inform me how much two such books may possibly have been _worth_ to
a publisher in the year 1625; being works of low price and popular
character, proceeding from an author of great name? How much is
it reasonable to suppose that a publisher may have given for the
copyright? or how far may it have gone towards the payment of a
bookseller's bill?

J.S.

Feb. 7. 1850.


_Treatise of Equivocation._--I shall feel happy if, through your
very opportune medium, I can obtain some information respecting a
very extraordinary and mysterious book, as to its existence, local
habitation, and any other _material_ circumstance, which has the title
of _A Treatise of Equivocation._ The first recognition of the work is
in the _Relation of the Proceedings in the Trial for the Powder Plot_,
1604. At signat. I. the Attourney-General, Sir E. Coke, appeals to it,
and affirms that it was allowed by the Archpriest Blackwel, and that
the title was altered to _A Treatise against Lying and Fraudulent
Dissimulation_. He proceeds to describe some of its contents, as
if he were himself acquainted with the book. Thomas Morton, Bishop
of Lichfield, and Coventry, afterwards of Durham, in his _Full
Satisfaction concerning a double Romish Iniquitie; Rebellion and
Equivocation_, 1606, refers to the work as familiarly acquainted
with it. (See Ep. Dedic. A. 3.; likewise pages 88 & 94.) He gives
the authorship to Creswell or Tresham. He refers likewise to a Latin
work entitled _Resolutio Casuum_, to the same effect, possibly a
translation, to which he subjoins the names of Parsons and Allen.