. Upon the delivery of my letter my master entertained me, and
next day bought me a new cloak, of which you may imagine (good Esquire)
whether I was not proud of; besides, I saw and eat good white bread,
contrary to our diet in Leicestershire. My master's name was Gilbert
Wright, born at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire; my mistress was born
at Ashby de la Zouch, in the same county, and in the town where I had
gone to school. This Gilbert Wright could neither write nor read: he
lived upon his annual rents, was of no calling or profession; he had for
many years been servant to the Lady Pawlet in Hertfordshire; and when
Serjeant Puckering was made Lord keeper, he made him keeper of his
lodgings at Whitehall. When Sir Thomas Egerton was made Lord Chancellor,
he entertained him in the same place; and when he married a widow in
Newgate Market, the Lord Chancellor recommended him to the company of
Salters, London, to admit him into their company, and so they did, and
my master in 1624, was master of that company; he was a man of excellent
natural parts, and would speak publickly upon any occasion very
rationally and to the purpose. I write this, that the world may know he
was no taylor, or myself of that or any other calling or profession: 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 drudgeries I willingly performed; scrape trenchers, &c. If
I had any profession, it was of this nature: I should never have denied
being a taylor, had I been one; for there is no calling so base, which
by God's mercy may not afford a livelihood; and had not my master
entertained me, I would have been of a very mean profession ere I would
have returned into the country again; so here ends the actions of
eighteen years of my life.

My master married his second wife for her estate; she was competently
rich; she married him for considerations he performed not, (nocturnal
society) so that they lived very uncomfortably; she was about seventy
years of age, he sixty-six or more; yet never was any woman more jealous
of a husband than she; insomuch, that whensoever he went into London,
she was confident of his going to women; by those means my life was the
more uncomfortable, it being very difficult to please