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He was one of William the Conqueror's concomitants. There are other such stones on both sides, but not yet uncovered.

"I am just preparing my instruments for observation of the weather, and quantity of rain, &c. I shall send you my memoirs of them when ready. I wrote to Dr. West, to know how I must ward off a foolish pretence they have got here of sessing me to the tax for my office, as they call it, meaning my practice; but I have not yet had his answer; and I would not suffer the profession to lose of its privileges through my neglect. — I am, Sir, with wishes of your health,

"Your most obedient humble servant, WM. STUKELEY."

"SIR,

May 2, 1728.

"I have perused both yours to his Grace the Duke of Ancaster, and the Letter of his Grace's Housekeeper since the date of yours. I think you did very well, in the circumstances of the young Lord *, to bleed him, and blister; and not to purge, which I have always observed to do more harm than good. I think you should keep him from being bound; which, perhaps, may be done with taking a quarter of a pint of asses milk in a morning. I would also recommend to you a tea made of sarsaparilla china and a little eyebright, which will have no bad taste, especially if there be added to it some cow's milk; and these remedies are easily taken, and very beneficial. If you add to the collyrium I directed a little mucilage of seeds of psyllium, and make use of it to his eyes by way of eye-water, it will be of advantage. You do well not to meddle with the speck on his eye that was hurt, for it is a scar from the wound, which will, by being touched with sharp medicines, receive harm rather than good. If the inflammation should continue, you must bleed again with leeches, and have an issue made in his left arm, though it be a pity to put him to that trouble if it be not necessary to preserve his sight. I cannot see how it can be a doubt whether he sees with his hurt eye; for sure his favourites about him may, with great ease, cover his other eye, and, by presenting objects to that, know whether he can distinguish them. I am sorry to hear that this disorder continues, and advise you the best I can, which is left to your liberty, who are upon the place, to change or proceed with as you see best. Your most obedient servant, HANS SLOANE."

"HONOURED AND DEAR SIR, Grantham, Aug. 26, 1729. "The following inscription was given me lately. It is cut on the back side of a large silver plate of Roman work in basso-relievo, found by ploughing in Risley Park, in Derbyshire, June 6, 1729: 'EXSUPERIUS EPISCOPUS ECCLESIÆ BOGIENSIS DEDIT. The Plate (they tell me) is an oblong-square, 12 inches long,

* Peregrine Bertie, the young Marquis of Lindsay (afterwards third Duke of Ancaster), who at that time was dangerously ill. He died Aug. 12, 1778.

+ Of this Silver Plate Dr. Stakeley printed an explanation, with an engraving, in 1736. See "Literary Anecdotes," vol. V. p. 503.

about

about S broad. It is high raised, and thought to have been enameled, being now decayed by time, and rendered brittle as glass. It weighs seven pounds. The sculpture or work on it represents a hunting, one man naked, another with a loose garment on; one has a sword, the other a spear. Two dogs seizing on a lion lying under a tree; a lioness at a distance running away. It was found standing on an edge, but two inches under-ground, and, no doubt, was deposited there in order to be taken away again by the same person. It was within a mile of Dale Abbey. There is an embossed border runs round the outer edge, charged with variety of figures, sheep, goats, men, some on foot, some mounted without bridle or saddle. I suppose these are of a less form than the other and principal work. There are fawns, a temple, and many other grotesque figures. The outermost rim is set round with little knobs, somewhat bigger than peas. The inscription is set round the foot, at the bottom; I suppose like that of a salver, and probably put on in later times, that it might serve for administration of bread at the sacrament, for which purpose it was given to the church (Bogiensi t). It may originally have been a Roman votive table. I know not the Church †, nor the Bishop. We have not hooks in the country to inform us of such things.

"Next week I expect Mr. Gale here, with whom I shall have the pleasure of drinking your health, and our friends at the Greeks. I am, Sir, with hearty prayers for your health, "Your most obliged and obedient servant, WM. STUKELEY." Grantham, Sept. 24, 1729.

"HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,

"I received yours. I have not been unmindful of observing the superfice and the bowels too of the Earth since I came into the country; and have collected a good deal in relation to a theory thereof, and a confirmation of what I advanced in the beginning of my Itinerary,' of a visible proof of the Earth's rotation on its axis from view of its surface; but you know well, Sir, there is nought to be done by way of publication unless one be in town. I design to be there two months in every year when I get any preferment in the Church; for then I shall abandon practice; for now, though I have all the business within ten miles round and more, which you will allow to be fatigue enough, I assure you I do not make above 50l. per annum of it.

