Shelf-sacrifice: WHR 4

This virtuoso drawing is from the equally virtuoso Chapter XXVII – ‘How a Monk of Sevile saved the Closse of the Abbey from being ransacked by the Enemie.’ This involves Fryar Jhon, ‘a right Monk, if ever there was any, since the Monking world monked a Monkerie,’ who sees the enemy raiding the vineyards of the Abbey and puts up a crazed fight to stop them:

‘… He hurried therefore upon them so rudely, without crying gare or beware, that he overthrew them like hogs, tumbled them over like swine, striking athwart and alongst, and by one means or other so laid about him, after the old fashion of fencing, that to some he beat out their braines, to others he crushed their armes, battered their legs, and bethwacked their sides till their ribs cracked with it; to others again he unjoynted the spondyles or knuckles of the neck, disfigured their chaps, gashed their faces, made their cheeks hang flapping on their chin, and so swinged and belammed them, that they fell down before him like hay before a Mower: to some others he spoiled the frame of their kidneys, marred their backs, broke their thigh-bones, pash’t in their noses, poached out their eyes, cleft their mandibules, tore their jaws, dung in their teeth into their throat, shook asunder their omoplates or shoulder-blades, sphacelated their shins, mortified their shanks, inflamed their ankles, heaved off of the hinges their ishies, their sciatica or hip-gout, dislocated the joints of their knees, squattered into pieces the boughts or pestles of their thighs, and so thumped, mawled and belaboured them every where, that never was corne so thick and threefold thresht upon by Plowmens flailes, as were the pitifully disjoynted members of their mangled bodies, under the mercilesse baton of the crosse.’