Mellilot, or King's Claver

Descript : This hath many green stalks, two or three feet high, rising from a tough, long, white root, which dies not every year, set round about at the joints with small and somewhat long, well-smelling leaves, set three together, unevenly dented about the edges. The flowers are yellow, and well-smelling also, made like other trefoil, but small, standing in long spikes one above another, for an hand breath long or better, which afterwards turn into long crooked pods, wherein is contained flat seed, somewhat brown.

Place : It grows plentifully in many places of this land, as in the edge of Suffolk and in Essex, as also in Huntingdonshire, and in other places, but most usually in corn fields, in corners of meadows.

Time : It flowers in June and July, and is ripe quickly after.

Government and virtues : Mellilot, boiled in wine, and applied, mollifies all hard tumours and inflammations that happen in the eyes, or other parts of the body, and sometimes the yolk of a roasted egg, or fine flour, or poppy seed, or endive, is added unto it. It helps the spreading ulcers in the head, it being washed with a lye made thereof. It helps the pains of the stomach, being applied fresh, or boiled with any of the aforenamed things; also, the pains of the ears, being dropped into them; and steeped in vinegar, or rose water, it mitigates the head-ache. The flowers of Mellilot or Camomile are much used to be put together in clysters to expel wind, and ease pains; and also in poultices for the same purpose, and to assuage swelling tumours in the spleen or other parts, and helps inflammations in any part of the body. The juice dropped into the eyes, is a singularly good medicine to take away the film or skin that clouds or dims the eye-sight. The head often washed with the distilled water of the herb and flower, or a lye made therewith, is effectual for those that suddenly lose their senses; as also to strengthen the memory, to comfort the head and brain, and to preserve them from pain, and the apoplexy.