pamphlet before me belonged to Camden, and is described in his
autograph, _Guil. Camdenj. Ex. dono Authoris_. It forms one of a large
collection of tracts and pamphlets, originally the property of Camden,
which are now in the library of the dean and chapter here.

It is curious that another document quoted by Mr. Craik in the same
volume (p. 286 _note_), seems to fix the meaning of a word or
expression, of obscure signification, in the authorised translation of
the Bible. In Judges, ix. 53., we read, "A certain woman cast a piece of
a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all tobrake his skull." I have
heard some one, in despair at the grammatical construction of the latter
clause, suggest that it might be an error for "_also_ brake his skull;"
and I have been told, that some printer or editor solved the difficulty
by turning it into "and all to _break_ his skull." But in the Lieutenant
of the Tower's marginal notes on an inventory of the Countess of
Hertford's (Lady Katherine Grey) furniture, quoted by Mr. Craik from
Lands. MS. 5. art. 41., he described the _sparrer_ for the bed as "_all
to-broken_, not worth ten pence." There seems, therefore, to have been a
compound, "to-breck, to-brake, to-broken" (_perfrango_), of which the
word in the "Book of Judges" is the preterite. I may be exposing my
ignorance, when I say, that the quotation in the _Romance of the
Peerage_ is the only other instance of its use I ever met with.

WILLIAM H. COPE.
Cloisters, Westminster

[The word "to-break," is not to be found in Nares.--Mr.
Halliwell, in his _Archaic Dictionary_, has TO-BROKE, broken in
pieces: