Let his own servants turn to save their stake,
Glean from his plenty, and his wants forsake;
But let some Judas near his person stay,
To swallow the last sop, and then betray.
Make London independent of the crown;
A realm apart; the kingdom of the town.
Let ignoramus juries find no traitors[3],
And ignoramus poets scribble satires.
And, that your meaning none may fail to scan,
Do what in coffee-houses you began,--
Pull down the master, and set up the man.
Footnotes:
1. The association proposed in parliament was, by the royalists, said
to be, a revival of the Solemn League and Covenant. But the draught
of an association, found in Lord Shaftesbury's cabinet, and
produced on his trial, in which that memorable engagement seems to
be pretty closely copied, was probably what our poet alludes to.
2. The protestant flail was a kind of bludgeon, so jointed as to fold
together, and lie concealed in the pocket. They are supposed to
have been invented to arm the insurgents about this period. In the
trial of Braddon and Spoke for a misdemeanor, the recorder offered
to prove, that Braddon had bragged, that "he was the only inventor
of the protestant flails; an instrument you have heard of,
gentlemen, and for what use designed." This circumstance was not
omitted by Jefferies, in his characteristic address to the
prisoner.
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