In the reign of Queen Elizabeth English apothecaries began to claim that they could make the confection as well as their Italian contemporaries. Some curious documents illustrating their confidence were given in an interesting research by Mr. W. G. Piper, published in _The Chemist and Druggist_, March 15, 1880. He quotes from William Turner, “the learned divine, daring Protestant, and first English botanist,” the title of a work on the virtues and properties of the great Triacle (published in 1568 but not now known), and also a few paragraphs from a later volume on the same subject in which, after describing the method of making the remedy, he says: “Wherefore if there be any Apothecaries in London that dare take in hande to make these noble compositions they may know where to haue them.” It appears that Hugh Morgan, the Queen’s apothecary, accepted the challenge, for in a pamphlet by him (1585) he insists that his product has been compared with other “theriacle” brought from Constantinople and Venice, and has been better commended. “It is very lamentable to consider,” he writes, “that straungers doe dayly send into England a false and naughty kinde of Mithridatium and Threacle in great barrelles more than a thousand weight in a year, and vtter ye same at a lowe price for 3d. and 4d. a pound, to ye great hurt of Her Maiesties subjects and no small game to straungers purses.” [Illustration: PREPARATION OF THERIACA. (From Brunschwick’s “Destillir,” Strassburg, 1500.) _Reproduced (by permission) from “The Follies of Science,” by H. Carrington Bolton (Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co., Milwaukee, U.S.A.)_] Mr. Piper also quoted at length from another pamphlet published in 1612 by R. Band (in a subsequent edition, R. Browne), who relates how the Master and Wardens of the Grocers’ Company, having marked that “a filthy and unwholesome baggage composition” was being brought into this Realm as Tryacle of Genoa, “made only of the rotten garble and refuse outcast of all kinds of spices and drugs, hand over head with a little filthy molasses and tarre to worke it up withal,” communicated with the College of Physicians, and induced them to prescribe the proper formula and to superintend the manufacture, which was then entrusted to Mr. William Besse, apothecary in the Poultry. Mr. Besse had to take “a corporall oath” before the Lord Mayor, and every year when he made the confection had to show the ingredients and the product to the College of Physicians. His triacle was sold at not above 2_s._ 8_d._ per lb. or 2_d._ per ounce. It appears from the same pamphlet that nothing was alleged against Venice Treacle except its “excessive dearness.”