themselves of their holidays, especially on Shrove Tuesday, to
search after women of ill fame, and to confine them during the
season of Lent. See a "Satyre against Separatists," 1642.

"Stand forth, Shrove Tuesday, one a' the silenc'st bricklayers;
'Tis in your charge to pull down bawdy-houses."

Middleton's Inner Temple Masque, 1619,
Works, ed. Bullen, vii., 209.]

And, Lord! to see the apprehensions which this did give to all people at
Court, that presently order was given for all the soldiers, horse and
foot, to be in armes! and forthwith alarmes were beat by drum and trumpet
through Westminster, and all to their colours, and to horse, as if the
French were coming into the town! So Creed, whom I met here, and I to
Lincolne's Inn-fields, thinking to have gone into the fields to have seen
the 'prentices; but here we found these fields full of soldiers all in a
body, and my Lord Craven commanding of them, and riding up and down to
give orders, like a madman. And some young men we saw brought by soldiers
to the Guard at White Hall, and overheard others that stood by say, that
it was only for pulling down the bawdy-houses; and none of the bystanders
finding fault with them, but rather of the soldiers for hindering them.
And we heard a justice of the Peace this morning say to the King, that he
had been endeavouring to suppress this tumult, but could not; and that,
imprisoning some [of them] in the new prison at Clerkenwell, the rest did
come and break open the prison and release them; and that they do give out
that they are for pulling down the bawdy-houses, which is one of the
greatest grievances of the nation. To which the King made a very poor,
cold, insipid answer: "Why, why do they go to them, then?" and that was
all, and had no mind to go on with the discourse. Mr. Creed and I to