With trains t' inveigle, and surprize
Her heedless answers, and replies;
And if she miss the mouse-trap lines,
They'll serve for other by-designs;

750

vol. 2, p. 142, upon the king of Navarre's talking with his company, of love, and Dumont's saying,

"Aye, marry, there;- -some flattery for this evil·

Longueville answers,

"Oh! some authority how to proceed;

Some tricks,—some quillets how to cheat the devil."

The Earl of Warwick likewise uses the word. (Shakespear's First Part of Henry the Sixth, act 2, vol. 4, p. 138.)

"But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,

Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw."

(See Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, act 3, p. 245.)

(Timon of Athens, vol. 5, p. 274.) And in his Hamlet, (act 5, vol. 7. p. 347.)

Hamlet, seeing the Grave Digger digging up sculls, says,

"Why may not that be the scull of a lawyer? where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks ?"

(See Warner's Albion's England, book 14, chap. 91, p. 369.)

Mr. Peck (in his Explanatory and Critical Notes on Shakespear's Plays; see New Memoirs of the Life of Milton, p. 230, upon the passage above from Love's Labour Lost) observes, "That quillet, as Minshieu says, is a small parcel.-Here we come to the point. If we look into the map of Derbyshire, we find a place called Over-Seile, which parish, though surrounded by Derbyshire, is yet a quillet, or small parcel of Leicestershire. The like may be observed of diverse other places in other counties. These quillets, in all sheriffs' aids, scutages, and the like, it should seem, were taxed, or pretended to be

And make an artist understand

To copy out her seal, or hand;

Or find void places in the paper

To steal in something to entrap her;

755

taxed, sometimes with one county, sometimes with the other, and sometimes with neither. Thus, when the sheriff of Leicester demanded those aids of the parish of Over-seile, it is probable they answered, they belonged to Derbyshire, not to Leicestershire. Again, when the sheriff of Derby demanded those aids, that they belonged to Leicestershire, and not Derbyshire. And so by this pretty artifice, sometimes got excused from both, or at least attempted so to do. The word is often used in our author, and is always used to signify a quirk of the law, or quibble.”

Dr. Donne (see letter to his sister, upon the death of her son, Collection of Letters made by Sir Toby Mathew, p. 345) uses the word in this sense. "The family would not think itself the less, if any little quillet of ground had been conveyed from it; nor must it, because a clod of earth, one person of the family, is removed."

v. 754. To copy out her seal] Mr. Selden observes, (Notes upon the Fourth Song of Drayton's Polyolbion, p. 69) “that there were no seals before the conquest in England. No king of this land, except the Confessor, before the conquest, ever using in their charters more than subscription of name and crosses."

"The punishment inflicted for counterfeiting another man's seal, was no less than abjuring the kingdom, or going into perpetual exile, as appears by writ of king John to the sheriff of Oxford, (Dugdale's Antiquit. of Warwickshire, p. 922, col. 1) wherein the king commands the sheriff to cause one Anketill Manvers, who had been taken up for falsifying the seal of Robert de Oldbridge, to abjure the realm; and to send him without delay to the sea by some of his officers, who should see him go out of the island." Dissertation on the Antiquity and Use of Seals in England. By Mr. Lewis of Mergate, 1740, p. 29.

Ibid.

or hand.] There have been artists in this way in all ages. A remarkable instance of this kind was Young, the forger of the Flower-Pot Plot, in the reign of William III. who was, 1 think, afterwards hanged for coining in Newgate. (See an account of him, in the Case of Blackhead and Young.)

"Till with her worldly goods, and body,
Spite of her heart, she has endow'd ye :
Retain all sorts of witnesses,

That ply i' th' Temples, under trees;

760

Or walk the round, with knights o' th' posts,
About the cross-legg'd knights, their hosts;

Her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough (see an Account of her Conduct, 1742.) observes, upon the imprisonment of the Lord Marlborough for this plot, "That to commit a peer, there should be an affidavit from somebody of the treason. Lord Romney, Secretary of State, sent for one Young, who was then in jail for perjury and forgery, and paid the fine to make him what they call a legal evidence; for the Court lawyers said, Young not having lost his ears, was an irreproachable evidence." Which verifies Sir Roger L'Estrange's observation (Reflection on Fable 386, part 1) "That for a knight of the post, (alluding to the practice of those times) 'tis but dubbing him with the title of king's evidence, and the work is done."