"I desire to know if you have in your Collection a Coin of Claudius, the reverse CERES AVGVSTA; a modius, or the like, reating to corn. I have one, on which I have written a dissertation, shewing it to belong to the famine in Claudius's time, mentioned by St. Luke, Acts xi.

"At this time the Living of Allhallows in Stamford is near vacant; the incumbent Mr. Rogers is in the last stadium of a dropsy, and cannot live a quarter of a year. It is worth near 150l. per

+ Bourges.

Exsuperius, called St. Swithin, Bp. of Thoulouse about the year 205.

annum.

annum.

I should be well pleased to have it. I guess there will be great application; it is in the gift of the Crown. I beg, dear Sir Hans, you will exert your interest, which I know is very great, in my favour. I guess the only way to secure it, is to be time enough. I dare say you will be denied nothing either of the Court or Courtiers. I design to come up to town in a very little time; but would have you speak first, to prevent others. I shall watch the opportunity as nicely as is in my power. "I am, with heartiest prayers for your health, dear Sir, your most obliged and most obedient servant, WM. STUKELEY." "GOOD SIR HANS, Stamford, Aug. 14, 1730. "I am desired by Mr. Wesley*, a Clergyman in our County, to beg the favour of you to lend his son, the bearer of this, Don John de Castro's description of the Arabian Gulf. His father is upon a most excellent Work, an Edition of the Book of Job, with large Criticisms and Dissertations, it being a Book as most antient, so full of all kinds of knowledge of those early ages, will be very acceptable to the learned world. Your book would be very safe; and I shall take it as a favour, added to, good Sir, Your most obedient and most humble servant, WM. STUKELEY."

66

1

"HONOURED AND DEAR SIR, Stamford, Oct. 19, 1730. Among the proofs of the Deluge of Noah visible to this day, whereof there are infinite numbers in your admirable Museum; this stone likewise before me is one, of which I send you enclosed the exact drawing. The sight of the stone, and the day, put me in mind of that great judgment, which God Almighty brought upon our globe as on this day, whereof the stone is a monument. The appearances which you see in the cavity of it are, perhaps, a parcel of fruits like hazelnuts, promiscuously jumbled together, and turned into stone; though they are pretty much like nuts, yet I suspect they are some other fruit. You, that are the great oracle of all natural knowledge, will probably at first sight resolve the doubt: and for that purpose I have drawn underneath two of them in their true shape and bulk. The fruits themselves are very distinct, the texture of the coat, rind, or shell of them, is like that of our hazel-nuts and pistacho's, and of the same bulk. There is in some of them a bit of the pedunculus or stalk; in others, the cavity, from whence it is dropt off, is very plain. This stone, among others full of shells, was taken out of a quarry near Aynho in Oxfordshire, and sent to Dr. Mead by the Rev. Mr. Wasse, minister there, about nine years ago. There were several small cornua ammonis, and other fossil shells, dug up in the same place, and are frequently so The Doctor gave them to me. The stone is ten inches long between the two corners. A shell left in the stone, and there are other shells on the back of it. It is commonly known that, upon digging in our fenny *Father of the celebrated Methodists, John and Charles. This Letter is directed, “To the Rev. Mr. Samuel Wesley, Dean's-yard, Westminster.”

