to their liberty?
Very pretty indeed! a wife must never go abroad with a Platonic to see
a play or a ball; she must never stir without her husband; nor walk in
Spring Garden with a cousin. I do say, husband, and I will stand by it,
that without the innocent freedoms of life, matrimony would be a most
intolerable state; and that a wife's virtue ought to be the result of
her own reason, and not of her husband's government: for my part, I
would scorn a husband that would be jealous, if he saw a fellow with
me." All this while John's blood boiled in his veins: he was now
confirmed in all his suspicions; the hardest names, were the best words
that John gave her. Things went from better to worse, till Mrs. Bull
aimed a knife at John, though John threw a bottle at her head very
brutally indeed: and after this there was nothing but confusion;
bottles, glasses, spoons, plates, knives, forks, and dishes, flew about
like dust; the result of which was, that Mrs. Bull received a bruise
in her right side of which she died half a year after. The bruise
imposthumated, and afterwards turned to a stinking ulcer, which made
everybody shy to come near her, yet she wanted not the help of many
able physicians, who attended very diligently, and did what men of
skill could do; but all to no purpose, for her condition was now quite
desperate, all regular physicians and her nearest relations having given
her over.****

* The opinion at that time of the General's tampering with
the Parliament.

** Blenheim Palace.

*** The story of Dr. Sacheverel, and the resentment of the
House of Commons.

**** The opinion of the Tories about that House of Commons.

CHAPTER IX. How some Quacks undertook to cure Mrs. Bull of her ulcer.*

There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake;
nothing so incredible but they will affirm: Mrs. Bull's condition was
looked upon as desperate by all the men of art; but there were those
that bragged they had an infallible ointment and plaister, which being
applied to the sore, would cure it in a few days; at the same time they
would give her a pill that would purge off all her bad humours, sweeten
her blood, and rectify her disturbed imagination. In spite of all
applications the patient grew worse every day; she stunk so, nobody
durst come within a stone's throw of her, except those quacks who
attended her close, and apprehended no danger. If one asked them how