114 
Reginald L’Estrange who was licensed for printing all Playbills, 
Briefs, and Quacksalvers’s Bills which appears to be a strange 
combination. 
The power of Quarter Sessions, was limited A.D. 1625-6 to 
granting local briefs or for specified counties. 
The plague in Cambridge (6 Chas. 1) had driven the students 
away, the tradesmen had no customers, the gyps and other 
servants had none upon whom to live, only seven score persons 
remained to sustain the 2,800 who usually fattened on the 
scholars, resort was therefore had, June 6, to a Brief the first 
printed one with Royal Arms at head, and “ By the Grace” and 
all the rest of it in type. A genuine Brief this without doubt, and 
there was no need for Sir Francis Goodwin (Dom State papers) of 
Winchenden, Berks, to send up to Sec. Conway to have the privy 
seal examined. 
It was in the seal and thread that the difference lay. Papal 
Bulls were written in Gothic characters, and had a round lead seal 
(bulla) attached to them, by a silk chord if of grace, by a 
hempen one if of justice, and commenced with the words Pius or 
Leo Episcopus ; for the Pope could only issue Buils after his 
Enthronement. Before that ceremony he could only issue Briefs 
which were always written in Latin Characters and sealed with 
red wax stamped with the seal of the fisherman’s ring 
(S. Peter in a boat) attached in the Pope’s presence but signed by 
the secretary of Briefs. 
Tn later times they were issued by the King and his Council, 
or by the Chancellor under his authority, and came afterwards to 
be called King’s Briefs or King’s Letters. 
There appears to have been a popular idea that collections 
could not be made in Churches for any but local or parochial 
purposes, unless under Royal Authority or by force of statute, and 
it was for this reason the Society for the Promotion of Christain 
Knowledge, A.D. 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel, 1701, were especially empowered to collect money. 
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