218 THE ANTIQUARIAN. 



list, and Ludowick Muggleton, a notable schismatic 

 and father of the sect called after his name, both of 

 them tailors, are not within the scope of this treatise, 

 or the province of English antiquities. 



To resume these : — I have shewn to what incon- 

 venience the tailorie were subject from master Clark, 

 the posture-master, and liis waggeries ; the following 

 retort, made to an upstart knight of the Thimble, 

 was not, when the circumstances are considered, 

 more severe than these might warrant. Lord Chan- 

 cellor Talbot kept a Welsh jester, named Rug Pen- 

 geUing, who was a shrewd fellow, and rented a farm 

 under his master. It happened that the chancellor's 

 bailiff, who had been a tailor, and bore Rug a grudge, 

 levied a distress on his goods for rent, observing, 

 like a churl as he was, " I '11 fit you, sirrah :" then, 

 replied the jester, ** it will be the first time in your 

 life that you ever fitted any one." 



One anecdote more — it is again from the collection 

 of James Petit Andrews, Esq., and I proceed to 

 close this elaborate lecture with the use and abuse 

 of the tailors and their calling made by play-wrights. 



In 1788 a garretteer tailor residing at 127 in the 

 Strand, near Exeter Change, issued a hand-bill, 

 pledging himself to exhibit, among other singular 

 operations on coats, the following tests of his skill. 

 He engaged to show any who would favour him with 

 a call at his attic retreat, " a tolerably decent suit on 

 his own back, made out of two ragged old coats 

 bought in Rosemary Lane for eighteen pence ; and 

 a coat that would admit of four changes of fashion, 

 made out of a much smaller-sized ragged old coat 

 and breeches, bought at the same place for two 

 shillings." 



Addison observes that " the tailor often contri- 

 butes to the success of a tragedy more than the 

 poets ;" it is lamentable, with this assertion of an 

 impartial critic before us, to view the general ingra- 

 titude, not to use a stronger phrase, with which these 

 patrons of the drama have been treated, and that by 



