaphon he speaks of " Dagger 
 Drunkenness" on a "pot of blew burning ale, with a fiery flaming 
 toste." Egerton Brydges' Censura Litteraria, vol. vii. p. 165. 
 
 Gunpowder Plot. 1605 (228). In a tract dated 1606 (reprinted 
 in C. Hindley's Old Book Collectors' Miscellany) on the Arraign and 
 Execution of the late Traitors (four at St Paul's Churchyard on 
 Thursday 30th Jan., and four in the old Palace in Westminster over 
 against the Parliament house on Friday following), "Fawkes, the 
 minor, justly called, the Devil of the Vault " is spoken of as " alias 
 Johnson." 
 
 Powder (209). "When the Letter was shewed to me by my 
 Secretary, wheren a generall obscure aduertisement was given of some 
 dangerous blow at this time, I did upon the instant interpret and appre- 
 hend some darke phrases therein, (contrary to the ordinary Grammer 
 construction of them, and in an other sort then I am sure any Divine, 
 or Lawyer in any Universitie would have taken them) to be meant by 
 this horrible forme of blowing us all up by powder." 
 
 K. James I., A speach in Parliament, 1605. 
 
 "Pen. If you cross him, he'll blow you up with gunpowder. 
 Abra. In good faith, he looks as if he had had a hand in the 
 treason. I'll take my leave." 
 
 Nat. Field, A woman is a weathercock. 
 
 Parliament House (230). " Surely if I were one of the Parliament- 
 house, I would not fail to put up a bill for the amendment of this thing." 
 
 Ascham's Toxophilus. 
 
 Flash (219). "Sir Petronel Flash" was a name given to a Bragga- 
 docio or boasting fellow. 
 
7 8 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 " Pietranelli souldiers serving on horseback armed with petronels, 
 snaphances or fire-lock pieces and cuirasses." (Florio.) 
 
 "Petronel (from P«V«««/) = Hand-Cannon for a Knight." 
 
 H. B. Wheatley's Note to Every man in his Humour. 
 
 Shyre (223). See Thos. Hearne's Curious Discourses (Of what 
 antiquity Shires were in England) by Several Hands. 
 
 "The other House is composed of Knights for the Shire and 
 Gentry, and Burgesses for the Townes." 
 
 James I. A speach in Parliament, 1605. 
 
 On the 27th Nov. 1616 that prince of hack-writers (and riders), 
 Gervase Markham, was censured in the Star Chamber and fined in the 
 sum of ;^500 for sending a challenge to Lord Davey. The quarrel 
 between them arose from his Lordship's dog " Bowser " having been 
 " in danger to be trodden on " by Markham at a hunting party at Sir 
 Gervase Clifton's. Opinions were delivered by the King's Attorney, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Chief Justice, Secretary Winwood, 
 the Vice-Chamberlain, the Bishops of Ely and London, the Master of the 
 Wards, Lord Arundell, the Lord Treasurer, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury and the Lord Chancellor. Censura Litteraria, vol. in. p. 64. See 
 curious anecdote of encounter between G. M. and Sir John Holies in 
 1597 in Theatr, Poet, Ang. i^'J'^ — 80), copied from CoUins's 'b^ohle 
 Families 84, 5. 
 
 See also 2 State Trials y^^ and Prologue (p. 29) for the prosecution 
 of Lord Sanquhar for the murder of the Fencing Master (Turner) 
 " who had accidentally put out one of the northern Pier's Eyes in 
 playing at Rapier and Dagger," in which Bacon as Solicitor General 
 conducted the prosecution. 
 
 Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors., vol. 11. p. 329. 
 
 Backe-Friend to us both (257). So Hobbes of Chillingworth : " A 
 lusty fellow that would drive his enemies before him ; but would often 
 give his own party a shrewd backblow." 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 79 
 
 Long Sword (287). "Logic is the armoury of reason, furnished 
 with all offensive and defensive weapons. There are syllogisms, long 
 swords ; enthymemes, short daggers ; dilemmas, two-edged swords, that 
 cut on both sides ; sorites, chain-shot ; and for the defensive, distinctions, 
 which are shields; retortions, which are targets with a pike in the 
 midst of them, both to defend and oppose." 
 
 Thos. Fuller, D.D., The Holy State (The General Artist). 
 
 Also, " Fencing is war without anger ; and manly sports are the 
 grammar of military performances." Ibid. "Of Recreations." 
 
 Field and Fields (37), (242). These words so frequent of occurrence 
 have a general and special sense : the field, generally, standing for the 
 field of combat or terrain ; and Fields being the unbuilt-over spaces in 
 and around London, especially on the North side. If we look at Ralph 
 Agas's Map of London (Civitas Londinum) date about 1560, we see 
 that the Fields bounded the whole of the North side of London, 
 behind Holborn : there, in order, we find Schmyt Fyeld (Smithfield), 
 More Fyeld (Moorfields), Fynesbury Fyeld (Finsbury Field) and The 
 Spurl-Fyeld (Spitalfields), of which we learn the following particulars 
 from Stow and other sources : — 
 
 Smithfield or Smoothfield, the planus Campus re et nomine of Fitz- 
 stephen. 
 
