conjecturally dated 1627, states that Musket had several years before broken out of Wisbech Castle, had since been banished, and, having returned, had again been taken prisoner. On 6 Oct. 1628 he was in confinement at the Gatehouse. Subsequently he was brought to trial, and, as one of the witnesses swore positively to his saying mass, he was condemned to death. He remained for twenty years under sentence, 'during which time he found means to exercise his functions with the same success as if he had enjoy'd his liberty' (Dodd, iii. 98). At the intercession of Queen Henrietta Maria he was reprieved and afterwards pardoned, but only on the condition of his remaining in confinement during the king's pleasure. When a proposal was made in 1635 for the appointment of a catholic bishop for England, Musket's name was in the list of persons proposed to the holy see. He was still a prisoner when he was chosen president of the English College of Douay in succession to Dr. Matthew Kellison [q. v.], who died on 21 Jan. 1640-1; but through the queen's intercession he was released and banished. He arrived at Douay on 14 Nov. 1641. Though he governed the college in the worst of times, he contrived to extinguish a debt of twenty-five thousand florins. He died on 24 Dec. 1645, and was succeeded in the presidency by Dr. William Hyde [q. v.]
Dodd says that 'as to his person he was of the lowest size, but perfectly well shaped and proportioned. . . . His eyes were black and large, and his countenance both awful and engaging.' The Italians styled him 'Flos Cleri Anglicani.' He is believed to be the author of an anonymous book, entitled 'The Bishop of London, his Legacy; or Certaine Motiues of D. King, late Bishop of London, for his change of Religion and dying in the Catholike and Roman Church. With a Conclusion to his Brethren, the LL. Bishops of England. Permissa Superiorum' [St. Omer], 1624, 4to, pp. 174. In this polemical work the author only personates Bishop John King [q. v.], as he himself declares (cf. Brydges, British Bibliographer, i. 506). Dodd says of this work, 'Some Protestant writers ascribe it to Mr. Musket, a learned clergyman, but how truly I will not say' (Church Hist. i. 491).
[Foley's Records, vi. 207, 211, 221; Gee's Foot out of the Snare, 1624, pp. 78-80, 99; Panzani's Memoirs, p. 226; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1627-1628 pp. 7, 105, 480, 486, 1628-9 pp. 345, 365.]
MUSPRATT, JAMES (1793–1886), founder of the alkali industry in Lancashire, was born in Dublin, 12 Aug. 1793, of English parents, Evan and Sarah Muspratt. His mother belonged to the Cheshire family of Mainwaxings. He was educated at a commercial school in Dublin, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a wholesale chemist and druggist there, named Mitcheltree, with whom he remained between three and four years. He lost his father in 1810, and his mother in the following year. Failing to obtain a cavalry commission in order to serve in the Peninsular war, and refusing to accept a commission in the infantry, he went to Spain and followed in the wake of the British troops. After the temporary abandonment of Madrid by General Hill in 1812 he was left in that city prostrated by fever; but, in order not to fall into the hands of the French, he rose from his sick bed, and managed to walk one hundred miles in two days on the way to Lisbon. He has left a record of the journey in a diary. Muspratt then enlisted as midshipman on the Impetueux, took part in the blockade of Brest, and was promoted second officer on another vessel. But the harsh discipline of his superiors proved intolerable to him, and, with a comrade, he deserted by night in the Mumbles roadstead off Swansea. He returned to Dublin about 1814, and became the intimate friend of Samuel Lover [q. v.], James Sheridan Knowles [q. v.], and the actress Eliza O'Neill, whom he was able to help in her profession.
A little later his inheritance, much diminished by a long chancery suit, came into his hands, and in 1818, at the age of twenty-five, after starting the manufacture of certain chemicals in a small way by himself, he set up, with a friend named Abbott, as a manufacturer of prussiate of potash. In 1823 the duty of 30l. per ton was taken off salt, and Muspratt at once took advantage of the opportunity of introducing into this country the manufacture of soda on a large scale by the Leblanc process. Losh had preceded him on the Tyne in 1814, and Charles Tennant [q. v.] on the Clyde in 1816, but only a beginning had been made. Muspratt saw that the valley of the Mersey, with its coalfields, salt-mines, and seaport, offered advantages of the first order for alkali works, and he set up his first plant at Liverpool. At first he was actually obliged to give away his soda-ash to the soap-boilers (who were prejudiced in favour of potash), and to teach them how to use it ; but soon the demand for his products increased so much that the works outgrew the land at his disposal, and Muspratt joined an Irishman, Josias Christopher Gamble, in building new works at St. Helens in 1828. Two years later he left Gamble and set up another manufactory at Newton. At this time
