the comfort of the Lands belonging to a Deanery Prebenda or Prebendship of Lands and other Revenues annexed to the Cathedrals many if not most of which with the Deanerles and Prebendships thereunto belonging as the Deanerie and twelve Prebends of Westminster by Queen Elizabeth were of the foundation and gift of the Kings Royal Progenitors Which comfortable and necessary supports of our Bishops administred by their Clergie are ex antiquo and long agoe resembled by some or the like usages in Ireland where the Coloni or Aldiones such as hold in Socage of the Irish Bishops did besides their Rents and Tributes erga reparationes Matricis Ecclesiae quidpiam conferre give something yearly towards the reparation of the Cathedral or Mother Churches and the Herenaci another sort of Tenants so called did besides their annual rent cibarià quaedam Episcopo exhibere bring to the Bishop certain provisions for his Houshold which was very frequent with the Tenants of Lands holden of our English Abbies and Religious Houses by an inquisition in the County of Tirone in anno 1608. it was by a Jury presented upon oath that there were quidam Clerici sive homines literati qui vocentur Herinaci certain learned men of the Clergy who were called Herinaci ab antiquo seisiti fuerunt c. And anciently were seised of certain lands which did pay to the Arch-bishop or Bishop of the Diocess quoddam charitativum subsidium refectiones pensiones annuales secundum quantitatem terrae consuetudinem patriae a dutifull and loving aid and some provisions and pensions according to the quantity of their lands and custome of their Country and the grants of such lands as appeareth by a Deed of the Dean and Chapter of Armach in Anno Domini 1365. to Arthur and William Mac Brin for their lives and the longer liver of them at the yearly rent of a mark and eight pence sterling una cum aliis oneribus servitiis inde debitis consuetis with all other charges and services due and accustomed had in them sometimes a condition of quam diu grati fuerint obedientes so long as they should be gratefull and obedient unto them Wherefore the Barons Nobility and Gentry of England who did lately enjoy those beneficiall Tenures by Knight-service now unhappily as the consequence and greater charges and burdens upon the people will evidence converted as much as an Act of Parliament in the twelfth year of the Reign of his Majesty that now is can doe it into Socage which were at the first only given for service and assistance of their King and Country and their mesne Lords in relation thereunto and have besides the before recited conditions many a beneficiall custome and usage annexed and fixed unto them and at the dissolution of the Abbies and Religious Houses had much of the Lands given and granted unto them and their Heirs in tail or otherwise with a reservation of a Tenth now a great deal below the value can doe no less in the contemplation of their honours dignities and priviledges received from them and many great favours continued unto their Heirs and Successors from Generation to Generation then doe that in the matter of Praeemption Pourveyance or Contribution towards the Composition or serving in of victuals or Provision for his Majesties Royal Houshold and the honor of his House and Kingdome which their Ancestors did never deny The Lord Maiors of London who doe take and re-receive yearly a payment or Tribute called Ale-silver and the Citizens of London who doe claim and enjoy by the Kings Grants Charters or Confirmations a freedom from all â—olls Lastage throughout England besides many other large priviledges and immunities and the Merchants of England and such as trade and trauell through his Ports and over his Seas into forrain parts and are not denied their Bills of Store to free their Trunks and wearing Clothes and other necessaries imported or exported from paying any Custome and other duties which with many other things disguised and made Custome-free under those pretences for which the Farmers of the Customes have usually had yearly allowances and defalcations would amount unto a great part of the peoples pretended damage by the compositions for Royall Pourveyance should not trouble themselves with any complaints or calculations of it when as both Citizens and Merchants can derive their more then formerly great increase of trade and riches from no other cause or fountain then the almost constant â—esidence of the King and Courts of Justice in or near London and the many great priviledges granted unto them and obtained for them by the Kings and Queens of England The Tenants in ancient Demeasne claiming to be free from the payment of Tolls for their own houshold provisions and from contribution unto all wages assessed towards the expences of the Knights of the Shires or Burgesses sent unto the Parliament which Sir Edward Coke believes was in regard of their helping to furnish the Kings Houshold provisions though since granted to other persons and their services turned into small rents now much below what they would amount unto and many Towns and Corporations of the Kingdome the Resiants in the Cinque Ports and Romney Marsh Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the Colledges and Halls therein and the Colledges of Winton and Eaton claiming to be acquitted from the payment of Subsidies by antient Exemptions may be willing to pay or bear as much as comes to their share in that one of the smallest parts of duty which is not to be refused by such as will fear God and honour the King And all the Subjects of England who enjoy their Common of Estovers in many of the Kings Woods or Forrests Pannage or feeding of Swine with Acorns or fetching of Ferne from thence Priviledges of Deafforrestations Assart lands Pourlieus and Browse wood and have Common of Vicinage and Common appendant not only therein but in most of his Manors by a continuance or custome of the charity or pitty of his Royal Progenitors and where they have no grant to produce for those and many other favours will for refuge and to be sure not to part with it fly to praescription and time beyond the memory of man and suppose that there was a grant thereof because that possibly there might have been one should not think much to let him pertake of some of their thanks and retributions which will not amount to one in every twenty for all the benefits which they have received of his Royal Ancestors or doe yearly receive of him Nor should forget that God Almighty the maker of heaven and earth giver of all good things and bestower of blessings who fed his people of Israel with Quails in the Wilderness where none were bred Manna where none was either before or since and made the Rocks to yeild water did in his Theocraty or Government of them by his Laws and Edicts written
wept for him that was in trouble and sate chief and dwelt as a King in the Army as one that comforteth the mourners the ears that heard him blessed him and the eye that saw him gave witness to him when men gave care and waited and kept silence at his counsel although it must be acknowledged that there are now some of the Gentry more learned accomplished then in former ages and might equall or goe beyond their worthy and honorable Ancestors if they would but imitate their Alms-deeds and hospitality and not permit their greater expences in matters less warrantable and laudable to make and enforce an avaâ—ice or Rubiginem animarum canker or rust of the soul to hinder or keep them from it And Gentlemen were not then as too many now are the fools of the Parish and so little valued as they are now when too many of them may be beaten and kickt in the Market-places in the view and sight of their over-racked and disobliged Tenants piget pudet dicere I would there were no cause or occasion to speak it and with their few attendants of Sicophants Pimps and Foot-boyes be as little helped or regarded by the Common people as a ridiculous pride and a large and wastfull retinue of sins and folly ought to be But kept great hospitalities and were heretofore in their houses in the Country as the Dii Tutelares of the poor or such as were in any want or necessitâ—es the Cities of refuge in all their distresses the Esculapius Temple for wholsome or honest medicaments or unmercinary cures of wounds and diseases which the good Ladies and Gentlewomen their Wives or Daughters were then well practised in and had great respects and reverence paid unto them for it And see how little is now done in any of those kinds if he hath any fear of God or care of goodness love or respect to his Country and posterity forbear a bewailing of the ruine and decay of the moralities virtues and honor of England and wonder how that only remaining relique of our fore-fathers magnanimity and virtues that seed plot of love and good will which the Angels in their song and rejoycing at the birth of our Jesus and Redeemer proclaimed to be a blessing that seminary of reverence honor and respect that ligament and tye betwixt the inferiours and superiours that incitement and encouragement to reciprocations of love and duty and that heretofore so famous and well imployed strength and power of the Nobility and Gentry should be disused and laid side and that those laudable pious and honorable actions of Hospitality and Charity in which our Kings of England so much delighted and by a solemn and thrice repeated crie or proclamation made by one of the Heralds of a Largesse a Largesse at the creation of every Baron Earl or Duke being as the cry or joy of the Harvest mentioned in the holy Scriptures and at St. George's Feasts did put the Nobility and Gentry in mind to doe the like in their several orbes and stations should be now restrained by the want of Pourveyance or Compositions for it or that there should be any endeavours to decay and hinder it at the fountain or well head by stopping the pleasant and refreshing waters which gladded our Sion and the Inhabitants thereof and made it to be the terror of all the Nations round about us or that any should think it to be for the good and honor of England to lessen that hospitality and plenty in the Kings House or Court which is so pleasing and suitable to the humor and constitution of the English Nation hath gained the Kings of England so much love at home and honor abroad maintained so fair a correspondency and intelligence betwixt the Court and Ministry and relieved the poor and needy the Widdow and the Fatherless And is so essentiall and proper to Majesty as David when he offered sacrifice unto the Lord after the bringing back of the Ark did give to every one of the people men and women a Cake of bread a good piece of flesh and a Flaggon of wine and so customary as the Romans could not think themselves secure in the good wills affections of the people without their Epulae and publick Feasts and caressing of the people which Julius Caesar nor his Successor Augustus would not adventure to omit Nor Domitian and Severus who gave oyle wine and other necessary provisions a Fin as Lois d' Orleans rightly understood it d' concilier l' amour de leurs Subjects quils prenoient par lebouchâ— to procure the love of the people who were taken by the mouth and was so customary in France as well as England as at a great solemnity there after that our King Henry the fifth had espoused the Daughter and Heir of France and the people of Paris in great numbers went unto the Louvre to see the King and Queen of England sit at meat together with their Crowns upon their heads but being dismissed without an invitation to eat or drink by some of the Officers or Masters of the houshold as they were accustomed they murmured exceedingly for that when they came to such grand solemnities at the King of Frances Court they used to have meat and drink given them in great plenty and those which would sit at meat were by the Kings Officers most abundantly served with wine and victuals and at extraordinary Feasts as that at the marriage of King Henry the fifth of England and the Lady Katherine Daughter of Charles the sixth King of France had Tables furnished with victuals set in the streets where they which would might sit and eat at the Kings charges as was afterwards also done at Amiens at the enterview of Lewis the eleventh of France and Edward the fourth of England And was there in those dayes most laudably used a fin dâ— unir le peuple au Roy les pieds a la teste pur affirmir le corps politick le lier par une gracieuse voire necessaire correspondence to the end to fasten the people unto the King and the feet unto the head to strengthen the body politick and unite all the parts thereof by a loving and necessary compliance and was an usage so well entertained in other Nations as the Tartars and Laplanders would not be without it and the Graecians thought themselves dishonored if there were not a more then ordinary care to entertain strangers of free cost insomuch as a Law was made amongst the Lucani to punish such as took not a care of them and the Swedes and Gothes esteemed it to be so great an unworthines not to doe it as they did by a Law ordain That whosoever denied lodging or entertainment to any strangers and was by witnesses convicted to have thrice offended in that kind his house was to be burned Those or the like kind and charitable customs haveing so crept through the cranies of humane
afterwards by reason of the Murrain of Cattel and a more then ordinary unseasonableness of those years twenty quarters of Corn were furnished for the Kings use and taken by the Sheriff of Kent at eleven shillings the quarter as appeareth by a Tally struck foâ— the payment thereof yet extant in his Majesties Receipt of the Exchequer and although that in the year next following by reason of a peace with France and the great victories before obtained against it by the English when the King was rich and the people rich which makes a Kingdom compleatly rich with the riches and spoiles gained thereby and that great store of Gold and Silver Plate Jewels and rich vestiments sparsim per Angliam in singulorum domibus were almost in every house in England to be found and that in the 23. year of the Raign of the said King so great a mortality of men and Cattle happned ut vix media aut decima pars hominum remaneret as scarce a third parâ— and as some were of opinion not above a tenth part of the people remained alive which must needs have made a plenty of money tunc redditus perierunt saith the Historian hinc terra ob defectum Colonorum qui nusquam erant remansit inculta tantaque miseria ex bis malis est secuta quod mundus ad pristinum statum redeundi nunquam postea habuit facultatem insomuch as Rents or Tenants for Lands were not to be had the Lands for want of husbandmen remained untilled which would necessarily produce a dearth and scarcity of Victuals And so great was the misery as the Kingdom was never like to recover its former condition And that in the 25. year of the Raign of King Edward the third by reason of the Kings coyning of groats and half groats less in value then the Esterling money Victuals were through all England more dear then formerly and the Workmen Artificers and servants raised their Wages yet in Anno 12 R. 2. though there was a great dearth yet Wooll was sold for two shillings a Stone a Bushel of Wheat for thirteen pence which was then thought to be a great rate a Bushel of Wheat being sold the year before for six pence And in Anno 14. of King R. 2. in an account made in the Receipt of the Exchequer by Roger Durston the Kings Bayliff he reckons for three Capons paid for Rent four pence half penny for thirteen Hens one shilling and seven pence for a Pâ—owâ—share paid for Rent eight pence and for four hundred Couple of Conies at three pence a couple one hundred shillings In Anno 2 H. 5. the Parliament understood four pounds thirteen shillings four pence to be a good yearly aâ—lowance or salary for a Chaplain being men of more then ordinary quality so gâ—eat a cheapness was there then of Victuals and other provisions for the livelihood of men and for Parish Priests six pounds per annum for their Board Apparrel and other necessaries and being to provide that Jurors which were to be impanelled touching the life of man Plea Real or Forty Marks damage should be as the Statute of 42 E. 3. c. 5. required men of substance good estate and credit did ordain that none should be Jurors in such cases but such as had fourty shillings per annum in Lands above all charges which was so believed to be a good estate in 5 H. 8. c. 5. which was almost one hundred years after as the Parliament of that year did think it to be an estate competent enough for such kind of men In the Raign of King Henry the sixth after that France a great and rich neighboring kingdom was wholy conquered and possessed by the English who had not then learned their wasteâ—ul Luxuries or Mimick fashions and could not with such an increase of Dominion and so great spoils and riches transported from thence hither but be abundantly and more then formerly full of money the price and rates of Victuals was so cheap as the King could right worshipfully as the Record saith keep his Royal Court which then could be no mean one with no greater a charge then four and twenty thousand pounds per annum and in the 33. year of his raign which was in Anno Domini one thousand four hundred fifty and five by assent of Parliament granted to his son the Prince of Wales but one thousand pound per annum whilst he had Dirt and Lodging for himself and his servants in his house until he should come to the age of eight years and afterwards no more then 2000. Marks per annum for the charge of his Wardrobe Wages of servants and other necessaâ—y expences whilst he remained in the house of the King his â—ather which was then thought sufficient to support the honor and dignity of the Prince and heir apparent of England though now such a sum of money can by some one that mâ—ndeth his pleasure more then his estate and the present more then the future be thrown away in one night or day at Cards or Dice In Anno 37 H. 6. Meadow in Derbyshire was valued but at ten pence per Acre and errable Land at three pence In the 22. year of the Raign of King Edward the fourth which was â—n the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred eighty and two the price and value of six Oxen was at the highest valuation but ten pounds In the seventh year of the Raign of King H 7. which was in Anno Domini one thousand four hundred ninety and two Wheat was sold at London for twenty pence the Bushel which was then accounted a great dearth and three years after for six pence the Bushel Bay Salt for three pence half penny Nampâ—wich Salt for six pence the Bushel white Herrings nine shillings the Barrel red Herrings three shillings the Cade in the fifteenth year of his Raign Gascoign Wine was sold at London for fourty shillings the Tun and a quarter of Wheat for four shillings In the 24. year of the Raign of King Henry the 8. a fat Ox was sold at London for 26 s. an half peny a pound for Beef and Pork and a half penny farthing a pound for Veal and Mutton was by Act of Parliament thought to be a reasonable price and with gain enough afforded In the fourth year of the Raign of Queen Mary which was in the year of our Lord God one thousand five hundred fifty and seven when very many families and multitudes of the people of England had been but a little before greatly monyed enriched by the lands spoil or the Monasteries and other Religious houses and their large possessions Wheat was sold before Harvest for four Marks the quarter Malt at four and fourty shillings the quarter and Pease at six and fourty shillings and eight pence but after Harvest Wheat was sold at London for five shillings the quarter Malt at six
The Antiquity Legality Reason Duty and Necessity OF PRAE-EMPTION AND POURVEYANCE FOR THE KING OR Compositions for his Pourveyance As they were used and taken for the Provisions of the KINGS Houshold the small charge and burthen thereof to the PEOPLE and the many great Mischiefs and Inconveniences which will inevitably follow the taking of them away By FABIAN PHILIPPS Manilius 3 Perquè tot Aetates hominum tot tempora Annos Tot Bella varios etiam sub pace labores Virgil Aeneid lib. 8. Sic placida populos in pace regebat Deterior donec paulatìm Decolor Aetas Et Belli Rabies Amor successit habendi London Printed by Richard Hodgkinson for the Author and are to be sold by Henry Marsh at the sign of the Princes Arms in Chancery-Lane 1663. To the Right Learned and truely Noble Lord Christopher Lord Hatton Baron of Kirkby Knight of the Bath Governor of the Isle of Guarnesey and one of the Lords of his Majesties most Honorable Privy Council My Lord THE Holy Evangelist St. Luke in his Gospel and History of the Acts of the blessed Apostles when he inscribed or Dedicated it to his friend Theophilus hath given us to understand that the Dedication of Books unto such as would read and peruse them is no late or Novel usage for it was in those times or shortly after not thought to be unfitting or unnecessary to take the approbation and opinion of Grave and Learned men of such things as were to be made publicke as Plinius Junior in his Epistles informs us so that it may with reason and evidence be concluded that the Dedication of Books was not originally to procure the favor of some great or good Man neither were the Epistles Dedicatory heretofore acquainted with those gross Flatteries untruths or immense and accumulated praises of the Patrons or their Ancestors which some Foraign Printers for their own private gain do use in publishing Books out of some Copies and Manuscripts left by the deceased Authors or as too many German and other Authors have of late stuffed their Dedications withall which Heroick and great Souls do so little relish as the Books themselves would meet with a better entertainment if they came without them but one of the best and most approved usages of Dedications hath certainly and most commonly been derived from no other Source or Fountain then the great desire which the Author had there being before printing most probably but a few Copies sent abroad to receive the friendly censure and approbation of some Learned man who would in those days carefully read and peruse it and not as now too many men do oscitanter and cursorily take a view onely of the Frontispice or Title and lay it in the Parlor or Hall Windows to be idly turned over by such as tarry to speak with them or else crowd it in their better furnished then read or understood Libraries to make a Muster or great shew of such Forces as they have to bring into the Feild of Learning when there shall be any occasion to use them but neither then or before are able to finde or say what is in them But your Lordship being Master of the Learning in Books as well as of an excellent well furnished Library with many choice Manuscripts never yet published and very many Classick Authors and Volums printed and carefully pick't and gathered together out of the Gardens of good letters which an unlearned and reforming Rebellion and the Treachery of a wicked servant hired to discover them did very much diminish And your Eye and Judgement being able before hand to Calculate the Fate of the Author in the good or bad opinion of all that go by any Rules or measure of right Reason Learning or Judgement I have adventured to present unto your Lordship these my Labours in the Vindication of the Legality Antiquity right use and necessity of the Praeemption and Pourveyance of the Kings of England or Compositions for the Provisions of their Royall houshold for that your Lordship is so well able to judge of them and having been Comptroller of the houshold to his Majesties Royal Father the Martyr King CHARLES the First and to the very great dangers of your person and damage of your Estate like one of Davids good servants gone along with him in all his Wars and troubles when as he being first assaulted was inforced to take Arms against a Rebellious and Hypocritical part of his people in the defence of himself and his people their Religion Laws and Liberties and the Priviledges of Parliament and not only remained Faithfull to him during his life but after his death unto his banished and strangely misused Royal Issue when Loyalty and Truth were accompted crimes of the greatest magnitude and like some houses infected with the plague had more then one ✚ set upon them with a Lord have mercy upon us And did whilst that blessed King continued in his Throne and Regalities so instruct your self in those Excellent Orders and Government of his house as you have been able to enlighten and teach others amongst whom I must acknowledge my self to have been one and out of a Manuscript carefully collected by your Lordship concerning the Rules and Orders of the Royal houshold which your Lordship was pleased to communicate unto me to have been very much informed which together with the many favors with which you have been pleased to oblige me the incouragements which you have given me to undertake this work and the great respect and veneration which I bear unto your Lordships grand accomplishments in the Encyclopaidia large extent and traverses of all kinde of learning and your knowledge of Foraign Courts and Customes which being very extraordinary if you were of the ranke of private men must needs be very much more when it shall be added to the eminency of your Birth and qualitie and the Trust and Emploiments which his Majesty hath been pleased deservedly to confer upon you have emboldened me to lay these my endeavors before your Lordship submitting them to an utter oblivion and extinguishment and to be stifled in the Birth or Crâ—dle if they shall not appear unto your Lordship to be worthy the publike view and consideration Wherein although some may feast and highly content their Fancies with censuring me that I have been to prodigal of my labors in proving either at all or so largly the antiquity or legality of the Kings just Rights unto Prae-emption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them when as the Act of Parliament in Anno 12 of his now Majesties raign for taking them away doth give him a Recompence for them yet I may I hope escape the censure or blame of setting up a Giant of Straw and fighting with it when I have done or of being allied to such as fight with their own shadows or trouble themselves when there is neither any cause or necessity for it when as the Act of Parliament for taking away Pourveyance
and the Court of Wards and Liveries and Tenures by Knight Service either of the King or others in Capite or Socage in Capite did not expressely alleage or allow those Tenures and the incidents thereof to be their just rights but onely that the consequences upon the same have been much more burthensom grievous and prejudicial to the Kingdom then they have been beneficial to the King and alleadging also that by like experience it hath been found that notwithstanding divers good strickt and wholsom Laws some extending as far as to life for redress of the grievances and oppressions committed by the persons imployed in making provisions for the Kings houshold and of the Carriages and other provisions for his occasions yet they have been still continued and several Counties have submitted themselves to sundry rates Taxes and Compositions to redeem themselves from such vexations and oppressions and that no other remedy will be so effectual as to take away the occasion thereof especially if satisfaction and recompence shall be therefore made to his Majesty his heirs and Successors so as very many or most of the seduced and factious part of the people of this Nation having in the times of our late confusions been mislead or driven into an ill opinion of it may with the residue of the people be easily carryed along with the croud to a more then imagination that the Pourveyance and Prae-emption was no less then a very great grievance and that his Majesty was thereby induced to accept of a recompence or satisfaction for it and permit the people to purchase the abolition of that which they supposed to have been a grievance which do appear neither to be a grievance nor recompence but a great loss to the King and as much or more in the conclusion consideratis considerandis to the people And that the vulgar and men of prejudice and ignorance are not so easily or with a little to be satisfied as the learned and that in justification of a business from those Obloquies so unjustly and undeservedly cast upon it and so highly concerning the King and his people and in a way nullius ante trita pede altogether untroden wherein I cannot honor and obey the King as I ought if I should not take a care of the rights of his people which is his daily care nor love them or my self if I should not do all that I can to preserve his regalities I can be conscious to my self of many omissions and imperfections in regard of sundry importunities of Clients affairs some troublsome business of mine own which either could not or would not give me any competency of time or leasure but did almost daily and many times hourely take me off as soon as I was on and so interrupt and divert me as I had sometimes much ado when I got to it again to recollect my scattered thoughts and materials and Writing as the Printer called for it with so great a disturbance and a midst so many obstructions may possibly be guilty of some deformities in the method or stile some defects or redundancies impertinent Sallies or digressions or want of coherencies which might have been prevented or amended if I could have enjoyed an Otium or privacy requisite for such an undertaking or have had time to have searched the Archives and too much unknown or uninquired after Records of the Kings just legal Regalias or those multitudes of liberties customs and priviledges which the Lords of Mannors and their Tenants do at this day enjoy by the favour of the King and his royal Progenitors or to have raked amongst the rubbidge of time long ago tripped over and the not every where to be found Abdita rerum or recesses of venerable Antiquity or to have viewed all at once what I had done in its parts and delineations and perused it before it was printed in a compleat Copy with a deliberation necessary to a work of that nature and concernment But howsoever I speed therein I shall like those that brought the Pigeons or Turtle Doves instead of a more noble sacrifice content my self libâsse veritati to have offered upon the Altar of truth what my small abilities and greater affections could procure whereby to have incited such as shall be more happy in their larger Talents to assert those truths which I was so willing to have vindicated and to have rectified that grand and popular groundless mistake and prejudice which multitudes of the common people have by the late Vsurping Powers been cunningly taught to have against it And whether they intended evil or good thereby might be easily misled or mislead themselves to scandalize such an Ancient Legal and reasonable custome and Right of the King when as the great Civilian Paulus saith Rerum imperiti censuram sibi de rebus quibusdam arrogant volentes esse Legis Doctores nesciunt de quibus loquuntur nec de quibus affirmant ambitiosè pervicaciter insolenter ineptè de magnis rebus statuere And it was but a trick of the godless Tyrant and his company of State Gipsies to make the people the more able or willing to covenant and ingage for the maintenance and perpetuity of their Sin and Slaverie and to bear and suffer greater burdens taxes and oppressions then ever Englishmen did before And whatsoever the Fate of these my labors shall appear to be can conclude in magnis voluisse sat est and subscribe my self Your Lordships affectionate servant Fabian Philipps THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS CHAP. I. THe Antiquity of the Royall Pourveyance and Praeemption for the maintenance of the Kings Houses Navy Castles and Garrisons attended by a Jus Gentium and reasonable Customes of the most or better part of other Nations page 9. CHAP. II. Of the Vse and Allowance of Pourveyance in England and our British Isles p. 44. CHAP. III. The reason of Praeemption and Regall Pourveyance or Compositions for the Provision of the Kings Houshold p. 97. CHAP. IV. The right use of the Prae-emption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them p. 234 CHAP. V. Necessity that the King should have and enjoy his ancient rights of Prae-emption Pourveyance or Compositions for them p. 268 CHAP. VI. The small charge of the Pourveyance or Compositions for it to or upon such of the people as were chargeable with it p. 329 CHAP. VII That the supposed plenty of money and Gold and Silver in England since the Conquest of the West-Indies by the Spaniards hath not been a cause of raising the prices of food and victuals in England p. 341 CHAP. VIII That it is the interest of the people of England to revive again the Ancient and legal usage of his Majesties just rights of Praeemption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them p. 400 The Antiquity Legality Reason Duty and Necessity of Prae-emption and Pourveyance for the King Or Compositions for his Pourveyance as they were used and taken for the Provisions of the Kings Houshold the small
