To which purpose, on holidays and other spare times, all or the most docible part of the people trained up here, may likewise be taught to read, &c.

So may our most great prince and worthy senators become further instruments, for the nation's prosperity, and the salvation of many souls: thus may the blessing of heaven crown all their honourable enterprises and prudent counsels, with most prosperous success; which that it may be so, is the hearty desire of

Living near Lanselin in Denbighshire,

Whose Memory serves her truly and perfectly to relate what she hath seen and done one hundred and thirty Years ago. Having now the full Number of her Teeth; the most of them were lost, when she was Three-score Years and Ten. She is also remembered, by some of ninety Years old, to be taller than she is by seventeen or eighteen Inches: with several other Circumstances of her life, which shew her to be the Wonder of her Age. Licensed August 9, 1677. London, printed for C. L. Anno Dom. 1677. Quarto, containing eight Pages.

NOTHING appears so contradictory and idle, but some philosopher

or other has so earnestly espoused, that his life might have been easily taken, as a mortgage for the security of the truth, were the forfeiture thought considerable: and as of this sort there are many extravagant precedents that would make nature very ridiculous; so there are to be found amongst the graver sort of assertors, all the world over, whimsies, more foolish and barbarous than with the savages, who enjoyed scarce, or not at all, the light of nature: amongst other bustlings and trials of pens, it hath been a great dispute about the age of Adam, Methuselah, &c. Some would have monthly years, deducing argu ments from Eve; others from the moon: some more Persian like, will give the sun the glory of compleating the year; holding also nature to be in a continual decay through her own weakness, or our wantonness; and, though they lived so many years heretofore, we have so changed our bodies, that no one can be expected to live the quarter, nay scarce the tythe of our forefathers time. But it will be found nature cannot decay, nor has her luxury so circumscribed our age, but that we do find persons, whose extent of years serves to confute such indigested fancies.

Not far from the seat of old Parr, at this time lives (near Lanselin in Denbighshire) a woman, named Jane Morgan, whose memory yet serves her to give an exact account of several things she hath seen and known one hundred and thirty years ago: she walks uprightly, without the use of the least stick; her teeth are almost all now perfect in her head, although about threescore years ago she had lost most of them; she can see as well without spectacles, if not better than with then; her hearing is quick and apprehensive, and her organs of smelling are so corroborated by age, that no stench can invade them to the least prejudice. She was the first that learnt that famous and memorable tune called Si. danen, in all those parts. When queen Elisabeth was crowned, she led all the dances, and continued the head of all that country sports, until the death of king James; and was so sensible of the glory she had atchieved by such continual custom, that she would not part with it, until she had bred her daughter up to have it conferred on her; which she did in a publick assembly, when the coronation of king Charles the first was solemnised: but before her daughter, as her deputy, had practised, and in her absence taught the country measures for the space of one and twenty years, having several tunes dedicated to her: Old Simon the King was called her Delight; Jo Bent, her Fancy; Bob in Joy her Conceit; sleeping and waking she sung the Sidanen; wherefore the neighbours called her by that name.

Her mother Jane Lloyd was married at twenty years of age to one Evan Morgan, an able farmer's Son, who was the activest and strongest in his country at wrestling: but, at a certain trial of skill, when he had foiled all the neighbours, and strangers too, she put on man's apparel, entered the round, and gave him three falls; upon which she bore away the little silver bell that was the conqueror's due; but, upon enquiry, who this valiant stranger was, the young man fell so deeply in love with her, that, maugre all his friends, he married her, and lived with her forty-five years, before her womb was mature for conception; about the sixty-sixth year of her age, she brought forth her first born, a daughter, who did not conceive till the fifty-fifth year of her age.

Many masculine and heroick acts did this virago mother do, and, though sometimes the justices were severe, yet their warrants were always void; and, like curses of malefactors, returned upon themselves, for whatever ground she trod on, was to catch-polls and petty-constables as fatal, as Irish earth to venomous creatures.

