= 'It may be necessary to observe,
once for all, that the _piece_ (the double
sovereign)
went for
two and twenty shillings.
Ben Jonson - The Devil's Association
= 'This we may suppose to have
been the customary wages of a domestic servant.'--C. Cunningham
cites also the passage in the _Alchemist_, _Wks._ 4. 12;
'You were once ... the good, Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum,
that kept Your master's worship's house,' in which he takes the
expression 'three-pound' to be the equivalent of 'badly-paid'.
=1. 4. 1 I'll goe lift him.= Jonson is never tired of punning on
the names of his characters.
=1. 4. 5 halfe a piece.
= 'It may be necessary to observe,
once for all, that the _piece_ (the double
sovereign)
went for
two and twenty shillings.
'--G. Compare 3. 3. 83, where a
hundred pieces is evidently somewhat above a hundred pounds.
By a proclamation, Nov. 23, 1611, the piece of gold called the
Unitie, formerly current at twenty shillings was raised to the
value of twenty two shillings (S. M. Leake, _Eng. Money_ 2.
276). Taylor, the water-poet, tells us that Jonson gave him 'a
piece of gold of two and twenty shillings to drink his health
in England' (_Conversations_, quoted in Schelling's _Timber_,
p. 105). In the _Busie Body_ Mrs. Centlivre uses _piece_ as
synonymous with _guinea_ (2d ed., pp.
