that the French had not power to return one shot, but rowed away with a matter of four using oars that were left of about sixteen men. It was a dead calm, and the ketch had neither oars nor boat to help her, otherwise she had brought away the shallop and the remainder of the men. The post has desired the same supply again for his defence on Sunday next; the writer has taken order accordingly, and furnished him also with letters of safe-conduct." In the following month, September, another outrage upon the mail boat was committed. Waad, the deputy postmaster of Dover, gives an account of the transaction, and a capture made thereafter, in a letter to his chief, Witherings, on the 26th September. He writes: "The manner of taking the boats by those that were laid in Dover Castle was: that the Zealanders shot at them divers times, when one of the packet boatmen struck sail and showed the Lord General's warrant, which they slighted, and were like to stab the old man whom Waad trusts with the mail, with base words to His Majesty. The place was off the Splinter, betwixt Gravelines and Dunkirk. The day was the 2nd instant; and on the 3rd, setting out another boat with the mail, one of the ketch told Waad that he saw the captain that took them and some of his men; whereupon, about twelve in the night, he called the watch and carried the captain and other two to the town jail, having paid Sir William Monson's gentlemen's dinners and horse-hires to acquaint the Lord General in the forenoon before that the vessel was in Dover road. Whereupon Sir William Monson came into the road and took the ship out, and sent his boat after ashore. The prisoners being claimed by Sir William Monson, and also by Mr. Moore, Secretary to the Lord Warden, the Mayor adjudged to Sir William, who carried them to the Lord General. After examination, he returned them to Dover Castle; but their ship was cleared in the Downs, and on the Sunday morning took a bylander of Bruges; also that night the prisoners made escape out of the castle by a mat twisted very laboriously." The meaning of this last sentence probably is, that these sailors untwisted the strands of a mat, then spun the material into a kind of rope, and let themselves down from their cell in the castle.