Gilbert Wright, who had been 'servant to the Lady Pawlet in
Hertfordshire,' had married a widow with property, and lived afterward
'on his annual rents;' or on his wife's, and 'was of no calling or
profession.' This man had real need of a servant who could read and
write, for he himself could do neither; but he was, however, 'a man of
excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very
rationally and to the purpose.' Lilly was kindly received by Master
Wright, who found, it seems, employment enough for him. 'My work was to
go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad;
to make clean his shoes; sweep the street; help to drive bucks when he
washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames--I have helped to carry
eighteen tubs of water in one morning;--weed the garden. All manner of
drudgery I willingly performed.'

Mrs. Wright, who brought money to her husband, brought also a jealous
disposition, and made his life uncomfortable. 'She was about seventy
years of age, he sixty-six,' 'yet was never any woman more jealous of a
husband than she!' She vexed more than one man, too, and her first
husband had temptations to cut his own throat and escape from trouble
so; but he, as we shall learn by and by, got some relief otherwise, and
lived till death came by better means.

Tally had difficulty in keeping on good terms 'with two such opposite
natures' as those of his master and mistress, that he managed it
somehow, and says: 'However, as to the things of this world, I had
enough, and endured their discontents with much sereneness. My mistress
was very curious to know of such as were then called cunning, or wise
men, whether she should bury her husband. She frequently visited such
persons, and this begot in me a little desire to learn something that
way; but wanting money to buy books, I laid aside these notions, and