understanding and more distempered part of the people should be better and more to be followed and therefore to be taken in and receive as great an entertainment and applause as the Children of Israel did their Golden Calfe with shouts and acclamations whilst Moses as they thought had tarried too long with God Almighty in the Mount for his direction in the making of Laws or as the Romans did the more to be respected twelve Tables of Laws then those of their Mechanick and vulgar Judgements and reasonings which the wiser and more noble not the illiterate and foolisher sort of their Citizens and people had learned well considered and brought home from Athens and other cities of Greece as fit to be observed or imitated When as it might rather be remembred that God in his infinite mercy to the works of his own hands did so early distribute the Beams of his Right Reason and Illumination as the days of old were not without wisdom which being from everlasting and rejoycing afterwards in the habitable parts of the Earth her delights were with the sons of men And therefore Jeremy no Fanatique or man of an Imaginary or self conceited mistaken holiness but inspired by God Almighty and filled with the wisdom from above did not tell us as many of our Novelists and Commonwealth-mongers and the would be wise of the Rota's or Coffee-houses would make us believe that all the succesful experiments which the long lived world had approved to be right reason were either burthensome or oppressive and not to be any longer esteemed or that the paths of wisdom were worne out and not at all to be walked in but with a thus saith the Lord enjoyned us as if there and no where else it were to be found to stand in the ways and see and ask for the old Paths where is the good way and walk therein But that would have been to their loss and rather then faile of their purpose or forsake their beloved ignorant intermedling in Government they could never think any thing to be well until they had made all things ill and like Children would have liberty to do what they list which would do them as much good as the liberties of their misusing the power of the Sword or in medling in matters too high for them did in these last unhappy Twenty years and as little conduce to the publick or their own good and safetie as for Children to be permitted the use of Swords or Pistolâ— whereby to kill and mischief one another or of fire to burn themselves or set their Parents houses on fire or as they are said to do in Gonzaguas new discovered world in the Moon to govern their parents cannot finde the way to obey Laws and reasonable Customs unless their narrow Capaciâ—ies or small Understandings may apprehend the cause of it the reason of it must like the Lesbian rule be made to be as they whyâ—â—sie or fancie it and obedience to Kings or Laws cut out to their Interest and Conveniencies And will not believe that they have Liberties enough unlesse like Swyne got into a Garden they may foule and root up all that is good and beautifull in it And with their cries and gruntings could never be at quiet until they had trampled upon Monarchy and the majesty and loveliness of it digged up the Gardens of Spices and stopped the streams of our Lebanus And the late blessed Martir King Charles the First was no sooner in the defence of our Magna Charta and the Lawes and Liberties of England murdered but they and their Partisans must frame a Commonwealth and pretend a necessity thereof for avoiding the intollerable as they falsely called them burdens and oppressions of the people amongst which is ranked that great and most notorious piece of untruth that the Cart-taking for the King impoverished many of the people and that the Pourveyance cost the Country more in one year then their Assessments to the Army which with other matters contained in that most untrue and malicious Declaration of the Parliament of England as they then called themselves beraing date the 17. day of March 1648. are more against truth or any mans understanding then the tale of Garagantua's mighty mouth and stomach of eating three hundred fat Oxen at a meal and having five or six men to throw mustard into his mouth with shovels And as false as it was must for an edium to the late King and his Monarchicall Government be translated into Latine and sent and dispersed by their Emissaries into all the parts of the Christian world And from thence or some of the other I may not say causes but incentives or delusions the people too many of whom were inticed or made to believe any thing though never so much against truth reason common sense and their own knowledge must be taught for they could of themselves not find any cause to complain of it to believe that Declaration to be true to the end that whilst they did then bear and had long before endured very great assessements and burdens they might be enabled and be the better in breath to sustein for many years more a seaventy and sometimes a ninty and not seldome one hundred and twenty thousand pounds monethly Taxes and Assessments besides many other greater impoverishments and oppressions obedience must be called a burden every thing but ruining honest men and destroying of Loyaltie an oppression and every thing but vice and cheating to maintain it a grievance for the Truths sake therefore which every good and honest man is bound to submit unto and deâ—end and in vindication of his late Sacred Majesty and the Laws and Honor of my Country the too much abused England by such Tricks and Villanies and upon no other motive byasse or concernment but to make that scandal which only becomes the Father of Lyes and the causelesness of that complaint appear in their Deformities and proper colours I shall by an enquiry and search for the Original and Antiquity of Royal Pourveyance as to the furnishing of several sorts of Provision for the Kings House and Stable at a small or lesser rate then the markets and a praeemption for those or the like purposes used in this and most Nations of the World bring before the Reader the Laws and Acts of Parliament in England allowing it the Legality Reason Necessity and right use of it the small charge and burden of it and the consequences which will inevitably follow the takeing of it away which we hope will remove the ill opinion which some worthy men heretofore by reason of an abuse or misusage only and some very learned men of late misled by them have had of it CHAP. I. The Antiquity of Regal Pourveyance and Praeemption for the maintenance of the Kings Houses Navy Castles Garrisons attended by a Jus Gentium and reasonable Customs of the most or better part of other Nations WHich being not here intended or understood
to be by an invadeing of the peoples Rights and Properties in their moveables or immovables but a receiving or imposing of that which publick welfare and the contracts or respects of Subjects in general or particular have for benefits received and to be continued reduced into reasonable Customs and made to be as a most ready and willing Tribute Oblations or Duty to their Kings and Princes may go as high as Filial duty and Paternity and a retribution or gratitude for the peace and plenty which their Subjects and people enjoy under their Government Love Honor and Reverence for their Protection and self Preservation publick weal and safety and of every mans particular included in the General and was to be found in the morning of the world as well as in the afternoon and evening of it when as Joseph relieving the Egyptians necessity which a national Famine had brought upon them gave them Lands and Seed-Corn to sow it that they might have food for their Housholds and little ones and made a Law over the Land of Egypt to this day that the King should have the Fifth part of the yearly profits except the land of the Priests only which became not Pharaohs And in the Reign of King David when the Moabites being become his Subjects sent him Guifts and Shobi the Son of Nahash and Rabbab of the Children of Ammon and Machir the Son of Ammiel of Lodebar and Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim in his sorrowfull march against his Son Absolom brought Beds and Basins Earthen Vessels Wheat and Barley Floure Parched Corn Beans Lentils Parched Honey Butter Sheep and Cheese of Kyne for David and the people and in all or most of the Circumstances of what was lately used in England was no stranger in the happy and famous Government of King Solomon the wisest of men whose wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the East Country and all the wisdom of Egypt for besides the Victuals and Provision which his twelve great Officers or Socage Tenants provided for him and all that came unto his Table all the Kingdoms which he reigned over from the River of Euphrates unto the Land of the Philistines and unto the border of Egypt and all other his Dominions brought Presents unto him and his prouision for one day was thirty measures of fine Floure threescore measures of meal ten fat Oxen Twenty Oxen out of the Pastures and an hundred sheep besides Harts Roe Bucks Fallow Deer and fatted Fowl And all the Earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart and they brought every man his present Vessels of Silver Vessels of Gold Garments Armour Spices Horses and Mules a rate year by year And he raised a Levy out of all Israel and the Levy was thirty thousand men and sent them to Lebanon as workmen ten Thousand a month by course and two months at home and Judah and Israel were many as is the sand which is by the Sea in multitude eating and drinking and making merry and dwelt safely every man under his own Vine and under his Figg Tree from Dan even unto Beer-Sheba all the days of Solomon and as Josephus saith had Tribute Gatherers over the Syrians who brought him Provision towards the keeping of his house horses Mesha King of Moab rendred unto Ahab King of Israel a Tribute of one hundred Thousand Lambs and an hundred Thousand Rams with the wool some of the Philistines brought Jehosophat King of Judah Presents and Tribute Silver and the Arabians brought him Flocks seven thousand Rams and seven hundred Hee-goats And in the measure and description of the Holy City shewed to the Prophet Ezekiel in the Twenty Fifth year of Jehoiakims Captivity a portion of the City and Suburbs and Oblations were appointed for the Prince Which custom or right due to the Kings or Governors was not after the long and lamentable Captivity of the Children of Israel at their return and building of Jerusalem either forgotten or thought fit to be laid aside when as the Righteous Nehemiah considering the necessities of the people refused the bread of the Governor and that which was prepared for him daily which was one Oxe and six thousand sheep and also Fowls and once in ten days store of all sorts of wine Nor was that usage and way of remuneration to Superiors confined only to the pedagoguie of the Jews under the Severities of their Mosaical Laws or their being so much weaned from avarice or selfishnes by their remissions in their years of Jubile their many oblations free-will offerings and chargeable Sacrifices and no less a penaltie then death ordained for not obeying their Princes or Magistrates but was by a light of nature and emanation of right Reason some way or other brought or carried to the Greeks no despisers of wisdom or prudential imitations Agamemnon at the siege of Troy was able to treat the chief of the Grecian Army in his Tent with all fitting provisions And Eustathius the Scoliast saith that the King had at the devision of any spoils an extraordinary share assigned him for such entertainments The Spartan Kings had in all Sacrifices the Chynes and the skins for their honorary Fees as amongst the Hebrews the Priests had the shoulders and in that popular rustick and unmanerly Commonwealth of the Lacedemonians their Kings even in the time of their insolent Ephori who dominered over them and when they lived and were maintained ex publico out of the publick could not be denied by the Laws of Lycurgus in egressibus their marches or progresses capere quaecunque pecora libuerit to take what Cattel they pleased Et singulis quoque Calendis mensium singula pecora eis è publico data fuerint And in the Calends of every month the people gave or presented Cattel unto them Apollini immolanda to sacrifice to Apollo and when their Pythii or those two whom the Kings did use upon occasions to send to Delphos to consult the Oracle were publickly to eat with them Regibus ad Caenam non euntibus binae Chaenices id est Semimodia Farinae uni singulae Cotylae i. e. sextarii presentibus dupla data fuerint if the Kings for sometimes they had two came not to the place appointed to eat with the Pythii certain large proportions of meat wine and other Provisions were sent them and when they did come had a double proportion more then the Pythii allowed them The Athenians whilst they were a Republick highly valuing and carefully preserving their Liberties had their Tolls and vectigalia publica their Senators as well as their Judges having an allowance or pensions out of them and their Sitophilaces and Frumentatores or Overseers of the Corn were able to take care of the Provision of Corn quod in atticum emperium adveheretur duas partes in urbem mercatores deferre cogerent that two parts of the Corn which should be brought
by the Emperor Valentinianus to Numidia both the Mauritania's quatuor millia aureorum ducentas tantum solverent ducentas militares Annonas 800. capita id est equorum pabula singulasque Annonas solidis quatuor per annum jussit aestimari they were ordered to pay but yearly Four thousand and two hundred Crowns Twelve hundred measures of Military Corn or Provisions and Fodder or Provision for eight hundred horses every one of those Annonae or quantities being ordered to be rated at four shillings Justinianus tanti sed solidis quinis singulas Annonas compensari mandat and Justinian ordering the same proportions did command five shillings to be paid for every of those Annona's or quantities In that ancient custom of Posts or speedy Messengers instituted by Cyrus amongst the Persians and broughâ— into use amongst the Romans by Augustus Caesar before the coming of Christ provincialium paecunia equi cum hominibus ad currendum destinatis alerentur the Country or Provinces did bear the charges of men and horses quod Severus Imperator postea abolevit id fisci onus esse jubens which Severus the Emperor afterwards took away and put that charge upon himself as Princes do sometimes in other matters upon some necessity or reasons of State but not for any evil in the thing it it self no more being signified thereby then the remission of some Subsidies in England after they were Granted to Queen Elizabeth can declare them to be evill or inconvenient for it seems by Spartianus it was only done in regard that he desired se commendare hominibus to get an applause of the people stabula tamen in quibus equi aâ—ebantur provincialium sumptibus reficiebantur but the Stables notwithstanding in which the horses were kept were to be Repaired by the people The Terciocerius an Officer so called did look to the Bastages or publick Carriages Et res transvehendas transvectas ut frumentum Constantinopolim devehendi did order or send out Warrants for Carriages for the Emperors Journeys or to carry Corn for the publick to Constantinople Et in diversis orientis Regionibus erant corpora seâ— collegia naâ—tarum quorum quique per vices onera publica ferre cogebantur propter quod incommodum a muneribus civilibus immunes erant à Tributis liberi quandoque ad mercedulam Philici nomine accipiebant And in diverse parts of the East there were certain Corporations or Societies of Men of which every one by Turns were compelled to those publick Carriages in consideration whereof they were freed from the bearing of all Offices in the Common-wealth and from Tributes sometimes receiving a small reward called Philichus in mediterraneis quoque jumenta plaustra habentes eidem oneri erant obnoxii quae Angaria vocatur And in the Mediterranean they which had Carts and Horses were subject to the like duties The Wisigothes had their erogatores Annonae per singulas civitates castella their Stewards for all provisions in all Cities and Castles And Theodoricus King of the Gothes though so great an enemy to the Civil Law and the Laws of other Nations as he forbad the use of them with a nolumus sive Romanis legibus sive alienis institutionibus amodò amplius convexari and would as our Pride the Drayman and Hewson the Cobler and many of our Committee men wereof late troubled with reason and our English Laws be no more vexed with them could give notwithstanding such an entertainment to the right reason of them concerning Pourveyances as when he enjoyned a care in distributing the Annonae or military provisions he could say additum est etiam beneficii genus ut in presenti devotione praeceptis Regis nec divina domus the Kings house in the respectfull language of those times videatur excepta sed totum communiter sustineatur and would have that benefit extended to his own House that it might also be susteined by it And had them so much at his command as he appointed Annonaâ— praebendas infirmo venienti ad locum pro recuperanda sanitate provision to be made for one that was for his health removed to a better aire Those Annonae being not only confined to corn but comprehending omnia alimentorum genera all manner of yearly provisions for victuals quae praediorum Provincialium Domini conductoresque tuendi exercitus causa quotannis praebebant which the Provinces subject to the Roman Empire yearly paid towards the support of the Army Et solebant preberi in speciebus ipsis verum constitutione postea rediguntur ad praetia definita in delegationibus quae eo nomine singulis officiis dantur and were usually paid in kind but were afterwards reduced to certain prices by Officers appointed to that purpose qua Annonae eis debitae taxantur capita aut praetia ecrum quae sumunt ex tributis illius vel illius provinciae vel ex publicis Horreis by whom the Provisions of the Provinces or that which were taken out of the publique Barns or Granaries were duly rated Et quae militaribus palatinisque officiis ex eorum qui possessiones tenebant collatione erogabantur and gathered by the Emperors Officers which Doctor Ridley in his view of the Civil and Ecclesiasticall Law extends to all things necessary for the Princes House and Family In the time of Charlemaigne or Charles the Great who subdued the Gothes and other Northern and unruly Nations infesting the Roman Empire Tractatoria Legatorum the Treatments or entertainment of Messengers by a custome borrowed from the Romans for such as were by the Kings Letters or Warrants sent to or by the Emperor were usual and they might make use of horses adscriptis etiam bonis mansionibus quibus sumptu publico ali deberent and had houses and lodgings assigned where out of the publick provisions should be made for them and quid unicuique in itinere commeatus praestare deberet variè pro dignitate et qualitate personarum plus Episcopo quem rex mittebat Abati eâ— Comiti non tantum minùs autem vasallo decernebatur which were to be according to the dignity or quality of the persons sent as more to a Bishop less to an Abbot or Earl less then that to a more inferour et a subditis et provincialibus suppeditarenur were furnished by the Subjects and People of the Countries and it was a great favour for some Religious Houses and for Bishops and Churchmen to be exempted from it Et per singula territoria discurrentes mansionaticos et paravedos accipiunt and all places where they came were to have some entertainments tunc namque solebant subditi hospitio non modo recipere missos et legatos Principis Comites Duces et eorum ministros verum et viaticum eis pro unius cujusque dignitate praestare for then the Subjects were not only
crowd in amongst them and subscribe to that rule and part of right reason in making retributions and acknowledgements to their Kings or Governors for self-preservation so as a Lord of that Country brought the Governour of the Plantation which was made there two Deer skins and in one Town they made him a present of 700 wild hens and in other Towns sent him those which they had or could get A Caâ—ique at Panico near Florida and his men as their manner is weeping in token of obedience made the Governor a Present of much Fish And this custom of Pourveyance and gratefull acknowledgments being thus diffused and to be found amongst the farre greater part of all the Nations of the world we may well conclude it to be almost as universal as the use of Beds Phisick Horses and Shooes or the custome of washing of hands and so generally as if the Sun had in his journies been imployed by God Almighty the Author of all Wisdome and Goodness to scatter and infuse it with his light into the minds and understandings of mankind And that those few places or parts of the world which have not that custome because their Kings are their Peoples Heirs take what part of their Estates they please and govern by an Arbitary power may when they arrive to a better understanding acknowledge and bewaile the want of it And that from these and the like customes of real and willing obedience love to their Princes and their honor and dignity in which their native Countries and themselves did pertake and had so great a share came those great and marvailous publick works As the Piramides of Egypt the Obelisk cut by Semiramis out of the mountains the Pensil Gardens made by Nebuchadonosor the costly and most magnificent Temple of Solomon which was seven years in building by one hundred eighty three thousand six hundred men imployed therein the second Temple at Jerusalem which was 8 years in building and 10000 workmen at a time working upon it a part of the River Euphrates cut and brought into Tigris Ninive built and walled 480 furlongs about and 10000 workmen at a time imployed The stupendious and great Wall of 40 leagues in length built in China the Picts Wall as yet a wonder in its ruines and remains built betwixt some part of England and Scotland of 80 miles in length by Adrian the Emperor and another in or near the same place by the Emperor Severus Grahams Dike in Scotland built by Carausâ—us the Vallum Barbaricum a great Wall or Trench made by the Emperor Julian in Germany to defend it against the incursions of the Barbarians the four great High-wayes or Roads in England called Watlingstreet the Fosse Erminstreet and Iknel-street leading to the four Quarters or several parts of the Kingdome the Aquaeducts stately Buildings Palaces Castles and Forts and many other publick works built by the Romans and the greatest part of the Nations of the World serving to beautifie and adorn as well as strengthen it which could never have been made or done by the greedy rates of workmen or the extremities or hire of the utmost farthing And hence it will be now time to imbark for old England and our British Isles the more antient habitation of the Britains CHAP. II. Of the Use and Allowance of Pourveyance in England and our British Isles WHere those prudential as well as antient just reasonable Customes being by a long usage of time incorporated into the Civil Law and so universally allowed and received amongst many Nations as they may well be said to be established jure naturae gentium by a Law of Nature and Nations could not be any stranger when as the Romans by the conquest of it and the Governors and Legions transported hither were not likely to leave behind them their own Lawes and Customes especially such as these which had been appropriated to Martiall affairs and the support of the Honor and Dignity of the Governours or Lievtenants of Provinces For in Britain when Julius Agricola in the Reigns of Nero and Domitian governed for the Romans such kind of Pourveyance for publick uses or support of the Magistrate was taken as Tacitus his Son in Law in his life relates when he did frumenti tributorum auctionem aequalitate munerum mollire circumscisis quae in quaestum reperta mollifie the augmentation of Tribute and Corn with equal dividing of burdens cutting of those petty extortions which grieved the Subjects more then the Tribute it self for it seemed that the Romans had ingrossed all the Corn of the Country and instituting a Monopoly thereof compelled the poor Britains to buy it again of them at their price and shortly after laying a new charge upon them as to victuall the Army or the like to sell it again under foot and the Cart-takers for carriage of provision did use to take up Carts at places farre distant and make them pay well to be spared whereas the same thing saith Sir Hen. Savile the learned Scholiast or Commentator upon Tacitus might have been done without molestation of the people but not with like gain to the Officers nor were our Ancestors the Britains so unhappy in their friends the Saxons likely to be unlearned in those customes of Pourveyance when that great and famous Lawyer Papinian did afterwards at York for some years together under the Emperor Severus as our great Selden intimates dicere docere jus Caesareum keep the Courts of Justice according to the Roman Laws and that those Lawes flourished and continued here as directors and assistants of their Government for more then 350 years after that is to say from the fiftith year of Christ to about the year 410 since when or before the Irish paid very antiently their Coshery or exactio Dynastae Hibernici quando ab incolis sub ejus potèstate clientela victum hospitium capiebat pro seipso suaque sequela Tributes to their Kings or Rulers of lodging and victuals for them and their Retinue and so long continued it as it is not yet out of the memory of some men with how much honour and esteem an Earl of Desmond lived in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth amongst his Tenants in Ireland where when he yearly made his Progress they having comfortable bargains were some for one day and night others for two and some for a greater part of time to entertain him and his no small company And those reasonable Customes of Pourveyance without destroying of property have not been disused but have with relation to publick uses or benefits kept company with our municipall Lawes and Customes during all the Saxon times untill the Reign of Canutus the Danish King who notwithstanding his Agreement with King Edmond Ironside made in a single combat in Alney Mead before Gloucester in Campo Martio view of the Danish and English Armies to divide the Kingdomes of England and Denmark betwixt them having by the death of
the Tenants charges to the Lords Granary Gabulum mellis or Rent-honey 〈◊〉 gavel Rent-oates Wood-lede to carry home his wood Gavel or Rent-timber to repair his house and Gavel dung to carry out his dung often used in Kent where they think that in liberties and priviledges they doe surpass most of the other parts and Provinces of England And could at the same time also lay a greater burden upon the people then his pretended ease amounted unto in that his Law touching his own Demeasnes and enjoyn the Romescot or Peter-pence for every house or chimney which he had given the Pope larga maâ—u penhenniter as Bromton saith and a charge upon the people to a perpetuity as he thought of that which the former Kings had made but some temporary grants of to the See of Rome with great penalties for the non payment thereof And under severe mulcts commâ—nded the yearly payments of the Cirickseaâ— or Oblations for First fruits to the Church which was then as Mr. Somner saith à census sâ—â—e in gallinis sive in aliis rellus pro aedium decima solvendis a Rent or Duty to be paid in Henns or other things for the Tithes of their Houses or as a Symbolum or munus gift or offering And though William the Conqueror had a great affection to establish Leges Noricas Danish or Norway Lawes then used in many Provinces yet was England so happy in its unhappiness as he did not but precibus Anglorum atque Normannorum deprecâ—tus tired with the petitions and importunities as well of his Normans as the English ut per animam Regis Edwardi qui sibi post diem suum concesserat câ—ronam regnum cujus erant Leges nec aliorum extraneorum exaudiendo concederet eis sub legibus perseverare paternis as he respected the soul of King Edward who gave him the Crown and Kingdome and whose Lawes they were and not any strangers that he would not hearken unto them but give them leave to enjoy the Lawes of their Ancestors whereupon consilio habito precatu Baronum by the advice and counsel of the Barons when his conquering Normans as well as the subdued English thought it to be most for their good and safety to be governed by Edward the Confessors Lawes and the good old Customes of England he did after an enquiry of duodeâ—im sapientiorum de quo libet comitatu quibus jurejurando injunctum fuit twelve of the wisest men of every County upon their oaths restore to them patriae leges their own Laws especially the Laws of Edward the Confessor which were first instituted by King Edgar and had long lain asleep but at the same time took a care by a Law made on purpose ne quis domino suo debitas praestationes which did then and antiently signifie services and duties to be done subtrahat propter nullam remissionem quam ei antea feâ—erit that no man upon any release or discharge made thereof should withhold or deny his service or accustomed dues to the Lord which repealing as it were Canutus his Law did not certainly exclude the King or his Successors in their own particulars when as he procured by another Law ut jura regia illaesa servare pro viribus conentur subditi that all his Subjects should endeavour all they could to preserve his Regalities Et ex illo die the Laws of Canutus vanishing probably as those of Cromwell did Leges Sancti Edwardi multa autoritate veneratas per universum regnum corroboratas et observatas and from that time the Lawes of Edward the Confessor were greatly reverenced and through all England observed For we find not that Law of Canutus either repeated or mentioned as the Laws of some of the Saxon Kings were or any thing of that nature enacted or confirmed in or by the Laws of Edward the Confessor William the Conqueror or King Henry the the First but on the contrary the Laws of Edward the Confessor confirmed by William the Conqueror doe expresly ordain that debent enim et leges eâ— libertates jura et justas consuetudines regni et antiquas a bonis predecessoribus which could not well be meant or intended of any of Canutus or any the Denelage or Danish Lawes approbatas inviolabiliter modis omnibus pro posse suo servare every man ought to his utmost to keep and conserve the Lawes Liberties and Rights and the just and antient Customes of the Kingdome The Abbot of Ramsey was by a Charter of William the Conqueror exempt from carriages and Pourveyance And the Book of Doomesday which was made in the sixteenth year of his Reign and remains ever since an unquestionable record of the Kingdome is not without some vestigia or footsteps of Pourveyance in the Reign of that good and to this day ever honored King Edward the Confessor where it is said that tempore regis Edwardi reddebat civitas de Gloucester xxxvi l. numeratas xii sextaria mellis ad mensuram ejusdem Burgi xxxvi Dacras ferri C. virgas ferras ductiles ad claves navium Regis quasdam alias minutas consuetudines in Aula in Camera Regis in the time of King Edward the Confessor the City of Gloucester did pay yearly six and thirty pounds in money twelve measures of honey containing six Gallons a piece according to the measure of the Town six and thirty Dacres a proportion then known by that term of Iron and one hundred Rods of Iron to make nails for the Kings Ships and certain other small Customes for the Hall and Chamber of the King Et in Sciptone Rex tenet de annona xv l. the King had fifteen pounds per annum provision of corn and other victuals The Bordarii often mentioned in Doomesday Book were such as held Lands mensae domini designatas esculenta indicta videlicet ova gallinas aucas porcellos et hujusmodi ezhiberent appropriate to a Pourveyance for the Kings Table furnishing Eggs Hens Geese Pork and the like and for the Huscarles or houshold servants so called concerning whom it is there said Et gilda pro decem hidis scilicet ad opus huscarlum unam marcam argenti and he paid taxes for ten hides that is to say a mark of silver for the use or maintenance of them Tit Northantesceire reddit firmam trium noctium vel edulia ad caenam unam 30. lib. ad pondus made provision for one night of the value of thirty pound tit Oxenefordsc Comitatus Oxeneford reddit firmam trium noctium hoc est 100 lib. furnisheth provision for three nights of the value of 100 pound Et Doomsd. tit Wilts Wilton quando Rex ibat in expeditione vel terra vel mari habebat de hoc manerio xx sol ad pascendos suos Buzcarlos aut unum hominem ducebat secum pro honore quinque hidarâ—m when the King went
