This Terrible Person, On The 16th Of December 1573, At Lothbury, In
London, At A Table Of Twelve Pence A Meal, Supped With Some Merchants
And A Certain Melchisedech Mallerie.
Dice were thrown on the board, and
in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate
to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you
an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window.
Here Etna smoked,
daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the
slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter
was ended for this fitte."
But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester,
took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The
next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe."
Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his
characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient
because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the
past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.
Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of
gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable
that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back. There
was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a
moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a
great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of
stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall."
Hall, who had cut himself - and nobody else - nursed his wound indoors for
some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would
"shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret
and unlooked for mischief." Then, with "a mufle half over his face,"
Hall took post-horses to his home in Lincolnshire. Business called him,
he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he
fled in disguise.
After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He
dined at "James Lumelies - the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke,
born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales," - and
coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he
"fell to with the rest."
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie - and with insufferably
haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter
around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again,
passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary
rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel
of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall." Hall mutters to
his servants, "Jesus can you not knocke the boyes head and the wall
together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus?" His three servants go out of
the church by the west door:
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