Free The Pilgrim by Hugh Nissenson Page B

hat, with a French block and a white feather, for five pounds. That left me fourteen pounds to invest with John Loop, goldsmith, by The Sign of the Rook on Goldsmith’s Row, the fairest frame of houses and shops that I ever saw within the walls of London. Loop said that I could expect a return of five percent per annum. I put my money with him.
    Passing London Bridge, I counted the heads of twelve traitors stuck on spikes on the gatehouse at the south end of the bridge. Five other rotting heads had been blown off their spikes onto the street. One lay hard by my right foot. I looked away.
    Upon my return to Charing Cross, I spied a dog carrying a hand between its jaws. I saw the coach of his lordship, the Earl of Warwick. It took up almost the whole width of a narrow cobbled street. The coach’s wheels squeaked and clattered upon the stones. I glimpsed the splendors of Whitehall and went into Westminster Abbey, wherein for a penny, I gazed upon the tombs and monuments of the kings and queens of England, covered all over with gilding and carved in a most beautiful manner.
    In the crowded streets, I wondered about the people: the porters, the beggars, the gentlemen and ladies, the fish wives, apprentices, merchants, a constable, a vendor of hot oat cakes, the chimney sweeps, the whores, and above all, myself. Who amongst us, if any, was predestined to be saved?
    I bought a broadsheet of a ballad called “The Rat Catcher’s Song,” which I copied out in a letter for my uncle Roger and sent to my attorney, informing the former of my new position and place of residence and of my investment. Then I wrote, “I have not come upon a simile, but here for your enjoyment, dear uncle, is a verse sold on the streets of London town. It is an authentic voice of the City. The line, ‘And peepeth into holes’ is vivid, is it not?”
    I still have the broadsheet; the ballad follows:
    Rats or mice, ha’ ye any rats, mice, polecats, or weasels,
    Or ha’ ye any old sows sick of the measles?
    I can kill them and I can kill moles
    And I can kill vermins that creepeth up or creepeth down
    And peepeth into holes.
    I began my labours early Friday morning, the fifteenth of May. It was tedious. From that day on, I never ceased to contrive how to escape the tediousness of copying out inventories postmortem &c. in English and Latin.
    Mr. Appletree, his family, and servants were parishioners of St. Martin in the Fields. The Reverend Doctor Alexander Sommer was our pastor. He wore a gorgeous surplice. The Rev. Sommer was the favorite of the noblemen in the vicinity of Charing Cross. They filled his Sunday services, wearing great ruffs made of cambric, holland, lawn, or the finest other cloth that could be got for money. And their hats! Sometimes they were sharp on the crown, perking up like the shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crown of their wearers’ heads. Others were flat and broad on the crown, like the battlement of a castle. Another sort had round crowns, sometimes with one kind of band, sometimes with another, now black, now white, now russet, now red, now green, now yellow. They held these fantastical plumed monstrosities in their laps during a service, while the Rev. Doctor Sommer took as the subject of his sermon, Mark.14:7 in the new translation of Scripture: “For ye have the poor with you always.”
    The Rev. Doctor spake four hours. I remember but one thing that he said, “God made some rich and some poor so that two excellent virtues might flourish in the world: charity in the rich and patience in the poor.”
    After the service, Mistress Sarah said to me, “Why do the streets swarm with beggars? You cannot stand still but ten or twelve of the poor wretches come breathe in your face. Many of them have plague sores! What is the cause that so many pretty little boys and girls wander up and down in the streets, loiter in the churches, and lie under stalls in