Note 169 — Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
See also Hudibras, Part II. Cant. III.
They're guilty by their own confessions Of felony, and at the Sessions Upon the bench I will so handle 'em, That the vibration of this pendulum Shall make all taylors' yards of one Unanimous opinion; A thing he long has vaunted of, But now shall make it out of proof.
Hudibras was certainly written before 1663: ten years later Huyghens speaks of the idea of so employing the pendulum as a common one.