Thursday, 2 April 2009

from Abiezer Coppe, 1649

O my back, my shoulders. O Tythes, Excise, Taxes, Pollings, etc... Mine eares are filled brim full with confused noise, cries, and outcries; O the innumerable complaints and groanes that pierce my heart (thorow and thorow) O astonishing complaints.
Was ever the like ingratitude heard of since the world stood? what! best friends, surest friends, slighted, scorned, and that which cometh (in the basest manner) contemned, and some rewarded with prisons, some with death?
O the abominable perfidiousnesse, falseheartednesse; self-seeking, self-enriching, and Kingdome-depopulating, and devastating, etc.
These, and divers of the same nature, and the cries of England.
And can I any longer forbeare?...whom this hitteth it hitteth. And it shall hit home...Well! let it be how it will; these Levellers (so called) you mostly hated, though in outward declarations you owned their Tenents as your own Principle...
Neither do I forget the one hundred spent in superfluous dishes ( at your late great London Feast)... Howle you great ones, for all the feast daies dole, etc. heare your doome.

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