mantles" in the house of Master Spilsbury, "a very honest man who hath an exceeding good woman to his wife," but in the confusion that succeeded the battle they fell into the hands of two of Cromwell's soldiers, "exquisite snaps or clean shavers," who scattered them through the streets of the town so that certain "pie-makers" seizing upon them put them to the scurvy use of wrapping up "figs, dates, almonds, and caraway." One or two pages however (the value of which in Sir Thomas's opinion could hardly be over-estimated) were picked up by one Master Broughton, a drizzling rain having lodged them in the mud. And this intelligent Roundhead immediately recognizing their worth made, "as we are informed, all inquiry he could for trial whether there were any more such quinternions or no." By such means enough were eventually recovered to serve as a foundation for the "Jewel picked up in the kennels of Worcester Streets the day after the fight and six before the autumnal Equinox anno 1651"—a prose work which was put into print a few years later.
It now fell to the lot of Sir Thomas Urquhart to spend several years as a state prisoner first in the Tower of London, afterwards at Windsor. That Cromwell would continue to keep him behind stone walls if once he came to realize the choice quality of his erudite and ingenious spirit was inconceivable to Sir Thomas: so without more to do he set about to prove to the preoccupied Protector, by means of his pen, the inestimable value to the commonwealth of such an author.
It would be a difficult undertaking to pass judgement upon these works. They might have been the result of Panurge's collaboration with Thaumast the Englishman. In them buffoonery and wisdom stand so intermixed that whether they reach the height of super-subtle sagacity or the depths of fantastical folly remains still an open question.
In his Peculiar Promptuary of Time he gravely traces the pedigree of the Urquharts to Adam surnamed "Protoplast," indicating thereby how sorry a thing it would be for a family, spared for so many ages by God, to be brought to confusion in 1655 by Oliver Cromwell!
It cannot be denied that his antecedents were remarkable. The first to settle in Scotland was one Nomostor, son-in-law to Alcibi-
