he smoothering perplexitie, nay a number of them had
meruailous hot breaths, which sticking in the briers of their bushie
beardes, could not choose, but (as close aire long imprisoned) engender
corruption. Wiser was our brother _Bankes_ of these latter dais, who
made his iugling horse a cut, for feare if at anie time hee should
foist, the stinke sticking in his thicke bushie taile might be noisome
to his auditors. Should I tell you how many purseuants with red noses,
and sargeants with precious faces shrunke away in this sweat, you would
not beleeve me. Euen as the Salamander with his very sight blasteth
apples on the trees, so a purseuant or a sargeant at this present, with
the verie reflexe of his fine facias, was able to spoile a man a farre
of. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sunne, _Diebus
illis_ if it had bene so in England, the generation of _Brute_ had died
all and some. To knit vp this description in a pursuat, so feruent
and scorching was the burning aire which inclosed them, that the most
blessed man then aliue, would haue thoght that God had done fairely by
him, if he had turnde him to a goat, for goates take breath not at the
mouth or nose only, but at y eares also.

Take breath how they would, I vowd to tarrie no longer amongst them. As
at Turwin I was a demie souldier in iest, so now I became a martiallist
in earnest. Ouer sea with my implements I got me, where hearing the king
of France and the Swizers were together by the ears, I made towards them
as fast as I could, thinking to thrust my selfe into that faction that
was strongest It was my good lucke or my ill, I know not which, to come
iust to ye fighting of the battel, where I sawe a wonderfull spectacle
of bloud shed on both sides, here the vnwildie swizers wallowing
in their gore, like an oxe in his doung, there the sprightly French
sprawling and turning on the stayned grasse, like a roach newe taken out
of the streame, all the ground was strewed as thicke with battle axes,
as the carpenters yard with chips. The plaine appeared like a quagmire,
ouerspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you
beholde a heape of dead murthered men ouerwhelmed with a falling steed,
in stead of a tombe stone, in another place a bundle of bodies fettered
together in theyr owne bowels, and as the tyrant Romane Empereurs vsed
to tie condemned liuing caitifes face to face to dead corses, so were
the halfe liuing here mixt with sq