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I have the honour to receive of your Lordship, a very curious Specimen of a work, which I hope you will not long delay to give the Public. I foresee it will be extremely learned & usefull. — An ingenious Person, one Mr Barrington a welch-Judge has attempted something of the same kind, on our old Statutes. It is intitled Observations on the Ancient Statutes 4°.[37] It is done with taste. But he is defective in the old English Language. And without

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that knowlege of the Antiquities of the middle Ages, and wanting in that acumen, so conspicuous in the Specimen of Notes.—It is full of mistakes (I presume your Lordship has the book) arising from these defects. For instance p 213. he says sallet[38] conveys no idea whatsoever. Tho all our old English writers use it to signify a light head piece. I suppose from the Italian Celata. The fr[ench]. say Salade as you observe. p. 254 pele he supposes may signify hair, whereas it is the skin, with the remaining wool after it has been shorn. p. 257. he corrects the etymology of the Lawyers, concerning the Court of Pipowers, who derive it from pes pulvericatus because pied puldreaux ∧which∧ is the sam[e], in french signifies a Pedler; not reflecting on the tralatitious[39] use of words. p. 259—puzzled the Antiquary—all the puzzle which the Tumuli, barrows, or little hills at the end of Villages in England, was only this, whether they were raised for the use of Archery, and called Butts, or whether they were not ancient Tumuli, whose distance from each other served for the use of archery. p. 281. St. 3. Hen. 8—some also can no letters—he would have it con; and so corrects it, not adverting that in the old Eng. can signifies to know—to be able to do a thing. p. 319 he supposes that because polygamy, (as he heard) was punished by an auto de fe in portugal, it was not a civil crime in that Kingdom. In catholic Countries Polygamy is both a Civil & Eccl: crime as it is a violation of a sacrament.—But it seems the Author has called in this Edn, and given the purchasers, another, which I have not seen.[40]

But to return to the Specimen, which I truly think admirable in its kind. I was surprised at what is said p. 8 of your Lawyers, who interpret bruarium fr. Bruiere to signify a brewery. The word perpetually abounds in our old Charters, and our Lawyers never took the change. The common people have done it. When I lived in Lincolnshire near the Great Heath there, and in the neighbourhood of a ruin called Temple bruiere or the Temple on the Heath, an old Hospitalary of the Knights Templars, the Common people, who had preserved the Tradition of the luxury of those Knights, [deletion] call it, Temple Brewery. for that they were famous for brewing the best ale in all the County

Your Lordship's justly expressed aborrence of the Writ de haretico comburendo p. 10. does honour to your station. You brand it by an ingenious comparison. Yet, it is certain, that, altho the running or passing thro' the fire be amongst the common lustrations of the ancient World, yet the passing thro' the fire to Moloch in Scripture, signifies a real sacrifice or immolation, being always made equivalent to [deletion] ∧those∧ other expressions—they burnt their sons & daughters in the fire to their Gods.—they sacrificed their sons & daughters to Devils and Ezekiel [deletion] uses one of these expressions to

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explain the other—having caused their children to pass thro' the fire to devour them XXIII.37.

In a word, my Dear Lord, let me repeat my best wishes for your health not only for your own sake, but for the sake of literature in general, and for the public justice of Scotland in particular. I have the pleasure to know that two of my most intimate Friends, the great Lawyers, Ld Mansfield and Mr Charles Yorke, have, with me, the highest opinion of your Lordship's Virtues. The latter (who always gives me what leasure he can spare) had but just left me, when the Specimen came, which would have afforded much pleasure to a man whose knowlege is universal.

While he was with me he was much busied in a morning with the Speeches of the Lords of Session in the Douglas cause in which he is to appear before us, after Christmas, for the House of Hamilton.

We both admired the elegance, the great sense, & the legal precision of Ld Hailes's speech: and I have an equal contempt for Ld Kames's. I have read the great 4° Factum of both Parties; and I will tell you, inter nos, my present sentiments. I think there is but a base Physical possibility that the pretended Son is the real Son of Lady Jane: and further, that had Lady Jane, by one of the perverse caprices of pregnant women, set upon contriving the means of discrediting [deletion] ∧her own Son's∧ pretensions, she could not have done it more effectually.[41]

Let me continue my good Lord to have your esteem, and believe me to be with the truest regard, your affectionate and faithfull humble Servant

W. Gloucester