Chapter 78

“He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.”

“The old copies read _quit_,—_i.e._, discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley’s note.

It should be “quit” no doubt, but not meaning “discharged from working,” &c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.