And most perfidiously condemn
Those that engag'd their lives for them?[1]
And yet do nothing in their own sense
But what they ought by oath and conscience.340
Can they not juggle, and with slight
Conveyance play with wrong and right;
And sell their blasts of wind as dear,[2]
As Lapland witches bottled air?[3]
Will not fear, favour, bribe, and grudge,345
The same case sev'ral ways adjudge?
As seamen, with the self-same gale,
Will sev'ral different courses sail;
As when the sea breaks o'er its bounds,[4]
And overflows the level grounds,350
Those banks and dams, that, like a screen,
Did keep it out, now keep it in;
So when tyrannical usurpation[5]
Invades the freedom of a nation,
The laws o' th' land that were intended355
To keep it out, are made defend it.
Does not in Chanc'ry ev'ry man swear
What makes best for him in his answer?[6]
- ↑ This they did in many instances; the most remarkable were those of Sir John Hotham and his son, who were condemned notwithstanding that they had previously shut the gates of Hull against the King, and the case of Sir Alexander Carew.
- ↑ That is, their breath, their pleading, their arguments.
- ↑ The witches in Lapland pretended to sell bags of wind to the sailors, which would carry them to whatever quarter they pleased. See Olaus Magnus.
- ↑ This simile may he found in prose in Butler's Remains, vol. i. p. 298: "For as when the sea breaks over its bounds and overflows the land, those dams and banks that were made to keep it out do afterwards serve to keep it in; so when tyranny and usurpation break in upon the common right and freedom, the laws of God and of the land are abused, to support that which they were intended to oppose."
- ↑ Var. "Tyrannick usurpation," after 1700.
- ↑ A hit at the common forms of Chancery practice. But Grey thinks the poet has in mind the joke propagated by Sir Roger L'Estrange, Fable 61. "A gentleman that had a suit in Chancery was called upon by his counsel to put in his answer, for fear of incurring a contempt. Well, says the Cavalier, and why is not my answer put in then? How should I draw your
soldiers were said to have used torture to gentlemen's servants in order to extort information concerning their masters' property.
