176 KIMMERIDGE SHALE. 



to your petitioner, was not with all this satisfied, but shortly after com- 

 menced suit against your petitioner in His Majesty's Court of Exchequer, 

 upon the same pretences, and for the same matters hereby your Lordships 

 formerly settled and adjudged on by his Bill there exhibited and ready 

 to be showed to your Lordships may now plainly appear, that after a 

 year's suit and full hearing a determination of the cause in the said 

 Couit of Exchequer, the said Sir Kobert Mansel upon further purpose to 

 weary and threaten your petitioner renewed his said suit for the said 

 cause in the same court where yet tliere still dependeth to your petitioner's 

 extreme charge. That herewith not contented the said Sir Robert Mansel 

 hath since commenced likewise suits in His Majesty's Court of King's 

 Bench against your petitioner, for the very same matters here also com- 

 plained of and hath endeavoured to get your petitioner arrested there- 

 upon. Now your petitioner being in continual vexation by the restless 

 courses of the said Sir Robert ]NTansel,it is humbly prayed that your Lord- 

 ships would be pleased either to dismiss from this Honorable Board and 

 to repair your petitioner for the punishment and prejudice he hath 

 undergone already in the performance of your Lordships' said seizure and 

 to leave your petitioner to take his course by the ordinary proceedings of 

 the laws of this kingdom (which is allowed to all His Majesty's lawful 

 subjects) against the said Sir Robert Mansel, as the said Sir Robert 

 Mansel hath done against your petitioner, or ehe to take such course as 

 in your Lordships' wisdom shall be thought most fit to confine the said 

 Sir Robert Mansel to be bound by the order of this most Honorable 

 Board to which this petitioner hath always (and now will) most willingly 

 submit, which request the petitioner hopeth will be most consonant and 

 agreeable to justice, and for this, your Lordships' favour, the petitioner 

 will now pray for your Lordships," &c. This was not granted him until 

 1635. 



These Shales have been long known from a very early period to 

 he good fertilizers. A writer in The Gentleman's Magazine for the 

 year 1768 mentions the benefit some clay -ground derived from 

 the application of the ashes of Kimmeridge Shale from tlie Isle of 

 Portland, and in an article by Dr. Meyer in the Geological 

 Transactions for 1811 he speaks of it in similar laudatory terms as 

 liave other later writers done. 



More than 40 years ago a party of chemists and engineers, under 

 tlie conviction that the Shales of Kimmeiidge were of considerable 

 commercial value, formed the " Bituminous Shale Company," 



