WHEREAS Mr Yarwell, Mr Sterrop, and Mr Marshall, the 2 first were our Masters with whom we served our Apprenticeships, and since for several years we have made the best of work for them and Mr Marshall. And now they being envious at our prosperity have published several false, deceitful and malicious advertisements, wherein they assert that we cheat all that buy any of our goods, and that we pretend to many impossibilities, and impose on the public, they having wrested the words and sense of our advertisements, pretend that we affirm that a 2 Foot Telescope of our making will do as much as the best 4 Foot of another man’s make, and they fraudulently show in their shops one of their best 4 Foots against our small one, and then cry out against the insufficiency of our instrument. Now we G. Willdey and Th. Brandreth being notoriously abused, declare that we never did assert any such thing, or ever did pretend to impossibilities, but will make good in every particular all those [note, these are their own words] (impossible, incredible, miraculous, wonderful, and astonishing) things mentioned in our advertisements; which things perhaps may be impossible, incredible, miraculous, wonderful, and astonishing to them, but we assure them they are not so to us: For we have small miraculous telescopes, as they are pleased to call them, that do such wonders that they say it is impossible to make such, by the assistance of which we will lay any person £10, that instead of 2 miles mentioned, we will tell them the hour of the day 3 if not 4 miles by such a dial as St James’s or Bow.
After this the recalcitrant apprentices repeat all their former boasts, and conclude: “All these things are as they say impossible to them, but are and will be made by G. Willdey and T. Brandreth.... Let ingenuity thrive.” Willdey and Brandreth now, no doubt, thought that they had turned the tables upon their former masters, and had all the best of the battle; but the duel was not yet over, as the second time this advertisement appeared (Daily Courant, April 26), the following was immediately under it:—