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Excellent temper for breastplates

Have the clearest and the most running river water you can, and heat it up slightly more than warm. Then have a bunch of reseda, take its seeds and dip them into the said water and bring it to a rolling boil it while stirring it with a stick. Then pour it into a muid or any other vessel, then throw into it two pecks of salt. Then take a big cauldron full of the said river water and heat it up slightly more than warm. Take three or four times the quantity of red greasy earth you can hold in two cupped hands, dip it and throw it into the cauldron filled with the said water. Have as much pigeon manure as of the said earth, as much horse manure and as much iron scrapings. And mix each of these separately, throw into the caldron and leave for two or three days. Then throw it into the said muid and stir all strongly altogether. And the older this temper is, the better it will work.