We have a few old scores to wipe off." "Ay, marry! have we," cried an embroiderer's apprentice; "these extortioners have ruined my master's trade by their gold-and-silver-thread monopoly." "Hundreds of worthy men have been thrown out of employment by their practices," said a vintner's 'prentice.

"We sell not half the wine we used to do.

And no wonder! seeing two-thirds of the inns in London are shut up." "The brewers will be all ruined," said a burly 'prentice, with a wooden shovel over his shoulder; "since every day a fresh ale-house is closed; and no new licences are granted.

Murrain seize all such monopolists! They are worse than the fly in hops, or smut in barley." "Ay, plague take 'em!" exclaimed Dick Taverner.

"They are as bad as the locusts of Egypt.