parishes within the bills of mortality, who
are hereby empowered to demand them accordingly.

* * * * *

I am not to omit the receipt of the following letter, with a nightcap,
from my valentine;[136] which nightcap I find was finished in the year
1588, and is too finely wrought to be of any modern stitching. Its
antiquity will better appear by my valentine's own words:

"SIR,

"Since you are pleased to accept of so mean a present as a nightcap
from your valentine, I have sent you one, which I do assure you has
been very much esteemed of in our family; for my
great-grandmother's daughter who worked it, was maid of honour to
Queen Elizabeth, and had the misfortune to lose her life by
pricking her finger in the making of it, of which she bled to
death, as her tomb now at Westminster will show: for which reason,
myself, nor none of my family, have loved work ever since;
otherwise you should have had one as you desired, made by the hands
of,

"Sir,
"Your affectionate
"VALENTINE."

"_To the Right Worshipful Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., Censor of Great
Britain, and Governor of the Hospital erected, or to be erected, in
Moorfields._

"The petition of the inhabitants of the parish of Goatham in the
county of Middlesex;

"HUMBLY SHEWETH,

"That whereas 'tis the undoubted right of your said petitioners to
repair on every Lord's Day to a chapel of ease in the said parish,
there to be instructed in their duties in the known or vulgar
tongue; yet so it is (may it please your Worship) that the preacher
of the said chapel has of late given himself wholly up to matters
of controversy, in no wise tending to the edification of your said
petitioners; and in handling (as he calls it) the same, has used
divers hard and crabbed words; such as, among many others, are
'orthodox' and 'heterodox,' which are in no sort understood by your
said petitioners; and it is with grief of heart that your
petitioners beg leave to represent to you, that in mentioning the
aforesaid words or names (the latter of which, as we have reason to
believe, is his deadly enemy), he will fall into ravings and
foamings, ill-becomi