"The Court told us that, in respect to our education as scholars, we should not be pillory'd, though ('twas said) we deserved it.... We were sent back to our confinement, and _the next execution-day_ our books were burnt WITH FIRE (not with water, you must note), and we continue here; but, since I writ this, Mr. Ralphson had a supersedeas by _death_ to a _better place_!" In his account he affirms that, on his own confession of being the author of _The Plea_, and because he could find no bail, he was committed to Newgate-- "Lodged among the felons, whose horrid company made a perfect representation of that horrible place which you describe when you mention hell. A hard bench was my bed, and two bricks my pillow. But after two days and nights, _without any refreshment_, the unusualness of that society and place having impaired my health, which at the very best is tender, and crazy, I was removed, and am now in the press-yard, a _place of some sobriety_, though still a prison _ubi nihil amabile est_!" Twenty years after, 1704, his Plea was republished, with his narrative, by one of his fellow-prisoners, who had been released, and who calls it "an elaborate piece"! He adds, that De Laune, being unable to pay "the seventy-five pound, his children, his wife, and himself were imprison'd, and _all_ dy'd in New-gate; of which myself was an eye-witness, and a companion with him for the same cause in the same prison, where I continued above a year after his death." E. F. WOODMAN. P. S.--Query, What is the meaning, in the foregoing, of the expression "at the next execution-day"? Have we any instance on record of the execution of a malefactor in front of the Royal Exchange? and, if not, did the hangman come from Newgate, after "doing duty" there, and burn the book at the Exchange? In 1611 the books of Conrad Vorstius were publicly burnt in St. Paul's Churchyard and both the universities by the king's order. (Wilson's _Life and Reign of James I._, p. 120.) On Sunday, November 21, 1613, the books of Francis Suarez, the Spanish Jesuit, were publicly burnt at St. Paul's Cross. (_Court and Times of James I._, vol. i. pp. 279, 280.) C. H. COOPER. Cambridge. * * * * * {427} SACK. (Vol. ix., p. 272.)