“He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove
Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.”
“The old copies read _quit_,—_i.e._, discharged from working, and
gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley’s note.
It should be “quit” no doubt, but not meaning “discharged from working,”
&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday
diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the
riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in
fact for his trade.