But, as the longest day will have a night, spightful age wrought a tendency towards a decay, upon her vigorous nerves; yet in all this while time could not make her subject to the least disease, though it has submitted her to the most unheard of shifts for food as ever were or can be; and, by the calculation of her stomach, she may be thought now to be in the meridian of her age: hundreds of her neighbours can justify, that of what disease soever, cattle, horses, swine, sheep, or the like, die, her stomach (so far is fantastick prejudice unable to make the least impression on her) has a menstruum to digest gratefully such fætid flesh, that others would not only abhor, but it would put such stress and vio lence upon them, that irresistible death would infallibly follow.

It is a certain truth, that carrion, buried two or three days in the

winter-time, she will take up, which without any other preparation she will slice, and fling as collops upon the coals, which she will eat as savourly, as he that thinks he eats the best in town, when he hath the rarest cutlets dressed for him: and, if her prize cannot be at once eaten. she'll gently and carefully salt the remainder, and expose it to the greatest fury of her smoaking cell, and prudently reserve it as a future happiness.

If against a good time her neighbours bounty will bestow any corn upon her, she will yet upon her head make shift to carry two bushels to the mill; which tho' it be very remarkable in one of her age, it is very inconsiderable to what she hath done formerly.

When she was near an hundred years old, her occasions invited her about that time to Oswaldstrey market, which is three miles; but, because of its ruggedness and length, she had better have gone from London to Barnet: after she had there filled her apron with cumbersome necessaries to that bulk, that the burden seemed at some distance to walk before her; she was told by a stander-by, that it was impossible for her to carry such a troublesome burden home: this man's horse was then loaden with two pieces of coarse Welch cotton; she then scornfully answered it: If you put those two pieces, which your horse seems ' almost to shrink under, upon my shoulders, I will for a wager, under'take to carry them as far as my house, before you and your horse can 'come thither:' the man, being her neighbour (fearful to lose, and unwilling to displease her) replied he was more willing to ease than trouble

But one of the incredulous corporation, ignorant of her prodigious strength, wagered with her; and suspecting her neighbour would be partial, he, with three or four of his most curious neighbours, got horses, and followed her presently; and at the end of the two miles and a half they overtook the man, belabouring his weary horse: they asked him for the woman. He answered them, cursing, saying he had two or three scurvy falls, and that he had no sight of her in a quarter of a mile: they, going forward, found her returned, sitting in her chimney corner, smoaking tobacco in a comfortable short pipe; at which they were astonished.

A thousand more considerable stories must here (for brevity sake) be omitted it will therefore be convenient to add a relation her neighbours give, in respect of her age; some of fourscore-and-ten remember they heard their fathers say, she was a very proper tall woman.

In a house out of which she had seen buried eleven heirs, her proportion, as to her height, was taken above a hundred years ago; and, the last year coming to the same place, she was found to want of that measure betwixt seventeen and eighteen inches; and now she is four feet and four inches high, not at all stooping, at which the by-standers much admired; which she perceiving, told them, that her mother was com. pleatly two yards; and that, before she died, she shrunk to three feet and six inches: so that she concluded, by the graduation of their decays, before she had shrunk to her utmost, she must yet live above threescore years; and who knows but she may? For she is as merry as a girl of fifteen, and will sing from morning till night; her memory is so lively,

that she'll tell stories of Queen Elisabeth and King James, as fresh, and more pleasantly, than the sufferers in the late wars can.

I was the more willing to publish this, because I hoped some virtuoso's would be so kind, as curiously to satisfy themselves of the truth, and then the world after; with reasons how this comes to pass; and why others live not to the same age?

What sort of menstruum her stomach has?

How are her organs ordered, since no stench offends her?

And, since it is a contradiction to say she grows less, how comes the whole contexture of her body with such consent of parts to be diminished?

And, since the bones must consequently be contracted, how come we to find bones, long buried, of the same length as when first interred?

If any person question the truth of this narrative, or desire to satisfy their curiosity, let them repair to West-Smithfield, where she is daily expected, to convince the world of the truth thereof.

