Part 1

, p. 57. The selling of stockings was a separate trade at this time, and great attention was paid to this article of clothing. Silk stockings are frequently mentioned by the dramatists. Cf. Stephen Gosson, _Pleasant Quippes_:

These worsted stockes of bravest die, and silken garters fring’d with gold; These corked shooes to beare them hie makes them to trip it on the molde; They mince it with a pace so strange, Like untam’d heifers when they range.

=1. 1. 128 cut-worke smocks, and shirts.= Cf. B. & Fl., _Four Plays in One_:

----She show’d me gownes, head tires, Embroider’d waistcoats, smocks seamed with cutworks.

=1. 1. 135 But you must take a body ready made.= King James in his _Dæmonologie_ (_Wks._, ed. 1616, p. 120) explains that the devil, though but of air, can ‘make himself palpable, either by assuming any dead bodie, and vsing the ministerie thereof, or else by deluding as well their sence of feeling as seeing.’

=1. 1. 143 our tribe of Brokers.= Cf. _Ev. Man in_, _Wks._ 1. 82:

‘_Wel._ Where got’st thou this coat, I marle? _Brai._ Of a Hounsditch man, sir, one of the devil’s near kinsmen, a broker.’

The pawnbrokers were cordially hated in Jonson’s time. Their quarter was Houndsditch. Stow says: ‘there are crept in among them [the inhabitants of Houndsditch] a base kinde of vermine, wel-deserving to bee ranked and numbred with them, whom our old Prophet and Countryman, _Gyldas_, called _Ætatis atramentum_, the black discredit of the Age, and of place where they are suffered to live.... These men, or rather monsters in the shape of men, professe to live by lending, and yet will lend nothing but upon pawnes;’ etc.

Nash speaks of them in a similar strain: ‘Fruits shall be greatly eaten with Catterpillers; as Brokers, Farmers and Flatterers, which feeding on the sweate of other mens browes, shall greatlye hinder the beautye of the spring.’--_Prognostication_, _Wks._2. 145. ‘They shall crie out against brokers, as Jeremy did against false prophets.’ _Ibid._ 2. 162.

=1. 1. 148 as you make your soone at nights relation.= Cf. Dekker, _Satiromastix_, _Wks._ 1. 187: ‘Shee’l be a late sturrer soone at night sir,’ and _ibid._ 223:

By this faire Bride remember soone at night.

=1. 2. 1 ff. I, they doe, now=, etc. ‘Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale’s speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.’--Coleridge, _Notes_, p. 280.

=1. 2. 1 Bretnor.= An almanac maker (fl. 1607-1618). A list of his works, compiled from the catalogue of the British Museum, is given in the _DNB_. He is mentioned twice by Middleton:

This farmer will not cast his seed i’ the ground Before he look in Bretnor. --_Inner-Temple Masque_, _Wks._ 7. 211.

‘_Chough._ I’ll not be married to-day, Trimtram: hast e’er an almanac about thee? this is the nineteenth of August, look what day of the month ’tis.

_Trim._ ’Tis tenty-nine indeed, sir. [_Looks in almanac._ _Chough._ What’s the word? What says Bretnor? _Trim._ The word is, sir, _There’s a hole in her coat_.’ --Middleton, _A Fair Quarrel_, _Wks._ 4. 263.

Fleay identifies him with Norbret, one of the astrologers in Beaumont and Fletcher’s _Rollo, Duke of Normandy_.

=1. 2. 2 Gresham.= A pretended astrologer, contemporary with Forman, and said to be one of the associates of the infamous Countess of Essex and Mrs. Turner in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Arthur Wilson mentions him in _The Life of James I._, p. 70:

‘Mrs. _Turner_, the Mistris of the _Work_, had lost both her supporters. _Forman_, her first prop, drop’t away suddenly by death; and _Gresham_ another rotten _Engin_ (that succeded him) did not hold long: She must now bear up all her self.’

