I had seen as much already as I desired, for I had learned of old that he that keeps such company seldom comes off without a scratched face; but if he misses a mistress, he gets a wife, and stands condemned to a repentance during life, without redemption, unless one of the two dies. For women in the case are worse than pirates; a galley-slave may compound for his freedom, but there’s no thought of ransom in case of wedlock. I had a good mind to a little chat with some of them, but (thought I) they’ll fancy I’m in love with them. And so I e’en marched off into the married quarter, where there was such ranting, damning, and tearing, as if hell had been broke loose. And what was all this? but a number of women that had been locked up and shackled by their husbands, to keep them in obedience, and had now broken their prisons, and their chains, and were grown ten times madder than before. Some I saw caressing and coaxing their husbands, in the very moment they designed to betray them. Others were picking their husbands’ pockets to pay now and then for a by-blow. Some again were upon a religious point, and all upon the humour (forsooth) of pilgrimages and lectures; when alas! they had no other business with the altars or churches than a sacrifice to Venus, or a love meeting. Divers there were that went to the bath; but bathing was the least part of their errand. Others to confession, that mistook their martyr for their confessor: some to be revenged of jealous husbands were resolving to do the thing they feared, and pay them in their own coin. Others were for making sure aforehand by way of advance; for that’s the revenge, they say, that’s as sweet as muscadine and eggs. One was melancholy for a delay; another for a defeat; a third is preparing to make her market at a play. There was one among the rest was never out of her coach; and asking her the reason, she told me, she loved to be jolted. In this crowd of women, you must know that there were no wives of ambassadors, soldiers, or merchants that were abroad upon commission; for such were considered in effect as single women, and not allowed as members of this commonwealth.
The next quarter was that of the grave and wise, the right reverend widows, women in appearance of marvellous severity and reserve, and yet every one of them had her weak side, and ye might read her folly and distemper through her disguise. One of them I saw crying with one eye for the loss of one husband, and laughing with t’other upon him that was to come next. Another, with the Ephesian matron, was solacing herself with her gallant before her husband was thorough cold in the mouth, considering, that he that died half an hour ago is as dead as William the Conqueror. There were several others passing to and again, quite out of their mourning, that looked so demurely (I warrant ye) as if butter would not have melted in their mouths, and yet apostate widows (as I was told) and there they were kept as strictly, as if they had been in the Spanish Inquisition. Some were laying wagers whose mourning was most _à la mode_, and best made, or whose peak or veil became her best, and setting themselves off with a thousand tricks of ornament and dress. The widows I observed that were marching off, with the mark out of their mouths, were hugely concerned to be thought young, and still talking of masks, balls, fiddles, treats; chanting and jigging to every tune they heard, and all upon the hoity-toity like mad wenches of fifteen. The younger, on the other side, made use of their time and took pleasure while ’twas to be had. There were too of the religious strain; a people much at their beads, and in private; and these were there in the quality of love heretics, or platonics, and under the penance of perpetual abstinence from the flesh they loved best (which is the most mortifying Lent of all other). Some, that had skill in perspective, were before the glass with their boxes of patch and paint about them; shadowing, drawing out, refreshing, and in short, covering and palliating, all the imperfections of feature and complexion, every one after her own humour. Now these women were absolutely insufferable, for they were most of them old and headstrong, having got the better of their husbands, so that they would be taking upon them to domineer here, as they had done at home; and indeed, they found the master of the college enough to do.