 "And this Sommer 16 15 [the year of our play] the Citty of London 
 reduced the rude vast place of Smithfield into a fair and comely order, 
 which formerly was neuer held possible to be done, and paued it all 
 ouer...they also made strong rayles...and sequestred the middle part of 
 the said Smithfield into a very faire and ciuill walk... And this field was 
 for many yeares called ' Ruffian's Hall,' by reason it was the usual 
 place of frayes, and common fighting during the time that sword and 
 bucklers were in use. But the ensuing deadly fight of Rapier and 
 Dagger suddenly suppressed the fighting with Sword and Buckler." 
 
 Howes' ed. of Stowe, 1631, p. 1023. See Cunningham's Handbook 
 of London, Wheatley's edition. 
 
8o Worke for Cutlers 
 
 " I'll buy this i' the field, so I will ; I have a mind to it, because 
 'tis a field rapier." 
 
 B. Jonson, Every Man in his Humour^ Act ii. Sc. 2. 
 
 " Neither to look back to the Sword and Buckler age of Smithfield, 
 but content himself with the present." 
 
 B. J., Induction to Bartholomew Fair. 
 Stowe notes the encroachments and enclosure of this S., " whereby 
 remaineth but a small portion for the old uses ; to wit for markets of 
 horses and cattle, neither for military exercises, as joustings, turnings 
 and great triumphs, which have been there performed before the princes 
 and nobility, both of this realm and foreign countries " [see Froissart]. 
 
 St Giles in the Fields. " Ye may read in mine annals how that in 
 the year 1222 the citizens kept games of defence, and wrestlings, near 
 unto the hospital of St Giles in the field, where they challenged and 
 had the mastery of the men in the suburbs and other commoners... The 
 youths of this city also have used on holy days after Evening prayer, at 
 their masters' doors, to exercise their wasters and bucklers." Stow's 
 Survey p. 36. Strutt, Sports and pastimes Bk m. Chap. vi. Sec. 22, 
 gives an engraving of this. 
 
 Tothill Fields (or Fields, on the south side of the Thames). 
 Minsheu's Dictionary 1617. 
 
 '•'■ Spendall. And I will meet thee in the field as fairly 
 As the best gentleman that wears a Sword. 
 Stainer. I accept it : the meeting Place ? 
 Spendall. Beyond the Maze in Tattle. 
 
 St. What weapon ? Sp. Single Rapier." 
 Greene's Tu quoque, published by Thos. Hey wood, 1614. 
 Fields. " It is also a kind of dastardliness which hath brought this 
 fashion into our single combates, to accompany us in the fields with 
 seconds, thirdes and fourths. They were anciently single combates, 
 but now they are skirmishes and battels." 
 
 Florio's Montaigne Bk 11. chap, xxvii. 
 {Cowardize the Mother of Cruelty.) 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 8i 
 
 Moorfields. "This field of old time was called the More, as 
 appeareth by the Charter of Wm. the Conqueror to the College of 
 St Martin, declaring a running water to pass into the City from the 
 same More. Also Fitzstephen writeth of this More saying thus : 
 'When the great Fen or moor, which watereth the walls on the 
 North side is frozen &c.' This fen or moor field, stretching from the 
 wall of the city betwixt Bishopsgate and the postern called Cripples 
 gate to Fensbery and to Holy Well, continued a waste and unprofitable 
 ground a long time [but in the year 1415 the Mayor built the 
 postern called Moregate and caused the ditches to be cleansed and so 
 drained and dried the fen]. In the year 1498 all the gardens, which 
 had continued time out of mind without Moregate... were destroyed; 
 and of them was made a plain field for archers to shoot in " [they may 
 be descried in Agas]. Stow's Survey. 
 
 It was one of the chief resorts for duelling : — 
 
 "Walk into Moorfields. 
 I dare look on your Toledo. Do not shew 
 A foolish vapour in the Streets." 
 
 Massinger's City Madam, 
 
 Pepys stood and saw the wrestling there in 1661 and tells of the 
 fray between the butchers and the weavers in 1664. It was the 
 mustering ground of troops. Shadwell mentions cudgel-players and 
 Tom Brown the second-hand booksellers under the trees, while Keats 
 was born at livery-stables on the Pavement in Moorfields. 
 
 Finsbury or Fensbury without the posterns of Cripplegate and 
 Moorgate lent its name to the Square and Circus which subsequently 
 overspread Moorfields. Grub Street was hard by, "of late years inhabited 
 for the most part by bowyers, fletchers, bowstring makers and such like 
 occupations, now little occupied ; archery giving place to a number of 
 bowling alleys, and dicing houses, which in all places are increased and 
 too much frequented." Stow. 
 