MR. HOWELL'S VINDICATION OF HIMSELF

FROM THE

CHARGE OF BEING NO FRIEND TO PARLIAMENTS, AND A MALIGNANT.

BY

London: printed, 1677. Quarto, containing ten pages.

Y that which hath been spokent, which is the language of my heart, I hope no indifferent judicious reader will doubt of the cordial affection, of the high respects and due reverence I bear to parliament, as being the wholsomest constitution, and done by the highest and happiest reach of policy that ever was established in this island, to perpetuate the happiness thereof: therefore I must tell that gentleman, who was author of a book intituled, The Popish Royal Favourite' (lately printed and exposed to the world) that he offers me very hard measure; nay, he doth me apparent wrong, to term me therein, no friend to parliament, and a malignant; a character, which as I deserve it not, so I disdain it.

For the first part of his charge, I would have him know, that I am as much a friend, and as real an affectionate humble servant and votary to the parliament, as possibly he can be; and will live and die with these affections about me: and I could wish, that he were secretary of my thoughts a while; or, if I may take the boldness to apply that comparison his late majesty used in a famous speech to one of his parliaments,

ti. e. In his Pre-eminence and Pedigree of Parliament, printed in Vol. I. p. 45 of this Miscellany.

I could wish there were a chrystal window in my breast, through which the world might espy the inward motions and palpitations of my heart; then would he be certified of the sincerity of this protestation.

For the second part of his charge, to be a malignant, I must confess to have some malignity that lurks within me, much against my will; but it is no malignity of mind, it is amongst the humours, not in my intellectuals. And I believe, there is no natural man, let him have his humours never so well balanced, but hath some of this malignity reigning within him: for, as long as we are composed of the four elements, whence these humours are derived, and with whom they symbolise in qualities; which elements the philosophers hold to be in a restless contention amongst themselves (and the Stoick thought that the world subsisted by this innate, mutual strife) as long, I say, as the four humours, in imitation of their principles, the elements, are in perpetual reluctancy, and combate for predominancy, there must be some malignity lodged within us, as adusted choler, and the like; whereof I had late experience, in a dangerous fit of sickness it pleased God to lay upon me, which the physicians told me proceeded from the malignant hypocondriacal effects of melancholy; having been so long in this Saturnine black condition of close imprisonment, and buried alive between the walls of this fatal Fleet. These kinds of malignities, I confess, are very rife in me; and, they are not only incident, but connatural to every man according to his complexion: and, were it not for this incessant struggling and enmity against the humours for mastery, which produceth such malignant effects in us, our souls would be loth ever to depart from our bodies, or to abandon this mansion of clay.

Now, what malignity my accuser means, I know not; if he means malignity of spirit, as some antipathy or ill impression upon the mind, arising from disaffection, hatred, or rancour, with a desire of some destructive revenge, he is mightily deceived in me: I malign or hate no creature that ever God made, but the devil, who is the author of all malignity; and, therefore, is most commonly in French, le Malin Asprit, the Malignant Spirit. Every night before I go to bed, I have the grace, I thank God for it, to forgive all the world, and not to harbour, or let roost in my bosom, the least malignant thought; yet, none can deny, but the aspersions, which this my accuser casts upon me, were enough to make me a malignant towards him; yet, it could never have the power to do it: for I have prevailed with myself to forgive him this wrong censure of me, issuing rather from his not-know. ledge of me, than from malice; for we never mingled speech, or saw one another in our lives, to my remembrance; which makes me wonder the more, that a professor of the law, as he is, should pronounce such a positive sentence against me so slightly. But, methinks, I overhear him say, that the precedent discourse of parliament is involved in generals; and the tropick axiom tells us, that dolus versatur in univer. salibus, there is double dealing in universals: his meaning is, that I am no friend to this present parliament (though he speaks in the plural number, parliaments) and consequently, he concludes me a malignant: therein, I must tell him also, that I am traduced; and I am confident it will never be proved against me, from any actions, words, or letters,