CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
363
That keeps the loins of brethren girt,
Their Covenant, their creed, t' assert;[1]
And, when they've pack'd a parliament,
Will once more try th' expedient: 890
Who can already muster friends,
To serve for members to our ends.
That represent no part o' th' nation,
But Fisher's-folly congregation;[2]
Are only tools to our intrigues, 895
And sit like geese to hatch our eggs;
Who, by their precedents of wit,
T' outfast, outloiter, and outsit,[3]
Can order matters under-hand,
To put all bus'ness to a stand: 900
Lay public bills aside, for private.
And make 'em one another drive out;
Divert the great and necessary
With trifles to contest and vary.
And make the nation represent, 905
And serve for us in parliament;
Their Covenant, their creed, t' assert;[1]
And, when they've pack'd a parliament,
Will once more try th' expedient: 890
Who can already muster friends,
To serve for members to our ends.
That represent no part o' th' nation,
But Fisher's-folly congregation;[2]
Are only tools to our intrigues, 895
And sit like geese to hatch our eggs;
Who, by their precedents of wit,
T' outfast, outloiter, and outsit,[3]
Can order matters under-hand,
To put all bus'ness to a stand: 900
Lay public bills aside, for private.
And make 'em one another drive out;
Divert the great and necessary
With trifles to contest and vary.
And make the nation represent, 905
And serve for us in parliament;
- ↑ A lay preacher at Banbury said, "We know, Lord, that Abraham made a covenant, and Moses and David made a covenant, and our Saviour made a covenant, but the Parliament's covenant is the greatest of all covenants." The Marquis of Hamilton being sent into Scotland to appease the troubles there, demanded of the Scotch that they should renounce the covenant; they answered, that they would sooner renounce their baptism.
- ↑ Jasper Fisher, one of the six clerks in Chancery, a member of the goldsmith's company, and justice of the peace, spent his fortune in laying out magnificent gardens and building a fine house; which, therefore, was called Fisher's Folly. After having been the residence of the Earl of Oxford and Sir Roger Manning, it was used as a conventicle. See Fuller's Worthies, p. 197, and Stowe's Survey. The place where the house stood is now Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate. The word represent means either to stand in the place of others, or to resemble them. In the first sense, the members they should pack, would represent their constituents; but in the latter sense, only a meeting of enthusiastic sectaries.
- ↑ By these arts the leaders on the Parliament side defeated the purposes of the loyalists, and carried such points in the House as they were bent upon. Thus the Remonstrance was carried, as Lord Clarendon says, merely by the hour of the night; the debates being continued till two o'clock, and very many having withdrawn out of pure faintness and disability to attend the conclusion. The bill against Episcopacy, and other bills, were carried by out-fasting and out-sitting those who opposed them: which made Lord Falkland say, that they who hated bishops hated them worse than the devil, and they who loved them, loved them not so well as their own dinners.
