21 May 2010

A sudden and violent looseness

One day, going on foot to the guildhall with his clerk behind him, he was surprised in Cheapside with a sudden and violent looseness [of the bowels], near the Standard. He turned up his breech against the Standard and bade his man hide his face; ‘For they shall never see my arse again,’ said he.

- John Aubrey (1626-97) recounts a tale of Sir William Fleetwood (1535-94) in Aubrey’s Brief Lives, 2nd modern edition edited by Richard Barber, 2004

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