We imitate also flights

variety, both for pleasure and use. of birds we have some degrees of flying in the air: we have ships and boats for going under water, and brooking of seas; also swimming-girdles and supporters. We have divers curious clocks, and other like motions of return, and some perpetual motions. We imitate also motions of living creatures by images of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents: we have also a great number of other various motions, strange for quality, fineness, and subtilty.

"We have also a mathematical house, where are represented all instruments, as well of geometry as astronomy, exquisitely made.

"We have also houses of deceits of the senses, where we represent all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions and their fallacies. And surely you will easily believe that we that have so many things truly natural, which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses, if we would disguise those things, and labour to make them more miraculous. But we do hate all impostures and lies, insomuch as we have severely forbidden it to all our fellows, under pain of ignominy and fines, that they do not show any natural work or thing adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, and without all affectation of strangeness.

"These are, my son, the riches of Solomon's House.

"For the several employments and offices of our fellows, we have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we call 'merchants of light.'

"We have three that collect the experiments which are in all books. These we call 'depredators.'

"We have three that collect the experiments of all mechanical arts, and also of liberal sciences, and also of practices which are not brought into arts. These we call 'mystery men.'

"We have three that try new experiments, such as themselves think good. These we call 'pioneers' or 'miners.' "We have three that draw the experiments of the former four into titles and tables, to give the better light for the

drawing of observations and axioms out of them. These we call 'compilers.'

"We have three that bend themselves, looking into the experiments of their fellows, and cast about how to draw out of them things of use and practice for man's life and knowledge, as well for works as for plain demonstration of causes, means of natural divinations, and the easy and clear discovery of the virtues and parts of bodies. These we call 'dowry men,' or 'benefactors.'

Then, after divers meetings and consults of our whole number, to consider of the former labours and collections, we have three that take care out of them to direct new experiments of a higher light, more penetrating into nature than the former. These we call 'lamps.'

“We have three others that do execute the experiments so directed, and report them. These we call inoculators.' Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms. These we call 'interpreters of nature.'

"We have also, as you must think, novices and apprentices, that the succession of the former employed men do not fail; besides a great number of servants and attendants, men and women. And this we do also; we have consultations which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think meet to keep secret, though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state, and some not.

"For our ordinances and rites, we have two very long and fair galleries. In one of these we place patterns and samples of all manner of the more rare and excellent inventions; in the other we place the statues of all principal inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies; also the inventor of ships; your monk that was the inventor of ordnance and of gunpowder; the inventor of music; the inventor of letters; the inventor of printing; the inventor of observations of astronomy; the inventor of works in metal; the inventor of glass; the inventor of silk of the worm; the inventor of wine; the inventor of corn and bread; the inventor of

Χ

sugars and all these by more certain tradition than you have. Then we have divers inventors of our own, of excellent works, which, since you have not seen, it were too long to make descriptions of them; and besides, in the right understanding of those descriptions you might easily err. For upon every invention of value, we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourable reward. These statues are some of brass; some of marble and touchstone; some of cedar, and other special woods gilt and adorned; some of iron; some of silver; some of gold.

"We have certain hymns and services, which we say daily of laud and thanks to God for his marvellous works; and forms of prayers imploring his aid and blessing for the illumination of our labours, and the turning them into good and holy uses.

"Lastly, we have circuits or visits of divers principal cities of the kingdom, where, as it cometh to pass, we do publish such new profitable inventions as we think good. And we do also declare natural divinations of diseases, plagues, swarms of hurtful creatures, scarcity, tempests, earthquakes, great inundations, comets, temperature of the year, and divers other things, and we give counsel thereupon what the people shall do for the prevention and remedy of them.'

And when he had said this, he stood up; and I, as I had been taught, kneeled down, and he laid his right hand upon my head, and said, "God bless thee, my son, and God bless this relation which I have made; I give thee leave to publish it for the good of other nations, for we here are in God's bosom, a land unknown." And so he left me, having assigned a value of about two thousand ducats for a bounty to me and my fellows; for they give great largesses where they come upon all occasions.

(The rest was not perfected.)

THE HISTORY

OF THE REIGN OF

KING HENRY THE SEVENTH

To the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, &c.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS,—In part of my acknowledgment to your Highness, I have endeavoured to do honour to the memory of the last king of England, that was ancestor to the king your father and yourself; and was that king to whom both unions may in a sort refer: that of the roses being in him consummate, and that of the kingdoms by him begun besides, his times deserve it. For he was a wise man, and an excellent king; and yet the times were rough and full of mutations and rare accidents. And it is with times as it is with ways: sorne are more uphill and downhill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer. I have not flattered him, but took him to life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light. It is true your Highness hath a living pattern, incomparable, of the king your father; but it is not amiss for you also to see one of these ancient pieces. God preserve your Highness.Your Highness's most humble and devoted servant,

FRANCIS ST. ALBAN.

AFTER that Richard, the third of that name, king in fact only, but tyrant both in title and regiment, and so commonly termed and reputed in all times since, was, by the Divine revenge favouring the design of an exiled man, overthrown and slain at Bosworth-field, there succeeded in the kingdom the earl of Richmond, thenceforth styled Henry the Seventh. The king immediately after the victory, as one that had been bred under a devout mother, and was in his nature a great observer of religious forms, caused "Te Deum laudamus" to be solemnly sung in the presence of the whole army upon the place, and was himself with general applause and great cries of joy, in a kind of military election or recognition, saluted

king. Meanwhile the body of Richard, after many indignities and reproaches, the diriges and obsequies of the common people towards tyrants, was obscurely buried. For though the king of his nobleness gave charge unto the friars of Leicester to see an honourable interment to be given to it, yet the religious people themselves, being not free from the humours of the vulgar, neglected it; wherein nevertheless they did not then incur any man's blame or censure : no man thinking any ignominy or contumely unworthy of him that had been the executioner of King Henry the Sixth, that innocent prince, with his own hands; the contriver of the death of the duke of Clarence, his brother; the murderer of his two nephews, one of them his lawful king in the present, and the other in the future, failing of him; and vehemently suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby to make vacant his bed, for a marriage within the degrees forbidden. And although he were a prince in military virtue approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and likewise a good law-maker, for the ease and solace of the common people; yet his cruelties and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down his virtues and merits; and, in the opinion of wise men, even those virtues themselves were conceived to be rather feigned and affected things to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate in his judgment or nature. And therefore it was noted by men of great understanding, who, seeing his after-acts, looked back upon his former proceedings, that even in the time of King Edward his brother he was not without secret trains and mines to turn envy and hatred upon his brother's government; as having an expectation and a kind of divination, that the king, by reason of his many disorders, could not be of long life, but was like to leave his sons of tender years; and then he knew well, how easy a step it was, from the place of a protector, and first prince of the blood, to the crown. And that out of this deep root of ambition it sprung, that as well at the treaty of peace that passed between Edward the Fourth and Lewis the Eleventh of France concluded by interview of both kings at Piqueny, as upon all other occasions, Richard, then duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side of honour, raising his own reputation to the disadvantage of the king his brother, and drawing the eyes