 The first Playhouse in London, "The Theatre," was erected in 
 
 SI. 6 
 
82 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Finsbury Fields in 1576, see Early London Theatres {In the Fields) by 
 T. Fairman Ordish, F.S.A., who quotes from Remembrancia some 
 interesting notices of fencing and sword play. 
 
 Velvet (275). See note to Gilt on p. 58, also on p, 20. 
 
 Justice of the Peace (loi). James has himself told us how highly 
 he valued the services of a Justice of the Peace, and we might almost 
 suppose Dagger to have had an inkling of this from the dramatic effect 
 of his announcement : 
 
 So let the Judges bee neuer so careful! and industrious, if the Justices of Peace 
 vnder them, put not to their helping hands, in vaine is all your labour : For they are 
 the Kings eyes and eares in the countrey...For I hold a good Justice of Peace in his 
 Countrey, to doe mee as good seruice, as he that waites vpon mee in my Priuie 
 Chamber, and as ready will I be to reward him ; For I accompt him as capable of 
 any Honour, Office, or preferment about my person, or for any place of Councell or 
 State, as well as any Courteour that is neere about mee, or any that have deserued 
 well of me in forreine employments : Yea, I esteeme the seruice done me by a good 
 Justice of Peace, three hundred miles, yea sixe hundred miles out of my sight, as 
 well as the seruice done me in my presence : For as God hath giuen me large limits, 
 so must I be carefuU that my prouidence may reach to the farthest parts of them. 
 And as Law cannot be honoured, except Honour be given to Judges: so without 
 due respect to Justices of Peace, what regard will be had of the seruice ? 
 
 Therefore let none to be ashamed of this office, or be discouraged in being a 
 Justice of Peace, if he serue worthily in it. 
 
 James I., Works, A Speach in the Starre-chamber, anno 1616. 
 
 Philalethes. Right. And from thence I infer, That Duelling is a very dis- 
 honourable Practice. For when you have given the best Proof of your Sufficiency, 
 and killed your Man, you are seized into the Hands of Justice; treated like 
 Assassins : and condemned to Die with Circumstances of Ignominy. You are not 
 indicted for acquitting yourselves like Gentlemen; but for disturbing the Publick 
 Peace, and murthering the King's Subjects. Now the Law never loads a Man 
 with Reproaches, nor punishes him thus coarsely, for doing a handsome action. 
 Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, by Jeremy Collier, M.A., 1722. 
 
 So that it alwaies had a vigilant eye by anticipation to prevent many others that 
 would breake the peace by any of the meanes aforesaid, and therefore hath from age 
 to age appointed meet magistrates and watchmen, to whose charge especially (as 
 Selected Sentinells) they bid conunit the preservation of the peace, who in times past 
 
Glossarial Epilogue 83 
 
 before the raigne of King Edward the Third, were called Conservators of the peace, 
 and thence they have been termed Justices of peace, because they be Justices of 
 Record, or otherwise they be named Commissioners of the Peace, because they have 
 and derive their authority by the King's Commission who himselfe being the chiefe 
 and generall Conservator and Preserver of the peace throughout all his dominions, 
 doth by his severall Commissions commit some particles of his authoritie, touching 
 the continuance of the peace, and maintenance of certain of his Lawes, to some chiefe 
 and select men in all the parts of the Realme, whom hep taketh to bee the most miete 
 men for the same in respect of their integrity, wisedome, learning, courage, and 
 Uvelyhood. 
 Ferdinand Pulton of Lincoln's Inn, Esqre, De Pace Regis. 1623. Black Letter. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 A PUBLICATION OF HIS MATIes EDICT AGAINST 
 
 PRIVATE COMBATS, &c. 
 
 (See Prologue, pp. 30— 33-) 
 
 Touching the first branch of actuall offences by Blowes with the hand, Stripes 
 with a rod. Bruises with a cudgell, stabbes with a Dagger, or hurts with a Rapier, 
 Our purpose is out of the sense of Honour, to extend Our punishment as far aboue 
 those ordinary degrees, which are now in vse, as the facts themselues exceede all 
 humanitie. For though the differences betweene greater and lesser occasions and 
 motiues cannot bee denied, and the Ciuilians distinguish by their Lawes betweene 
 Blowes that smart, or smart not; yet since that scome holdes a Gentleman well 
 borne, and sutably behaued, worthy the chastisement of a dog, this onely respect 
 ought to bee preferred to the smart that is felt by the sences 
 
