some old men.]

FIRST.
God help! God help! there's law for punishing,
But there's no law for our necessity:
There be more stocks to set poor soldiers in,
Than there be houses to relieve them at.


OLD MAN.
Faith, housekeeping decays in every place,
Even as Saint Peter writ, still worse and worse.

FOURTH.
Master mayor of Rochester has given commandment,
that none shall go abroad out of the parish; and they
have set an order down forsooth, what every poor
householder must give towards our relief: where
there be some ceased, I may say to you, had almost
as much need to beg as we.

FIRST.
It is a hard world the while.

OLD MAN.
If a poor man come to a door to ask for God's sake,
they ask him for a license, or a certificate from a
Justice.

SECOND.