Soap.- Short and True Relation concerning the Soap-busines (A). Containing the severall Patents, Proclamations, Orders, whereby the Soape-makers of London...were damnified, by the Gentlemen that were the Patentees for Soape at Westminster..., lacking final blank, woodcut head-piece and initial, light foxing and soiling, title with ink smudge and defective at lower inner margin not affecting text (repaired), [Goldsmith's 724; Kress 603; Wing S3555], for Nicholas Bourne, 1641 bound with Looking-Glasse (A) for Sope-Patentees, title with typographical border, verso of final leaf soiled, [Goldsmiths' 910; Wing L3026], 1646, together 2 works in 1 vol., only editions, later engraved bookplate of E.F.Armstrong, modern calf, gilt, by Palmer Howe of Manchester, red roan label, very slightly rubbed, small 4to

⁂ Two interesting tracts on the making of soap. In 1631, hoping to exploit the soap trade as a source of revenue, Charles I granted a monopoly of soap-manufactures to a Westminster group made up of inexperienced Catholic recusants. The new patent was justified on the basis of invention which allegedly made a better, cheaper, white soap without the use of whale oil, which had been the key ingredient in the patent of the dispossessed London soap makers. The latter were now ruthlessly suppressed, brought before the Star Chamber, and even jailed. In the first tract the Londoners narrate the extraordinary repressive measures taken against themselves and the general public and expose the fraud of their Westminster rivals, who in fact continued to use whale oil while producing an inferior and more expensive product.

Edward Frankland Armstrong (1878-1945), chemist.