 This Striker shall condemne vnder his owne hand, before hee bee suffered to 
 depart out of restraint, that saucie Paradox which giues liberty to Gentlemen 
 with their owne Swordes to reuenge wrongs done to themselues. Hee shall further 
 promise solemnly before the Lords, neuer to offend vpon the like occasion, in the 
 like contempt. Hee shall be bound to the good Behauiour during the space of 
 the next sixe Moneths that ensue, and during the same terme likewise abstaine from 
 Our Court, and from all places where the Queene our dearest Spouse, and the Prince 
 Our dearest Sonne shal happen to reside. For it is true that Palaces of this qualitie, 
 should rather serue for so many Sanctuaries to distressed Subiects that endure wrong, 
 then receptacles or retraits for persons of vnstayed iudgement, that offer it. Last of 
 
84 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 all, Wee leaue the person that was hurt or stricken, to the benefit of his action of 
 Battery at the Common Lawe, with a meaning, that Our Censures be reputed rather 
 cumulatiue, then priuatiue, of any lawfuU help that lustice yeeldes, vnlesse the Lordes 
 can deuise by their discretion at the cleansing of the wound, to purge all motiues 
 that may cause it by succeeding accidents, (that rancle and renew) to breake out 
 againe 
 
 For triall of the maine point, after Gentlemen haue agreed to trie the Quarrell by 
 their Swords in the Field, it is considerable whether both of them be slaine or neither. 
 For in euery one of these, the diuersitie of Degrees drawes in likewise a great 
 difference betweene the courses that are to bee obserued by the Lords, and their 
 Deputies. Touching the partie slaine after Challenge in cold blood by single Fight, 
 in despite of Our decree, or in case the match consist of many, touching all those 
 that are slaine, Our part is onely to leaue them to the lustice or Mercie of their 
 Eternall ludge 
 
 In excuse of Seconds, it is said by some, that they were onely brought in as 
 vsefull instruments to paire weapons, to search bodies, to depart the Combatants vpon 
 equall tearmes, to suppresse aduantage vpon either side, and to see faire play : yet 
 since the Fight it selfe is absolutely bad in it selfe, it is not possible for any acte 
 assisting, or abetting, whatsoeuer cloud be cast vpon a tender eye, to bee iust, or in a 
 matter of this weight to warrant accessaries, when We taxe the principal!. These 
 Seconds in very deed, to make the best of them, are onely stout Assistants to bad 
 ends: their fairest actions are but formall preparations: their excuses are but 
 shadowes : though they see the sinner, yet they runne with him. If wee marke well, 
 their labours and endeuours are of little vse : For whatsoeuer be expected of their 
 Humanitie, their Charitie and Care ; yet whosoeuer vndertakes to moderate men in 
 fight will not forbeare, either vpon the sight of blood, or the sence of smart, to rush 
 desperately vpon extremities. These Seconds might perhaps serue better to some 
 ende, in case the prosecution of priuate Quarrels by the Sword, were first admitted 
 and approoued by any Prince or State: But since they shrinke that should bee 
 the Supports and Stayes, it is not strange, that Sublato Principali, omnia cadunt 
 accessoria : Betweene an Actor therefore and an Abettor, the difference cannot bee 
 great, howsoeuer malice may be masked vnder false couers 
 
 The better to bring Quarrels to discouerie, when they begin first to worke, it is 
 obserued, that not onely in the common Ordinaries, to which Gentlemen doe vsually 
 resort, but sometimes also in the Tennis Courts, in bowling Allies, Dicing houses, 
 and all houses of game, questions sometimes vpon a cast, sometimes vpon distemper 
 in losse, vpon refusall to lend vpon iraportunitie to be paid, vpon termes of 
 comparison, and words of exception, vpon as many contingents, as places of that 
 nature breed vexations and contradictions 
 
Glossarial Kpilogue 85 
 
 For remedie whereof, Wee doe straitly charge and command; First Our owne 
 Groome-porter, and then all other keepers of gaming-houses, of Tennis Courts, and 
 bowling Allies, vpon paine of Our high displeasure, beside three moneths commit- 
 ment and suspension of their power, to keepe houses of resort to that end, for the 
 space of three whole yeeres at the least, that instantly vpon the giuing of any 
 reproachful word, or passing any blow betweene Gentlemen, that are likelie to 
 seeke a sharpe reuenge by the sword, in some place more priuate, their first care bee 
 to take the weapons of the persons kindled with rage, if it may be ; the next to keepe 
 them in sunder till some Officer of the Peace be brought into the place to command 
 in Our name, till the Quarrell comming to the hearing of the Lords in Conmiission, 
 may receiue a sharper censure, or a better satisfaction, as they in their graue 
 Judgements shall finde, both the persons to deserue, and the cause to be con- 
 siderable. 
 
