subjects ... that notwithstanding all the trouble, not one third part of
the saltpetre required could be furnished." It proceeds to state that Sir
John Brooke and Thomas Russell, Esq., had proposed a new method of
manufacturing the article, and that an exclusive patent had been granted to
them. The King then _commands_ his subjects in London and Westminster, that
after notice given, they "carefully keep in proper vessels all human urine
throughout the year, and as much of that of beasts as can be saved." This
appeared to fail; for at the end of the same year, the "stable" monarch
proclaimed a return to the old method, giving a commission to the Duke of
Buckingham, and some others, to "... break open ... and work for
saltpetre," as might be found requisite; and in 1634, a further
proclamation was issued renewing the old ones, but excepting the houses,
stables, &c. of _persons of quality_.

During the Commonwealth the nuisance was finally got rid of; for an act was
passed in 1656, directing that "none shall dig within the houses, &c. of
any person _without their leave first obtained_."

BROCTUNA.

Bury, Lancashire.

J. O. treats _The Lord Coke, his Speech and Charge, with a Discoverie of
the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers_, 8vo. London: N. Butter, 1607, as a
genuine document; but it is not so; and, lest the error should gain ground,
the following account of the book, from the Preface, by Lord Coke, to the
seventh part of his _Reports_, is subjoined:

"And little do I esteem an uncharitable and malicious practice in
publishing of an erroneous and ill-spelled pamphlet under the name
Pricket, and dedicating it to my singular good lord and father-in-law,
the Earl of Exeter, as a charge given at the assizes holden at the city
of Norwich, 4th August, 1606, which I protest was not only published
without my privity, but (beside the omission of divers principal
matters) that there is no one period therein expressed in that sort and
sense that I delivered: wherein it is worthy of observation, how their
expectation (of scandalizing me) was wholly deceived; for behold the
catastrophe! Such of the readers as were learned in the laws, finding
not only gross errors and absurdities on law, but palpable mistakings
in the very words of art, and the whole context of that rude and ragged
style wholly dissonant (the subject being legal) from a lawyer's
dialect, concluded that _