are ready to break out, if any of them (which God forbid!) should dare to
begin; the King and every man about him minding so much their pleasures or
profits. My Lord Hinchingbroke, I am told, hath had a mischance to kill
his boy by his birding-piece going off as he was a-fowling. The gun was
charged with small shot, and hit the boy in the face and about the
temples, and he lived four days. In Scotland, it seems, for all the
newes-books tell us every week that they are all so quiett, and everything
in the Church settled, the old woman had like to have killed, the other
day, the Bishop of Galloway, and not half the Churches of the whole
kingdom conform. Strange were the effects of the late thunder and
lightning about a week since at Northampton, coming with great rain, which
caused extraordinary floods in a few hours, bearing away bridges, drowning
horses, men, and cattle. Two men passing over a bridge on horseback, the
arches before and behind them were borne away, and that left which they
were upon: but, however, one of the horses fell over, and was drowned.
Stacks of faggots carried as high as a steeple, and other dreadful things;
which Sir Thomas Crew showed me letters to him about from Mr. Freemantle
and others, that it is very true. The Portugalls have choused us,

[The word chouse appears to have been introduced into the language
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1609, a Chiaus sent
by Sir Robert Shirley, from Constantinople to London, had chiaused
(or choused) the Turkish and Persian merchants out of L4,000, before
the arrival of his employer, and had decamped. The affair was quite
recent in 1610, when Jonson's "Alchemist" appeared, in which it is
alluded to .]

it seems, in the Island of Bombay, in the East Indys; for after a great
charge of our fleets being sent thither with full commission from the King
of Portugall to receive it, the Governour by some pretence or other will