 6-3 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aeademie, Gentlematis 67 
 
 Accedens of Armory 67 
 
 Action of Battery 30, 31, 44, 65, 84 
 
 Agas, Ralph 79 
 
 Agrippa $2,-, 69 
 
 Ale-house Daggers 28 
 
 Amends for Ladles 66 
 
 Anatomic of Abuses 58, 6z 
 
 Andrews, Bishop 51 
 
 Annals of Q. Elizabeth zy 
 
 Antiquaries, Society of Front., 30 
 
 Arcadia or Menaphon 77 
 
 Arber, Prof. E. 6z, 69, 73 
 
 Archaeologia 75 
 
 Archery 70, 71, 81 
 
 Book of 72 
 Armorie, Book of 43, 67 
 Armory, Accedens of 67 
 
 Elements of 67 
 
 5rw ajs of 67 
 Arms 43, 67 
 
 Arms and Armour, History of 64 
 Arnold's Chronicon 51 
 ^rt of Flatterie 77 
 Artillery 70, 75 
 Ascham 55, 61, 69, 71, 75, 77 
 
 Back-Sword 24, 47, 51, 5* 
 Backe-friend 47, 78 
 Bacon, Francis 29, 31, 32, 33, 74, 78 
 Badelaire 51 
 
 Band, Cuffe and Ruff 16 
 
 Base Spaniard 39, 56, 57, 58 
 
 Basket-Sword 43, 6j, 66 
 
 Basket Hilt 65, 66 
 
 Basilikon Doron 28, 75 
 
 Basilisques 75 
 
 Battery, Action of 30, 31, 42, 65, 84 
 
 Battle of Agincourt 71 
 
 Beard, Ballad of 51 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher 15, 56 
 
 Coxcomb 50 
 Bend, Bent 41, 61, 72 
 Bemers, Juliana 67, 68 
 Bevis of Southampton 43, 66 
 Bleiv-Cap for me 57 
 Bilbow 71 
 Bill 44, 71, 73, 74 
 
 Forrest 73 
 
 Black 73 
 Billmen 74 
 Bladesmiths 22 
 Blazon of Gentrie 67 
 Blinkinsops 56 
 Bolingbroke 52 
 Bolton, Edmund 67 
 Book of St Albans 67 
 Book of Siuord 49, 52, 60, 73 
 Booke of Armorie 43, 67 
 Bouncing 45, 75 
 Bow 44, 71, 75 
 Breaker, Sword 60 
 
Indt 
 
 ex 
 
 87 
 
 Broad-Sword 65 
 
 Broken Stuord 40, 60 
 
 Brydges, Egerton 77, 78 
 
 Buckle 38, j4 
 
 Buckler 27, 41, 54, 65, 73, 79 
 
 BuUein's Dialogue j6 (n.) 
 
 BuUen's OW i»/fl>j 6i 
 
 Bumbard 75 
 
 Burn, J. H. 76 
 
 Burton, Sir R. 49, 52, 60, 73 
 
 Bussy d'Ambois 64 
 
 Caliburn 7 a 
 Cambridge Diet, jo 
 Camden a6, 27, 70, 73, 75 
 Campbell, Lord 78 
 Capon 39, sS, 59 
 Carleton, Sir Dudley 33 
 Cartwright, Wm. 17 
 Case 41 
 
 of Rapiers 53 
 Castle, Egerton S'^i Si 
 Catalogue of Honour 67 
 Censura Litter aria 77, 78 
 Challenge 84 
 Chapman, George 64 
 Cheape zo, 76 
 Chillingworth 78 
 City Madam 81 
 Civitas Londinum 79 
 Claymore 65, 66 
 Clephan, R. C. 64, 65, 74 
 Clinch, George Front., 30 (n.) 
 Cobbett's State Trials 31 (n.) 
 Compendious Exam. 54 
 Collier, Jeremy 55, 82 
 
 J. P. 58, 76 
 Comines, Ph. de 70 
 Cotgrave, Randle 27, 50, 51 
 Cotton, Richd. 51 
 
 Courtyer, Hoby's 54, 63 
 Coxcomb 50 
 Cowley, A. 63 
 Crack'd Crown 37, 49 
 Creede, Thos. 21 (and note) 
 Culverines 75 
 Cunningham, P. 79 
 Curious Discourses 78 
 Cutlers, Worke for 37 — 48 
 
 Company of ai 
 
 Hall of 21 
 
 Ordinance for ji 
 Cutter 62, 63 
 
 of Coleman St 63 
 Cutting Dicke 19, 42, 62 
 Cynthia's Revels 51 
 Cyrano de Bergerac 54 
 
 Dagge 30, 75 
 
 Dagger 27, 28, 30, 69 
 
 Ale SI, 77 
 
 at your Backs 71, 49 
 
 cheap 52 
 
 Drunkenness 77 
 
 in Cheape 19, 76 
 
 in Holbom 20, 77 
 
 and Pie 76 
 
 School 66 
 
 pies 76, 77 
 Darcie, Abraham 27 
 Davenant 5 a 
 Davies, Sir John 61 
 Decker, Thomas 16, 77 
 Defence, Maister of 23, 24, 29, 44, j6, 
 Defendant 23, 64 
 Defiance to Envy 59 
 Delicate Diet for Droonkards 77 
 Demmin, Aug. 64, 77 
 Dick, Cutting (see) 
 
