The silent record blushes to reveal
Their undescended dark original.
But grant the best. How came the change to pass;
A true-born Englishman of Norman race?
A Turkish horse can show more history,
To prove his well-descended family.
Conquest, as by the moderns ’tis express’d,
May give a title to the lands possess’d;
But that the longest sword should be so civil,
To make a Frenchman English, that’s the devil.
These are the heroes that despise the Dutch,
And rail at new-come foreigners so much;
Forgetting that themselves are all derived
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived;
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones
Who ransack’d kingdoms, and dispeopled towns;
The Pict and painted Briton, treach’rous Scot,
By hunger, theft, and rapine, hither brought;
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-hair’d offspring everywhere remains;
Who, join’d with Norman French, compound the breed
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.
And lest, by length of time, it be pretended,
The climate may this modern breed have mended;
Wise Providence, to keep us where we are,
Mixes us daily with exceeding care;
We have been Europe’s sink, the jakes, where she
Voids all her offal out-cast progeny;
From our fifth Henry’s time the strolling bands,
Of banish’d fugitives from neighb’ring lands,
Have here a certain sanctuary found:
The eternal refuge of the vagabond,
Where in but half a common age of time,
Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime,
Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn,
And all their race are true-born Englishmen.
Dutch Walloons, Flemmings, Irishmen, and Scots,
Vaudois, and Valtolins, and Hugonots,
In good Queen Bess’s charitable reign,
Supplied us with three hundred thousand men:
Religion — God, we thank thee! — sent them hither,
Priests, Protestants, the devil, and all together;
Of all professions, and of ev’ry trade,
All that were persecuted or afraid:
Whether for debt, or other crimes, they fled,
David at Hackelah was still their head.
The offspring of this miscellaneous crowd,
Had not their new plantations long enjoy’d,
But they grew Englishmen, and raised their votes,
At foreign shoals of interloping Scots;
The royal branch from Pict-land did succeed,
With troops of Scots and scabs from north of Tweed;
The seven first years of his pacific reign,
Made him and half his nation Englishmen.
Scots from the northern frozen banks of Tay,
With packs and plods came whigging all away,
Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarm’d,
With pride and hungry hopes completely arm’d;
With native truth, diseases, and no money,
Plunder’d our Canaan of the milk and honey;
Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen,
And all their race are true-born Englishmen.
The civil wars, the common purgative,
Which always use to make the nation thrive,
Made way for all that strolling congregation,
Which throng’d in pious Charles’s restoration.
The royal refugee our breed restores,
With foreign courtiers, and with foreign whores:
And carefully re-peopled us again,
Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign,
With such a blest and true-born English fry,
As much illustrates our nobility.
A gratitude which will so black appear,
As future ages must abhor to bear:
When they look back on all that crimson flood,
Which stream’d in Lindsey’s, and Caernarvon’s blood;
Bold Strafford, Cambridge, Capel, Lucas, Lisle,
Who crown’d in death his father’s fun’ral pile.
The loss of whom, in order to supply
With true-born English nobility,
Six bastard dukes survive his luscious reign,
The labours of Italian Castlemain,
French Portsmouth, Tabby Scott, and Cambrian;
Besides the num’rous bright and virgin throng,
Whose female glories shade them from my song.
This offspring if our age they multiply,
May half the house with English peers supply:
There with true English pride they may contemn
Schomberg and Portland, new-made noblemen.
French cooks, Scotch pedlars, and Italian whores,
Were all made lords or lords’ progenitors.
Beggars and bastards by this new creation
Much multiplied the peerage of the nation;
Who will be all, ere one short age runs o’er,
As true-born lords as those we had before.
Then to recruit the commons he prepares,
And heal the latent breaches of the wars;
The pious purpose better to advance,
He invites the banish’d Protestants of France;
Hither for God’s sake, and their own, they fled
Some for religion came, and some for bread:
Two hundred thousand pair of wooden shoes,
Who, God be thank’d, had nothing left to lose;
To heaven’s great praise did for religion fly,
To make us starve our poor in charity.
In ev’ry port they plant their fruitful train,
To get a race of true-born Englishmen;
Whose children will, when riper years they see,
Be as ill-natured, and as proud as we;
Call themselves English, foreigners despise,
Be surly like us all, and just as wise.
Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman: