Ham.
I take it that the editor of Archbishop Bramhall's _Works_ was judicious in
not altering the {497} word _pinece_ to _pinnace_, as an object very
different from the latter was meant; _i. e._ a _cimex_, who certainly
_revenges_ any attack upon his person with a _stink_. _Pinece_ is only a
mistaken orthography of _punese_, the old English name of the obnoxious
insect our neighbours still call a _punaise_ (see Cotgrave _in voce_).
Florio says "Cimici, a kinde of vermine in Italie that breedeth in beds and
biteth sore, called punies or wall-lice." We have it in fitting company in
_Hudibras_, III. 1.:
"And stole his talismanic louse,
His flea, his morpion, and punese."
This is only one more instance of the danger of altering the orthography,
or changing an obsolete word, the meaning of which is not immediately
obvious. The substitution of _pinnace_ would have been entirely to depart
from the meaning of the Archbishop.