spirits. The following mixture is proper for the preservation of animals: one pound of salt, four ounces of alum, two ounces of pepper, powdered together.

"I should be particularly obliged to such captains of ships as would set apart a small cask of spirits, into which they may put every uncommon sea production which they meet with during their voyage, wrapping every article separate in a rag, or a little oakum."

1793, Suppl.

E.

XCI. A Royal Hawk.-King James's Hawking. Sir Anthony Weldon.-Weldon's Court of King James.

MR. URBAN,

Feb. 15.

IN the beginning of September last, a paragraph appeared in several newspapers, mentioning, that a hawk had been found at the Cape of Good Hope, and brought from thence by one of the India ships, having on its neck a gold collar, on which was engraven the following words:

"This goodlie hawk doth belong to his Most Excellent Majestie, James Kinge of England. A. D. 1610."

On seeing this account, an anecdote immediately occurred to me, which I had lately met with in a curious old manuscript, containing some remarks and observations on the migration of birds, and their flying to far distant regions; and which, if you think it may throw any light on the subject, now much attended to by naturalists, or confirm the opinion of some, respecting the longevity of birds of prey, is much at your service. The words from my author are as follow: "And here I call to mind a story of our Anthony Weldon, in his Court and Character of King James;' The King,' saith he, being at Newmarket, delighted much to fly his goshawk at herons; and the manner of the conflict was this; the heron would mount, and the goshawk would get much above it; then, when the hawk stooped at the game, the heron would turn up its belly, to receive him with his claws and sharp bill; which the hawk perceiving, would dodge and pass by, rather than endanger itself. This pastime being over, both the hawk and heron would mount again, to the utmost of their power, till the hawk would be at another attempt; and, after divers such assaults, usually, by some lucky hit or other, the hawk would bring her

down; but one day, a most excellent hawk being at the game, in the king's presence, mounted so high with his game, that both hawk and heron got out of sight, and were never seen more; inquiry was made, not only all over England, but in all the foreign princes' courts in Europe, the hawk having the king's jesses, and marks sufficient, whereby it might be known; but all their inquiries proved ineffectual."

Hoping, Mr. Urban, that the above communication may prove acceptable to some of your readers, either as a matter of amusement, or occasioning some farther inquiry to be made after the hawk lately brought over from the Cape, I remain,

1793, Feb.

MR. URBAN,

Yours, &c.

T. S.

March 3, 1793.

MENTION is made in your last Magazine, of the hawk found at the Cape of Good Hope with an inscription on his collar, indicating his having belonged to James I. of England. Your correspondent infers, with great probability, the authenticity of the inscription, from an anecdote (which, he says, he lately met with in an old manuscript) alluding to Sir Anthony Weldon's Court of King James. Having lately read that curious book, I recollected the circumstance, and turned to the passage alluded to, which indeed, as to the chief circumstance of the hawk's disappearing, is faithfully quoted, but in Weldon no mention is made of the manner of conflict, &c. As it may probably be not unpleasing to many of your readers, I have sent you the passage in question faithfully transcribed from Sir A. Weldon's history.

"The French sending over his Falconers to shew that sport, his master Falconer lay long here, but could not kill one kite, ours being more magnanimous than the French kite, Sir Thomas Monson desired to have that flight in all exquisiteness, and to that end was at 1001. charge in GosFaulcons for that flight; in all that charge, he never had but one cast would perform it, and those had killed nine kites, never missed one. The Earle of Pembroke, with all

* The word King, I suppose, is here by mistake omitted.

the Lords, desired the king but to walk out of Royston town's end, to see that flight, which was one of the most stateliest flights of the world, for the high mountee; the king went unwillingly forth, the flight was shewed, but the kite went to such a mountee, as all the field lost sight of kite and hawke and all, and neither kite nor hawke were either seen or heard of to this present, which made all the court conjecture it a very ill omen,"

I shall be obliged to any of your ingenious correspondents for some account of the author and book I have just quoted. It abounds with curious anecdotes of the great men and transactions of those times, of which the author is said, in the title-page, to have been an eye and eare witnesse. What degree of faith is due to them, at present, I am rather at a loss to determine.

1793, March.

MR. URBAN,

Yours, &c.

J. W.

April 23.