2 R. 2. ca. 1. Upon complaint made in Parliament that Pourveyors and Buyers did take Provisions of the Clergy and enforce them to make carriages against their Liberties It was enacted that the holy Church should have and enjoy her Franchises and Liberties in all points in as ample manner as she had in the time of the Kings noble Progenitors Kings of England and that the great Charter and the Charter of the Forest and the good Laws of the Land be firmly holden and kept and put in due execution saving to the King his Regality which is in the Record but omitted in the Print by which Statute saith Sir Edward Coke there was nothing enacted but what was included in Magna Charta And in the same Parliament it was ordained that the Statutes heretofore made should be kept and that all Clerks should have their Actions against such Pourveyors by Actions of Trespass and thereby recover treble damages And in 7 R. 2. cap. 8. it was ordained that no Subjects Chator shall take any victuals or carriages to the use of their Lords or Ladies without the owners good will and the party endamaged if he will shall have his Suit at the Common Law 2 H. 4. cap. 15. Pourveyance of the value of forty shillings or under for the Kings house shal l be paid for presently upon pain of forfeiture of the Pourveyors Office 23 H. 6. ca. 14. If any Buyer or other Officer of the Duke of Gloucester or of any other Lord or person take any Victuals Corn Hey Carriages or any other thing of the Kings Liege people against their will or without lawfull bargain but only for the King and the Queen and their houses they shall be arrested and if any of the said buyers other then of the King and Queen shall be convicted of such unlawfull taking he shall pay treble damages 28 H. 6. ca. 2. None shall take any persons Horses or Carts without the delivery of the Owner or some Officer nor any money to spare them saving alwayes to the King his Prerogative and his Preheminence of and in the premisses And in the care of our Kings to redress the peoples grievances and satisfie their complaints against the Pourveyors rather then the Royal Pourveyances it may be understood also that they did not altogether lay aside the preservation and care of those antient and most necessary rights and parts of the Kingly Prerogative by their Answers given in divers Parliaments to the Petitions of the People concerning it as 13 Ed. 3. The Commons pray in Parliament that all Pourveyors as well with Commission as without shall be arrested if they make not present pay whereupon it was agreed that the Commissioners of Sir William Heallingford and all other Commissioners for Pourveyance for the King be utterly void 14 Ed 3. Ordered that the Chancellor by Writs doe pay the Merchants of Barton and Lynne for their Pourveyance of corne 17 Ed. 3. The Commons pray that remedies may be had against the outragious taking of Pourveyors The Statutes made shall be kept and better if it may be devised 20 Ed. 3. That payment be made for the last taking of victuals Order shall be taken therein They pray that Pourveyors not taking the Constables with them according to the Statute of Westminster shall be taken as Theeves and the Judges or Justices of Assize or the Peace may inquire of the same The Statutes made shall be observed 21 Ed. 3. Upon a complaint of the Commons That whereas in the Parliament in anno 17. and the next Parliament before it was accorded that Commissions should not issue out of the Chancery for Hoblers and taking of Victuals c. the said Ordinances are not kept If any such Imposition was made the same was made upon great necessity and with consent of the Prelates Counts Barons Autres grandees and some of the Commons then present notwithstanding the King will not that such undue Imposition be drawn into consequence but willeth that the Ordinances in this Petition mentioned be well kept And as touching the taking of victuals alwayes saving the Kings Prerogative his will is that agreement be made with such of whom the same are and shall be taken The Commons alleaging That whereas it was lately ordained and assented by the King and hîs Council that men and horses of the Kings Houshold should not be harbinged in any part of the Country but by Bill of the Marshall of the House delivered to the Constable who should cause them to have good sustenance for themselves and their horses as should be meet and cause their victuals to be prised by the men of the same Towns and before their departures should pay the parties of whom the victuals were taken and if they did not their horses should be arrested and that contrary hereunto they depart without payment pray that in every Bill mention be made of the number of horses and that no more but one Garson be allowed and that payment according to the Statute may be made from day to day The King is pleased that this Article be kept in all points according to the form of the Statute They complain that the Pourveyors of the King Queen and Prince severally doe come yearly assess and Towns severally at ten Quarters of Oates more or less at their pleasure and the same doe cause to be carried away without paying for the same and pray that such Tallages and Pourveyance may be taken away The King will forbid it and that no man take contrary to such prohibition saving to him the Queen his companion and their Children their rightfull takings Eodem Parliamento whereas the horses of the King Queen Prince do wander into divers parts doing much hurt and damage to the people and that hay oats c. are taken contrary to the Ordinances already made the Commons pray That the King will ordain that those horses may abide in some certain place of the Country where they are and that Pourveyance may be had for them in convenient time of the year by the Deputies as may be agreed between them and the owners of those goods The King is well pleased that the Ordinances already made shall be kept and that Pourveyances may be made for his best profit and ease of his People 45 Ed. 3. That no Pourveyance be made for the King but for ready money and that the King be served by common measure The Statutes made before shall be observed They complain of the decay of the Navy by reason tha◠sundry mens ships were stayed for the King long before they served the Masters of the Kings Ships doe take up Masters of the Ships as good as themselves The King will provide Remedy 46 Ed. 3. They complain that Ships arrested have been kept a quarter of a year before they pass out of the Port and in that time the Masters or Marriners have no wages Y
his Plate for religious uses for his Chappel and Devotion sell the Coats of the Yeomen of his Guard break in scorn his great Seal of England by the hand and hammer of a common Blacksmith which shewed what they intended to the life of the owner drive and engage all men into a monstrous Rebellion a slavery which proved to be the consequence and just reward of it and deprive him as much as they could of the loyalty duty love and obedience of his people and having abundantly enriched themselves and their Godless praying party by the Crown Lands and Revenues of the Church most of the Nobility and Gentry and many other good men and their Families did not think it reasonable to serve their Master for a little but as a further reward and recompence for their care and diligence to oppress and ruine their King and his better Subjects would be sure to make for themselves as good a Pourveyance and Provision as they could upon pretences of some little losses in their own small and necessitous Estates and allow one another besides their gaine of plundering and traiterous and sacrilegious purchases out of the improvements of the Common misery and washing as well as wasting three Kingdomes over in blood some fifty pounds some ten some four pounds a week towards theiâ— support and maintenance and to make their proportions the more plausible and to seem something reasonable would not leave out of the account the well stretched Items of the losses and charges of their Grandchildren married Sons and Daughters and when they had finished their ungodly work murdered the King Monarchy Magna Charta Petition of right and the Lawes and Liberties of the People and converted their own sins into the bloody and unsure foundation of a Common-wealth founded upon the blood and murther of their Soveraign and many thousands of his loyal and religious Subjects and the perjury of themselves and as many as they could perswade or constrain unto it and the greatest of iniquities and made the people who got as much ease by it as the Asse in the Fable who thought to make his burden of Sponges the lighter by lying down in the water with them believe that when two parts in three of the Kingdome were undone to enrich a third and brought under a slavery and arbitrary power of the mechanick and ruder sort of them that their freedome from Pourveyance and Cart-taking was an especial deliverance which amongst other wonderfull things as they called them pretended to be done for them being only to buy Sadles for their reforming Legislators to ride upon their backs and a favour much of kin to that of Pharoahs kind usage of the Children of Israel when he set Task-masters over them to afflict them with burdens made their lives bitter with hard bondage caused them to make bricâ— and double the Taâ—e thereof and gather the straw was recompence sufficient for all their money and sins laid out in that wicked and detestable cause and for all that which they were to endure in this life and the next and in that seeming holy but assured cheating a miserable and strangely deluded Nation continued like the Egyptians in their way to the Red sea and oppressing of Gods people untill their Oliver and grand Impostor and Instrument had out-witted and undermined them and insâ—ead of many Tyrants had set up his single Tyranny and having from an indebted and small Estate made much less by a former drunken and debauched conversation by which he was so streightned as not to be able to buy some oats or pease to sow a small parcel of ground but to borrow some of a friend upon his promise of a Repayment upon his hoped for increase at Harvest did notwithstanding neither then nor after a more plentifull crop of his wicked doings and that great Estate which the sinnes of a factious and wicked part of the people had made him Master of ever find the way to satisfie or repay And having largely pourveyed for himself better then he could do in his Brewhouse put an Excise upon Ale Beer and intoxicated as many as he could seduce with an opinion that Rebellion was Religion and gotten an Arbitrary power with a large Revenue in Lands which was the Kings and other mens an Army of twenty thousand Foot and ten thousand Horse and a formidable Navy to be maintained at the peoples charge to continue their misery and three hundred thousand pounds per annum to defray the charges of his tyrannical Government took himself to be a Child of Providence and something more then one of the smallest Branches of Cromwell alias Williams King Henry the eights Barber and therefore in order to a Kingship or something by another name amounting to as much made it his work to disguise and metamorphose the antient Government decry our fundamentall Lawes and every antient constitution dig up by the roots all that was not novel or assistant to his designs fit to make a head out of the Heels and after he had taken an oath to maintain and preserve the Laws and Liberties of the people imprisoned Serjeant Maynard Serjeant Twisden and Mr. Wadham Windam who pleaded in the behalf of a Client for them thought it to be conscience Law and Latin good enough to call our Magna Charta magna Farta and did so order his Convention or thing called a Parliament of England compounded and made up of time-servers and a Medly of Irish and Scottish of the like complexion as they were brought in Anno 1656. by one of their Tooles called an Act of Parliament to ordain that pourveyance or Composition for the Kings house which they were taught to alleage to be a grievance to the people and very chargeable when there was none at all at that time in being in England nor was ever intended by many of the worshipfull Mushrooms to be thereafter should no more be taken under pain of Felony And was as great a kindness and ease to the people as if they had ordained that no more Subsidies which seldome amounted to more then a tenth part of the late yearly Taxes should be imposed by Parliament but Assessments at 70 thousand pounds or one hundred and twenty thousand pounds per mensem as often as long as that which they called the supreme Authority should have or feign a necessity for it or that offenders should be no more sent for by the Kings messengers or tried by Juries and the known Laws of the Land but at Cromwells High Court of Justice or Shambles lined with red or bloody Bayes or that there should be no more use or trouble of the Train Bands but an Army of 30000 domineering Redcoats or Fanaticks with their Bashaws or Major-Generals maintained at the peoples charge to keep or make them quiet under their vassalage or slavery or that there should be no more Coat and Conduct money long agoe remitted by King Charles the Martyr
and prices of Barley and what they made it with and confirmed by Inspeximus of the Ordinances of divers Kings of England the Kings Progenitors which set the assise of Bread and Ale and the making of measures and howsoever stiled a Statute appears not to have been an Act of Parliament but an Exemplification only made of those Ordinances and Orders by King Henry the third at the request of the Bakers of Coventry mentioning that by an Act of Parliament made in the first year of his Reign he had granted that all good Statutes and Ordinances made in the times of his Progenitors aforesaid and not revoked should be still holden in which the rates and assise of bread are said to have been approved by the Kings Bakers and contained in a Writing of the Marshalsey of the Kings House where the Chief Justice and other Ministers of Justice then resided and by an Ordinance or Statute made in the same year for the punishment of the offending Bakers by the Pillory and the Brewers by the Tumbrel or some other correction The Bayliffs were to enquire of the price of Wheat Barley and Oats at the Markets and after how the Bakers bread in the Court did agree that is to wit waistel which name a sort of bread of the Court or Kings House doth yet retain and other bread after Wheat of the best of the second or of the third price also upon how much increase or decrease in the price of wheat a Baker ought to change the assize and weight of his bread and how much the wastel of a farthing ought to weigh and all other manner of bread after the price of a quarter of Wheat which shewes that the Tryal Test Assay or Assize of the true weight of bread to be sold in all the Kingdome was to be by the Kings Baker of his House or Court and that there was the Rule or Standard and that the prices should increase or decrease after the rate of six pence And Fleta an Author planè incognitus as to his name saith Mr. Selden altogether unknown who writ about the later end of the Reign of King Ed. 1. tells us that amongst the Capitula coronae itineris the Articles in the Eyre concerning the Pleas of the Crown which were not then novel or of any late institution enquiries were made de vinorum contra rectam assisam venditoribus de mensuris item de Forstallariis victualibus â—â—nalibus mercatum obviâ—ntibus per quod carior sit inde venditio de non virtuosis cibariis of wine sold contrary to the assize of Measures and Forestallers of the Market to make victualls dearer and of such as sold corrupt food or victuals An. 31 Ed. 1. it was found by inquisition that Bakers and Brewers and others buying their corn at Queen-Hithe were to pay for measuring portage and carriage for every quarter of corn whatsoever from thence to Westcheap St. Anthonies Church Horshoo Bridge to Wolsey street in the Parish of Alhallowes the less and such like distances one ob q to Fleetstreet Newgate Cripplegate Birchoners Lane East-cheap and Billingsgate one penny 17 Ed. 2. By command of the King by his Letters Patents a Decree was made by Hamond Chicwel Maior That none should sel Fish or Flesh out of the Markets appointed to wit Bridge-streat East-cheap Old-Fishstreet St. Michaels Shambles and the Stocks upon pain to forfeit such Fish or Flesh as were sold for the first time and for the second offence to lose their Freedome And so inherent in Monarchy and the royall Praerogative was the power and ordering of the Markets and the rates of provision of victuals and communicable by grant or allowance to the inferior Magistrates as the King who alwayes reserves to himself the supreme power and authority in case of male administration of his delegated power or necessity for the good and benefit of the publick is not thereby denuded or disabled to resort unto that soveraign and just authority which was alwayes his own and Jure coronae doth by right of his Crown and Regal Government belong unto him as may appear by the forfeiture and seising of Liberties and Franchises and many other the like instances to be found every age And therefore 41 King E. 3. without an Act of Parliament certain Impositions were set upon Ships other Vessels coming thither with Corn Salt and other things towards the charge of cleansing Romeland And 3 Ed. 4. the Market of Queen Hithe being hindred by the slackness of drawing up London Bridge it was ordered that all manner of Vessels Ships or Boats great or small resorting to the City with victuals should be sold by retail and that if there came but one Vessel at a time were it Salt Wheat Rye or other Corn from beyond the Seas or other Grains Garlick Onions Herrings Sprats Eels Whitings Place Codds Mackarel c. it should come to Queen-Hithe and there make sale but if two Vessels came the one should come to Queen-Hithe the other to Billingsgate if three two of them should come to Queen-Hithe and if the Vessels coming with Salt from the Bay were so great as it could not come to these Keyes then the same to be conveyed to the Port by Lighters Queen Elizabeth by advice and order of her Privy Councell in a time of dearth and scarcity of corn commanded the Justices of Peace in every County to enforce men to bring their Corn to the Markets limited them what proportions to sell to particular persons and ordered them to cause reasonable prices and punish the Refusers And the like or more hath been legally done by the Kings authority in the Reign of King James and King Charles the Martyr in the beginning of whose Reign by the advice of all the Judges of England and the eminently learned Mr. Noy the then Attorny Generall rates and prices were set by the Kings Edict and Proclamation upon Flesh Fish Poultry and most sort of victuals Hay Oats c. commanded to be observed All which reasonable laws constitutions customes were made confirm'd continued by our Kings of England by the advice sometimes of their lesser and at other times of their greater Councels the later whereof were in those early dayes composed of Bishops Earles and Barons and great and wise men of the Kingdome not by the Commons or universall consent and representation of the people by their Knights of the Shires or Burgesses sent as their Procurators ad faciendum consentiendum to consent unto those Acts of Parliament which should be made and ordained by the King and the Barons and Peers of England for they were neither summoned for that purpose nor represented in Parliament untill Anno 49 H. 3. and in Anno 26 or 31 Ed. 1. were called thither only ad faciendum quod de communi consilio per Comites Barones ceteros Proceres to do those things which by the King and the Barons and
he or his heirs did not unto the Lord or any of his Heirs of whom the Lands were holden his services within two years was upon a Cessavit per Biennium brought by the Lord and no sufficient distress to be found to forfeit the Lands so holden And from no other source or original was derived Escuage for the Tenants by Knight service not attending the King or their Lords in the wars which as Littleton saith was because the Law intendeth and understood it that the lands were at the first for that end freely given them whence also came the Aide to make the eldest Sonne of the King a Knight and to marry the eldest Daughter and the like assistances or duties unto the mesne Lords as gratefull acknowledgements for the Lands holden of them which the Freeholders in Socage are likewise not to deny and were not at the first by any Agreement betwixt the King and his particular Tenants nor likely to be betwixt the mesne Lords and their Tenants when the Lands were given them for that some of the mesne Lords might probably be without Sonne or Daughter or both or any hopes to have any when they gave their Lands and their Grants doe frequently mention pro homagio servicio in consideration only of homage and service to be done And being called auxilia sive adjutoria Aids or Assistances to their Lords who could not be then in any great want of such helps when the portions of Daughters were very much in vertue and little in mony and the charges of making the eldest Son a Knight the King in those dayes bestowing upon all or many of them some costly Furres Robes and the other charges consisting in the no great expences of the furnishing out the young Gentleman to receive the then more martial better used and better esteemed honour of Knighthood were reckoned by Bracton in the later end of the Reign of King Henry the third inter consuetudines quae serviciae non dicuntur nec concomitantia serviciorum sicut sunt rationabilia auxilia amongst those customes which are not understood to be services nor incidents thereof if they be reasonable But were de gratia ut Domini necessitas secundum quod major esset vel minor relevium acciperet and proceeded from the good will of the Tenants to help their Lords as their occasions or necessities should require Et apud exteros saith Sir Henry Spelman non solum ad collocandas sorores in matrimonium sed ad fratres etiam Juniores milites faciendos And with some forreign Nations as the Germans old Sicilians and Neapolitans not only towards the marriage of the Sisters of their Lords but to make also their younger Sons Knights For the good will and gratefull retorns of the Subjects to their Kings and Princes and of the Tenants to their Lords were not only since the Norman Conquest but long before practised and approved by the Britains the elder and most antient Inhabitants of this our Island and other world as is manifest by the Ebidiu or Tributum paid per Nobilium haeredes Capitali provinciae domino the Heirs of the Nobility or great men after the death of their Ancestors to the Lords or chief of the Province like unto as Sir Henry Spelman saith our relief which Hottoman termeth Honorarium a free gift or offering And that learned Knight found upon diligent enquiry amongst the Welch who by the sins of their forefathers and injury of the Saxons are now contented to be called by that name as Strangers in that which was their own Country that that Ebidiu was paid at a great rate non solum è praediis Laicis sed etiam Ecclesiasticis not only by the Laity but the Church-men And being not discontinued amongst the Saxons was besides the payment of Reliefs attended with other gifts and acknowledgements of superiority as well as thanks for Gervasius Tilburiensis in the Reign of King Henry the second when the people of England had not been so blessed and obliged as they were afterwards with the numberless Gifts Grants and Liberties which in the successive Reigns of seventeen Kings and Queens after preceding our now King and Soveraign were heaped upon them found oblata presents gifts or offerings to the King to be a well approved Custome and therefore distinguished them into quaedam in rem quaedam in spem some before hand for hopes of future favours and others for liberties or other things given and granted by the King and the Fine Rolles of King John and Henry the third his Son will shew us very many Oblata's or Free-will Offerings of several kinds which were so greatly valued and heeded as King Henry the third and his Barons in or about the 23 year of his Reign which was thirteen or fourteen years after his confirming of Magna Charta did in the bitter prosecution and charge of Hubert de Burgo Earl of Kent and chief Justice of England demand an Accompt de donis xeniis of gifts and presents amongst which Carucagii or carriages were numbred spectantibus ad Coronam appertaining to the Crown And upon that and no other ground were those reasonable Lawes or Customes founded that the King might by the Laws of England grant a Corody which Sir Henry Spelman ex constitut Sicul. lib. 3. Tit. 18. defineth to be quicquid obsonii superiori in subsidium penditur provisions of victuals made for superiors Et ad fundatores Monasteriorum and to the Founders of every Monastry though by the Constitutions of Othobon the Popes Legat in the Reign of King Henry the third the Religious of those houses were forbidden to grant or suffer any to be granted or allowed è communi jure spectabat corrodium in quovis suae fundationis monasterio nisi in libera Eleemosina fundaretur it belonged of common right to grant a Corrody in any Religious houses of their foundation if not founded in Franke Almoigne disposuit item Rex in beneficium famulurom suorum corrodium c. likewise the King might grant to any of his houshold servants a Corrody in any houses of the foundation of the Kings of England and as many were in all by them granted as one hundred and eleaven which that learned Knight conceived to be an argument that so many of the Monasteries were of their foundation Et issint de common droit saith the learned Judge Fitzherbert in his Natura Brevium and also of Common Right the King ought to have a reasonable Pension out of every Bishoprick in England and Wales for his Chaplain untill the Bishop should promote him to a fitting Benefice Which if the compositions for Pourveyances being reduced into contracts and a lawfull custome were or should be no other then gratitudes may be as commendable and necessary as those well approved Examples of thankfulness recorded in holy writ of Abrahams giving King Abimelech Sheep and Oxen
by his own finger or spoken by his own mouth give all the Nations of the Earth a pattern or direction for Pourveyance and gratefull acknowledgements in his reserving the Tenths or Tithes for his Priests or Clergy notwithstanding their Glebe and 48 Cities with the Pomaeria's or Lands belonging unto them and their shares and parts out of the multitudes of Sacrifices with many other Fees and Priviledges which were for a further support and provision for them great offerings of Oxen Silver and Plate brought unto the Tabernacles by the Princes and the Heads of the houses of their Fathers which God himself directed Moses to receive and dispose amongst the Levites and the offerings at the Feast of the Passeover which later if not brought were to be very poenal to the refuser in being to be cut off from his people their Offerings and Free-gifts and First-fruits and that which was brought by Gods direction as a Pourveyance for the building of the Tabernacle which was then the only Church Which our fore-fathers the Britans as well as the Saxons had so good a mind to imitate as they did in the Feast of St. Martin yearly offer to the Church for their Ciricksceat or contributions to the Church certam mensuram bladi Tritici a certain measure or quantity of wheat and at Christmas gallos gallinas Hens and Cocks which in a Synode or Councell holden in Anno 1009. at Aenham in England were interpreted to be Ecclesiastica munera contributions to the Church and long before that established by a Law of King Ina's under a great penalty and by a Law of Canutus long after laid under a greater penalty of eleven times the value of the Bishop and two hundred and twenty shillings then a very great summe to the King And it may be remembred that our Saviour the blessed Son of God whilest he was upon Earth and was the Messiah or King of Israel long before prophecied and to ride as a King in a kind of triumph into Jerusalem and would not use unfitting or unjust wayes and means unto it did send two of his Disciples for a Colt or Foal of an Ass to ride upon with no other answer or satisfaction to be given to the Owner but that the Lord hath need of him and streight way he will send him hither which a learned Commentator upon that place understands to be some exercise of a Kingly power to convince the stubborn Jews of his Kingly office But if the Royall Pourveyance or Compositions for them shall be so unhappy as not to be able to grow or prosper upon the Stocks of gratitude or those every daies benefits quae magna accipientibus ac etiam dantibus which are great to the receivers if rightly valued and great and costly to the givers which the people of this might be fortunate Island have for those many ages and hundreds of years past had and received of the Kings and Monarchs thereof The contracts and agreements made with the several Counties for the Pourveyances their willing submission thereunto if the King had no former right as he had a sufficient one thereunto can no less then induce an Obligation that naturalem rationem honestatem naturalem juris fidei vinculum quibus necessitate omnes astringuntur natural reason and honesty with the Bonds and Tyes of the Law and common faith which ought to be in every man and one unto another And being the great Peacemakers cement and quiet if observed as they ought to be in all the affairs of mankind brings with them or are to enforce a necessity of performance But if the obligations which the faith and contracts of one man to and with another which generally binds the most rude and ignorant of mankind and the Heathen as well as Christian shall not be able to make any impression upon us Or if Gratitudes Duties and Retributions to our King and Common Parent can by any rules of Law or Reason be interpreted or understood to be no more then a Custome All the subordinate ranks and degrees of the People and Subjects of England might be perswaded to follow the counsel given by the blessed Redeemer of Mankind which the Emperor Severus and some of the Heathen Roman Emperors by the only light of nature could as if they had read his Gospels propose afterwards almost in the very same words of Doe unto others as they would have others doe unto them and believe that the legall priviledges and customes of the King in his Praeemption Pourveyance or Composition for his Houshold who gave or confirmed unto them all their Priviledges and Customes being rationabiles and by the Civil Law are undeâ—stood to be legitime praescriptae most reasonable and lawfully prescribed or used when they are bona fide and but for forty years and ought to be inviolabiles quia nec divino juri nec legibus naturae Gentium sive municipalibus contradicunt inviolable when they contradict not the Laws of God Nature and Nations and the Laws of the Land neither are nor can be any grievance but are justly due unto him as he is their Supreme when as it was well said by Judge Barkeley in his Argument in the Exchequer Chamber in the Case of the Ship-money unhappily there put to a dispute the whole Realm is but one body whereof the King is the head and all the Members doe center in that body and if one member epecially the head do suffer all the rest will suffer with him and though every man hath an Interest in the Common-wealth yet the Kings Interest is incomparable and beyond all others And the Compositions for the Pourveyance being not only a duty and a custome now above 88. years reckoned but from the 3. year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth which was the time of the first agreement or compositions for the most of the Counties of England and Wales to the death of King Charles the Martyr and from his death to the restauration of Charles the second his Son our gracious Soveraign in the twelfth year of his Reign will yeild no less a Totall of years then one hundred which is justly accompted to be a time immemoriall or beyond the memory of man and makes a more warrantable prescription and ground of Title then that in King Henry the seconds Reign tempore Henrici Regis Avi in the time of King Henry the first his Grandfather or post coronationem suam after his own coronation or post ultimam transfretationem in Normanniam after his last going over into Normandy or that in Henry the thirds time post ultimam transfretationem in Britanniam or that time of Limitation by the Statute of 32 H. 8. ca. 2. of 50 years for bringing of Writs of Right and Formedons c. And in the Kings case being a greater Epocha period or account of time must needs be the best of Prescriptions