levels of Lincolnshire, on the edge of the high countries, they find very great quantities of antediluvian timber-trees. for such I do not scruple to call them. The like is observed on the marshy grounds at the mouth of all great rivers, and generally in all boggy and moorish ground, all the world over. Likewise among these trees they frequently find great quantities of hazelnuts, acorns, and the like, crowded together on heaps. These appearances, as well as the stone before us, are, I suppose, not only a demonstrative proof of the veracity of the sacred records, whence we have the account of the Deluge; but likewise in my judgment, bring us to a very near approach to the time of the beginning of the Deluge; but different from what is assigned in Authors.I observe, they generally make the beginning of the Deluge to fall in winter. Scaliger fixes it to the 17th of November ; Abp. Usher, the 17th of December; Whiston, the 28th of November; Shuckford, the 1st or 2d of November. The Sacred Historian says, it began on the 17th day of the second month. The first month they begin with the autumnal equinox, as if Moses reckoned time by exact Julian years. But according to the calculations I have made of this matter, I find God Almighty ordered Noah to get the creatures into the Ark on Sunday the 12th of October, the very day of the autumnal equinox that year, and on this present day, on the Sunday se'nnight following (the 19th of October) that terrible catastrophe began, the moon being past her third quarter. If we would know how it answers to this year, in order to understand the season; it is parallel to the 19th of September, when summer is over, and autumn begins. All the grain and fruits of the earth are now perfectly ripe, and fit to be gathered. The nuts began to drop off the trees, Holyrood day being past. The seeds of vegetables have all possible chance to escape in sufficient quantity, to cloath again the new world. Many trees were then torn up by the roots with the violence of the storm, hurried down from the high countries, and with the decreasing waters left in the mud, on the edge of the fens, mouths of great rivers, &c. where the turf has overgrown them. Along with them nuts and acorns were driven together in heaps, and are found at this day in their true form. The oil they abound with, and hardness of their shell, has enabled them to withstand a total change of parts, though the colour be lost, and the whole like dirt. They wanted the condition of the fruits in our stone, if such they be, which happening to fall into the cavity of a matter then beginning to turn into stone, by help of the petrifying juices, like insects in amber, have found a more durable tomb. It is just to suppose that, if the Deluge had begun at the latter end of November, or December, the nuts would have been sunk into the earth, which is generally soft in woods, or would have been eaten up by animals, or carried into their dens and holes by that time; and not so readily have been gathered together, to accompany the trees; as when beaten off the trees when first ripe, according to our assertion.

"This assignment of the beginning of the Deluge may possibly be a week earlier, or the like, but not later, and is attended too with this advantage: that the Ark rested on the top of Mount Ararat on Monday the 23d of March, and the earth generally appeared on the 5th of June; which answers to the beginning of our May, as to season. Here was the whole power of the summer's heat, to dry the earth, and call forth the benumbed vegetable world; and Noah went out of the Ark at the latter end of October, soon after the autumnal equinox, and there would be sufficient quantity of food for the creatures turned out. Whereas, by the other hypothesis, Noah quits the Ark at the very dregs of winter. Thus the flood began and ended at the time of year when the world was created, and in several respects there is a par ratio for it; though I believe God Almighty in this grand concern ordered it pursuant to many natural causes, and made use of the concurrence of all as far as they would extend; yet in the main it was purely miraculous; and to pretend to solve it by philosophical or astronomical principles is no less an impotent than an impious attempt; and among other things, has given a handle to the late sceptics, who doubt of the divine authority of the Scriptures; which, the more they are looked into, the more they discover their truth and beauties. I am, honoured and dear Sir, your most obedient and devoted servant, WM. STUKELEY." Stamford, Dec. 29, 1730.

"HONOURED AND DEAR SIR, "I received your Letter with a very particular pleasure, because therein I flattered myself that I perceived you had a favour for me, in a matter you will guess by the station I am now in. My Living here is worth 2001. per annum ; and I have lately had a salary of 251. per annum settled on me by the Bishop of Lincoln *, as I ain Governor of an Hospital at Stamford by virtue of my Living. And I have a further expectancy of a Living in our neighbourhood; but it will be some trouble and charge to vindicate the Bishop's intended favour to me, which I should save, as well as the time I could employ better, if you should please more plainly to encourage my hopes; and then I should think only of pushing my future fortunes in a different quarter of the world. Our common friend Mr. Gale, who well knows all my views, can explain this, if you please to ask him about it. All I have to say in my own favour is, that no one in life had a greater respect for Sir Hans Sloane than myself, or has upon all occasions more endeavoured to vindicate his honour, when I lived in town; and the doing it has cost me some friendships, which I never regretted. I could mention in particular, that it bred a great coolness in a neighbour of mine of Ormond-street †. As I always espoused your interest cordially, so I shall be more engaged to do it when you are my Patron, and shall be more enabled to do it, when fixed nearer the Thames, for which I shall willingly enough change my present station, though a very plea+ Undoubtedly by Dr. Mead.

* Dr. Reynolds.

sant

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