 Botxiyer sS 
 
88 
 
 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Dillon, Lord 75 
 
 Discourses, Curious 78 
 
 Discourses on Matters Militarie 27, »8, 75 
 
 Display of Heraldrie 67, 73 
 
 Disraeli, Isaac 30 
 
 Dodsley 18 
 
 Don Lewis (Luis) 56, 69 
 
 Doore 41, 61 
 
 Dowden's Hamlet 26 
 
 Draggon in Sussex 43, 66 
 
 Draper's Dictionary 54, 6» 
 
 Drayton's Battie of Agincourt 71 
 
 Polyolbion 66 
 Dudgeon 41, 50 
 Duels 
 
 origin of 23 
 
 Edict against 33, 83-85 
 
 Recueil des Edits 31 
 
 Case of 31 
 Dugdale 23 
 'Dycf^s Glossary 19 (n.), 64 
 
 Early Eng. Text Society 66 
 Early London Theatres %^ 
 Eastward Hoe SS 
 Edict against Duels 30, 83-5 
 Elements of Armory 67 
 Elizabeth, Annals of Queen 27 
 
 History of Princess 27 
 Ellis's Specimens 66 
 Essays, Collier's Moral 8* 
 Etymologicum Anglicanum 50 
 Evelyn's Syl-va 50 
 Excalibur 66 
 Exchange Ware etc. 16 
 
 Fairholt, F. W. 51, 57 
 Familiar Letters js 
 Farquhar, George 52 
 Fashion 40, 60 
 
 Faustus, Dr 59 
 Fencer 30, 65 
 Fencing Masters 
 
 Agrippa 53, 69 
 
 Blenkinsops 56 
 
 Caranza 56 
 
 Don Lewis 56, 69 
 
 Grazzi 56 
 
 Hieronimo 56 
 
 Marozzo si 
 
 Saviolo 69 
 
 Silver (see) 
 
 Turner, John 
 Fencing School 20, 44, 69, 70 
 Fencing 79 
 Feme, John 67 
 Field, Nat. 66, 74, 77 
 Field and Fields 27, 38, 39, 41, 45, 
 46, 47. 79 
 
 Smithfield 79 
 
 Moorfields 79, 81 
 
 St Giles in the Fields 80 
 
 Tothill Fields 80 
 Finsbury 72, 79, 81, 82 
 Fitzstephen 81 
 Flash- 45, 77 
 
 Sir Petronel 77 
 Fleay, F. C. 19 (n.), 62 
 
 Biog. Cbron. Eng. Drama 20, 21, 62 
 Florio's Dictionary 78 
 
 Montaigne 53, 57, 70, 80 
 Forrest Bill 73 
 Forms and Hist, of Snuord 27 
 Fortunes of Nigel 52, 60 
 Foster Lane 20, 76 
 Four Prentices 75 
 Foxe 42, 63, 64, 66 
 Fqyle (foil) 26 (a), 29, 39) 63 
 Fragmenta Vetusta 73 
 
 Regalia 73 
 
Index 
 
 89 
 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay 63 
 Fuller's Holy State 61, 79 
 
 Gascoigne 77 
 
 Gelt 58,59 
 
 Gentleman's Academie 67 
 
 Gentleman, Institucion of 54, 59, 71 
 
 Gerard's Herbal 50 
 
 GifFord 61 
 
 Gilt (see Gelt) 39, 58 
 
 Glaive (Gleyve) 0,3, 58, 73 
 
 Glover, Robert 67 
 
 God's foot 19, 38, 39, ss 
 
 Gosson, Stephen $;, 6z 
 
 Grazzi 53 
 
 Greene's Tu Quogue 66 
 
 Qa^ _/or Upstart Courtier 22, 70 
 
 Arcadia or Menaphon 77 
 
 Robert 63, 77 
 Grubb, John 74 
 Grub Street 81 
 
 Guide to the Tongues (Minsheu's) 74, 80 
 Guillim, John 67, 74 
 Gull 
 Gun (Gunne) 44, 45, 71, 74, 75 
 
 Halbard 73 
 
 Hall, Bishop 59 
 
 Hand and Half Sword 24 
 
 Handbook of London 79 
 
 Hands 73 
 
 Hansard's Book of Archery 72 
 
 Harleian Miscellany ij, 16 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel 6* 
 
 Hatch'd 40, 63 
 
 Heame, Thos. 78 
 
 Heywood, Thomas 
 
 Apology for Actors 18 
 
 Challenge for Beauty 18 
 
 Cutting Dick 19, 6z 
 
 Heywood, Thomas (cont.) 
 