Elizabeth if they stood upon equall terms with him and owed him neither gratitude allegiance or subjection That he who is so great a looser by the change alteration of times and his own his Royal Progenitors bounties and indulgences might howsoever be allowed to be a little gainer in that one particular of the Compositions for his Pourveyances for in every thing else he is abundantly a very great looser and ought as well to take an advantage by it as the Clergie and Impropriators of England doe by the rise and encrease of their Tithes and impâ—ovement of their Glebes and are sure to be gainers by the difference in the value and price of commodities when as they sell their corn at the highest rates and make the improvement of their Glebes to follow the rise of money and the Markets And may take it to be no Paradox or stranger to any mans understanding or belief that the King who by his Lawes hath ordered that reasonable prises and rates should be taken for victuals and houshold provisions for himself and all his people and if his Sheriffs Justices of Peace Clerks of the Markets and the Lords and Stewards of Court-leets had but imitated the care of their Predecessors in the execution of the trusts committed unto them by their Soveraign and his Laws or of the Sheriffs in the reign of King Henry the third when as the King by his Writ being petitioned to give the Sheriffe of Bedford a power to dispence with the Vintners in the Town of Bedford for selling wine above the rates assize doth it in these words Rex c. Vic. Bed salutem Quia Villa de Bedeford distat a quolibet portu maris duas dietas tibi praecipimus quod permittas Vinitar Bed Sextarium vini Franc. vendere pro 8. denar sextarium vini Andeg. Wascon de Blanc pro 10 d. non obstante c. Teste R. c. allowing them to take for a pint and a half if the Sextarie was then accompted to be no greater a measure of wine 7 d. and for the like measure of white wine of Anjou and Gascoine 10 d. And had not as they doe daily too much neglected the execution of the Laws and laid by their duties to God their King and Country and by being over wakefull and diligent to improve their estates and private interests taken a Nap or fit of sleeping in point of time farre beyond that of the seven notorious Sleepers might at this day have been out of the reach of the causeless murmur of those who as they were seduced and fooled by Oliver and his Associates in the greatest of iniquities can make a Non causa to be a cause of their Complaints and of a grievance to themselves when as they and many of their fellow Subjects are and have been the only and immediate causes of it and if rightly considered is a reall grievance to the King and to all that buy more then they sell. And that if the King and his Laws had been as they ought to have been better obeyed and observed in such a Land or Kingdome as England is which is justly accompted to be blest with so much peace and plenty and such an over-plus of all things good and pleasant as well as necessary for the sustenance of the People or Inhabitants thereof as a deer year is not heard of above once at the most in ten or twenty years but many very cheap ones The rates or prices agreed upon by the Counties in the fourth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth would have been enough and sufficient or more then enough if the Acts of Parliament of 25 H. 8. ca. 2. to suppress the enhaunce of the then Market rates which may well be supposed to have been much cheaper then what it was in Anno 4 of Elizabeth and the Statutes of incerti temporis or King Henry the third 3 4 Ed. 6. ca. 19. 5 Ed. 6. ca. 14. against Forestallers had been duly put in execution And that the 12. Counties bordering upon London and adjacent as Middlesex Essex Kent Surrey Sussex Hertford Buckingham Berkshire Bedford Oxford Cambridge and Hâ—ntington Shires making no small gains by the vent and rise of their provisions and commodities and an high improvement of their Lands beyond all other Counties and Parts of England would if the Markets had been regulated and kept down to such just and reasonable prices as might have been well enough afforded have for want of their now great rates for victuals and commodities night and day sent unto London that greatest belly and mouth of the Kingdome and their racking or improving of their Lands been constrained to let fall and diminish their rates and prices and follow the regulating of the Markets and make their prices and rates to be conformable to the Laws and plenty of the Kingdome which would have brought unto them and their Estates a greater or more then supposed damage many times and very far exceeding the pretended losses of serving in their proportions of the Kings provisions as they were agreed upon And if this shall not be believed without experiments or demonstrations they may be quickly brought to assent unto that which will certainly pâ—ove to be a truth that if the King should as King Henry the second keep his Court and Parliament for a time at â—larendon in Wiltshire or as King Edward the first did keep his Court and Parliament in Denbigh-shire at Ruthland too often mistaken and called Rutland or at Carnarvon in Wales or at York where whilest he was busie and imployed in his Warres against the Scots he kept his Terms and Court for seven years together or as many of the former Kings did keep their Christmas and other great yearly Festivals sometimes at Nottingham other times at Worcester Lincoln and other places far remote from London And as the Sun yearly diffuseth his liâ—ht and heat in his journey through the Tropicks some at one time and some at another unto all parts of the world or as the blood in the body naturall daily circulates visits and comforts all the parts of it should enrich comfort most of the parts of his Kingdom with the presence and influence of his Courts and residence Those rates and prises in the Composition for Pourveyances would rather prove to be too high a rate and allowance then too little As it happened to be in Anno 1640. when the late King and Martyr was enforced to be with his Court and Army about Newcastle upon Tine on the borders and confines of Scotland where the cheapness of victualls and other provisions at the Market rates in those parts fell to be very much under the Kings rates or allowance according to the Compositions for his Pourveyance made in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth which the Inhabitants and People thereabouts understood so well as a great store and farre more pâ—ovisions being daily brought in at those rates then
the King and his then more then ordinary numerous retinue could expend he was which many that were then present can testifie enforced by a Proclamation to forbid the bringing in of great quantities or more then was necessary And if the rates which Queen Elizabeth accepted her provisions to be served in by the Counties had been agreed to have been paid in money and not in kind and had by the fall of the Markets which the Lawes well executed would in a Kingdome of peace and plenty have easily brought to pass been too high a rate and more then the provisions served in kind would have amounted unto those who made that agreement for themselves and the Counties and places which they represented could not have receded from it no more then she or her Successors if the provisions served in kind should have grown cheaper or might have been had for less money or been bought by her Officers at easier rates then the Compositions could without the help of a Proviso with honour or Justice have desired that her provisions might not have been served in kind by the several Counties of England and Wales but that the money or rate then agreed upon to have been the price of those provisions should have been yearly paid into the Exchequer to be disposed of for that purpose which probably might have been the reason that at the first agreement made by several Counties for the Compositions some for 3 years some for four and some for seven there was a proviso that either party disliking which until our mad times or quarrelling with the fifth Commandement and finding fault with every thing that fed not the rebellious humour was not at all done by the Counties should be at liberty and free from that agreement For there can be no reason unless ingratitude and unreasonableness neglect of Laws and Duties breach of Faith and Contracts and reasonable Customes unto the King and Soveraign shall be installed virtues and put in the seat of reason and understood to be no otherwise that when all the Lands of the twelve adjacent and neighbour Counties of London have been so exceedingly and to such a height improved and the Lands of all the other Counties of England and the Dominion of Wales have by neighbourhood and communication largely likewise and more then formerly improved and raised their rents and estates by the rise and greater prices given for Corn Cattel Victuals and all other Houshold Provisions more then they were heretofore the Landlords made to be so very great gainers and the Tenants if they be no great gainers sure enough to be made savers by heightening the prices of Corn Cattel and all other victuals and houshold provisions the King only should bear the burden and not partake of some of the fruits if there were nothing else to require or deserve it of their great advance and increase in all their Estates and Revenues And that he by whose power alliance and interest with forreign Princes the People of England doe enjoy the trade as well inward from forâ—aign parts as outward into them the many priviledges and immunities procured for our Merchants by his famous Progenitors and Predecessors as that of Burgundy and the Neatherlands France Spain Portugal Ligorne the Russian or Muscovy Trade the Hanse or Hamborough Turkish and East-Indie Trades for all which but Burgundy and the East-land Trades our Merchants are beholding to Queen Elizabeth and King James the Rex Pacificus with the Trades now begining to florish in and with our English Colonies in Virginia Bermudas Barbados St. Christophers Meviâ— New-England and Sianam c. which doe serve to augment our plenties and delicacies in England and his protection of them and all their Trades with forreign Princes by his Leagues Confederacies and Ambassadors and allowing them the freedom of the Seas and Ports and that beneficiall Trade for the London Woodmongers or Colliers to Newcastle upon Tine for coals where their Chaldrons by which they buy are more then double to what they sell and measure by at London and the owners of the Colleries to gain their custome doe not only sell at cheap and easie rates but give and allow them for nothing seven and sometimes eight or nine Chaldron of their great and double chaldrons or measures in every twenty or score of chaldrons and notwithstanding their easie and small rates can by engrossing and keeping them upon the River of Thames unsold and a combination and confederacy among themselves sell their coals at 24 or 30 s. a single or London chaldron and think that also not to be gain or profit enough unless they can upon any Frost or increase of winter weather or the news sometimes but feigned or pretended that a Ship or two of coals were cast away by storms raise their coals 2 3 5 10 or 20 shillings more in a chaldron when they please to the damage of the Rich and great oppression of the Poor who buy their coals by the peck and must pay a greater rate for them then their labours small earnings every day from 4. in the morning until 12. at night will amount unto and did in the times of Rebellion and pretence of Gods glory to be advanced by it continue their mystery of trade and oppression to such a height impudence as when it was proved at a Sessions at the Old-Baily in London that they might sell cheaper and the Lord Maior and Justices had put a rate upon coals and ordered that they should sell accordingly neither the fear of Laws or Magistrates was able to perswade them to an obedience or diswade or deterre them from their Liberty of sinning should be denied such a legal antient and reasonable duty And may believe that the granting and permitting of Marts Fairs and Markets at home and the improvement of his Subjects Estates Revenues a five times moâ—e in some places and ten in others within the space of 200 years last past and 20 times more then what they were before that period by their peace and liberties may very well deserve so small an acknowledgement and return and so petit a priviledge as the having of a Praemption and his Provisions served in for his household at reasonable prices which is no more then what the Law it self enjoyneth to be done unto all the People and Subjects of England from the highest to the lowest and to the poorest as well as unto the aboundantly or indifferently rich And that when in our Magna Charta or great Charter of our Liberties the Praeemption Pourveyance was not denied upon present payment for all under 40 shillings and for the rest within forty dayes after and the Cart-taking upon the payment of ten pence a day for a Cart with two horses and fourteen pence a day for three secundum antiqua pretia after the old rates for which now are allowed better rates and being afterwards confirmed by King Henry the third in a solemn procession
the University of Cambridge who may require the Maior of the Town to make the Assise in the presence of the Chancellor of that University and if it be not well observed may himself punish the offenders by the authorities and power only derived from the King Who may with better reason justice and equity claim and keep his Rights of Praeemption Pourveyance and compositions for it then the Stret gavel was in 4. Ed. 1. claimed by the Lord of the Manor of Cholmton in the County of Sussex that every Tenant of that Manor should yearly give two shillings then a good summe of money pro itu reditu for his going out of the Manor or returning into it or as the Town of Maldon in Essex did in the fifteenth year of the Reign of that King claim by antient custome Totteray which was a payment of four pence for every bushel and a half of corn sold there 4 pence for Stallage and a Mark penny viz. 1 d. per illos qui truncos extra domum in vicis ejusdem ville habuerunt for every one which had pipes or gutters laid or made out of their houses into the streets de omnibus pascentibus mariscum de pecoribus of all that had cattel going or feeding in the Marsh for every Horse two pence Oxe two pence Bullock a penny and for every five Sheep two pence quae praestatio vocatur which in the language of the Civil and Common Law was usually understood to be Pourveyance or furnishing of necessary provisions Or as the Town of Yarmouth which was made a Port or Haven by Letters Patents of King Edward the first did antiently and doe now take and receive of the Herring-Fishers a certain Prize of Pourveyance of Fish and Herring towards the maintenance and repair of their Haven Or as the Lord Roos of Hamlake from whom the Earls of Rutland are descended did claim and enjoy as belonging to Belvoir Castle custumam ibidem vocat Palfrey silver quae levari debet annuatim de villis a Custome called Palfrey silver which ought to be levied every year of the Towns of Botelesford Normanton Herdeby Claxton Muston Howes Barkeley Queenby aliis Hamlettis and of other Hamlets Or as King Edward the third had to send his Writ or Comâ—â—ssion to the Magistrates of the Town of Barwick 〈◊〉 Tweed to inquire Si pisces marini Salmones in aqua de Tweed capt usque villam praedictam duci in vico vocat Narrow Gate venditioni exponi de custumis inde Regi solvend if the Sea Fish and Salmons taken in the River of Twede were brought to the Town of Barwick upon Tweed and put to sale in the street called Narrow-gate and of the Customes to be paid for them to the King More especially when the Judges in 11 Hen. 4. did resolve it to be Law as well as reason that the Pourveyor or taker for the King might take victuals or provisions at a reasonable price to the use of the King against the will of the party â—elling them Which unless the Laws of God Nature and Nations and the Laws of the Land reasonable Customes Liberties Rights and Priviledges should be all and every thing in the peoples own cases and concernments and nothing at all in the Kings and that the duty of Subjects honor of the King and support and maintenance of him who supports and defends them and all that is theirs in their just and legal Interests should be but as the Astronomers lines and terms of art in the firmament as Zones Tropicks Meridian Zodiack and the Ursa major and minor c. meerly imaginary and undemonstrable may with as much or greater reason be understood to be no burden as the late design if it should take effect of the Petition of the Lord Maior Aldermen and Common Councel of the City of London lately presented vnto the House of Common in Parliament in order as they alleage to the honor happiness and prosperity of the Kingdom that the Governor Deputy and Assistants of their desired Company of thâ—â—nglish Merchants trading into Italy and the Dominiâ—â— of the French King and the King of Portugal and of all other Merchants thereafter to be taken into that Association may besides other emoluments to be taken of the Merchants have power for the maintenance of the Government to take and receive upon all goods to be exported and imported not exceeding one twentieth part of the Customes as they are on all goods except Wines and on wines not exceeding one fourtieth part of the Customes as they now are Which twentieth part after no greater a reckoning then four hundred thousand pounds per annum for the Customes which if not too much defrauded are more likely to be eight hundred thousand pounds per annum will be twenty thousand pounds per annum and if eight hundred thousand pounds per annum will come near unto as much as the pretended losses of the Counties in the Compositions for the Pourveyances And the people of England would find the Pourveyance and Compositions for them to be for their own good and profit as well as there is a great and every where to be acknowledged reason for it not denied to be reason in their own cases affairs dealings one with another by the want of greater benefits if the King should shut up all his Ports and forbid all Trade with forreign Merchants inward or outward as some Kings and Princes have commonly and ordinarily done and as Common-wealths and those that call themselves Estates do as well as Kings and Princes in case of hostilities and upon reason of State or some other extraordinary occasions Or put down as God forbid he should or seise as forfeited by misuser which many will be found to have deserved all the Fairs and Markets in the Kingdome or some great part of them or forbid for some time as hath been antiently done all the Markets in two or three Counties and command the people to bring their victuals and provisions to be sold where the Kings or the Publick necessities or occasions wanted them or allow but one or two in a County at the chiefest or greatest of Cities or Towns or as King Henry the third did strictly command the assise of bread wine beer and victuals to be kept in Oxford in debito statu secundum precium bladi sicut in aliis Burgis Villis as it ought according to the price of corn and as was used to be in other Towns and Burrows threatning them that if they neglected to doe it he would seise and take the Town into his own hands and at the same time setting a rate or price upon wines gave the Magistrates of that Town to understand that whoever did otherwise ad corpus suum graviter se caperet omnia vina sua a Vice-comite suo Oxon. in manum suam capi praeciperet should be arrested and
promises of gratitude and thankfulness after they are had and received to have given him in perpetuity as much or a great deal more than ever the Pâ—aeemption Pourveyance or Composition for it would have amounted unto and imprecated curses and woes as many or more then the plagues of Egypt to have fallen upon them and their after generations neglecting it for it is ever to be understood that the Subsidies Assessements and other Ayds given to the Kings and Princes of England by their Subjects and People in Parliament or at any time taken or otherwise received by them have been more with respect unto their own particular Estates included in the safety of his greater and his granting them free and general pardons not only for offences criminal committed one against another but for offences committed against the King and incroachments and intrusions upon the royal Revenves and for his Royal protection and defending of them and preserving them in their peace and plenty then as for any retributions or acknowledgements of their favours shewed to any or many in particular There being as much reason for the King to expect and receive the presents or acknowledgements of his people as it was for King Solomon to take his presents sine quibus saith the great and excellently learned Grotius Reges Orientis adire non solebant without which the people were accustomed not to come unto their Kings and continued long after to be a custome as may be understood by the Kings or Wise men coming out of the East to worship and adore our blessed Saviour at his birth and is at this day not disused in the Africk and Asiatick Countries And did not nor ought to dull or lessen the alacrity and payment of other necessary duties and tributes when as Solomon besides the provisions of his Houshold brought and served in every year by a rate and what he had of the Governors of the Countrey which if they were not provisions or conducing thereunto might be some other Tributes and did receive Gold and Tributes or Customs of the Merchant men of the Trafâ—ick of the Spice Merchants For if it hath been reason every where and amongst all Nations where either subjection and duty to superiors or humane prudence had any entertainment or abode to take as much care as may be of general and publick safeties when the safeties of particulars are included and comprehended in them and to be willing in the common or publick calamities of a Warre already fastned upon them or hope to prevent them readily to contribute to their Princes or permit them to take provisions sometimes without any price at all and at other times but at reasonable prises in order to their preservation or repelling of evils or inconveniences which would a great deal more molest or trouble them or to give him or his Army free quarter as the men of Israel Juda did unto David their King or bring or send victuals and provisions to his Camp or marching Army and can think it no ill husbandry though they have but the day before paid contribution to the Enemy had much of their Cattel and Provisions taken away by the Enemy a Husband Brother or Sonne killed women and children slain and butchered and the bloody and dreadfull Scenes or Pageants of Warre every where to be seen heard of or lamented or to do as the Danes did lately to the unjustly invading Swedes give money to keep their houses from spoiling or burning It can be no less then reason to contribute something yearly to a King who not only keeps us from those and many other woes and miseries by land and by Sea but daily heapes and multiplies his blessings upon us in protecting and defending us and not only gave many of us our Vineyards but procureth us all to sit quietly under the shadow pleasure content and fruitfulness of our owâ— vines and by his care at home and abroad preserves us and our Estates in an envied peace and plenty And be the more willing to allow him his Praeemption and Compositions for Pourveyance which amounts not unto the two hundreth or five hundreth part and sometimes not the one thousand part or more of the expence and losses which warre and the many times not to be avoided unruliness and spoil thereof may bring upon them Unless like Ulisses Companions transformed into Swine by the accursed charms of a Cirâ—e or inticements of selfish or foolish interests for the maintenance of our vices and luxuries we should think it to be either Religion Duty Conscience Reason or Prudence to take all we can from a King who is the Guardian of all his people and a nursing Father to the Church which his Royal Progenitors Kings of England were so long agoe accustomed to rank amongst their principall cares as in the 23. year of the Reign of King Edward the first it was alledged in a pleading and allowed for law right reason that Ecclesia est infra aetatem in custodia Regis qui tenetur jura haereditates ejusdem manu tenere defendere the Church is as an Infant under age and in the custody of the King who is bound to defend and maintain its rights estates and hereditaments who governs by no Arbitrary will or power but by our known Lawes which are so excellent beyond all the Laws of other Nations so rational so binding and transcendent so carefully watching over the peoples liberties and proprieties such a Buckler Guard and strong Tower of defence unto them and poenal to all that shall but execute any unjust or illegall commands tending to the violation of them not to be denied by the most seditious and undutifull Subjects when they shall but be pleased to be friends and at peace with their reason and understanding as if by any divine punishment proceeding from an iratum Numen an angry and just God after ages should find England to be governed by a King or Prince as cruel as Nero or Commodus and as arbitrary and unruly as some of the Roman or Eastern Emperors have been there cannot untill the sword shall have cut the strings of our Magna Charta and silenced or banished the Laws be any oppression or evil happen to the people without the Balm of Gilead and remedies as quickly brought and found out by our Lawes as there can be any necessities or occasions of them Wherefore we should not like people altogether transported and carried out of humanity into a Lycanthropia or woolfish nature think it to be rationall honest or becoming us instead of every mans saying Domine quid retribuam Lord what shall I render thee for all thy benefits to make it the greatest of our care imployment and business not only to take from the King but keep all we can from him And if they would or could tell how to doe it without the just reproach of disloyalty dishonesty and villany should not do it in his
many of them who having racked their Tenants to the utmost can leave their Ancestors great and stately houses in the Country as if they had been lately infected with the plague or were haunted with some Devils or Hobgoblins and employ their expences which would have been more honourably laid out in hospitality in treatments of two or three hundred pounds at a time some of our prodigal Gentry expending fifty threescore or an hundred pounds in a Suit of Apparrel can give it away after twice or thrice wearing to a Pimp Sicophant or flattering Servant and lose two hundred or five hundred pounds in a night at Dice or Cards give a hundred pounds for a needle work Band and expend two hundred pounds per annum for Periwigs and all the racked Revenue either laid out by themselves or their wives who vie who shall spend most in the wicked and vain pursuits of a detestable luxury and as if they held their Lands not as formerly by Knight service but by Lady service and their Ancestors had taken pains to leave them estates to play the mad-men withall do make sin the only Errand and employments of their lives and conversations and by their prodigal expences and confining themselves to some few dishes of meat dressed at the Common Cooks in London do leave their Foot-boys and Servants so little of it as they are many times constrained to be glad with the bones and scraps which would have been better bestowed upon Beggars and have reason enough to believe that their Masters can doe no miracles nor multiply loaves of bread or fishes But our Nobility and Gentry demeaned themselves in a more honorable noble and Christian way as may be understood by that of Thomas Earl of Lancasters expences in house-keeping in the Reign of King Ed. 2. when money was scarcer than now it is and yet the account from Michaelmas in the 7. year of the Reign of that King unto Michaelmas in the 8. year of his Reign being but for one year was in the Buttery Pantry and Kitchin three thousand four hundred and five pounds And there was paid for 6800 Stock-fishes so called and for dried Fishes as Lings Haberdines c. 41 l. 6 s. 7 d. for one hundred eighty four Tonnes and one Pipe of Clarret wine and one Tonne of white wine 104 l. 17 s. 6 d. gave costly Liveries of Furres and Purple to Barons Knights and Esquires and paid in that year 623 l. 15 s. 5 d. to divers Earles Barons Knights and Esquires for Fees The house-keeping of the Nobility being not then mean or ignoble when in the fourteenth year of that Kings Reign Hugh Spencer the elder was by Inquisition found to have been possessed of at his several Houses or Manors 28000 Sheep 1000 Oxen and Steers 1200 Kine with their Calves 2000 Hogs 300 Bullocks 40 Tons of Wine 600 Bacons 80 Carcases of Martilmas Beef 600 Muttons in the Larder and 10 Tons of Sider Richard Nevil Earl of Warwick in the Reign of King Henry the fifth had in his house oftentimes six Oxen eaten at a Breakfast and every Tavern was full of his meat and he that had any acquaintance in his house might have there so much sodden and roste as he could prick and carry upon a long Dagger Cardinal Woolsey Arch-Bishop of York in the Reign of King Henry the eighth kept no small house when as his Master Cook in the Privy Kitchin went daily in Velvet and Satten with a chain of Gold about his neck had two Clerks of the Kitchin a Surveyor of the Dresser a Clerk of the Spicery four Yeomen of the ordinary Scullery four Yeomen of the silver Scullery two Yeomen of the Pastery and two Pastery men under them in the Scalding house a Yeoman and two Grooms In the Buttery two Yeomen Grooms and two Pages In the Pantery two Yeomen and in the Waferie two Yeomen Nicholas West Bishop of Ely in the year 1532. in the 23 year of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth kept continually in his house one hundred Servants giving to the one halfe of them 53 s. 4 d. a piece then an allowance for a Gentleman Servant but now by an unreasonable and illegall rise and exaction of servants wages not the halfe of a Carter or Ploughmans wages and to the other 40 s. a piece and to every one of his Servants four yards of broad Cloth for his Winter Gown and for his Summer Coat three yards and a half and daily gave at his gate besides bread and drink warm meat for two hundred poor people Edward Earl of Derby in the Reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth had 220 men in Checque Roll fed sixty eight aged persons twice every day besides all comers appointed thrice a week for his dealing dayes and every good Friday gave unto two thousand seven hundred poor men meat drink and money The Lord Cromwell in the declyning times of charity as Mr. John Stow well observed served twice every day at his gaâ—â— two hundred poor people with bread meat and drink sufficient all the Gentry making it to be their honor in their lesser orbes to measure their Actions by those as good and honorable patterns And proportionable to their hospitality and the state and dignity of our then Nobility were the numbers of their Servants in their houses at home or in their journies or riding abroad many of the Knights Gentlemens Sons of England making it to be the best of their breeding education and way to preferment to serve or retain unto them insomuch as notwithstanding the Statute made against giving of Liveries or Badges 1 R. 2. cap. 7. and the suspicion which some of our Kings and Princes and King Henry the seventh had of their greatness and popularities the great so called Earl of Warwick in the Reign of King Henry the sixt rode with six hundred men in red Jackets embroidered with ragged staves before and behind Thomas Audley Lord Chancellor of England usually rode with many Gentlemen before him with coats guarded with velvet and chains of gold and his Yeomen following after him in Liveries not guarded William Paulet Marquess of Winchester did ride with a great attendance in Liveries and gave great reliefe at his gate and Edward Duke of Somerset did the like John de vere Earl of Oxford in the Reign of Queen Mary notwithstanding the rigour of the Law against Liveries and Reteiners which King Henry the seventh did so turn against one of his highly deserving Ancecestors as it cost him a fine of ten or fifteen thousand marks was accustomed to ride from his Castle of Hedingham in Essex to his City House at London Stone with eighty Gentlemen in tawny velvet Liveries or Coats and Chains of Gold about their necks before him and one hundred tall Yeomen in the like Livery of Cloth following him with the cognisance of the Blew Bore embroidered on their left shoulder Which being the custome of the good
