The Cloak’s Knavery
From “Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy; being a Collection of the best merry Ballads and Songs, old and new.” London, 1714.
Come buy my new ballad,
I have’t in my wallet,
But ’twill not I fear please every pallate;
Then mark what ensu’th,
I swear by my youth
That every line in my ballad is truth.
A ballad of wit, a ballad of worth,
’Tis newly printed and newly come forth;
’Twas made of a cloak that fell out with a gown,
That cramp’d all the kingdom and crippled the crown.
I’ll tell you in brief
A story of grief,
Which happen’d when Cloak was Commander-in-chief;
It tore common prayers,
Imprison’d lord mayors,
In one day it voted down prelates and prayers;
It made people perjured in point of obedience,
And the Covenant did cut off the oath of allegiance.
Then let us endeavour to pull the Cloak down
That cramp’d all the kingdom and crippled the crown.
It was a black Cloke,
In good time be it spoke,
That kill’d many thousands but never struck stroke;
With hatchet and rope
The forlorn hope
Did join with the Devil to pull down the Pope;
It set all the sects in the city to work,
And rather than fail ’twould have brought in the Turk.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
It seized on the tower-guns,
Those fierce demi-gorgons,
It brought in the bag-pipes, and brought in the organs;
The pulpits did smoke,
The churches did choke,
And all our religion was turn’d to a cloak.
It brought in lay-elders could not write nor read,
It set public faith up and pull’d down the creed.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
This pious impostor
Such fury did foster,
It left us no penny nor no pater-noster;
It threw to the ground
The commandments down,
And set up twice twenty times ten of its own;
It routed the King and villains elected,
To plunder all those whom they thought disaffected.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
To blind people’s eyes
This Cloak was so wise,
It took off ship-money, but set up excise;
Men brought in their plate
For reasons of state,
And gave it to Tom Trumpeter and his mate.
In pamphlets it writ many specious epistles,
To cozen poor wenches of bodkins and whistles.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
In pulpits it moved,
And was much approved
For crying out, Fight The Lord’s battles, beloved;
It bob-tayled the gown,
Put Prelacy down,
It trod on the mitre to reach at the crown;
And into the field it an army did bring,
To aim at the council but shoot at the King.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
It raised up States
Whose politic fates
Do now keep their quarters on the city gates.
To father and mother,
To sister and brother,
It gave a commission to kill one another.
It took up men’s horses at very low rates,
And plunder’d our goods to secure our estates.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
This Cloak did proceed
To damnable deed,
It made the best mirror of majesty bleed;
Tho’ Cloak did not do’t,
He set it on foot,
By rallying and calling his journeymen to’t.
For never had come such a bloody disaster,
If Cloak had not first drawn a sword at his master.
Then let us endeavour, etc.
Tho’ some of them went hence
By sorrowful sentence,
This lofty long Cloak is not moved to repentance;
But he and his men,
Twenty thousand times ten,
Are plotting to do their tricks over again.
But let this proud Cloak to authority stoop,
Or Dun will provide him a button and loop.
Then let us endeavour to pull the Cloak down
That basely did sever the head from the crown.
Let’s pray that the King
And his Parliament
In sacred and secular things may consent;
So righteously firm,
And religiously free,
That Papists and Atheists suppressed may be.
And as there’s one Deity does over-reign us,
One faith and one form and one Church may contain us.
Then peace, truth, and plenty our kingdom will crown,
And all Popish plots and their plotters shall down.