 English Traveller 17, 59 
 
 Four Prentices 75 
 
 If you knoiu not me etc. 18, 19, 58, 76 
 
 Pleasant Dialogues 70 
 
 Rape of Lucrece 18 
 
 Woman Killed ivith Kindness 18 
 Hindley, Charles 16, 67, 76, 77 
 Hobbes, Thos. 78 
 Hoby, Sir T. 54, 63 
 Holbom, "Dagger" in zo, 76 
 Holland's Pliny jo 
 Holy State 61, 79 
 Honest Whore $\ 
 
 Hoiv a man may choose a good <wife etc. 63 
 Howell, James S5, 57, 69 
 Hudibras (Hughdebras) 49, 56 
 Hughes, Tom 
 Hugo, Victor a 6 
 Hunsdon, Lord 73 
 Hutton, Captain A. 23 (n.), 52, 53 
 
 Institucion of Gentleman 54, 59 
 Instructions for Forreitie Travell 57, 69, 
 71 
 
 Jack of Dover 62 
 James I 
 
 Basilikon Doron 48, 75 
 
 Duels 19 
 
 Edict against 30, 83-85 
 
 On Justice of Peace 82 
 
 Proclamation Front., 29, 3c, 31 
 
 Speach in Parliament 77 
 
 Speach in Star Chamber 8a 
 Jests, Hobson's 76 
 Jonson, Ben 
 
 Alchemist 77 
 
 Bartholomew Fair 61, 62, 65, 66, 80 
 
 Discoveries 63 
 
go 
 
 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Jonson, Ben (cont.) 
 
 E-uery Man In His Humour j6, 66, 80 
 
 Ne<w Inn 75 
 
 Staple of Neius 74 
 
 Tale of a Tub 65 
 Junius, Francis jo 
 Justice of Peace 41, 8», 83 
 
 Kennett 49 (n.) 
 
 Laking, Guy F. 50, 53 
 
 Lamb, Charles 17 
 
 Lapiving 40, 61 
 
 Lasb 38, ss 
 
 Legh, Gerard 67 
 
 Lewis (Luis), Don 56, 69 
 
 Lives of the Chancellors 78 
 
 Long-Sword 23, »4, 48, 56, 79 
 
 Love and a Bottle j* 
 
 Maister of Defence 23, 24, 29, 44, 56 
 
 Markham, Gervase 67, 68, 71, 72, 78 
 
 Marlow 63 
 
 Marozzo 53 
 
 Marston's Satires 59 
 
 Martial Laiu 42, 65 
 
 Massinger 81 
 
 Matches (matcht) 19, 49 
 
 Matthey, Capt. C. 31 (n.), 58 
 
 Meighen, Richard 21 
 
 Memoirs of a Highland Lady 53 
 
 Menaphon 7 7 
 
 Mere's, Wifs Treas. 61 
 
 Minsheu, John 74, 80 
 
 Montaigne 53, 57, 70, 80 
 
 Moorfields 79, 81 
 
 More, Sir T. sS, 74 
 
 Morglay 43, 66 
 
 MuUinger, J. Bass 16 (n.) 
 
 Murray's Diet. 50, 51, 52 
 
 Musquet (Musket) 71, 75 
 
 Nares 49, 50, 73 
 Nashe, T. 51 
 Naunton, Sir Robt. 73 
 Ne<w World of Worlds 65 
 Nock 44, 72 
 North, Roger 63 
 
 Oaths ss 
 
 Old Book ColVs Misc. 16, 67 
 
 Oldys 15 (n.) 
 
 Ordish, T. F. 82 
 
 Origines Juridiciales 23 
 
 Overbury, Sir T. 60 
 
 Pace Regis, De 83 
 
 Panier-Hilt 66 
 
 Paradoxes of Defence 31 (n.), 52, 54, 
 
 57, 61, 66, 69, 73, 74 
 Park, Thomas 15 
 Parlement Man 45 
 Parlement House 46, 77 
 Partisan 73 
 Passau 63 
 
 Peace, Justice of 41, 82, 83 
 Penniless e Parliament etc. 72 
 Pepys 81 
 
 Percy Society 51, 57 
 Petronil 75, 77, 78 
 Phillips, Ed. Diet. 65 
 Pierce Penilesse 51 
 Pietranelli 78 
 Pike 71, 73, 79 
 Piquers 27 
 Plot, Gunpowder 77 
 Points (Poynt) 38, 44, 47, 53, 54, 55 
 Poignard 28, 53, 58, 66 
 Pollock, Sir F. 27 
 Polyolbion 66 
 
Indt 
 
 ex 
 
 91 
 
 Powder 45, 46, 77 
 
 Prize a4, 48, 70 
 
 Proclamation Front., 29, 30, 31 
 
 Book 29 
 Provost 24 
 Pulton, Ferd. 65, 83 
 Pummell 41, 49 
 
 Quip for Upstart Courtier 70 
 
 Raper 53 
 Rapier a6, 79, 80 
 — s. Case of si 
 
 — and Dagger i6, 29, 53, 79 
 
 — Single 38, 80 
 Reactio 59 
 Recueil des Edits 31 
 Reformation, The $% 
 Remains, Camden's 70, 73, 75 
 Remembrancia ja, 72 
 Retrospective Review 16 
 