people Subjects and men of Honor in England in those more honorable more performing less complementing times but since withering and growing fruitless and out of fashion when that great commander Luxury had with his Regiments and Brigades of vices new fangles and vanities subdued and put the people to a greater contribution towards such their wicked and vain expences and all that they can now make shift for is too little to support and bear out their extravagancies It is well known and experimented to the great comfort of such as lived within the virge of the Kings houses and residence that the Hospitality of the Kingdome like the heart in the body naturall the primum vivens beginner and conservator of life beginning in the Kings house and propagating and diffusing it self in and through as many of the Nobility and Gentry as being de meliori lutâ— of a more then ordinary extraction did strive as much as became them to imitate Royal Examples would be in the Kings house the ultimum mâ—riens the last which expired And that besides the necessary grandeur and magnificence of the Kings houshold plenty and variety of meat and drink to entertain at his Officers Tables the Nobility Gentry and Citizens which had any occasion to come thither and 240 gallons of Beer allowed the poor every day at the Buttery Barre three gallons every day at the Court gate for thirteen poor men six services or messe of meat and seven pieces of beef a day as wast and extraordinarie for the Kings Honor the chippings of bread sometimes more then should be and the fragments and knapstry of broken or quarter or half joynts of meat carcases of Fowl and Poultry pieces of Pie-crust or other provisions carefully and daily gathered and put into severall Almes-baskets left at every Table and Chamber in the Court and distributed unto the poor by two Grooms and two Yeomen of the Elemosinary or Almnery who enjoy an yearly Salary and maintenance from the King for that only imployment which hath fed and supported many poor Families in and about Westminster as well as Common Beggars the Lodgings and accomodations of Nobility and Gentry resorting to the Court have so greatly enriched all the Streets and parts about it as that end of London and parts adjacent have like trees planted by the water side so very much prospered as Westminster which originally had but some scattered houses adjoyning to the Abby and the Kings Palace came aftewards to be a Burrough Town Corporation endowed with great Liberties and Priviledges and sending Burgesses to the Parliament afterwards to be a City and the people of other parts as birds haunting the woods for shelter shade or succor observing the plenty happiness which they enjoyed have built made their nests habitations as near as they could unto that place and Royal seat of bounty charity and magnificence insomuch as the swelling and increase of London at this day every where to be seen not without some admiration in her Extent and buildings hath within this and the last Century of years very much outgrown that antient City it self and as Mr. John Graunt and some others have truly and ingeniously observed extended it self Westward and as near as it could unto the Royal bitation as if that were more to be desired for a neighbourhood then the River of Thames the Exchange or Custome-house of London and places of Trade and Traffick They therefore that shall remember how his Majesties Maundie or Charity kept as his Royal Ancestors ever did upon the Thursday before Easter or Eve of Good-Friday with a Joul of Salmon a Poll of Ling 30 red Herrings and as many white garnished with â—erbs in new clean wooden dishes four six penny loaves of Court bread cloth for a Gown and a Shirt a pair of New Shoes and Stockins and a single penny with a twenty shillings piece of gold overplus put in severall little purses given to as many poor old men as the King is years old and the state and decency observed in the distributing of it after their feet washed and dried and the King with a condiscention and unexampled humility beyond the reach and example of any of his Subjects kneeling upon his knees and devoutly kissing the feet of those his Almes-men cannot certainly tell how to murmur at such an hospitality or Provisions which afforded him the means wherewith to doe it Nor should the many cures which he yearly doth unto such as are Lame Blind Diseased or troubled with the Disease called the Kings Evil because he cureth it the patience and meekness which he employeth in it and the yearly charge of at least three thousand pounds per annum which his Angel Gold of the value of ten shillings and a silk Ribbon put about the neck of every one be they rich or poor young or old which doe come to that English Pool of Bethesda to be healed and cured be forgotten or thought unworthy a gratitude or some remuneration or acknowledgements Neither can any that ever understood or read of the round Tables of our King Arthur the great Roger Mortimer and the famous Hospitality of England continued through the British Saxon and Norman times all the turmoyls and troubles of the after Generations in their greatest extremities of the Barons warres and the direfull and bloody contentions of the two great discording Houses of York and Lancaster with the vast quantities of Land given besides to Monasteries and Religious Houses to the great increase of Charity and Alms-deeds which was then the only Trade driven or thought on in the way to Cabo di buona speranza the everlasting rest of the righteous the large proportions of Lands given for Chantries in a then supposed pious care of themselves and their Progenitors great gifts and remunerations to Servants and curtesies and kindness to Neighbours and Tenants when most of our Nobility and Gentry thought themselves not great unless they were good nor a Gentleman because he had only the insignia virtutum Armories and marks of the honor of his Ancestors descended unto him without the virtuous noble and heroick qualities which were the cause or original of them when pride and interest the Devils Deputies were not the Soveraign which they most obeyed vanity and all the folliâ—s of sin the neighbours which they loved as themselves when virtue was not reckoned as it is now amongst too many a base or simple companion nor honour turned into a Pageant or nâ—men inane or only made a pretence to deceive mens expectations when almost every English Gentleman was in his Parish and amongst his Tenants like Job that good accomptant of his talents a deliverer of the poor that cried the fatherless and him that had none to help him caused the Widows heart to sing for joy was eyes to the blinde feet to the lame brake the jawes of the wicked pluckt the spoils out of his teeth grieved for the poor
understanding and right reason into the ruder sort of the heathen as in some parts of Africk the King thinks he is not beloved of his people unless he doth sometimes feast them and the heads of the Cowes which are killed for that provision are painted and hung up like pictures in his Chamber as for an honor to the King whereby such strangers which did come to his Court might perceive that he was a good King Being like the Agapes or Love Feasts allowed by St. Paul and those which the primitive Christians continued as an excellent Custome and usage when the rich as Tertullian witnesseth brought to those publick feastings meat and provisions and fed and feasted the poor which were so usefull and well-becoming all such as intended or desired the comfort and blessing of it as that thrifty as well as magnificent Commonwealth of Venice doe not only order and encourage yearly Feasts among the several ranks and Classes of their Citizens and people but doe make an allowance to their Duke or shadow of Monarchy for the feasting of the principal of the Senate and to send yearly in the winter to every Citizen a certain petty present of wild foul And if the virtue of charity which St. Paul makes to be the chief or summa totalis of all the virtues and excellencies which humane nature or frailties can be capable of and will not allow that of speaking with the tongues of Angels which certainly is more to be valued then our last twenty years English complement nor the gift of prophecy and understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge neither the having of such a faith as might remove mountains to be any more then nothing in him or a noise or emptiness if charity be not joyned with it be so superlative The people of England as well as their Kings and Princes were not mistaken when they did so heed and thought it necessary to be observed as a good part of the Tythes given by Aethelulph in the year after the birth of Christ 855. not only of his own Lands in demeasne but as most of the Writers which lived nearer that time have as the most learned and judicious Selden rightly observed it extended unto a grant made by the consent omnium Praelatorum ac Principum suorum qui sub ipso variis provinciis totius Angliae praeerant of all the Bishops and Prelates and the Princes and Earles which under him governed in the severall Provinces and whether the Tithes came first to be setled here by that great King Ethelulphus and his Bishops and great men or were assented unto or granted afterwards by the piety and devotion of particular men and the owners of lands and goods of which very many grants doe occurre before they were settled by a very just and binding authority of the Secular Ecclesiastical power and authority in this our Isle of great Britain some part of them may be certainly said to be in the use and application of them to the Church and Ministry and sacred uses dedicated and designed for hospitality Which the People of did so greatly regard and look after as the supposed want of it in the reverend Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury begot a project in the reign of King Henry the eighth as Doctor Peter Heylin that learned and great Champion of the Church of England and the truth even after he was blind hath recorded it Whereby a design was laid by a potent and over-busie Courtier to ruine the Revenues belonging to that Arch-Bishoprick by informing the King that the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury had fallen much Wood let long Leases for great Fines and made great havock of the Revenues of his Arch-Bishoprick whereby to raise a fortune to his wife and children and with so large a Revenue had kept no Hospitality that it was more meet for Bishops to have a sufficient yearly stipend out of the Exchequer then to be incumbred with Temporal Revenues and that the Lands being taken to his Majesties use would afford him besides the said Annual stipends a great yearly Revenue But the King rightly apprehending the device sent the Informer on an errand about Dinner time to Lambeth-house where he found all the Tables in the great Hall to be very bountifully provided the Arch-Bishop himself accompained at Dinner with diverse persons of quality his Table exceeding plentifully furnished and all things answerable to the port of so great a Prelate wherewith the King being made acquainted at his coming back gave him such a rebuke for his false information and the design which was built upon it as neither he nor any of the other Courtiers duâ—st stir any further in that suite And the common people of England have always with so much reason loved and applauded Hospitality good House-keeping Alms Deeds and works of Charity and in that besides their own benefits and concernments did but delight in the ways of God which he hath commanded and is well pleased with whereby the heretofore famous and greatly beloved Nobility and Gentry of England have gained so much love honor power reverence and well deserved esteem as the greatest part of the respects which are now afforded and paid by them unto their Issues and remaining generations are as unto too many of them more in remembrance of the good and vertuous deeds of their Ancestors then any personal good or vertue is either to be found in them or according to the courses which they now hold is so much as expected from them who think a name or title like some gaudy Sign-post hung out of an empty ill governed and worse furnished house where vice and all manner of sins in their horrid and ugly deformities being treated and entertained do crawle up and down like Toads Frogs and Serpents in some dark and loathsome Dungeon or that a pedigree deriving their discents from some or many Heroes and Worthy Patriots is honor enough for them do scorn all but their own foolries and suppose a witty Drollery and the Friskes and Funambuloes of an ill governed wit or of brains soaked and steeped in drink more to be valued then the wisdom in the Proverbs of Solomon hate vice and admonition shun vertue and morality as they would do the burst and fire of a Granado and believe dâ—inkâ—ng Dicing and Drabbing to be a more Gentile and cleanlier way of Hospitality and make the common people whilst they stand almost amazed at their Debaucheries and irregularities ready to swear they are illegitimate or some Changelings crept into the name and estate of their Hospitable and vertuous Progenitors and if any of them should be well affected and inclined to walk in the ways of their Ancestors and keep good houses can never be able to do it by reason of the no Reason of their Ranting and expensive Wives twenty of which sort of new fashioned women for there are some though not so many as should be which are or would be helpers to
or some other sum of money in a Bill of four or five pounds and give an acquittance for it as if they themselves had received it So as all manner of cozening and artificial and newly devised trim ways of cheating under the pretence and colour of Religion honesty and doing of faithful service having like some Epidemick and general contagion infected and spread it self through almost all the ranks and degrees of the people the King who is like to be most abused by it hath now a greater necessity then ever of his Compositions for Pourveyance and of the several Counties serving in their Provisions for that otherwise so great a number of Harpies and Gypsâ—es as his officers and servants shall meet with in the buying of his houshold Provisions will make a great allowance or assignments in money for houshold expences which several Acts of Parliament in the Reign of King H. 7. King H. 8. Queen Elizabeth and King James did in aid of the Pourveyance or Compositions for them limit and appoint to be paid towards the charge of house-keeping out of several parts of the revenue as some out of the profits of the Court of Wards some out of Fee Farm Rents and others out of the Customes yet unrepealed to be but as a very little and render it altogether insufficient and not the one half so much in value as the allowance or money shall seem to be Or if the King had had a yearly sum of money to be yearly charged upon the people and paid by them in lieu of the Pourveyance as it was designed by a Bill for an Act of Parliament thrice read in the house of Peers in Parliament in the first year of the Reign of King James and passed and sent down to the house of Commons and being by them not assented unto but another Bill for an Act of Parliament prepared and sent up in stead of the former and the abolishing of all Pouâ—veyance and fifty thousand pound per annum in recompence thereof granted to be leavyâ—d upon the Lands in every County of England and prosecuted no further then the twice reading of that Bill Such an yearly sum of money being afterwards yearly drawn and forced from those uses by some greater necessities would have left the King to more wants and his people to a greater necessity of supplying him or if it had been then as it is now supposed to be satisfied by a grant of the moiety of the Excise of Ale Beer Sider Perry and other compounded drinks to be yearly paid to him his heirs and Successoâ—s those yearly profits would have been under the like fate of being otherwise imployed and whether in that way or by the fifty thousand pound per annum to be charged upon the people would not have been a just and adâ—equate recompence for the yearly loss if no more of seventy three thousand six hundred pounds fourteen shillings and seven pence which the King now sustaineth for want of his prae-emption Pouâ—veyance or Compositions for them by how much the sum of seventy three thousand six hundred pounds fourteen shillings and seven pence per annum if no furâ—her addition of damage should happen exceedeth fifty thousand pounds per annum and by how much the moiety of such an Excise might as it doth now fall a great deal short of the estimate or yearly Income which it was believed to be Nor can come up unto that equality or rule of justice which ought to be in laying of Assessements or Taxes upon the common people for a general and publike good wherein every man being concerned ought to contribute for that such a Tax or Imposition for the Pourveyance will be as wide of it as to lay the burden of the rich upon the poor compell the Aged Lame or Impotent to maintain the young more healthy and able or to enforce a contribution of the County of Oxford towards the See Walls Inning of Marshes or draining of Fennes in Norfolk and Lincolâ—eshire constrain men to fraight out Ships and pay custome for the goods of Merchants when they shall partake nothing of the gains and make all the Counties and people of England to pay a far greater Tax then the Compositions for Pourveyance amounted unto for to purchase a discharge of Compositions for Pourveyance which lay but lightly upon all but twelve or thirteen Shires or Counties which are near adjacent unto London and gave them little or no trouble at all to ease those twelve or thirteen Counties which gained ten times more by the Pourveyance and the Kings residence at London then what they ever paid or contributed towards it And may well miscarry in the hopes ot wishes of the peoples content or approbation when as such a recompence as the King is supposed to have by it and as much again laid upon the people by the fraud and exactions of the Brewers and sellers of Ale and Beer c and the peoples oppressing and cheating of one another by pretence and colour of it and in the Farming or collecting of it shall be extorted or taken out of the necessities or excess of his subjects the groans and complaints of the poorer sort of them and the murmurings and discontents of the rich more able to bear it who will not be perswaded but that it is an Artifice of the Nobility and Gentry to ease themselves of other necessary duties and payments by taking it off their own shoulders and putting it upon theirs And the poorer sort of people who were never used to be troubled with any charge or payments towards Pourveyance and Compositions and by their weakness of Purse and Estate are always more sensible and complaining of any burdens which shall be laid upon them shall as they will finde themselves to be loosers in the rise and heightning of all victuals and provisions to be bought as much or more then the yearly charge of the Kings Pourveyance and Compositions did amount unto for that the Kings price will increase that of the Nobility that of the Nobility will raise the Gentry in their prices and the unreasonable rates and prices which the Gentry must be constrained to give will raise that of the common people and a price once raised and fixed but for a little time is so by the craft and sinful pretences of the sellers kept up and continued as it seldom falls again but riseth higher and higher and as far as they can possibly stretch or strain it so as none will be gainers but the sellers who are not a third part of the people and their gains must be made out of the losses and damage of the King and two parts of the people Who will also be put in a worse condition when the King by a daily waste and consumption in his Revenue by such exactions and prices imposed upon him in buying his houshold provisions at such intollerable rates and prices as the unbounded avarice gnawing and grinding advantages of
the sellers shall be pleased to put upon him shall for want of his Pourveyance or Compositions be enforced to lay down his Officers and Servants Tables and put all or most of his servants to Board-wages and that the money which shall be intended or assigned to pay them shall afterwards upon some emergencies or necessities of State affairs for the defence or preservation of himself or his people be transferred to other important uses When the wants and cravings of his servants who cannot live by unpaid Arrears may set them to hunt the people for monys which they suppose may by reason of some neglected rights or concealments be due from them to the King their Master or to devise projects and perswade him to strain his Prerogative in the reformation of known abuses in Trade or other dealings wherein many of the people do appear to be very great gainers more then by Law or Conscience they ought to be to the end that he might help his servants who think it to be reasonable enough for them to essay lawful ways and means to support themselves whilst they conceive that they should not have wanted their daily bread or maintenance if the business of the Common-wealth and the Kings care of the people in general had not bereaved or deprived them in their particulars And that their sufferings want of Wages and fitting maintenance was to procure the wel-fare and happiness of their fellow subjects Or if that way which many times galles vexes more in the maner then the things themselves shal not extend unto their relief will at the best after dangerous discontents and commotions in the minds of the people but beget largâ— Taxes and Assessements in exchange of projects or some other necessitated incursions upon the peoples liberties or produce some Artifices of Policies of State to raise money from them as the Crusadoes by the Popes in the Reign of King Henry the third and dispensing for money with such as had engaged to go to the wars in the holy Land and were sick or not able or had a minde to â—arry at home or as some Kings and Princes have done by pretending fears of invasion from some neighbor Princes or a necessâ—ty of transporting the war out of their own into an enemies Country and when they had raised great sums of money and made ready their Armies dismissed all but the money which was gained by them to return home again upon an overture of a peace or a certainty that there was no need or likelihood of wars When it is well known that the people had no just cause to complain of the Pourveyance or Compositions for it nor of the Cart taking as to themselves or their servants when the Masters had two pence a mile allowed them for their Horses and Carts which most commonly went not above twelve miles from their habitations the Horses having no want of Grass Provender or Hey the men had better Beer and Victuals then they had at home And the owners of Carts and Horses within the Virge of the Kings houses or Palaces or in the way of his progress were no loosers by his coming when either for his recreation or refreshment or to visit the several parts and Provinces of his kingdom he should think fit to make his progress to meet with and redress any complaints or grievances which should happen therein So as the fault must needs be in themselves if they would now finde fault with that which they could not do before when as those just and ancient rights of the Kings of England and duties of their subjects were alwayes so necessary and inseparable to the Crown and their Imperial dignity as that if our ancient Kimgs of England had not enjoyed those their just rights which the fury of the Barons waâ—s against King John and his son King Henry the third and those grand advantages which they had over those Kings in so great a commotion of the people which the power and interests of those Barons for all had not laid aside their loyalty had stirred up against them did not in the making and confirming of our Magna Charta think fit to deny them if they paid the antiqua pretia ancient rates and hire they could not without an immense charge which we do not finde they were at have removed so often and so far as they did from London to their several houses and Palaces which their many Forrests Chases and Parks for their disport and Hunting in several Counties and remote parts of the Kingdom will evidence that they did not seldom do and make so many Voyages into Normandy as our Norman Kings William Rufus and Henry the first and their successor Henry the second and he and his son King John and Richard the second did into Ireland or as other of their predecessors did into Wales or as King James did from and into Scotland or King Charles the Martyr his son when he went thither to be Crowned nor keep their Christmas and other Festivals or their Parliaments as many of our Kings and their successors did in several places of the Kingdom which their Letters Pattents dated from thence do frequently testifie or the term as King Edward the first did at York Neither could our late Royal Martyr King Charles the first have made so good a shift as he did to remove himself and his Court Northerly and to York in the yeer 1641. to save himself from the London tumults nor have gathered Forces or had means or time to defend himself and his people if he had released and forbid his Pourveyances by Act of Parliament but must like a Bird without Feathers or with broken wings have been taken with a little running after and been brought back again by the Sheriff of the first County he had escaped into which the Rebellious paâ—ty in the late distempered and fatally unhappy Parliament were confident would have been the consequence of his going away from them without granting unto them his regality and surrendring up the care and protection of his people into their arbitrary way of governing them in his name to their own use and as they pleased by Votes and Ordinances If his officers and servants could not when the Factious party in that Parliament had seised his Rents and Revenues have hired a Cart for his use without an order or provision of Carts and Horses made by the appointment of two of the next Justices of Peace or at a lesser rate then six pence a mile or what more every rich sturdy Clown or his rude unmannerly servants should have demanded of them to be paid before hand and upon refusal of their Carts or Carriages should have had no other remedy but to complain to the Justices of Peace to compell or punish them The want of which part of the Royal Pourveyance as well as his other Pourveyance and Compositions for them hindring his now Majesty in the last Summer 1661. when he
some immunities and priviledges to them their successors and after generations in perpetuity When some families may be forever made happy as one was in a progress of King James when a careful Gentlewoman with her seven young children having too small an estate to educate them being purposely placed in a stand where the King was brought to shoot at a Deer and pleasantly tendred to the King as a Hen with her seven Chicken gave his Princely charity and bounty the opportunity to take them into his care and service when they came to be fit for it and brought either all or most of them to great preferments when poor people or their children being lame or diseased with the sickness called the Kings Evil may be freed from their otherwise tedious journeys and charges in going to London their abode there and returning home which if a Tax were laid upon their Parishes to furnish would come to as much if not more then the charge of Cart taking and Pourveyance did cost them When our Pool of Bethesda shall be Itinerant and the good Angel shall yearly ride his Circuit to bring blessings and cures to those that need it and where a multitude of people shall not be the cause of uncovering the roof of any house to let down the sicke in their beds to be healed All which with many other comforts and benefits which the King by his progress or residence brings to all which are or shall be near it The City of York in the North parts of England and her adjacent and neighbor Provinces would purchase at a greater rate then the Pourveyances or Compositions for them do or did ever yearly amount unto and being like to be gâ—eat and glad gainers by it would be most chearfully willing and ready to carry or remove his travailing goods or utensils from or to any of his Royal houses at his no contemptible or unreasonable rates or Prices Oâ— the City of Worcester or Town of Shrowsbury with their adjacent bordering Shires would in the prospect or certain gain of it be not at all discontented or troubled at the neighboâ—hood of such an enriching staple comfort Which every man may believe when as he must be a great stranger to England as well as to common sense and understanding who cannot apprehend how much relief an old fashioned English Gentlemans house for we must distinguish betwixt rich hospitable good men and those who being weary of Gods long continued mercies and patience do think they are not Gentlemen or well educated if they do not swear as fast as they can God damne me and the devil take me and make themselves and their wives and children their estate and all that they have the prey and business of Taylors Vintners Cooks Pimps Flatterers and all that may consume them is unto two or three Cottages or poor peoples houses near unto it what small Villages and Towns and how mean unfrequented and poor Oxford and Cambridge were before the founding of those famous Universities and the Colledges and Halls in them How many Villages and some Borrough Towns have been founded and built by the warmth and comfort of the Kings Palaces as Woodstock c. how many have been built or much augmented by the neighborhood of Abbies and Monasteries c. as Evesham Reding Bangor St. Albans c. and of Bishops houses as Croydon Lambeth c. though many or most of the Religious Houses in England and Wales were at the first designed intended for solitude How many great Towns and Villages in Middlesex Essex and Kent have been more then in other Counties more remote built or much augmented and increased by the Kings residence at London and the Port Towns and conveniency for Shipping How many Farmers in Berkshire and other Counties near London have more then in those farther distant converted their Barns into Gentlemens Halls or stately houses and began their Gentility with great and plentiful revenues to support it What addresses or suites are often made to Judges in their Circuits to transfer the keeping of the Assizes from some City or Shire Town to some other Town in the County to help or do them some good by the resort and company which comes to the Assizes as to keep it at Maidstone and not at Canterbury in the County of Kent at Woolverhampton not at Stafford in the County of Stafford c. or to keep Terms in a time of Pestilence and adjornment from London to St. Albans Hertford or Reding how like an Antwerp or the Skeleton or ruins of a forsaken City the Suburbs of London now the greatest and beautifullest part of it would be if the residence of the King and his Courts of Justice should be removed from thence or discontinued How many thousand families would be undone and ruined and how those stately buildings would for want of that daily comfort which they received by it moulder and sink down inter rudera under its daily â—uines and give leave to the earth and grass to cover and surmount them and turn the new Troy if that were not a fable into that of the old Which the Citizens of London very well understood when in the raign of King Richard the second and the infancy of those blessings and riches which since have hapned to that City by the Kings of England making it to be their darling or Royal Chamber that King was so much displeased with them as besides a fine of ten thousand pounds imposed upon them for some misdemeanors their liberties seised their Maior committed prisoner to the Castle of Windsor and diverse Aldermen and substantial Citizens arrested he removed his Court from London where not long before at a solemn Justes or Tourney he had kept open house for all comers they most humbly and submissively pacified â—im and procured his return to so great a joy of the Citizens as they received him with four hundred of their Citizens on horseback clad all in one Liveâ—y and pâ—esented the King and Queen with many rich gifts All which and more which may happen by the Kings want of his Pourveyance or Compositions for them and keeping him and his Officers and Servants in want of money or streightning him or them in their necessaries and daily provisions may perswade every man to subscribe to these Axioms that the more which the King hath the more the people have That whosoever cozens and deceives the King cozens and deceives the people that the wants and necessities of the King and common parent which is to be supplyed by the people are and will become their own wants and necessities That it cannot be for the good or honor of the Nation that the King who is not onely Anima Cor Caput Radix Reipublicae the Soul heart head and foundation of the Commonwealth but the defender and preserver of it should either want or languish in his honor and estate when as unusquisque subditorum saith Valdesius Regi ut
