Footnotes
[9]A Schuchion. MS. escutcheon. P.
[9]Scuchion. MS. escutcheon. P.
[1]or the.
[2]money. P.
[3]at it. MS. and P.
[An Escocheon for all Locks.] Stow, in his Annals of Queen Elizabeth, has particularly distinguished Mark Scaliot as a clever blacksmith; and Dr. Robert Plot, in his “Natural History of Staffordshire,” 1684, especially notices the elaborate, ingenious, and expensive locks made by several eminent Staffordshire locksmiths. He observes:—“The greatest excellency of the blacksmith’s profession, that I could hear of in this county, lies in their making locks.” He then explains at large a certain kind of locks with a master’s key, and inferior keys for the servants; and supposing any servant to trifle with such locks, the master or mistress can “certainly tell how many times that servant has been in, at any distance of time; or how many times the lock has been shot for a whole year together.” He also says: “I was told of a very fine lock made in this town (Stafford) sold for twenty pounds, that had a set of chimes in it, that would go at any hour the owner should think fit.”
73.
A transmittible Gallery over any Ditch or Breach in a Town-wall, with a Blinde and Parapit Cannon-proof.
[A transmittible Gallery.] The perusal of the elaborately illustrated works of Vegetius, Vitruvius, Fludd, and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, would abundantly furnish the Marquis of Worcester with hints to show what had been done in such warlike machinery, and to stimulate him to make improvements. Such an invention as the present one, with others of a like magnitude, he probably never proved practically beyond satisfying himself by means of well made models, that whatever modifications he proposed to introduce were mechanically practicable.