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In a Polyglot dictionary, published in the year 1625, by John Minshew, our attention was attracted by the following observations, under the article "RINGFINGER. Vetus versiculus singulis digitis Annulum trebuens Miles. Mercator. Stultus. Maritus. Amator. Pollici adscribitur Militi, seu Doctor. Mercatorem á pollice secundum, stultorum, tertium. Nuptorum vel studiosorum quartum. Amatorum ultimum."
A fruitful source of the widespread belief that our navy in the old days was chiefly manned by recourse to compulsion, is a confusion between two words of independent origin and different meaning, which, in ages when exact spelling was not thought indispensable, came to be written and pronounced alike. During our later great maritime wars, the official term applied to anyone recruited by impressment was 'prest-man. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and part of the eighteenth century, this term meant the exact opposite. It meant a man who had voluntarily engaged to serve, and who had received a sum in advance called 'prest-money. 'A prest-man, we are told by that high authority, Professor Sir J. K. Laughton, 'was really a man who received the prest of 12d., as a soldier when enlisted. In the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana' , we find: 'Impressing, or, more correctly, impresting, i.e. paying earnest-money to seamen by the King's Commission to the Admiralty, is a right of very ancient date, and established by prescription, though not by statute. Many statutes, however, imply its existence one as far back as 2 Richard II, cap. 4. An old dictionary of James I's time , called 'The Guide into the Tongues, by the Industrie, Studie, Labour, and at the Charges of John Minshew, gives the following definition: 'Imprest-money. G. [Gallic or French], Imprest-
After living several years in the world, principally at the court of Francis de Medicis, Socinus, in 1577, went into Germany, and began to propagate the principles of his uncle, to which, it is said, he made great additions and alterations of his own. So Minshew, who supposes it to be derived from the French, mot, verbum, quasi verba facere, aut sermonem de aliqua re habere.
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