for Tillage and Pasturage agros luxuriantes rich and fertil Lands watered and enriched with many Rivers her Mountains and Downs covered and replenished with Sheep and far more then they were before the Raign of King Edward the third abounds with Corn Butter Cheese and all manner of Commodities for the uâ—e and livelyhood of mankind and by a greater improvement of all the Lands of the Kinâ—dom within this last Century or hundred yeares then was in three or four hundred yeares before and by watering marling and burning the more barren parts of it is gone far beyond the time and expectation of our Fathers and Progenitors either Brittaines Saxons or Normans and is in the yearly value of Land increased in many parts or particulars thereof twenty thirty or fourty to one more then it was insomuch as we may to our comfort say and believe that Forraign Writers were well acquainted with our happiness when they called England the Court of Ceres and as Charles the great or Charlemaigne of France our neighbor was wont to term it the Granary of the Western world a Paradice of Pleasure and Garden of God and was many ages before in the Brittish times so fruitful in all kinde of Corn and Grain as the Romanes were wont yearly to transport from hence with a Fleet of eight hundred vessels then but something bigger then Barges great store of Corn for the maintenance of their Armies and our Brittains could before those large improvements of Lands and Husbandry which have been since made in it declare unto the Saxons when they unhappily called them in to their aid and took them to be their friends that it was a Land plentiful and abounding in all things Pope Innocent the fourth in the Raign of our King Henry the third called it Hortus deliciarum a Garden of delights ubi multa abundant where all things are plentiful And in the Raign of King Edward the third where there was small or very little enriching or bettering of Lands compared with what it is now the English Leigier Embassadors at Rome heaâ—ing that Pope Clement the sixth had made a grant as he then took upon him to the King of Spaine of the Fortunate Islands now called the Canaries did so believe that to be England which was then granted by the name of the Fortunate Islands as they made what haste they could home to inform the King of that which they believed to be a danger And may now more then ever well deserve those Encomiums or commendations which our industrious Speed hath given it that her Vallies are like Eden her Hills as Lebanon her Springs as Pisgah her Rivers as Jordan and hath for her Walls the Ocean which hath Fish more then enough to feed her people if they wanted Flesh and had not as they have such innumerable Herds of Cattle flocks of Sheep such plenty of Foul Fruit Poultery and all other provisions on the Land for the sustenance life of man to furnish the delicacy of the richer part of the people and the necessities of the poorer if they would but lay aside their too much accustomed Lazines and carelesseness with which the plenty of England hath infected her people and not suffer the Dutch to enrich themselves and make a great part of their vast Commerce and Trade by the Fish which they catch and take in our Brittish Seas multiplying the stocks of their children and Orphants whilst too many of ours for want of their parents industry have none at all or being ready to starve or dye do begg up and down the streets when the waters have made her great the Deep hath set her on high with her Rivers running round about her plants and sent out her little Rivers unto all the Trees of the field when she is become the Merchant for many Isles hath covered the Seas with her ships which go and return a great deal sooner then Solomons Ships to or from Ophyr searcheth the Indies and the remotest parts of the earth to enrich her borders and adds unto her extraordinary plenty the Spices Sugar Oyl Wine and whatsoever foreign Countries can produce to adorn our Tables which former Ages wanted or had not in so great an abundance And that her people are now if so much no more numerous than formerly by her emptying of multitudes of her Natives into Ireland since the Raign of King Henry the Second many of whose Inhabitants have been English transplanted gone thither by our many great Plantations since the middle of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth sent into America as Virginia Bermudas New-England Barbadoes St. Christophers Mary-Land Charibe Isles Meâ—is c. By our many Voyages at Sea and to the Indies more than formerly our Fishing in Newfound Land which we had not in former dayes our Nursery of War and Regiments of English in Holland and the United Provinces and our greateâ— than formerly Luxury use of Physick and shortning the lives of the richer part of the people by it When the Provisions for the Kings Houshold or the Compositions for them in so great a plenty as England is now more than formerly blessed with notwithstanding that we do keep fewer Vigils Fasting Eves than heretofore and do as it hath been an usage custom of this Nation eat more flesh in every one month of every year the time of Lent excepted which since the Reformation of our Religion the return of it from the now Church of Rome to that which is more Orthodox is very little at all or not so well observed as our Laws intend and it ought to be than all France Spain the Netherlands do in every year would if the Universal Pride Luxury of the people and their Racking and Cheating one another to maintain it did not hinder it be as cheap or cheaper afforded than it was heretofore For that our Ancestors well approved and much applauded customs of Hospitality are almost every where turned out of doors and an evil custom of eating no Suppers which a Tax for a little time of as much as was saved by one meal in every week introduced and brought into fashion to maintain the Grand Rebellion hath helped the Back to cozen the Belly and the Back with its Brigade of Taylors and all other the abused and retaining Trades to Lucifer hath cheated and rooted out Love Charity and good House-keeping and retrenched much of the Provisions which were wont to be better employed That the Lands of most part of the Monasteries and Religious Houses in England and Wales and their yearly Revenues which at the old easie rates were in or about the Raign of King Henry the Fourth computed to be sufficient and enough to maintain fifteen Earls which after the rate of Earls in those dayes and their great Revenues could not be a little fifteen hundred Knights six thousand two hundred Gentlemen and an hundred Hospitals besides â—wenty thousand pounds per Annum to be given
to the King many if not all of which were by Priviledges or otherwise exempted from Pourveyance and being at a low and great undervalue in the latter end of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth now above one hundred years since of the yearly value of one hundred eighty six thousand five hundred twelve pounds eight shillings peny farthing now improved unto more then Ten times that yeerly value are for the most part of them come to be the inheritance of Lay-men And too much of the Revenues of Bishops which by a sacrilegious alienation from the Church are not enjoyed by any of the sons of Levy A great part of the Lands belonging to Monasteries or Religious houses by custome or exemption become Tythe free The greatest part of 3845. Appropriations or Impropriations which had been formerly designed and given ad mensam unto several Monasteries and Religious houses for the better support and maintenance of their hospitality and which before contributed nothing to the Kings Pourveyance now made to be a Temporal and Lay inheritance Many Forrests and Chaces and a great part of other Forrests and Chases Deafforrested much Assart lands and many Parks converted to Tillage or Pasture No Escuage paid since the Reign of King Henry the sixth nor Aid leavyed to make the Kings eldest son a Knight or to marry his eldest daughter for above fifty years during the Reign of King Edward the sixth Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth and very many Copy-hold estates which usually paid nothing at all to the provisions for the Kings houshold converted into Freeholds Many Fenns and Imbancked Marshes consisting of some hundred thousand Acres Drained or recovered from the Sea An Espargne or saving more then formerly of much money very far surmounting the yearly charge damage or losses by the Kings Pouâ—veyances in the purchase or procuring the Popes Bulls which as was affirmed in the Parliament of 25 H. 8. had betwixt that time and the fourth year of the Reign of King H. 7. cost the people of this Kingdome threescore thousand pounds Steâ—ling by being no more troubled with provisions to Benefices many chargeable Oblations to the Church and mony spent in Lamps or Taâ—ers Pourveyance or provisions for the Popes Legates Shrines Copes Altarages extraordinary Masses Dirges Trentals relaxations faculties grants aboltions Pensions Censes Procurations rescripts appeals and long and chargeable journyes to Rome where as well as in England as their own Monkes and Wâ—iters affirm the Pope did Angariis Injuriis miseros exagitare poll and pill the wretched English made Walter Gray a Bishop of England in the Reign of King H. 3. pay one thousand pounds for his Pall and at the breaking up of every general Council extorted of every Prelate a great sum of money before he would give them leave to depart chid William Abbot of St. Albans for coming to take leave of him without any present and when he offered him fifty marks checked and inforced him before he went out of his Chamber to pay one hundred Marks the fashion being then for every man to pay dear for his Benedictions lay down his money ready told before his Holiness feet and if present Cash was wanting the Popes Merchants and Usurers were at hand but upon very hard conditions to supply it And so great were his Emunctiones as Mathew Paris calls them exactions and impositions in England as a bloody Wolf tearing the Innocent sheep by sometimes exacting a third part of the Clergies goods and at other times a twentieth by aides towards the defraying of his own wars and other pretences sometimes exacting the one half of an yearly revenew of their Benefices and enjoyning them under the penalty of their then dreadful Excommunications not to complain of it or publish it sending his Legats or Predicatores to wring and preach money out of the peoples purses pro negotio Crucis under coloâ—r of making a war to regain Jerusalem and the Holy Land out of the hands of the Saracens and by such a multitude of other contrivances and extorsions as all the Abbotts of England vulâ—u Flebili capite dâ—â—nisso were with great sorrow and lamentation enforced to complain to the King of the impossibility of satisfying the Pope eos incessanter torquenâ—i incessantly grinding tormenting them of his avarice and exactions toto â—undo detestabiles to be abhorred of all the world By Dispensations pardons liceâ—ces Indulgencies vows pilgrimages Writs calâ—ed perinde valere breeves and other instruments of sâ—â—dry natures names and kinds in great 〈◊〉 which in the Act of Parliament of â—5 H. 8. 〈…〉 the exonerating of the Kings subjects from 〈…〉 and impositions paid to the See of Rome 〈…〉 said to have greatly decayed and impoverished 〈◊〉 â—â—tâ—llerable exactions of great sums of money the subjects of the Realm A freedom from the chargeable giving of great quâ—ntities of Lands for Chantries and the weaniâ—g of that Clergy by the reformation of the Church oâ— England from their over-sucking or making sore the Breasts or Nipples of the common people which the murmuring men of these times would if they had as their forefathers tried it more then seven times and over and over be of the opinion of Piers the Plowman in Chaucer who being of the Romish Church wrote in the unfortunate Reign of King Richard the second when the Hydra of our late Rebellious devices spawned by the not long before ill grounded Doctrines and treasonable positions of the two Spencers father and son began to Craule complaining That the Friars followed folke that were rich And folk that were poor at little price they set And no Cors in the Kyrkeyard nor Kyrke was buried But quick he bequeth them ought or quit part of his det Adviseth his friend Go confesse to some Frier and shew him thy synnes For while Fortune is thy frend Friers will thee love And fetch the to their Fraternity and for thee beseech To their Prior Provinciall a pardon to have And pray for the pole by pole if thou be pecunâ—osus Brings in a Frier perswading a sick Farmer to make his confession to him rather then to his Parish Priest and requesting him as he lay upon his death-bed to bestow a Legacy upon his Covent Give me then of thy Gold to make our Cloister Quoth he for many a Muskle and many an Ouster When other men have been full well at ease Hath been our food our Cloister for to rease And yet God wot unneath the foundement Performed is ne of our pavement Is not a Tile yet within our wones By God we owen fourty pound for stones And in his Prologue to his Canterbury Tales thus Characters such a Frier Full sweetly heard he confession And pleasant was his absolution He was an easie man to give pennance There as he wist to have a good pitance The diâ—use of the old and never grudged course of Sponte Oblata's gifts or presents to the King and the
Aurum Reginae Gold or presents made and given to the Queen in return of their Gifts and favors received from the King Great liberties and priviledges by grants of free Warren Mines Felons and Outlaws goods Deodands Waiss Estraies Fishings Court Leets Tolls and freedom from Tolls to many Cities and people of England granted since the ninth year of the raign of King Henry the third when for the like and some other liberties then confirmed unto them the people of England not having half so much before that time granted unto them as by the bounty and Indulgences of the succeeding Kings and Princes they have had since took it to be no ill bargain to give unto the King for that his grace and favour a Subsidy of the Fifteenth part of all their moveables not loosely rated or much undervalued as their posterities have found the way to do Abundance of Wood and Tymber sold and destroyed by their prodigal posterities which yeelded them as much money as the inheritance of the Lands would have done some of their wives like the story of Garagantuas lusty Mare whisking down with their Tailes whole Woods and great store of Timber in them of two or three hundred years growth A lesser number of servants and retainers and charge of Badges and Liveries especially since the Statutes of 1 R. 2. ca. 7. and 8 E. 4. ca. 2. made against too great a number or the abuse of them when as now many Gentlemen can put a Coachman Carter into one and supply the places of a Servingman Butler and Taylor by one man fitted for all those imployments A great increase of Wool and the price thereof since the Raign of King Edward the third by our quondam flourishing Trade of Clothing untill that our late giddy times of Rebellion had so very much lessened and impaired it Many great Factories or Manufactures of Bays Sayes Serges and Kerseys at and about Colchester Sudbury c. and of stuffs at Norwich Canterbury Sandwich Kiderminster c. erected and encouraged before our long and late unhappy wars and the raign and Rapine of Mechanick Reformers The Lands of Wales greatly improved since the Raign or King Henry the fourth and his severe Laws which denyed them the intercourse commerce and priviledges of England The freeing of some of the Northern Counties as Cumberland Westmerland and Northumberland from the trouble charge and damages of maintaining their Borders against the Scotish formerly and frequent outrages invasions and taking away their goods and cattle by day and by night And the like freedom from the incursions and depraedations of the Welch assured and settled upon the four Shires or Counties of Gloucester Worcester Hereford and Shropshire by the guard and residence of a Lord President of Wales and the Marches thereof Abundance of Markets and Fairs now more then formerly granted so as few or no parts of England and Wales can complain of any want of them within every four or five miles distance Great stoâ—e of Welch Scottish and Irish-cattel now yearly brought into England when as few or none were heretofore Horses Oxen and Cattel now by Law permitted to be transported into the parts beyond the Seas which were formerly denyed A greater profit made to many private Lords of Mannors by Lead and other Mines c. more then heretofore Many Fruit Trees bearing Apples Pears c. yearly planted and great quantities of Sider and Perry made more then formerly Many Rivers made Navigable and Havens repaired The loss of Cattel and great damages by Inundations of the Sea or the Creeks thereof or of some boysterous and unâ—uly Rivers prevented by contributions to the making of Sea walls by several Statutes or Commissions for Sewers None or very little trouble or charges before ouâ— late wars for maintaining of Garrisons c. or by the disorder or Rapines of any of them Our Ships better then in former times secured upon the Sea Coasts by light houses c. Some of our Principal native Commodities as Fâ—llers Earth Leather Hides c. and Corn when it is not cheap prohibited to be exported Divers Statutes restraining Aliens not being Denizend to Trade or keep Shops c. Convenient provisions made for Vicars in case of Churches appropriate The goods of Foraigners to be taxed for the payment of fifteens The breed of large Horses and increase of Husbandry commanded divers Statutes made for the incouragement of Merchants Merchandize and Mariners preservation of Fishing Fuel Cattel and Rivers and against Freequarter of souldiers excessive Tolls Forestallers Regrators Ingrossers and Monopolies Riots Routs and Vagabond Rogues and to relieve the poor All Commotes or unlawful gatherings of money in Wales and the Marches thereof taken away Weights and measures Regulated Depopulations prohibited Many an unjust title in concealed Lands made good by sixty years quiet possession Interest for money lent reduced to a lower rate then formerly and Brokage forbidden No Tillage or errable land to be laid down but as much to be broken up Merchants Strangers permitted to Trade and sell their Merchandize in England and buy and sell things veâ—dible and a great improvement of Trade and Merchandize six or seven times exceeding that which was in or before the raign of Queen Elizabeth Fishgarthes in the Rivers of Ouse and Humber ordered to be pulled down The passage upon the River of Severne freed from Tolles imposed by the proprietors of the Lands upon the Banks The bringing of Silver Bullion into England by our English Merchants encouraged the transportation from thence of Gold and Silver without the Kings licence prohibited and the care of the Kings Exchangers untill the disuse of it now of late preventing all abuses in the coyn or money of the Kingdom Merchants Aliens and Merchants of Ireland ordained to imploy their mony received in England upon the Commodities thereof and every Merchant Alien to finde Sureties that they shall not carry Gold or Silver out of this Realm The keeping of great numbers of Sheep by rich men whereby meaner men were impoverished restrained to a certain number Ordinances made for Bakers Brewers and other Victuallers The prices of victuals to be rated and assessed by the Magistrates Rents of houses in Staple-Towns to be reasonable and assessâ—d by the Maior Great quantities of waste grounds and Commons inclosed and improved A long and happy Peace at home for more then two hundred years Many an Act of Parliament made to prevent or remedy grievances enlarge the peoples liberties and make them the most free and happy Nation in the world si sua bona Norint if they could but be content with their happiness and know how to use it All the Revenues and Estates of the people aswell reall as personal exceedingly and by many degrees improved more then formerly And all manner of Victuals and provisions sold at such excessive rates and prices as would busie our Forefathers with no common or ordinary wonder if they could be alive again
to see or understand it and makes the former Market prizes and rates to be but as Pigmies or Dwarfs to those which are now so immense and Gigantine So as if the Laws of God Nature and Nations right reason and the heretofore well approved custome of England with the care of avoiding of evils and inconveniencies which was wont to be the primum mobile and greatest Orator in worldly affairs to incite and stir up most mens cares and preventions mâ—ny of whom have had cause to lament the not allowing of that and oother the Kings ancient and just rights and a due submission thereunto cannot perswade or lead them unto that great part of reason duty called Prae-emption Pourveyance or Compositions for them the consideration of the lâ—berties and happiness which they do now enjoy more then many of their Ancestors might certainly drive or carry them into their more laudable ways and courses When the peoples want of a liberty of unmannerliness or Praeemption before their Soveraign or his servants on his behalf begets no other loss or grievance unto them then a disturbance of their Fancies or their not obtaining that which did not become them or their Humor of hindring their betters from having of it or to make a vie betwixt them and the Kings servants either to hinder him from having of it or to make him pay for it a great deal more then it was worth Which Davids three Worthies who hazarded their lives And brake thorough the host of the Philistims to draw water out of the Well of Bethlehem and brought it to David who longed and had a desire to drink of it would never have done but would have been ashamed to offer unto their Prince so great an indignity And the charge and enhaunce of the prices of all Commodities necessary for houshold provisions will by the needless racking of rates and prices and the Insana praetia intollerable rates and prices which the King by the avarice and insatiableness of the sellers is and shall be inforced to give so infect and spoile the markets of such part of the people as shall have occasion to buy which are many to every one that is a seller those that are sellers having sometimes also occasion to be buyers as if the wisdom of the King and his great and Privy Councel prevent it not there will in a few years be ten times or a greater charge more then was in the same year when the Pourveyance or Compositions for it were abolished imposed upon the subjects by the Tyranny of rates and prices then ever the Compositions for the Kings Pourveyance or houshold provisions did amount unto And when the difference in the Compositions for the Kings Pourveyance betwixt the Market rates and the Kings price do amount at the utmost but unto sixty five thousand pounds per annum or thereabouts and is charged upon so many and in so easie and petit proportions And being no greater a charge or inconvenience the people who in a legal and Parliamentary way are to help him to sustain and bear his burdens if they love and tender their own good and the well being of themselves and their posterities will too prodigally cast away too much of their own happiness and as much of their own Estates if they shall for want of so small and easie accommodations which are so just and so necessary to the honor and support of their Prince enforce him into so great a prejudice and damage as to pay yearly four times as much as sixty five thousand pounds per annum shall amount unto in many if not all the particulars of his houshold provisions as may be instanced in four and twenty shillings the price of a Sheep which was in the Compositions to be served in at three shillings four pence Aâ— Oxe twelve pounds which was to have been furnished at four marks three shillings or two shillings six pence for a Hen which was to be furnished for two pence four shillings for a Goose which was to be sent in for four pence Lambs at twelve pence a piece for which he now pays eleven or twelve shillings and at Christmas sixteen or twenty shillings Wheat at ten pence a Bushel the Market rate being no more for Wheat in 18. of Queen Elizabeth for which he lately paid before the late dearth 7 s. 6 d. a Bushel and cannot furnish sixteen dishes of meat to the Table of one of his great Officers of his houshold if report be true under twenty shillings a dish And if weather beatâ—n by such an exaction and enhaunce of prices he shall seek a shelter or Port by putting one thousand two hundred and fourty servants the Queens servants above and below staiâ—s not included to Boardâ—wages the profits and allowed avails of their places which contrary to the Laws of England the honor of the King the weal and profit of him and his people too many have deaâ—ly bought and paid for will to reduce their vails and profits of their places into a certain yearly Board-wages their standing Wages and Pensions being so very petit and inconsiderable cost him in such an unreasonable and intollerable exaction and enhaunce of Rates and Prices as there is in the Markets ten times more in money and twenty times more in some then what he now paies if his servants shall not like hunger bitten starved and ragged Beggars be enforced to torment aswell as shame him with their daily Petitions and importunities or be as the naked attendants about the Salvage Kings Or if he shall not make them recompence for the losses of their Diet and availes arising by it will undoe and ruine very near so many Families and Dependencies who have nothing to live upon but his Majesties service and their hopes of subsistance by it Or if the loss of Pourveyance or Compositions for them shall in his house-keeping endamage him but two hundred thousand pounds per annum it will with one hundred thousand pounds per annum profit which was heretofore made by the Tenures amount unto three hundred thousand pounds per annum which will be more then that part of the Excise which was allowed in lieu of the Tenures and Pourveyance and the supplemental Revenue of the Chimney money deductis deducendis will yearly bring into the Kings Exchequer So great a damage will arise unto the King by the loss of his Pourveyance and Compositions for them and so much the greater if he shall put his servants which never King of England was yet inforced unto and the Nobility and Gentry of England untill of late disdained to do to Board-wages and give them recompence for their losses and will be not onely a very great damage and inconvenience in the consequence to the people But a great dishonor unto the King whose sublimity Majesty and Honor is not to be measured or managed by the narrow rules of private men or house-keepers for although it may relish very well
nine pounds per annum Cheshire having sixty eight Parishes and furnâ—shing but 25. lean Oxen at the Kings price 2l 13s -4d a peice Total 66 l. 13 s. 4 d. at the Market price 6 â— 10 s. Total 162 l. 10 s. 0. Difference 95 l. 16 s. 8 d. was not thereby charged with more then one pound nine shillings upon every parish Cornewall having an hundred sixty one Parishes and furnishing but Ten fat Oxen at the Kings price 4 l. Total â—0 l. Market price 10 l. Total 100 l. Difference 60l did bear not so great a contribution as eight shillings upon every Parish The County of Devon having three hundred ninty four Parishes and furnishing but Ten fat Oxen at the Kings price 4 l. Total 40 l. Market price 10 l. Total 100l Difference 60 l. Muttons fat 150. at the Kings price 6 s. 8 d. Total 50 l. Market price 18 s. Total 135l Difference 85l paid no greater a sum in that yearly Composition then ten shillings upon every parish Gloucestershire which hath two hundred and eighty parishes paid but four hundred twenty two pounds seven shillings eight pence which was not one pound eleven shillings upon every parish Hertfordshire numbering one hundred and twenty parishes paid but one thousand two hundred fifty nine pounds ninteen shillings four pence which laid upon every parish but abouâ— ten pounds ten shillings Herefordshire furnishing but 18. fat Oxen at the Kings price 4 l. Total 72 l. Market price 10 l. Total 180l Difference 108 l. and having one hundred seventy six parâ—shes made every one of them a contributary of no more then about twelve shilâ—ings six pence upon every parish Kent having three hundred ninety eight parishes and being a very great gainer by the Kings so constant abode in his Chamber of London more then its charge of Pourveyâ—nce amounted unto paid but three thousand three hundred thirty four pounds and six shillings which laid upon ever parish for Composiâ—ions for the Pourveyance no more then about eight pounds ten shillings Lincolnshire which hath six hundred and thirty parishes and paid but one thousand one hundred seventy five pounds thirteen shâ—llings and eight pence charged every parish with no more then about nineteen shâ—llings six pence or thereabouts The County of Northampton having three hundred twenty six parishes and being like to be no looser by its gainful vicinity to London and the Royal Residence paid no more towards the Pourveyance and Compositions then nine hundred nineâ—y three pounds eighteen shillings four pence which was for every parish very little more then three pounds The County of Norfolke having six hundred and sixty parishes paid but one thousand ninety three pounds two shillings and eight pence which charged every parish not with one pound eleven shillings Somersetshire which hath three hundred eighty five parishâ—s and paid no more then seven hundred fifty five pounds fourteen shâ—llings eight pence laid no greater a leavy for the Composition for Pourveyance upon every Parish then about fourty shillings The County of Surry having one hundred and fourty parishes and paid no more then one thousand seventy nine pounds three pence rendered every parish a contributer for the Pourveyance of not above seven pounds nineteen shillings The County of Sussex which hath one hundred and twelve parishes and paid no more to that kind of contribution then one thousand and sixteen pounds two shillings six pence makes every Parish to be charged with no greater a sum or proportion then three pounds thirteen shillings six pence or thereabouts And London which is and hath been the greatest gainer by the residence of the King and his principal Courts of Justice at Westminster and by the confluence of the people not onely of this Nation but many Merchants and people from all parts of the Christian word is grown to be the grand Emporium and Town of Trade in England mighty and strong in shipping a Merchant-like Tyrus for many Isles and as great and famous as any City or Mart Town of the World to whom all the Ships of the Sea with their Mariners do bring their Merchandize the most of Nations are her Merchants by reason of the multitude of the Wares of her making and with the multitude of her riches and Merchandize makes all the other parts Counties Cities and Borough Towns of the Kingdom as to riches money and Trade her vassals and retailers doth for all these benefits contribute with the out Ports only for the Kings Grocery ware which if it could be called a contribution did in some years amount according to the full price but unto two thousand pounds per annum and in other years but unto sixteen hundred pounds or there abouts and is raised and charged by way of Impost upon the gross quantites of such kinde of Merchandise and being repayed the Merchant by the retailer and by the buyer to the retailer was no more in the fifth year of the Raign of King Charles the fiâ—st in the Impost or Rates of Composition then as followeth viz. Rates of Composition for Grocery wares for his Majesties House Pepper The hundred pound xviii d. Cloves The hundred pound xviii d. Mace The hundred pound xviii d. Nutmeggs The hundred pound xviii d. Cynamon The hundred pound xviii d. Ginger the hundred pound xii d. Raisons of the Sun the hundred waight iii. d. Raisons great the piece i. d. ob Proyns the Tun xvi d. Almonds the hundred waight v. d. Corrants the Tun ii s. Sweet oyle the Pipe iii. s. Sugar refined the hundred waight viii d. Sugar powder and Mukovadoes the C. waight v. d. The Chest xx d. Sugar corse and paneles the C. waight iii. d. Figges the Barrell i. d. Figges the Piece ob q. Figges the Topnet ob Dates the hundred waight viii d. Rice the hundred waight iiii d. ob Olives the Tun iiii s. Castel and all other hard Soap the C. waight vi d. Anniseeds the hundred waight ii d. Licorish the hundred waight ii d. And so petit as in a pound of Raisins of the Sunne now sold for four pence a pound it falls to be less then the eighth or tenth part of a farthing increase of price in every pound of Raisins of the Sun And as inconsiderable in the charge or burden of it laid upon the Grocers or Retailers as that of their pack-thred and brown paper which in the vent of those commodities and accommodation of Customers are freely and willingly given into the bargain And when the Brewers in London and four miles about did before the granting of the Excise upon Ale and Beer and taking away of the Pourveyances or Composition for them pay four pence in every quartet of Malt which they Brewed the Composition thereof amounting but unto three thousand five hunded pounds per annum being now remitted and not paid by reason of the said Excise that yearly Impost or Composition did not onely lye upon the Brewers but was dispersed and laid upon
