460 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 184. 



THE " SALT-PETEB-MAN. 



(Vol.vii., p.377.) 



Your correspondent J. O. asks for information 

 to No. 4. of his notes respecting the " salt-peter- 

 man," so quaintly described by Lord Coke as a 

 troublesome person. Before the discovery and 

 importation of rough nitre from the East Indies, 

 the supply of that very important ingredient in 

 the manufactory of gunpowder was very inadequate 

 to the quantity required ; and this country having 

 in the early part of the seventeenth century to 

 depend almost entirely upon its own resources. 

 Charles I. issued a proclamation in 1 627, which set 

 forth that the saltpetre makers were never able to 

 furnish the realm with a third part of the saltpetre 

 required, especially in time of war. The pro- 

 clamation had reference to a patent that had been 

 granted in 1625 to Sir John Brooke and Thomas 

 Russel, for making saltpetre by a new invention, 

 which gave them power to collect the animal fluids 

 (ordered by the same proclamation to be preserved 

 by families for this purpose), once in twenty-four 

 hours in summer, and in forty-eight hours in 

 winter. This royal proclamation was very ob- 

 noxious and inconvenient to the good people of 

 England, increased as it was by the power granted 

 to the saltpetre makers to dig up the floors of all 

 dove-houses, stables, cellars, &c., for the purpose 

 of carrying away the earth, the proprietors being 

 at the same time prohibited from laying such floors 

 with anything but " mellow earth," that greater 

 facility might be given them. This power, in the 

 hands of men likely to be appointed to fulfil such 

 duties, was no doubt subject to much abuse for 

 the purposes of extortion, making, as Lord Coke 

 states, " simple people believe that Lee (the salt- 

 peter-man) will, without their leave, breake up the 

 floore of their dwelling-house, unless they will 

 compound with him to the contrary." The new 

 and uncertain process for obtaining the constituents 

 of nitre having failed to answer the purpose for 

 which the patent was granted, an act was passed in 

 1656, forbidding the saltpetre makers to dig in 

 houses or lands without leave of the owner : and 

 this is the point to which the learned commentator 

 of the law, in his Discouerie of the Abuses and Cor- 

 ruption of Officers, alludes, when " any such fel- 

 lowe if you can meete with all, let his misdemenor 

 be presented, that he may be taught better to 

 understand his office." In England, up to about 

 the period when these curious acts of parliament 

 were passed, the right of all soil impregnated with 

 animal matter was claimed by the crown for this 

 peculiar purpose ; and in France the rubbish of 

 old houses, earth from stables, slaughter-houses, 

 and all refuse places, was considered to belong to 

 the Government, till 1778, when a similar edict, to 

 relieve the people from the annoyances of the salt- 

 petre makers, was made. J. Deck. 



Cambridge. 



METBICAL PSAXMS AND HYMNS. 



(Vol. HI., pp.119. 198.) 



In reply to your correspondent Abun, who in- 

 quired about the origin and authority of metrical 

 psalms and hymns In churches, in addition to an 

 extract from one of Bishop Cosin's letters on the 

 subject, I referred also to the treatise commonly 

 known as Watson's Deduction, but of which trea- 

 tise Ileylin was in fict the author. I have re- 

 cently met with a passage in Heylin's History of 

 the Reformation (ann. 1552, Lond., 1674, p. 127.) 

 which seems to contain the rudiment or first germ 

 of the JJeduction, and to which Abun therefore 

 (if not already acquainted with It) may be glad 

 to be referred : 



" About this time (says Heylin) the Psalms of 

 David did first begin to be composed in English 

 meetter by one Thomas Sternhold, one of the grooms 

 of the Privy Chamber ; who, translating no more than 

 thirty-seven, left both example and encouragement to 

 John Hopkins and others to dispatch the rest : — a 

 device first taken up in France by one Clement Marot, 

 one of the grooms of the bedchamber to King Francis 

 the First ; who, being much addicted to poetry, and 

 having some acquaintance with those which were thought 

 to have enclined to the Reformation, was persuaded by 

 the learned Vatablus (professor of the Hebrew tongue 

 in the University of Paris) to exercise his poetical 

 phancies in translating some of David's Psalms. For 

 whose satisfaction, and his own, he translated the first 

 fifty of them ; and, after flying to Geneva, grew ac- 

 quainted with Beza, who in some tract of time trans- 

 lated the other hundred also, and caused them to b& 

 fitted unto several times ; which hereupon began to be 

 sung in private houses, and by degrees to be taken up 

 in all the churches of the French, and other nations 

 which followed the Genevian platform. Marot's trans- 

 lation is said by Strada to have been ignorantly and per- 

 versely done, as being but the work of a man altogether 

 unlearned ; but not to be compared with that barbarity 

 and botching, which everywhere occurreth in the 

 translation of Sternhold and Hopkins. Which not- 

 withstanding being first allowed for private devotion, 

 they were by little and little brought into the use of 

 the church, permitted rather than allowed to be sung 

 before and after sermons ; afterwards printed and bound 

 up with the Common Prayer Book, and at List added 

 by the stationers at tiie end of the Bible. For, though 

 it is expressed in the title of those singing psalms, that 

 they were set forth and allowed to be sung in ali 

 churches before and after Morning and Evening Prayer, 

 and also before and after sermons ; yet this allowance 

 seems rather to have been a connivance than an apprO' 

 bation : no such allowance being anywhere found by 

 such as have been most industrious and concerned in 

 the search thereof. At first it was pretended only 

 that the said Psalms should be sung before and after 

 Morning and Evening Prayer, and also before and 

 after sermons ; which sliows they were not to be inter- 

 mingled in the public Liturgie. But in some tract of 

 time, as the Puritan faction grew in strength and con- 



