upon those daughters of destruction, would keep a family with decency, and maintain a wife with honour.  When our author was in this forlorn miserable state, he writ a letter to his wife, which Mr. Winstanly has preferred, and which, as it has somewhat tender in it I shall insert.  It has often been observed, that half the unhappy marriages in the world, are more owing to the men than the women; That women are in general much better beings, in the moral sense, than the men; who, as they bustle less in life, are generally unacquainted with those artifices and tricks, which are acquired by a knowledge of the world; and that then their yoke-fellows need only be tender and indulgent, to win them.  But I believe it may be generally allowed, that women are the best or worst part of the human creation:  none excel them in virtue; but when they depart from it, none exceed them in vice.  In the case of Green, we shall see by the letter he sent his wife how much she was injured.

“The remembrance of many wrongs offered thee, and thy unreproved virtues, add greater sorrow to my miserable state than I can utter, or thou conceive; neither is it lessened by consideration of thy absence, (tho’ shame would let me hardly behold thy face) but exceedingly aggravated, for that I cannot as I ought to thy ownself reconcile myself, that thou might’st witness my inward woe at this instant, that hath made thee a woful wife for so long a time.  But equal heaven has denied that comfort, giving at my last need, like succour as I have sought all my life, being in this extremity as void of help, as thou hast been of hope.  Reason would that after so long waste, I should not send thee a child to bring thee charge; but consider he is the fruit of thy womb, in whose face regard not the father, so much as thy own perfections:  He is yet green, and may grow strait, if he be carefully tended, otherwise apt enough to follow his father’s folly.  That I have offended thee highly, I know; that thou canst forget my injuries, I hardly believe; yet I perswade myself, that if thou sawest my wretched estate, thou couldst not but lament it, nay certainly I know, thou wouldst.  All thy wrongs muster themselves about me, and every evil at once plagues me; for my contempt of God, I am contemned of men; for my swearing and forswearing, no man will believe me; for my gluttony, I suffer hunger; for my drunkenness, thirst; for my adultery, ulcerous sores.  Thus God hath cast me down that I might be humbled, and punished for example of others; and though he suffers me in this world to perish without succour, yet I trust in the world to come, to find mercy by the merits of my Saviour, to whom I commend thee, and commit my soul.”

  Thy repentant husband,

  for his disloyalty,

  Robert green.

This author’s works are chiefly these,