YOUR correspondent J. W, may find, in the Antiquarian Repertory, vol. III. p. 28, a half-length portrait of Sir Antony Weldon, from a drawing in the collection of the present Earl of Bute, in which his face is represented as unpleasing and disagreeable, as his character is unworthy and despicable, in a short memoir which accompanies the portrait, extracted from Wood's Athenæ. In pp. 193, 194, of the same volume, Mr. Thorpe, of Bexley, has favoured the editor with some strictures on the foregoing extract, containing a good account of the family of Weldon, by which it appears that Mr. Wood was wrong in saying that Sir Antony

was born of mean extraction," though Mr. Thorpe has nothing to say in vindication of his personal character,

1793, April.

MR. URBAN,

E.

June 2.

J. W. has requested to know what degree of faith is due to Weldon's Court of King James. The following notices may assist his inquiry. Ant. Wood (Ath. Ox. I. 729) says, "it was accounted a most notorious libel."-Rapin (Hist. of Engl. II. 189) denominates it properly "but a satire."-and Dr. Campbell (Biog. Brit. III. 684) asserts, "that the notions and evidence it contains are of no value at all." That Weldon, indeed, was author of the work, as the title-page intimates, by the initials of Sir A. W, or that the real author

was an eye and ear witness of the circumstances he records, are points separately combated and denied in an answer to the pamphlet itself, entituled "Aulicus Coquinariæ;" and printed in the same year, 1650. Which book, says the Oxford historian (ut supra) involves much of a MS. in the Bodleian Library, written by Bishop Goodman, and inscribed "The Court of King James, by Sir A. W. reviewed." This vindication of the King and his Court contains a multitude of complex or contradictory relations, in which "confusion is worse confounded" than before. And, as it was professedly published to exculpate those persons and transactions, which had been reflected on in the work ascribed to Sir A. W. there can (in all probability) be little just reli ance placed in the opposite assurances either of the one writer or the other. Secret histories are at best suspicious; and that strange complication of mystery which hung over certain events in the reign of our first James, seems also to have involved the narration of them.

For the farther satisfaction of your correspondent J. W. I beg to add, that A. Wood persists in considering Weldon as the real author, notwithstanding the preface to "Aulicus Coquinaria" declares "The brat was only fathered upon him," and, although the title-page describes it as "pretended to be penned by Sir A. W. and published since his death."

In the transcript from Weldon's History, the charge for gos-faulcons should be printed 1000l. instead of 100). according to the edition of 1650, p. 150.

1793, June.

T. P.

XCII. On the Progressive Introduction of Newspapers.

Account of the first Newspapers established in England.

JULY 9, 1662, a very extraordinary question arose, about preventing the publication of the debates of the Irish Parliament in an English newspaper called The Intelligencer; and a letter was written from the Speaker to Sir Edward Nicholas, the English Secretary of State, to prevent these

See Lord Mountmorres's Hist, of the Irish Parliament.

publications in those diurnals, as they call them. The London Gazette commenced Nov. 7, 1665. It was at first called the Oxford Gazette, ftom its being printed there during a session of parliament held there on account of the last plague. Antecedent to this period, Sir R. L'Estrange published the first daily newspaper in England.

From the following passage in Tacitus, it appears that somewhat like newspapers were circulated in the Roman state: "Diurna populi Romani, per provincias, per exer citus, curatius leguntur ut noscatur, quid Thrasea non fecerit."

In a note of Mr. Murphy's excellent translation of Tacitus, he laments that none of these diurnals, or newspapers, as he calls them, had been preserved, as they would cast great light upon the private life and manners of the Romans.

With the Long Parliament originated appeals to the peo ple, by accounts of their proceedings. These appeared periodically, from the first of them, called " Diurnal Occurrences of Parliament," Nov. 3, 1641, to the Restoration.

These were somewhat like our Magazines, and they were generally called "Mercuries; as Mercurius Politicus, Mercurius Rusticus; and one of them, in 1644, appears under the odd title of Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal."

The number of these publications appears, from a list in an accurate, new, and valuable piece of biography, from 1641 to 1660, to have been 156.

These publications of parliamentary proceedings were interdicted after the Restoration, as appears from a debate in Grey's Collection, March 24, 1681; in consequence of which, the votes of the House of Commons were first printed by authority of parliament.

From the first regular paper, the above-mentioned Public Intelligencer, commencing Aug. 31, 1661, there were, to 1688, with the Gazette, which continued regularly, as at present, from Nov. 7, 1665, seventy papers, some of a short, and others of a longer duration.

The first daily paper, after the Revolution, was called "The Orange Intelligencer; and thence to 1692 there were twenty-six newspapers.

From an advertisement in a weekly paper, called "The Athenian Gazette, Feb. 8, 1696, it appears, that the coffee-houses in London had then, exclusive of votes of parliament, nine newspapers every week; but there seems not to have been in 1696 one daily paper.