all their Customers and Inhabitants of London who paying for it in the smalness of their Ale and Beer and of the measure were notwithstanding no loosers by it when as the damage that the poorest sort of house-keepers received thereby came not when their gains were least unto the twentieth penny nor of the richer to the hundreth or two hundreth peny of what they gained by the Kings residence by trade letting of lodgings or the greater rent of their houses and if the Brewer had paid it himself and not laid it upon his Customers might for his priviledge in Brewing in the Cities of London and Westâ—minster and not being removed or punished for the Nuisance have very well afforded so small a sum as four pence in every quarter of Mault containing Berkshire Cheshire Cornewall Devonshire Gloucestershire Hertfordshire Herefordshire Kent Northampton Norfolk Somersetshire Surrey Sussex and London may give the prospect of the rest and how small the proportions were which were charged upon such as were to bear or pay them may make it appear that that so much now of late complained of charge of Pourveyance or Compositions for them will be so little as there will be no cause at all for it when as the yearly charge of buying Babies Hobby horses and Toys for children to spoil as well as play with which costs England as hath been computed near one hundred thousand pounds per annum or of amending the High ways yearly Treatments given to Harvest Folk or the expences of an Harvest Goose and a Seed Cake given yearly to their Plow-men keeping a Wake or Parish Feast every year or the monyes which the good Women in every Parish and County do expend in their Gosshippings at the birth of their Neighbours Children or many other such like trivial and most cheerful and pleasing expences will make the foot of the accompt as to the several kinds of those particulars to be a great deal more then the charge of that necessary duty of Pourveyance or Compositions for them which was so â—asy and petit as in most of the Counties of England it was many times not singly rated or assessed by it self but was joyned with some other Assessements and in Kent where more was paid then in any one County near London it was so little felt and regarded as a Tenant paying one hundred pounds rent per annum for his Land did not think it to be of any concernment for him to reckon it to his Landlord and demand an allowance for it Which caused the people of Oxfordshire Barkshire Wiltshire and Hampshire upon his now Majesties most happy restoration receiving his gracious letters offering them the Election of suffering him to take his Prae-emption and Pourveyance or to pay the Compositions to return answer by their letters which were read before the King in his Compting-house in White-Hall that they humbly desired him to accept of the Compositions And all the other Counties and the generality of the people of the smaller as well as greater Intellectuals to understand it to be so much for the good of the King his People as many of them are troubled and discontented that he hath them not And they who causing the Markets and the prices of things to be so unreasonably dear and excessive by their own raising of prices for their own advantages may when they please make the difference betwixt the Kings rates and theirs to be none at all or much lesser if they would but sell as cheap as they might afford their commodities according to the plenty of Victuals or provisions which is in England The high prices and rates which are now put upon Victuals and Provisions for Food and House-keeping being neither enforced nor occasioned by any plenty of Gold or Silver in England and if there were any such store or abundance of it non causatur effective cujus effectus est necessarius nisi aliunde impediatur could not be so the sole or proper cause of it as if not otherwise hindered it could not want its necessary effect Berkshire Cheshire Cornewall Devonshire Gloucestershire Hertfordshire Herefordshire Kent Northampton Norfolk Somersetshire Surrey Sussex and London may gâ—ve the prospect of the rest and how small the proportions were which were charged upon such as were to bear or pay them That so much now of late complained of charge of Pourveyance or Compositions foâ— them will be so little as there will be no cause at all for it when as the yearly charge of buying Babies Hobby-horses and Toys for children to spoil aswell as play with which costes England as hath been computed near one hundred thousand pounds per annum or of amending the High ways yeerly Treatments given to Harvest Folk or the expences of an Harvest Goose and a Seed Cake given yearly to their Plowmen keeping a Wake or Parish Feast every year or many other such like trivial and most cheerful and pleasing expences will make the foot of the accompt as to the several kinds of those particulars to be a great deal more then the charge of that necessary duty of Pourveyance or Compositions for them which was so easie and petit as in most of the Counties of England it was many times not singly rated or assessed by it self but was joyned with some other Assessements and in Kent where more was paid then in any one County near London it was so little felt and regarded as a Tenant paying one hundred pounds rent per annum for his Land did not think it to be of any concernment for him to reckon it to his Landlord and demand an allowance for it And the people of Oxfordshire Barkshire Wiltshire and Hampshire upon his now Majesties most happy restoration receiving his gracious letters offering them the Election of suffering him to take his Prae-emption and Pourveyance or to pay the Compositions returned answer by their letters which were read before the King in his Compting house in Whitehall that they humbly desired him to accept of the Compositions And all the other Counties and the generality of the people of the smaller as well as greater Intellectuals do understand it to be so much for the good of the King and the people as many of them are troubled and discontented that he hath them not And they who causing the Markets and the prices of things to be so unreasonably dear and excessive by their own raising of prices for their own advantages may when they please make the difference betwixt the Kings rates and theirs to be none at all or much lesser if they would but sell as cheap as they might afford their commodities according to the plenty of Victuals or provisions which is in England The high prices and rates which are now put upon Victuals and Provisions for Food and house-keeping being neither enforced nor occasioned by any plenty of Gold or Silver in England and if there were any such store or abundance of it non causatur effective
cujus effectus est necessarius nisi aliunde impediatur could not be so the sole or proper cause of it as if not otherwise hindered it could not want its necessary effect CHAP. VII That the supposed plenty of money and Gold and Silver in England since the Conquest of the West Indies by the Spaniards hath not been a cause of raising the prices of food and victuals in England BUt will upon a due examination be too light in the Ballanee of Truth and Reason and deserve a place in the Catalogue of vulgar Errors For that the rise of Silver in its value or denomination by certain gradations or parts in several Ages from twenty pence the ounce by King Henry the sixth by his prerogative to thirty pence and between his Raign and that of Queen Elizabeth to forty pence and after to forty five pence and after to sixty pence ours being of a finer standard mixture or Allay then that of France the united Belgicque Provinces or the haâ—se or Imperial Cities of Germany and is now as high as five shillings and a penny the ounce comes far short of the now or then enhaunce of victuals and commodities and makes so large a disproportion as the abundance of that could not be probably the cause of the dearth of victuals and all manner of Commodities for that the plenty of those bewitching and domineering mettals of Gold and Silver supposed to be betwixt the Times of the discovery and subduing of the Indian Mines in the Raign of our King Henry the seventh which was about the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and five and the middle of the Raign of King Edward the sixth when as those Irritamenta malorum American riches and the alurements of them did not in the time of Charles the fifth Emperor who out-lived our King Henry the eight amount unto for his account any more then five hunddred thousand Crowns of Gold and with that and what came into Europe to the Spanish Merchants Accompts our English havâ—ng not then learnt the way to the West Indies or to search the unknown passages of the unmerciful Ocean could not have so great an influence upon England which was no neer neighbor to the Indies as to cause that dearth of Victuals all commodities which was heavily complained of in the raign of King Edward the sixth and if it had there would not have been any necessity of King Henry the 8. embasing or mixing with Copper so much as he did the Gold and Silver Coin of the Nation or that the price of the ounce of Silver should be raised betwixt the Raign of King Henry the 7. and the middle of the raign of Queen Elizabeth to sixty pence or five shillings the ounce and though it must be granted that the raising of the ounce of Silver by King Henry the 8. or King Edward the 6. to five and forty pence and afterwards by some of his successors to sixty pence and the making of more pence out of an Ounce then was formerly might be some cause of the enhaunce of the price of victuals and commodities And that some of our Gallants or Gentlemen of these times forgetting the laudable fâ—ugality of their ancestors who had otherwise not have been able to have leâ—t them those Lands estates which do now so elevate their Poles â—ay by coiting their mony from them as if they were weary of it many times ignorantly give out of their misused abundance more mony or as much again as a thing is worth or not having money to play the fools withall in the excess of gluttony or apparel or the pursuite of their other vices may sometimes by taking them upon day or trust give three or four timâ—s more then the commoditys would be sold to another for ready money the seller being many times never paid at all and if he should reckon his often attendance and waiting upon such a customer to no other purpose but to tire himself and never get a peny of his money would have been a greater gainer if he had given him his wares or commodityes for nothing and if after many yeers he should by a chance meet with his money looseth more by his interest then the principal amounted unto Yet if Parliaments which have been composed of the collected wisdom of the Nation and their Acts and Statutes which have been as they are understood to be made with the wisdom and universal consent of the people of England tanta solemnitate and with so great solemnity as Fortescue in the Raign of King H. 6. and the Judges in Doctor Fosters Case in 12. Jac. Regis do say they are may be credited the plenty of Gold and Silver was never alleaged or believed to be a cause of the dearness of Victuals and provisions When as the Statute of Herring made in the thirty fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the third when the Trade of Clothing was in a most flourishing condition such a Trade necessarily inducing conferring some plenty of money declares the cause of the dearness of Herring to be because that the Hostes of the Town of great Yarmouth who lodged the Fishers coming there in the time of the Fair would not suffer the Fishers to sell their Herrings nor to meddle with the sale of the same but sell them at their own will as dear as they will and give the Fishers that pleaseth them so that the Fishers did withdraw themselves to come there and the Herring was set at a greater dearth then there was before and that men outvied and overbid each other For if the many accidents concurring to the enhauncing of the price of any thing or commodity beyond its ordinary and intrinsicque worth value shall be rightly considered as famine the unseasonableness of the year or harvest blasts or Mildews of Corn transportation fear of an approaching famine keeping Corn and provisions from Markets and hoarding them up eâ—ther for the people 's own use or to catch an opportunity of the highest rates the scarcity or surpassing excellency of it obstructions which wars policy or controversies of Princes or neighbor Nations one with or against another may put upon it a general Murrain or Mortality of Cattel Inundations of waters great store of provision or foder for Cattle or a gentle Winter the charge and burden of a new Tolle or Taxe a present necessity to have the thing desired to be bought or had which the crafty and covetous seller hath taken notice of the importunity of an affection to have it although it cost a great deal more then the worth of it or the conveniency for one more then another which may recompence the damage in giving too much for it or more then was otherwise needful making it to be a good bargain for that particular person time or place which would not be so for others and the Market people imitating one anothers high demands
have made in overplus and spare money and that Paul Bayning an Alderman of London could about the same time besides an Estate in Land of inheritance of almost six thousand pound per annum make a totall of his personal Estate of about one hundred and fourty thousand pounds which was as much or more then many thousand men in the County of Essex could above their necessary expences make in â—n overplus or sum of money And that if money were in England as plentiful as it was in Jerusalem in the happy Raign of the wise King Solomon when it was said to be in as much abundance as the stones in the streets yet if Corn Cattel and food should be scarce the greatest plenty of money we can imagine would not deliver us from that dearth which was in that Kingdom not many years after when Samaria was besieged making the excessive rates of an Asses head and a Kab of Pigeons Dung and whether money be scarce or plentiful if there should be a famine as it was in Israel when there had been no rain in three years when the heavens were as brass and the fruits of the earth failed no man can with any reason believe that the great rates or prices of Corn Victuals and houshold provisions were because there was plenty of Gold Silver for if there be a scarcity of the thing to be bought it must be the want of that and not the abundance of money that makes the dearness which if it be never so much cannot increase that little that is of the Commodity or thing to be bought nor the want of money make it to be any cheaper the want or plenty of it contributing in such a case nothing at all to the making that to be dear which when there is more of it will be sold at a cheaper rate for a little money whether they that are to buy it have little or more of money the want of money constraining him that sells to sell cheaper and the great store of money sometimes but not often or generally perswading the buyer to give more then one that hath not so much will be dâ—awn to give for it For as it is true that in Virginia where their principal Barter or Exchange is by Tobacco instead of money and is there many times used as their Coyn or money that where any man there is in want of Tobacco and must needs have it he will be willing to give more Beavers Skins or any other commodities which he hath for it then he would otherwise do if Tobacco were more plentiful or easier to be had And as certain likewise that when there is great store of Tobacco and it is in the language of Merchants and Tradesmen but as a Drug and of little price or value there will not be so much of other things or commodities given for it So it will be as true and certain that there is in no Kingdom or Country of Christendom especially in our Brittain and other world where howsoever some Cosmographers and Chartes or Mapps would by a great mistake make Gold to be a Native the Sun is not so amorous as to beget us Mines of Gold nor is there any probability that there ever were any neither is there any Tagus or River bringing any golden Sands along with it And that which we have of Silver is but rarely and seldom intermixed and lurking in our Mines of Lead there can be no ground for our belief or reason that there should be such a disesteem or under valuing of Gold and Silver in regard of any plenty of it as was amongst the Americans or West Indians when they would give great quantities of it for Knives Beads or other Toys which the novelty of them or their desires to have them made to be pretious or that there should ever be such a surfet of Gold and Silver which most of the sons of men do desire to get or keep as to make all things dear which are to be bought with it or to hinder that cheapness of things to be bought with it which will be of necessity where there happens to be an abundance which is the true and never failing cause of cheapness abstracted and altogether a stranger to any supposed plenty of money neither the want of money or plenty of it being generally any sole proper or efficient cause of cheapness or dearness which residing in the commodity to be bought or fold tanquam in subjecta materia as in its matter or subject regulates and makes the price when there are no fraudes or Artifices to disturbe it according as there is a scarcity or plenty of that which is to be bought or sold which is the cause that the scarcity of money hath not in all ages made or enforced a cheapness of commodities or houshold provisions to be bought with it nor a plenty of money made a dearness or enhaunce of prices nor any thing like or within many degrees of that which is nâ—w or â—ath been within forty years last past and they therefore will err toto Caelo who by misplacing thâ— cause would make the plenty or scarcity of the mensura or money to be either the cause of the scarcity or plenty dearness or cheapness of the Mensurata or things to be bought with it as by a retrospect into the course of former times and ages may be plainly manifested Where we may find the Britaines when the Barbarians drave them back to the Sea and the Sea put them back to the Barbarians grievously tormented with a famine and mortality which raged in the Land and with great desolations wrought by that dearth and after they had by repressing their enemies gained some peace and that produced such a plenty and abundance of all things as the like before no age had seen to have faln into great Riots and Excesses plenty of money there being then none or little in the Land not being any cause of the dearth or scarcity nor scarcity of the mony of the plenty of provisions The Saxons being oppressed with the invasion of the Danes and enforced to pay them a Composition of sixteen thousand pounds shortly after twenty thousand pounds afterwards twenty four then thirty and lastly fourty thousand pounds untill all the Land was emptyed of all her Coyne did not find their Victuals to be cheap in regard of their want of money but Victuals and all things to be bought with it to be dear by reason of the spoil of wars and Murrain of Cattel And they having in Anno Domini 1066 met with Talions Law and the Divine vindicta or punishment for their perfidiousness to the Britaine 's hastened by their excess of pride the women wearing as Ordericus vitalis a contemporary of William the Conqueror tells us far longer Trains or Garments then was necessary and the men striving to overtake the pride and vanity of Absolom in his hair or Bush of Excrement and so
pence in one intire peice of coyn and a Queen Elizabeths six pence doth now pass in payment for three times the value of a two pence yet our Caesars value or rate put upon it making our now Denarius or penny to be current at the rate or value which the former Denarius or peny was and the King giving at his Mint or Exchange for those or any other coyns of Silver after the rate as the ounce of Silver is now at and the buyers of things or commodities can put it away in payment for a peny and the seller can pass it away for as much as he received it there is no wrong at all done by it when it passeth in England though the intrinsick value will be onely looked upon in Foraign parts for a greater value then it is as in some of the Heathen Countries where Rice and sometimes Cocao Nuts pass for their money or as the Dutch have done when some of their Towns have been streightly besieged in allowing the Townesmen and â—arrison to make use of Tynne Leather or Paper for money and not onely promised but at the raising of the siege rendred them in good money as much as that went or was taken for or as our King James did when he made good Queen Elizabeths promise and paid good money for that Copper or base money which her necessities in the Irish wars had made use of for the present or as our farthing Tokens or brass did no hurt but a great deal of good when they went for more then the intrinsick worth or value And therefore such high rates and prices of victuals and houshold provisions may well be understood to be the product of other causes and not of any plenty of money which could not cause either a scarcity of provisions which is one of the grand causes of high rates and prices or when there is a plenâ—y of provisions enforce any great rates and prices for them But if it should be otherwise and that the valuing of Coyn above their true and real values should have no small influence upon the prices and rates of food and houshold provisions yet they did not always proceed passibus aequis keep even pace one with another when as from the raâ—sing of the ounce of Silver to fourty five pence those peices of Coyn which went before for a penny were as Mr. Malines saith taken in payment in the Raigns of King Henry the eighth Edward the sixth and Queen Mary for two pence and when the ounce of Silver came to be five shillings or sixty pence in the Raign of Queen Elizabeth went for three pence though it waighed but a penny waight the prices or rates of victuals and houshold provâ—sions would not keep company with the intrinsick value of the money but contenâ—ing themselves with the denomination or what it was then or is since onely currâ—nt for are at this day gone excessively beyond the rise of the ounce of Silver so unreasonably as they do exceed all measure and reason those proportions which were formerly holden betwixt the coyn and the Bullion and Master Malines in his book called Lex Mercatoria attributting all or or the most part of the dearness of all sorts of houshold provisions to the raising of the Rents of Lands will hardly be able to reconcile that contradiction with what he seemeth at the same time to be very positive in that according to plenty or scarcity of mony commodities do generally become dear or good cheap and that so it came to pass of late years that every thing is enhaunced in price by the aboundance of Bullion moneys which come from the West Indies into Europe and the money it self being altered by valuation caused the measure to be made lesser whereby the number did increase to make up the tale being augmented by denomination from twenty to forty and in later years from forty five to sixty it being always to be remembred that the rareness or scarcity of every thing doth augment the value and that it is the value which begets an esteem and makes it precious and that Silver being in the infancy of the world very much esteemed and valued and hath to the decrepit and old age of the world more more increased its value and esteem the rising of the price or rate of the ounce of Silver by King Henry the sixth King Henry the eight and Queen Elizabeth might as well proceed from the scarcity of it as from any policy or reason of State to keep our Silver at home and not permit it to be carryed away by Foraign Princes enhances or putting a denomination upon it over and above its real value or to keep the ballance of Trade and Commerce even betwixt us and them and that as it hath been rationally enough said by some that the denomination of coyn passeth by the connivance of the Magistrate insensibly and as much without damage or inconvenience to the people as the permissive monies have done amongst Brokers and Merchants Cashiers and as it is now daily experimented by the Brass or Copper farthing since the causeless suspention of the farthing tokens by the late over turning Reformers because they were established by his late Majesties Letters Patents or upon some other new found Politick pretences which some Tavern keepers and Chandlers do take the boldness to stamp with an inscription of their own names and places of abode And it would be near of kin to a wonder the reason of it lye everlastingly hid undiscovered that any plenty of monys here should so swell our rates and prices and make every thing dear which is to be bought with it and make a plenty of provisions to be as a scarcity when as there have been no such effects or consequences thereof found amongst other Nations For the Hollanders who by the Artifice of their Banks and greatness of their Trade do give laws to all the commerce and money of Christendom and a great part of the Pagan Nations and in their long wars with the King or Spain for above sixty years together have been a means to waste consume all the Gold and money which his Indies or other large and over taxed Dominions could furnish and had it spent upon or amongst them and having little Lands of their own but much of their provisions and victuals from the neighboring Countries and Nations could not in that great plenty of money and Trade wherein they are known to abound live so cheaply as they might if the heavy burden of continual Taxes and Excise which are there the onely or a great part of the cause of their dearness were separate and abstracted from the natural and genuine rates and prices thereof where Fish Fowl Carrets Turneps Apples Pears and many other houshold provisions are notwithstanding the burden of their Excise much cheaper then in England if store or plenty of money could be any efficient cause of high
a consumption of their estates making the greatest most universal and extended gâ—ievances and oppression of the Nation When as there is and hath been for some yeers of late in England the greatest want of money and Trade which should introduce and procure it that ever it languished and groaned under for three hundred years last past by an universal poverty and want of it by reason of twenty years great and heavy Taxes which yearly enforced and called for more money then the King of Spain during that time received for his West Indies for his own account or England ever paid in Taxes all being summed up together in the space of 500. years before together with a geneâ—al pride luxury since wasting and carrying away that little that was left of our money whilst all or the most of our Gold have been inticed and transported into Foraign Countries by reason of the fineness of our Standard and their putting a greater value upon our coyne much of our Silver hath in coyne or Plate been carried into Ireland and Scotland and from thence or from England into Foraign parts and that little which remained of it together with a great part of our Silver converted into Gold and Silver Lace or other vain and needless manufactures some millions of money imployed here by the Dutch at interest because that their own Country yeelded not above four per cent for it called home and taken away by reason of our distempers and troubles the bringing of interest by our usuâ—ping Legislators to six per cent whereby to advance the sale of loyal mens lands which they had without law or reason taken from them eighty thousand pounds in coyne and Silver Bullion or Ingotts of our small â—emainder of mony yearly carryed out of England by our East Indian company into the East Indies or Persia to purchase Spices many superfluous and transmarine commodities without which our forefathers could live longer more plentifully and healthy then now they do And so little money left in the Nation in general or amongst the common people as they are many of them being dragged by their necessities enforced to endure the greatest bitings and extortions from the Usurers and the Cancer or Gangreen of Usury Brokage grown so high and intollerable as by a judicious computation lately made there are no less then 3000. publike and private Brokers and Harpies in and about the City of London taking fourty sixty or eighty per cent far exceeding that of the Jews or the Caursini when they toâ—mâ—nted England with their unmerciful Usuries untill they were banished many of our Merchants by reason of the adulterating of our Commodities and taking away the credit of them or by the inticements of an unlawful gain buying their Corants at Zant and Silks and other Commodities in the Levant and Turky with pieces of eight and their Deal and Timber in Norway with Dollars which hath made such a scarcity and want as all the Silver money coyned in the Kingdom by the late Parliament so called with their dolorous Cross and ill tuned Harp amounted when it was called into the Mint after his Majesties restoration to no more with some store of Brass Copper or Lead counterfeit money crept in amongst it then five hundred thousand pounds sterling or thereabouts and that which went about of the Coynes of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles the Martyr not being estimated to be much above as much more noâ— making a total with both included together of more then a million and a half of sterling monies which amongst four millions of people if that should be the account of the number of the inhabitants men women and children in England there being not likely to be many less would afford but seven shillings and six pence to every one and if the money in the Kingdom should as some have guessed it more at random then upon certainty or pâ—obability amount unto twenty seven hundred thousand pounds or to make it numerum rotundum for the more even and easie computing of it three millions sterling would yeild every one but fifteen shillings which renders the mony of the kingdom to be lamentably scarce too little for the people may without the blame of being over sanguine or credulous induce any man to believe that the credit which the people have one with another far exceeds the money of the Nation that they which are any thing rich in the Kingdom the Nobility Gentry and such as live upon their Lands and Estats without trading onely excepted are but as the Pikes in the Ponds or Rivers which devour and feed upon the multitude and smaller Frye of Fâ—shes that there is no such plenty of money now in England when poverty and want are as Regiments of armed men breaking in upon every County and part of England and Wales the lamentations of the poor and such as are undone for want of trade and imployments are as the noise of many waters and the excessive rates and prices of victuals and houshold provisions are to seek for some other causes or originals then a supposed plenty of money when as there is no housekeeper but feels the burden and smart of them and may hear almost every body not as Usurers which do it to conceal their money from such as might over importune them to borrow it or to heighten the necessities of such as they may scrue up to their exactions or in a greedy humor or appetite never think they have money enough but as a people exhausted and impoverished by wars and luxury lamenting their want of money and that every Town Corporation City and County of the Kingdom the more vain and prodigal part of the people who make hast to spend all that they have or can come at onely exepted have too many symptomes and signs of a poverty and want of Trade and tire themselves with the complaints of it And it cannot be either want or plenty of money which causeth such extraordinary rates and prices of food and houshold provisions servants and workmens wages greatness of Rents and the intollerable and unreasonable prices of all that are to be bought either for the Belly or the Back now more then it was twenty years ago and then more then it was some hundred years before making the sin of oppression and cozening one another to rise like the waters of Noahs Flood prevailing and increasing greatly but the wickedness in the hearts of men doing and devising evil continually oppressing and cheating one another For it was not an abundance of mony that hath made Beef to be at three pence Mutton four pence a pound and to be much dearer at Christmas and other Festivals then at other times in the year but an evil custome only the will pleasure of the Butchers or that hath raised â—he Board wages of a Footmen to be seven shillings and a valect du Chambre or extraordinary Serving-man ten shillings
