Samuel Rowlands

“ We are abused in a great degree,
For there’s no knaves so wronged as are we
By those that chiefely should be our part-takers:
And thus it is my maisters, you card-makers,
All other knaves are at their owne free-will,
To brave it out, and follow fashion still
In any cut, according to the time,
But we poore knaves (I know not for what crime) ,
Are kept in pie-bald suites, which we have worne
Hundred of yeares, this hardly can be borne.
The idle-headed French devis’d us first,
Who of all fashion-mongers is the worst:
For he doth change farre oftener than the moone ”

“ And some, because we have no beards, doe thinke
We are foure panders, with our lowise lockes,
Whose naked chinnes are shaven with the poxe:
Divers opinions there be other showes,
Because we walke in jerkings and in hose ”