rers, and set up a great work for cloth-making in Picardy, they
brought in a bill for explaining and better executing former acts for
preventing the exportation of wool, fullers earth, and scouring clay;
and this was immediately passed into a law. A petition being presented
to the house by the lustring company, against certain merchants who had
smuggled alamodes and lustrings from France, even during the war; the
committee of trade was directed to inquire into the allegations, and
all the secrets of this traffic were detected. Upon the report the
house resolved, That the manufacture of alamodes and lustrings set up
in England had been beneficial to the kingdom; that there had been a
destructive and illegal trade carried on during the war, for importing
these commodities, by which the king had been defrauded of his customs,
and the English manufactures greatly discouraged; that, by the smuggling
vessels employed in this trade, intelligence had been carried into
France during the war, and the enemies of the government conveyed
from justice. Stephen Seignoret Rhene, Baudoin, John Goodet, Nicholas
Santini, Peter de Hearse, John Pierce, John Dumaitre, and David Barreau,
were impeached at the bar of the house of lords; and, pleading guilty,
the lords imposed fines upon them according to their respective
circumstances. They were in the meantime committed to Newgate until
those fines should be paid; and the commons addressed the king, that the
money might be appropriated to the maintenance of Greenwich hospital.
The house having taken cognizance of this affair, and made some new
regulations in the prosecution of the African trade, presented a solemn
address to the king, representing the general degeneracy and corruption
of the age, and beseeching his majesty to command all his judges,
justices, and magistrates, to put the laws in execution against
profaneness and immorality. The king professed himself extremely well
pleased with this remonstrance, promised to give immediate directions
for a reformation, and expressed his desire that some more effectual
provision might be made for suppressing impious books, containing
doctrines against the Trinity; doctrines which abounded at this period,
and took their origin from the licentiousness and profligacy of the
times.

SOCIETY FOR THE REFOrMATION OF MANNERS.

In the midst of such immorality, Dr. Thomas Bray, an active divine,
formed a plan for propagating the gospel in foreign