Egerton MS 1140

"GREAT BRITAIN's Treasure; Environing this famous Ile with brazen walls invincible, maintained with great gaine by forces invisible: Unto the Sacred Matie of the great and mightie monarch Charles the First of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, etc., most humblie presenteth Francis Stewart, eldest sonne to the late Earle of Bothwell: By whose loyall care and special diligence the subsequent treatises have been recovered and painfully recollected out of the old papers and fragments of that worthy and lately deceased knight, your Mats. faithfull and ingenuous servant, Sir Nicolas Halse; anno Dom. 1636." The treatises are five in number : in the first a proposal is made of raising money by leasing the British fisheries to the Dutch ; in the second, it is proposed. to allow foreign ships to take refuge in British ports, on the payment of 15 shillings per ton ; in the third, a recapitulation is given of the two previous treatises, together with a scheme for increasing the navy without charge to the Exchequer, and of substituting a coinage of " Mundick and Sinder Tinne" for copper coin ; in the fourth is contained " a fine and excellent way whereby your Mattie. may have eighteen thousand pounds yearly of certaine rent by irone works to be erected in your new Plantations ; " and the fifth contains a project for raising money by licenses for the use of a new invention of Sir Nicholas Halse, for kills [kilns], ovens, and furnaces. At the end is added a Breviat or synopsis of the contents of the treatises, and a table of the treasures shewn to have been lost. Autograph. In the original binding, with silver clasps, on which are engraved the figures of Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude; the arms of Charles I. are on the sides, and the inscription, " Tibi soli, 0 Rex charissime! " Octavo. [Bibl. Eg. 1140.]