The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane

It is an adventure book. As 'tis the present mode to embellish a history with a portrait of the writer, it will not be amiss if I here at the outset give you some hints by which you may see, as in a frontispiece, the image of that Benet Pengilly who is about to tell you many marvelous things. What kind of man I am you may better judge when you come to the last page of this history; my business now is to present my image as I was; to which end I would have you picture a man close upon thirty years of age, clad in a jerkin and breeches of leather, six foot and some odd inches in height, gaunt and lean as a famished wolf, fierce visaged, with an unkempt beard of hair, and a shock ragged as a bush, and both as black as any ink; a deep-sunk, bloodshot eye, and a swarthy skin, all besmirched with broken egg, filth and blood. This pretty portraiture you shall frame in the town pillory, which stood over against the church of St. Mary, in the city of Truro, with this very true description writ under the headpiece