"1683, Easter day. My Lord Dartmouth arrived in Plimmo. from Tangier. In March, Sir G. Jeffry, the famously [Query, _infamously_] loyal Lord Chief Justice, came hither from Launceston assize: lay at the Mayor's: viewed ye citadells, Mt. Edgecumbe, &c. "The winter of this yeare proved very seveare. East wind, frost, and snow, continued three moneths: so that ships were starved in the mouth of the channell, and almost all the cattel famisht. Ye fish left ye coast almost 5 moneths. All provisions excessive deare; and had we not had a frequent supply from ye East, corne would have been at 30s. per bushell,--above 130,000 bushells being imported hither, besides what went to Dartmo., Fowy, &c. "The Thames was frozen up some moneths, so that it became a small citty, with boothes, coffee houses, taverns, glasse houses, printing, bull-baiting, shops of all sorts, and whole streetes made on it. The birdes of the aire died numerously. _Lambert, that olde rebell, dyed this winter on Plimmo. Island, where he had been prisoner 15 years and mo._" The trial of Lambert took place in 1661. He may have been sent at first to Guernsey, but could only have remained there until removed in 1667 to Plymouth. His imprisonment altogether lasted twenty-one years. Lambert's removal to Plymouth has, I believe, been hitherto unnoticed. Probably it was thought a safer (and certainly, if he were confined in the little island of St. Nicholas, it was a severer) prison than Guernsey. RICHARD JOHN KING. THE CAXTON COFFER. An opinion prevails that biographers who lived nearest the times of the individuals whom they commemorate are most entitled to belief, as having at command the best sources of information. To this rule, however, there are numerous exceptions; for time, which casts some facts into oblivion, also produces fresh materials for historians and biographers. It is certainly advisable to _consult_ the earliest memoir of an individual in whose fate we take an interest, and even each successive memoir, in order that we may trace the more important historical particulars, and such critical opinions as seem to require discussion, to their true source. The result of some comparisons of this description, on former occasions, has almost led me to consider biographers as mere copyists--or, at the best, artists in patch-work. I shall now compare, on one point, the earlier biographers of Caxton:-- "Gvilhelmus Caxton, Anglus--habitavit interim in Flandria 30 annis cum domina Margareta Burgundiæ ducissa regis Edwardi sorore."--Joannes BALE, 1559. "Gvilhelmvs Caxtonus, natione Anglus. Vir pius, doctus, etc. In Flandria quidem triginta annis vixit cum Margareta Burgundiæ duce, regis Edwardi quarti sorore."--Joannes PITSEUS, 1619.