And you, O silent Gentlewomen, methinks you long to know whether there be no remedies for you to be had, that you may also be as well arm’d against the rigid natured, subtle and dissembling Lovers, as well as they have against the vitious Gentlewomen; take notice, that since you have subjected your selves to that foolish fashion of these times, never of your selves to go a wooing; but with patience will expect who will come for you, that rule must be first observed, and regard taken of him that cometh, then it is the time to consider, principally.

Whether he loveth you for your mony, or for your beauty.

Inquire whether he have a good method, or way, for the maintaining of a Family.  For if he have not that to build upon, the whole foundation will tumble.

Search also whether he be of an honest, rather then great extraction.  For Vertue is the greatest Gentility.

Inquire also whether he be a frequenter of Alehouses; especially of such as are of an evill reput.

    To be a lover of such houses,
    Makes him to think of other Spouses.

If he be covetous of honour, he hath several other Vertues.

Hate a Gamester like the Plague; for they are consumers of all; nay their very gain is loss.

Abhor a person of no imploy, or gadder along the streets; for they are fit for nothing.

If you marry, shew all honour, respect, and love to your husband.  Indeavour not to Lordize over him; because that, both by Heaven and nature is given unto him.

In so doing, you will have, as well as our new-married Couple, the expectation of a happy match; which though it falls out well, yet is subject to severall accidental corruptions; as you will perceive in the further Confession of the insuing Pleasures, even as if they were a Looking-glass.

THE SEVENTH PLEASURE.

The bad times teaches the new married Couple.  Makes them brave housekeepers.  They take in Lodgers, and give good examples to their Children.

It was formerly very pleasant living, when Trading and Merchandizing flourished so nobly, that every evening people were fain to carry a whole drawer full of mony out of the Counter in to the Counting-house; and then the good woman had alwaies two or three hours work to sort it, before they could so much as think of going to bed:  but it seems that destructive War, as being a scourge from Heaven, for our dissatisfied Spirits; hath so lamentably humbled the Land of our Nativity, that there are very few who have not now just causes enough to complain.

And you, O young people, shall be witnesses hereof, who have already, in that short time that you have been married, experience that things do not alwaies run upon wheels so merrily as was expected.  ’Tis true you possess the Pleasure of an indifferent Trade, as well as the rest of your Neighbours; but it is not in any measure to be compared with those golden daies that your Ancestors had, when they could lay up so much wealth, and yet complained they had but little custom.