cesse; though some crosse accydents of late hath made him (not without
reason) desire to waite upon thee, it being needfull that I should give
him this testimony, least his journey to thee be misinterpreted."

The estate which Sir John Winter thus vacated in this neighbourhood was
soon after assigned to his opponent by the House of Commons, who ordered
on the 29th of September, 1645, "that Major-General Massy, in
consideration of his good and faithful service which he hath done for the
kingdom, shall have allowed him the estate of Sir John Winter (who is a
delinquent to the Parliament) in the Forest of Dean; all his iron-mills,
and the woods (timber trees only excepted not to be felled), with all the
profits belonging to them; and ordered that an order at once should be
brought into the House to that purpose." Eventually, however, Sir John
Winter recovered his property, through the influence probably of the
Lords in Parliament, who appear to have favoured him. On his return to
this country he nevertheless seems to have been imprisoned, for on the
7th of September, 1652, we find him liberated from the Tower, upon bail
for three months, on account of sickness; a term of liberty which was
enlarged upon the 7th of December, on the same security, to three months
longer, with permission to go where he pleased within twenty miles of
London. On the 17th of the same month he was remanded back to the Tower.

Evelyn tells us that at this time Sir John Winter amused himself with a
project for charring coal. "July 11th, 1656.--Came home by Greenwich
Ferry, where I saw Sir John Winter's new project of charring sea-coale,
to burne out the sulphure and render it sweete. He did it by burning the
coals in such earthen pots as the glasse-men mealt their mettal, so
firing them without consuming them, using a barr of yron in each crucible
or pot, which barr has a hook at one end, that so the coales being
mealted in a furnace wth other crude sea-coales under them, may be drawn
out of the potts sticking to the yron, whence they are beaten off in
greate halfe-exhausted cinders, which being rekindled make a cleare
pleasant chamber fire, deprived of their sulphur and arsenic malignity.
What successe it may have, time will discover."

Reverting to Sir John Winter's retreat from Lydney, it may be remarked
that, with his retirement from the Forest district, its south side became
quiet; not so its north, for there the following incidents occurr