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Corn Factors or Brokers were not employed till aboutthe year 1745: the origin of them is thus noticed :—“ Theformers coast-ways used to attend Bear Quay once a-weekwith samples of the various sorts of grain then lying in thevessels on the river; it however frequently happened that theformers were forced to return home without having disposedof their grain j and as the Essex growers principally used theBull Inn in Whitechapel, (which the buyers also on thataccount frequented) some of them who had a good opinionof the landlord, whose name was Johnson, began to leavetheir samples with him, to be sold at fixed prices; and after-wards entrusted him with discretionary powers as to marketprices, which he managed so much to the satisfaction of bothbuyers and sellers, that in a short time he opened a littlecounting-house on Bear Quay, and called himself the corn-factor of the Essex farmers, in which business he was suc-ceeded by his son and grandson.’’

CORONETS were first assigned to earls by Henry III . ;but John of Eltham, second son of Edward II. , was the firstwho wore a coronet. Selden says that Audomer d’ Valence,Earl of Pembroke, had a coronet—16 Edw.II. The mar-quis’s coronet was granted by Richard II. ; and the viscount’sin the time of James I. : the barons’ had only a crimson cap,turned up with fur, till the coronet was allowed them byCharles II .

COTTON. It is stated that the cotton plant was ancientlyto be found only in Egypt , and that the down of it was fabri-cated into garments, to be exclusively worn by the priests :the raw material was introduced into Europe long before thediscovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope jand it appears in Hacluyt’s Collection of Voyages, that thiscountry was supplied with it from the Levant by the Genoesevessels in 1430; but afterwards the trade was entirely cn-