Nay sometimes, when there has been no similitude of hands, from that very circumstance, men of dexterity have pretended to prove it the person's hand.

This was exemplified in the case of an Irish physician, in the time of the Popish Plot, "who was charged with writing a treasonable libel, but denied the thing, and appealed to the unlikeness of the characters. It was agreed, they said, that there was no resemblance at all in the hands; but the Doctor had two hands, his physic hand and his plot hand; and the one not one jot like the other: now this was the Doctor's plot hand; and they insisted upon it, that because it was not like his hand, it was his hand." (L'Estrange's Moral to the Fable of a Christian and a Jew, part 2, fab. 202.)

v. 760. That ply i' th' Temples, under trees.] Mr. Oldham alludes to this practice, Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal imitated, p. 298.

If Temple Walks and Smithfield never fail
Of plying rogues, that set their souls to sale

Or wait for customers, between

The pillar-rows in Lincoln's-Inn:

Where vouchers, forgers, common-bail, 765

And affidavit-men ne'er fail

T'expose to sale all sorts of oaths,
According to their ears and clothes,

To the first passenger that bids a price,
And make their livelihood of perjuries:
For God's sake, why are you so delicate,

And think it hard to share the common fate?

v. 762. About the cross-legg'd knights, their hosts.] He calls the monuments of the old knights lying cross-legged, hosts to the knights of the post; alluding to the proverb of dining with Duke Humphreythe knights of the post walking in Westminster Abbey about dinner time. (Mr. W.)

See the proverb of dining with Duke Humphrey explained amongst the London proverbs, Fuller's Worthies, p. 198. And a poem, entitled, The Legend of the thrice honourable, ancient, and renowned Prince, his Grace, Humphrey, Duke of St. Paul's Cathedral Walk, Surveyor of the Monuments and Tombs of Westminster, and the Temple, Patron to the Perambulators of the Piazzas in Covent Garden, Master of King's Bench Hall, and one of the Coliege's Privy Council. (penes me.) The author of Chronic. Chronicor. Ecclesiastic. lib. 2, p. 72, gives the following account of the cross-legged Knights.

Sumptuossissima titulo S. Sepulchri per orbem Christianum erecta Canobia in quibus hodieque videre licet, militum illorum imagines, monumenta Tibiis in crucem transversis: Sic enim sepulti fuerunt quot quot illo sæculo nomina bello sacro dedissent, vel qui tunc temporis crucem suscepissent.

v. 767, 768. T" expose to sale all sorts of oaths,—According to their ears and clothes.] Lord Clarendon gives a remarkable instance of this kind. (History of the Rebellion, vol. 2, p. 355.) "An Irishman of a very mean and low condition, who afterwards acknowledged, that being brought to Mr. Pym, as an evidence of one part of the charge against the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, (viz. the Earl of Strafford) in a parti

Their only necessary tools,

Besides the gospel, and their souls.

770

And when y' are furnished with all purveys,

I shall be ready at your service.

I would not give (quoth Hudibras)

A straw to understand a case,

Without the admirabler skill

To wind, and manage it at will;

To veer, and tack, and steer a cause,
Against the weather-gage of laws;

And ring the changes upon cases,
As plain as noses upon faces,

As have well instructed me,
you

775

780

For which you've earn'd (here 'tis) your fee;
I long to practice your advice,

And try the subtle artifice;

cular, in which a person of so vile a quality would not be reasonably thought a competent informer: Mr. Pym gave him money to buy a satin suit and cloak; in which equipage he appeared at the trial, and gave his evidence." The like was practised in the trial of Lord Stafford, for the Popish Plot, (Mr. Carte's History of the Life of James, the First Duke of Ormond, vol. 2, p. 517.) by Mr. Hetherington, agent to Lord Shaftesbury. See likewise Impartial Examination of Mr. Neal's Fourth Volume of the History of the Puritans, p. 379.

(See

v. 782. For which you've earn'd (here 'tis) your fee.] The beggar's prayer for the lawyer would have suited this gentleman very well. the Works of J. Taylor, the Water Poet, p. 101.) "May the terms be everlasting to thee, thou man of tongue; and may contentions grow and multiply; may actions beget actions, and cases engender cases as thick as hops; may every day of the year be a Shrove Tuesday; let procla