He is mentioned twice in Spark’s _Narrative History of King James_, Somer’s _Tracts_ 2. 275: ‘Dr. Forman being dead, Mrs. Turner wanted one to assist her; whereupon, at the countesses coming to London, one Gresham was nominated to be entertained in this businesse, and, in processe of time, was wholly interested in it; this man was had in suspition to have had a hand in the Gunpowder plot, he wrote so near it in his almanack; but, without all question, he was a very skilful man in the mathematicks, and, in his latter time, in witchcraft, as was suspected, and therefore the fitter to bee imployed in those practises, which, as they were devilish, so the devil had a hand in them.’

_Ibid._ 287: ‘Now Gresham growing into years, having spent much time in many foule practises to accomplish those things at this time, gathers all his babies together, _viz._ pictures in lead, in wax, in plates of gold, of naked men and women with crosses, crucifixes, and other implements, wrapping them all up together in a scarfe, crossed every letter in the sacred word Trinity, crossed these things very holily delivered into the hands of one Weston to bee hid in the earth that no man might find them, and so in Thames-street having finished his evill times he died, leaving behind him a man and a maid, one hanged for a witch, and the other for a thief very shortly after.’

In the ‘Heads of Charges against Robert, Earl of Somerset’, drawn up by Lord Bacon, we read: ‘That the countess laboured Forman and Gresham to inforce the Queen by witchcraft to favour the countess’ (Howell’s _State Trials_ 2. 966). To this King James replied in an ‘Apostyle,’ _Nothing to Somerset_. This exhausts the references to Gresham that I have been able to find. See note on Savory, 1. 2. 3.

=1. 2. 2. Fore-man.= Simon Foreman, or Forman (1552-1611) was the most famous of the group of quacks here mentioned. He studied at Oxford, 1573-1578, and in 1579 began his career as a necromancer. He claimed the power to discover lost treasure, and was especially successful in his dealings with women. A detailed account of his life is given in the _DNB_. and a short but interesting sketch in _Social England_ 4. 87. The chief sources are Wm. Lilly’s _History_ and a diary from 1564 to 1602, with an account of Forman’s early life, published by Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps for the Camden Soc., 1843.

He is mentioned again by Jonson in _Silent Woman_, _Wks._ 3. 413: ‘_Daup._ I would say, thou hadst the best philtre in the world, and couldst do more than Madam Medea, or Doctor Foreman.’ In _Sir Thomas Overbury’s Vision_ (Harl. Ms., vol. 7, quoted in D’Ewes’ _Autobiog._, p. 89) he is spoken of as ‘that fiend in human shape.’

=1. 2. 3 Francklin.= Francklin was an apothecary, and procured the poison for Mrs. Turner (see Amos, _Great Oyer_. p. 97). He was one of the three persons executed with Mrs. Turner. Arthur Wilson, in his _Life of James I._ (p. 70), describes him as ‘a swarthy, sallow, crooked-backt fellow, who was to be the _Fountain_ whence these bitter waters came.’ See also Somer’s _Tracts_ 2. 287. The poem already quoted furnishes a description of Francklin:

A man he was of stature meanly tall. His body’s lineaments were shaped, and all His limbs compacted well, and strongly knit. Nature’s kind hand no error made in it. His beard was ruddy hue, and from his head A wanton lock itself did down dispread Upon his back; to which while he did live Th’ ambiguous name of _Elf-lock_ he did give. --Quoted in Amos. p. 50.

=1. 2. 3 Fiske.= ‘In this year 1633, I became acquainted with Nicholas Fiske, licentiate in physick, who was borne in Suffolk, near Framingham [Framlingham] Castle, of very good parentage.... He was a person very studious, laborious, and of good apprehension.... He was exquisitely skilful in the art of directions upon nativities, and had a good genius in performing judgment thereupon.... He died about the seventy-eighth year of his age, poor.’--Lilly, _Hist._, p. 42 f.

Fiske appears as La Fiske in _Rollo, Duke of Normandy_, and is also mentioned by Butler, _Hudibr_.,