The court of conscience or Dick VVhippers sessions VVith the order of his arraigning and punishing of many notorious, dissembling, wicked, and vitious liuers in this age. By Richard West.
West, Richard, fl. 1606-1619.
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Lyers.
HEre comes a proper child, a well fac't youth,
With very neat apparrell, comely making:
Where haue you bene my child? forsooth in truth
I was but where my mothers maide's a baking,
O lying villaine, all this liue-long day,
He hath beene with the cut-purse boyes at play.
What this is one of these that cannot speake
Three words, but two of them shall be a lie:
Is grace gone from you? is your faith so weake,
To stand in falshood? what's the cause or why?
Or who should moue thee thus to speake the word,
Which can no truth nor certaintie affoord.
Thy credit's crackt, there's no man that will trust thee
If thou shouldst tell a thousand certaine tales:
All honest men abandon and detest thee,
Each true man cryes out, and vpon thee railes.
They doe eschew, abandon and detest
A lier, worse then any sauage beast.
Nimble tongu'd Nicholas (as the Prouerbe saith)
He that will lie will steale: but as for you,
I haue a whip will remedie in faith,
The tripping of your tongues not speaking true.
Vntrusse you Rascall, nay a knaue so young,
Must learne to rule his false and lying tongue.
