This is a single-sheet ballad with three illustrations (I'll call one an amalgam, since it has two woodcuts that have been sawed apart from their original blocks and pressed together). The most interesting thing, though, is that this has been bound alongside the most repetitive, derivative collection of ballads I've ever seen. Even the woodcuts are chock-full of wormholes on every page.
The sign of celestial God, for example, on this ballad also appears in "England's New Bellman" (128). "England's New Bellman" was "printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, and J. Wright, the same partners who printed nearly everything else in this collection--including "A Letter for a Christian Family." It would actually be shorter to list the exceptions to their partnership than to list everything that they published. I'm confident, but not certain, that this was the latest incarnation of the ballad "conger."
It seems initially that the smuttier ballads were more likely to be printed independently: F. Coles published "The Wanton Wife of Bath" without naming the other partners; R Burton (who I don't believe was a partner) published "Five Merry wives of Lambeth" and "A Westminster Wedding" in the 1660s.
I digress. The sign of the penitent prayer also appears in "A Leiceſterſhire Frolick" (28). There, the figure has the upside-down text "Oh ſpare our lives I pray." There's no text above her in "A Letter for a Christian Family."
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