 Retume from Pernassus 16, 49, 60 
 
 Riley's Afif»?j. of London it, 51 
 
 Uoar 45, 60 
 
 Roaring Boy 60 
 
 Roper, Wm. 55, 74 
 
 Rostand 34 
 
 Royster 59 
 
 Ruffiaris Hall 79 
 
 Ruffler 59 
 
 Saint Victor, Paul de a8 
 St George for England 7 a 
 St Giles in the Fields 80 
 Sanquhar, Lord 29 
 Satiromastix 77 
 Saviolo 69 
 Scarf 42, 62 
 Schiavona 65 
 Scholar's Prize 24, 48, 70 
 
 School of Abuse sSi 6* 
 
 Dagger 66 
 School Fencing 20, 44, 69, 70 
 Schools and Masters of Fence 52, 53 
 Scott, Sir W. 52, 60 
 Scower (Scowre) 40, 59 
 Scoivrers, The 59 
 Selden, John 23 (n.), 33 
 '5 foot 19, 38, 39, SS 
 Shadwell, T. 59, 81 
 Shakspeare 19, 21, 26, 49, 50, 52, 54, 
 
 59, 61, 62, 63, 70, 73 
 Society 51 
 'Shart S5 
 Shewe 18 
 
 Short Sword 23, 58 
 Short View, Collier's ss 
 Siege of London 20. 
 
 Rhodes 52 
 Shyre 45, 78 
 Silver, George 31 (n.), s%, J3. 54, 57, 
 
 58, 61, 65, 66, 69, 73, 74 
 Silver (Siler) 40, 58, 60, 61 
 Single Rapier 31, 52 
 Skeat 26, 50 
 Skelton 59 
 
 Sloane MS. 23 (n.), 76 
 Smithfield 79, 80 
 Smythe, Sir John 27, 28 (n.), 75 
 Solingen 64 
 Somers' Tracts 
 Spaniard 39, 56, 37, 58, 75 
 Spedding's Bacon 33 (n.) 
 Spitalfields 79 
 Stafford 54 
 
 Star Chamber 31, 33, 78 
 State Trials 29, 31 (n.), 78 
 Stationers' Registers 21, 76 
 Statutes 3 Jac. 1. 21 against Swearing 56 
 Steelets (stilettoes) 30, 51 
 
92 
 
 Worke for Cutlers 
 
 Stow's Survey *i, 79, 81 
 Strutt's Sports go 
 Stubbes, Philip 58, 6 a 
 Sussex, Dragon in 43, 66 
 Swash 65 
 
 Swash-buckler 41, 65 
 Swearing S5 
 
 Statute against 
 Sword 24 
 
 in Middle Ages 26 
 
 Long »4, 48, 56, 79 
 
 Single 38, 52 
 
 Two-hand 24, 46, 65 
 
 and Buckler 27, 4*, 5*, 65, 73, 79i 
 go 
 
 Back 24, *7, 51. 5a 
 
 Short 23, 58 
 Sivord and Centuries 23 (n.), 52 
 Sylva 50 
 
 3a// 0/"'^ AflWiit 45, 73 
 Tattle (Tothill), Maze in 80 
 Taylor, John 72, 76 
 Theat. Poet. Ang. 78 
 Theatre, The 81 
 Tickle Bo<we's own Nock 44 
 
 (See Nock) 
 Tokens, Tavern 76 
 Toledo 23, 64, 66, 81 
 Tothill Fields 80 
 
 Toxophilus sSt 61. 69) 7*1 77 
 
 Treason, The 42, 77 
 
 Trial by Combat 23 
 
 Truss 27 
 
 Trj/all of Che-oalry 55, 62 
 
 Two-hand Sword 24, 46, 65 
 
 Tucke 27 
 
 T« Quoque, Greene's 66, go 
 
 Turner, John 92 
 
 Velvet 20, 47, 58, 82 
 Venies (Venues) 26 (n.) 
 
 Wallace Collection 50, 53, 60 
 
 Ward, A. W. Introd. Note, 59, 63 
 
 Ward, Edwin 24, 25 
 
 Webster 64 
 
 Welch, Charles 22 
 
 Wheatley, H. B. 26, 66, 78, 79 
 
 White Deiiil 64 
 
 Winde in that door 41, 61 
 
 JVit^s Treasury 61 
 
 Recreation 77 
 Woman a Weathercock 74, 77 
 Wood, Anthony 65 
 Wood 45, 74 
 Worcester College 15 
 Worke for Armorours 16 
 Wyrley, W. 67 
 
 Yorke, Rowland 26 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PR2411.v5°7ri90r"'''^''"^ 
 Woflfe 'oi; cvtiers; or, A merry dialogue b 
 
 3 1924 013 127 364 
 
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