he went home into Spain that all the Citizens of London were Booted and ready as he thought to go out of Town and that for many years since all the men of the Nation as low as the Plowmen and meanest Artizans which walked in their Boots aâ—e now with the fashion returned again as foâ—merly to Shooes and Stockings Neither is it plenty of money that maketh Scholars or men of Learning never less regarded more poor and scorned to pay double or many times treble the rates and prices for Books then they did twenty years ago because the rates and prices of books are by the unconscionable Arts and Trade of the Stationers proportioned and kept up to a penny a sheet which of late was usually paid for Pamphlets sold and cryed up and down the streets to publish the madness and rebellion of an hypocritical and wicked part of the people or that causeth China Orenges which at a dearer rate then elsewhere are to be had at the Play-house door five for a shilling but within the house in that which is called the Pit not to be had of the woman that sells them under three for a shilling because for a Monopoly of the only selling of them in the Play-house she gives one hundred pounds Fine and thirty pounds per annum Rent and hath such a power and dominion over some of the peoples purses who take it to be an honor to be foolish and ready upon any terms to part with their money and be their own Pick pockets as they that sit in the eighteen pence Rooms or Galleries may have four for a shilling and those that sit in the twelve penny Rooms or Galleries are seldom denyed five for a shilling It was not the plenty of money but Prodigality which in Holland and the Netherlands not long since made Tulips whose glories are in the varieties of their most excellent Colours and abasements in the want of Odour to accompany them to be at two or three hundred pounds sterling a piece untill those insane and causeless prices were decryed and forbidden by the Edicts or Placaets of the States General and that an hundred or sixty or fifty or fourty pound sterling could be here given for a Root of a Tulip when as now in an abundance or commonness of them one or two hundred of them may be had for five pounds It is not an abundance of money but abundance of Devil sin and vice and all manner of villanies which makes all Commodities to be so dear at London and in its adjacent Counties our Cloth to be as dear again as it was but lately and not half so honestly made the binding or putting an Apprentice to a Draper or Grocer which not long ago could be done for twenty or thirty pounds cannot be now under an hundred or an hundred and twenty pounds and that many which do now come to buy any thing of a Tradesman can hardly escape the temptation of a bribe or some share in the bargain to permit him to sell his sophisticated or adulterated wares at as high a price as he can possibly get for them or that makes house-rents when the undone people in the Countries flock to London to see if they can find a better subsistence one part in three dearer then it was twenty years ago Nor an abundance of money in Spain and other Foraign kingdomes that makes as some ingenious Travilers have well observed provisions of victuals to be much dearer in or under the chief City of a Nation or Country then it is at a distance from it or that makes an Hen Egge to be sold at Madrid for three pence when as twelve may be had for a penny in Gallicia or places more remote Nor that in Ireland whither too much of our money is transported and many peices of Eight which our Merchants have imported into England and being here afforded at three shillings three pence a peice do there yeild the exporter five shillings a peice and makes a greater plenty of money to be there then should be there doth notwithstanding continue such a cheapness of victuals and houshold provisions as it made a Maid-servant when she was lately sent to Market to come home with a complaint that she paid five pence for a Hen and could have but fourteen Eggs for a penny For it is not scarcity of mony that makes victuals to be so cheap in Yorkshire where many of the Gentry do many times want no money for Horse Races and other needless expences but the far distance from London and want of vent for their Commodities And besides the causes above mentioned proceeding from frauds and the peoples oppressing one another it will be ubique semper every where and at all times true that many times sola universaque hominum libido non natura rebus omnibus pretium suum posuerit it is the unruliness of mens appetites which causeth things to be dear And whether our money or Bullion be more or less then it was heretofore or more imported then exported there would not be such a cry and complaint of the want of money if the prudence of our more generous and hospitable Ancestors had not been as it is so much slieghted and thought unworthy our imitation and that our estates had been the rule and measure of our expences of which if an account were taken but in some particulars which since the flight and banishment of our English Hospitalities hath more then formerly wasted the money and Revenues of England it will be found that the laying aside or scorning or seldom usage of the grosses viandes Butchers or course meat as it is now disdainfully termed and the substantial food dyet of Beef and Brewesse Mutton Veal Poâ—k Bâ—con c. and the introducing in stead of them many Foraign quelque choses or fantastically made Dishes Oleos Fricasses and Potages hant gousts and provoking sawces in the steed of a more wholsom Diet with rich Wines and many costly Confections Banquets and perfumes at the disert or end of meals or repasts have spent and cost more then the pious more noble prudent and worthy custom of hospitality building of Castles and the building and endowing of stately Churches and Monasteries ever did and that the money spent in some one vain and costly Dish adorned and enriched with Amber gris making a charge of ten or twelve pounds would in the later end of the Raign of King Henry the eighth have gone a great part of the way in the defraying of the expences of an Oxe or a Beef by a Gentleman or good Housekeeper for in those dayes they were synonimas or Termini convertibiles every day in the Christmas to entertain his friends and Tenants and feed the poor And that if the charges of our delicacies incouragements and incentives of the most mortal sins heaping upon those that use them the dangers of immortal punishments with that which hath within these last century or hundred
her herse trimmed up as stately as the Armes-painters and Abusers can devise it with Tapers burning in great silver Candlesticks hired at the Goldsmiths and four or six women in mourning fitting to attend it to shew the beholders the unbecoming pride and vanity of it and a Shop keepers Wife whilst her husband complains of want of trade must not want a Velvet Gown every Servant must as much as their wages will reach unto imitate their Master and Mistresses in their clothes and the fashion of them which Queen Elizabeth did well prevent when she caused the Taylors to enter into Bonds or Recognizances not to make clothes finer then the degree of such as were to wear them every Cotager and Day-labourer will do what they can to eat of the best and live after the rate of a Farmer every Farmer live and have his diet like a Gentleman every Gentleman of the smallest estate whatsoever strives to live like a Knight and some Gentlewomen taking themselves to be higher born then any of their kindred or neerest relations can remember will not think their husbands do their duty unless they permit them like Baronesses to have Carpets foot paces on the ground when the Madam so called shall have a mind to sit in her garnish of sin and foolery to receive the visits of those which when the Marmalet is eaten do most commonly appear to have come onely to view and censure her pride every Knight will spend and live like a Lord or Baron and the sons and daughters of too many of our Gentry ready to tear them in peices to enforce them to make them an allowance proportionable to their pride and prodigâ—lities whilst the Gentlemen racking and raising their Rents beyond the yearly Income and value of the Tenants Lands are too often the cause that the Tenants do put as high rates and prices as they can upon their commodities to be sold or sent to the Markets and use as many Cheats as the Country Devil can invent for them to abuse and cozen the buyers the Citizens raise the price of their wares and commodities to maintain their delicacies workmen their wages because victuals are so dear servants by a sinful necessity of pride never think they have wages enough to the end that they may wear better Clothes then they should do King William Rufus Hose or Breeches of three shillings price or a Mark as he was afterwards perswaded to believe it then thought to be magnificent worthy enough for a mighty Kings wearing is not now a rate or price enough for a Ploughmans ordinary wearing And the improvements of our Lands and Estates do seem to have served for no other purpose then to improve and multiply our sins and vices whilst the hospitality and virtues of England like the brave Brittish Caractacus or Catacratus Prince of the Silures following in his chains the triumphs of the Romish Conquerers are made to be the attendants of the Triumphs of our vices and wickedness and Truth and Honesty like the distressed Naomi and her daughter Ruth going their mournful Pilgrimages to finde a better entertainment So as there must needs be a want of Trade when there is so great a Trade driven of pride and vanity and a dearness of all things when every one almost some poor and despised Moralists and men of Religion and care in their ways and walkings onely excepted makes what shift he can per fas aut nefas to save and get what he can for himself and there is scarce a courtesie done for one another without a bribe or fellow-feeling the sons are ready to betray their parents and the parents to prostitute and deliver up their children to the slavery of sin for the support of their pride and luxuries the most of our friendships and realities now turned into a lying most dissembling and accursed complement the rich making it their hoc age and onely business to oppress the poor who since the fall and dissolution of our Abbies and Religious Houses are so impoverished and increased as a Gentleman of the same and no more Land and Estate then he had fourty years ago paying but three shillings four pence per annum is now constrained to pay forty shillings per annum and the rates and prices of workmens wages victuals and every thing else so increased and beyond reason more then was formerly as may appear by the difference betwixt what was in Anno Domini one thousand four hundred thirty and seven in the sixteenth year of the Raign of King Henry the sixth now but two hundred thirty and two yeers ago when â—hichely Archbishop of Canterbury built that famous Colledge of All-Souls in Oxford there was paid to a Stone-cutter but two shillings ten pence a week a Carpenter four pence a day a Sawyer fourteen pence a hundred for sawing of boaâ—ds a Joiner five pence half penny a day and but sixteen pence for himself and his servant for two days four pence a day to laborers five pence a day to such as digged stones four pence a day for a Cart for a weeks Commons for Mr. John Wraby who was comptroller of the works and an eminent man in those times fourteen pence for his servant ten pence for the meat of his horse for a week ten pence half penny and for the expences oâ— Mr. John Druel Surveyor of the works travailing with two servants and three horses from Maidstone to Lambeth and their charges at Lambeth for two nights and two days seven shillings And what is now paid to workmen when a Carpenter will have three shillings a day and eighteen pence or two shillings a day for his man and eighteen or twelve pence a day for a common laborer as there is never like to be any more easie or reasonable rates for houshold provisions or workmens Wages or any hospitality to be found in England nor any thing else of vertue or goodness unless the wisdom of the King and his great Councel shall prevent that Ultimam ruinam great and destroying ruine which citato cursu as to the peoples Estates in this life and sending their souls into the other world with a Lord have mercy upon us is galloping upon the Nation and will never be prevented either by preaching or Church Censures or the King and his Nobilities own examples without some severe and well observed Sumptuary Laws now very much wanted by an unhappy repeal of all in that kind which we had before and without which all that can be done to hinder and destroy an innundation of miseries which by our pride and luxury far surmounting any of our forefathers is suddainly like to over-run us will be to as little purpose as that which the King of Achen is said to do when he and all his nobilty do in the blindness of their Religion upon a certain day in every year ride in great pompe and procession to the Church to look if
the Messias be come and not finding him as they supposed to be come the King returns riding upon that Elephant which he prepared for the Messias to ride upon And untill those daily growing and dangerous Evils and sins of pride and luxuâ—y which have undone the greatest of Empires and Kingdoms ruined the Brittaines by the Saxons and the Saxons by the Danes and Normans shall be curbed and redressed there needs no petition to be made for an assent or subscription to this known and sadly experimented truth That there is a great want of money and it is not any plenty of money which makes such an enhaunce of the rates and prices of houshold provisions and of all other things to be bought or sold but our pride begetting an ungodly selfishness and pride and self interest begetting all manner of cheating to maintain them which have brought those evils of evils upon us and made those miseries wants are so every where complained of and have destroyed all honesty friendship obedience and taught the people by such wicked necessities and imitating one anothers good success by their evil actions to run over all Laws and penalties that can be threatned or laid in the way and that the King having no Elixir or means to transmute all the mettals in this Kingdom to an infinitum of Gold and Silver to furnish the vanity of the peoples expences there must in so universal a prodigality and profusion as is in the Nation beâ—yond the reach and compass of the peoples means and estates when a Bricklayer must wear silk Stockings and his wife a Whisk of four pounds pâ—ice and an Alewoman if she hath turned up the Dâ—vel Trump and be but a little beforehand will think her self not well apparelled if her Gowns be not of silk or bedaubed with Gold or Silver Lace every ordinary mans house must be furnished with one peece of plate if not many more the weighty Silver money be melted down into Plate and all or a great part of the Bullion and Foraign coyns exported as soon as they are imported needs be a want of money and that when Kit or Christopher Woodroofe a rich Citizens son in the later end of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth marrying the daughter of a great Lord of this Kingdom which wore a Silver Legg in stead of a better which had been cut off to prevent a greater mischief by a Gangreen had a mad and strange custome to throw his shillings upon the Thames to make them in the language of the Boys to dive and leap as Ducks and Draks it was no marvail that he was many times when he wanted money necessitated to steal his wives silver Legg in a morning before she was up and pawn it And that the Tyranny and Tricks of Trade oppression of the Markets and the arbitrary power which the people take to impose high and unreasonable rates and prices one upon another which exceeds most of the evils imaginable in a time of peace do make a great addition to the poverty of the Nation too many of whom do make their own burdens and complain of them when they have done and may be eased themselves if they would but ease others And that as the people of Florence do more cheerfully endure those many great Taxes and Burdens which the grand Duke imposeth upon them because by a Banda or rule for the rates and prices of victuals and houshold provisions so as those which are sent to buy cannot be cheated or injuried they enjoy such a cheapness as makes them a recompence the people of England would not take their Taxes and Assessements for the publike to be much or any great burden if by reducing the Market prices and rates to a reiglement intended by our Laws they might not so much cozen and oppress one another but be the better enabled to live cheapely and to pay them CHAP. VIII That it is the interest of the people of England to revive again the Ancient and legal usage of his Majesties just rights of Praeemption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them ANd now that the lines from all the parts of the Circumference of this discourse concerning the lawfulness and necessity of the Royal Praeemption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them are met in the center or conclusion of it every man that is not over Byassed by his own conceit or prejudice or carryed into an obstinacy or uningenious resolution not to alter his opinion or obey so great a truth because he once thought or said or declared otherwise will I hope be so far perswaded by the light and rules of right reason as to understand that Praeemption which is founded upon the Laws of Nature and Nations hath been as ancient a custome in the world as that of Civility and good manners and lived here in England the age of Methusalah is an ancient and undoubted right of the Kings and that the Royal Pourveyance or respects to be paid in that particular from subjects to their Kings and Princes for the supportation of their honor may well deserve an approbation when the Laws of God and the Laws of men and the Civil Common and Canon Laws have not denyed it And the Laws and customs of Nations have made it as common and necessary as the use of houses fire and water and Arms for offence and defence uncovering or bowing of the head in sign of reverence wearing of Shoos or Sandals for the defence or safe-guard of the Feet or any thing else which hath met with a customary and universal approbation and have so prevailed with most of the rational inhabitants of the world as the people of Japan who howsoever they be averse to many of the customes of other Nations as to delight to have their Teethâ—black when others do desire to have them white mount their horses on the right side when as we and many other Nations do on the left do not as we do uncover their heads in saluting each other but onely untie some part of their Shoos or Sandals nor do arise to any which do come to salute them but sit down are notwithstanding unwilling to come behind other Nations in the duty of Pourveyance and honor of their Prince which may induce us to subscribe to that common principle of Nature and Nations that there is and will be a necessity of the Royal Prae emption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them and that there is a noble use of them Nor to think it burdensome when as what the Country looseth by their Compositions or serving in the Kings provisions after his rates or by his Cart takings do not every yeer one with another amount unto so much as the Papal impositions which before the raign of King Edward the sixth were Annually laid upon their fortunes and estates or drawn beyond the Alpes by Romes artifices Or that it is the duty which every man owes to God and his King and Country and the good
of himself and his own posterity to further and advance the peoples cheating and oppressing of one another or to cause the King to pay the dearer or incur so great a damage as now it plainly appears he doth in his house-keeping for want of his Pourveyance when as all the Landed and rich men in England all the Farmers and all the Citizens and Tradesmen of the Nation the later of whom like aqua fortis can eat and make their way to be sauers thorough the dearest or highest rates or prices of houshold provisions by adulterating or raising their Commodities or as a London Brewer lately said concerning the Excise upon Ale and Beer that it should never hurt him whilst there was water enough in the Thames those of that profession being not contented to be repaid by the house-keeper the six pence rated for the Excise upon every Barrel of six shillings Beer unless they may leave out of such a Barrel of Beer six penny worth of Malt and make it by an half Boyling of it to save the expence of fire little better then so much half sodden water and are not satisfied also with such an unchristian cozening of the people and making their drink by such their doings and puting in Broom and other noxious ingredients in stead of Hopps to be as unwholsome as it is weak and naughty unless they may likewise cozen the King of his Dues upon the Excise and put as many tricks as they can upon him and his Laws and Officers and when by these and many other devices they make themselves very great gainers by the Excise in abusing both the King and his people are as busie as any in raising the cry against the Excise as a very great grievance and when all the Mechanick and Rustick part of the Nation workmen day-laborers maid-servants and men-servants shall not onely be savers but gainers by the enhance of rates and prices and the King onely and the poor of the Kingdom be the very great loosers and sufferers by it Or for the interest of the body Politick that the pinch and hardship should lye all on the Princes part and he onely be the greatest looser by his want of Praeemption Pourveyance or Compositions of the Counties as he had formerly be as an Amorite or stranger in our Israel and pay usury for his victuals by being constrained to give two parts in three or more sometimes then fourty per cent for the houshold provisions which his officers and servants do buy or provide for him four parts in five in many things six parts in seven in some other more then the Market rates and prices were in the beginning of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth when the Compositions were made by the Counties and willingly assented unto or that now there is a greater plenty of Food and houshold provisions Trade and Manufâ—cture then were in the former ages and all things may be afforded to be sold as cheap as they were retroactis seculis or some hundred years ago or as they were in the four and twentieth year of the Raign of King Henry the eight and cheaper then they were in the beginning of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth every thing should be dearer to him then to others or that so great an increase of Rates and Prices as have been within this last hundred years and all the mischiefs and inconveniencâ—s of them which have been brought upon the King and his people by private and particular interests the non execution of good Laws and the neglect and carelesseness of the subordinate Magistrates Justices of Peace and Clerks of the Markets should with an addition be continued and fixt upon the King who if he should resume but his Tolles in Fairs and Markets which the Civilians do rightly enough derive a tollendo from taking many of which are now accompted to be as the proprieties inheâ—itance of private men or Lords of Mannors are in some cases more by the indulgence of the Kings Royal Progenitors and a prescription claimed by long enjoyments or continuance of favors then de jure or were by grants or confirmations allowed where they were before but usurped and with-held from him and a Royalty and prerogative so antiently allowed in the Roman Empire as Valens and Valentinian the Emperors a mercatoribus seu negotiatoribus quae ad domum imperialem pertinent exegerunt necessitatem debitam pensionum ex emolumentis negotiationum did raise a good part of their Pourveyance or provisions for their houshold out of the Tolles or profits made by Fairs and Markets those of the people of England who do claim an exemption from the payment of them and those very many proprietors of Lands or Mannors who by many Royal grants and favors do claim and enjoy the profit of the Tolles would finde to be a greater damage and prejudice unto them then that which the Olivariaâ— party and the troublers of our Israel pretended to be by the Royal Pourveyance or Compositions for them or should as he never doth let his Lands to the uttermost penny measure his gifts or bounties by that of private men and proportion his favors according to his wants or occasions of keeping or saving what he can for himself or the ingratitude or forgetfulness of those which receive them and be as unwilling to answer acknowledge benefits as too many are unto him or take his Reliefs Herriots First fruits Fee Farms Quit Rents Customes Fines for alienation Fines certain or incertain of his Copyhold estates at the full and present value and the Fees for his Seals in Chancery and the other Courts and all his Subsidies according to the alteration of monys the disproportion betwixt the present and the former rates there would be cause enough for them to acknowledge his favouâ—s already received and believe that those small retributions in his Pourveyance or Compositions for them will bear so small a part in the Ballance as they should rather lay their hands upon their mouths and rest assured that they which are daily craving and gaining by the King and blest with a peace and plenty under his government cares and protection should be ashamed to make him to be so great a looser and themselves such gainers by his loss and damages And that it can no way become them to suffer him that granted or confirmed their Fairs and Markets to be oppressed by them pay a shilling and many times more for every groat he disburses for his necessary occasions and at the same time in the distribution of his bounties and rewards give a shilling more for every groat which he intended to give shall be kind to every body and receive in acknowledgement thereof no more then to get keep all they can from him which in their own particular estates would bring no less then ruine to all the people of England and those that so very much enrich themselves by putting him to more expences then
the Cinque Ports which cometh within the Orlokes two pence five Eggs in every hundred brought to London for Poultery brought thither on horseback three Farthings and on foot an half penny for every load of Cheese two pence for every dozen of Sheep brought to Smithfield to be sold an half penny for every Cow or Beast bought out of the Franchise a penny and of every foraigner bringing Cows Beeves Sheep Swine or Porks to Smithfield to be sold betwixt the Feast of St. Martin and Christmas the third best Beast Sheep Swine or Pork after the two first best or some Composition for them and if the Beast be of the value of a Mark the Bailiff was to restore fourty pence for his skin and might take for lean Hogs or Porks brought thither to be sold betwixt Hock tyde and Michaelmas the third best next afâ—ter the first best or twelve or six pence in lieu thereof which with their other Tolles and Perquisites and the yearly Scavage or Shewage the profit of Tronage and Pesage at the Balance together with their yearly income by the Cole Meters places would if the King for the better supply of his Pourveyance should take into his own hands as they are now Collected and taken either in money or in specie the above mentioned Tolles and Customes which are but the Irradiations and participations of the power and authority of the King imparted unto them for the better order and management of the peace and affairs of the people in those lesser Orbes and as was covenanted in a confirmation of the Fee Farm of three hundred pounds per annum for the Shirivalties of London and Middlesex by King John in case of taking away or granting any of the profits thereof release and discharge the said Fee Farm Rent of fifty pounds per annum bring a good assistance to his charge of Pourveyance and houshold provisions and make him some amends and recompence for his daily great damages sustained in his more then formerly expences for his houshold provisions by making his so constant aboad in that his Imperial Chamber Being priviledges better to be liked and approved then many of those which are not discommended in Military affairs where a Colonel of horse hath liberty besides his pay of a Colonel to reckon a pay for a Captain though he hath none and to be allowed for a certain number of spare Horses and to Muster and take pay for â—ix of his own servants and the like for one in every of the six Troops of his Regiment And may be allowed a soveraign as well as those daily and frequently practised given received and taken acknowledgments of Favors Reciprocations and discharges of obligations which are in and thorough the Kingdom performed as well as expected by all the people of the Nation one unto another and by all mankind in their several actions and affairs one with another and their dependencies and relations one unto another And as little to be omitted as the duty and priviledge of the Prae-emption of the Tyn at a reasonable rate with many other allowances and liberties in the Counties of Cornwall and Devon not to be denyed to the King or his Royal Predecessors Kings of England who before they had granted them away had all or the greatest part of the Lands or soyle where the Tynne Mines are For it cannot be any injustice or have so much as any aspect of wrong or oppression that he whose Royal Ancestors have granted confirmed to all his people their liberties and priviledges should seek to preserve his own which helpes to preserve theirs and be unwilling to part with them and his praestationes Angariarum Parangariarum Plaustrorum navium c. his Pourveyance Cart taking and impressing of Ships which as Bossius cited by Zecchius saith Regi competunt ratione Excellentiae ejus dignitatis quae Regalia dicuntur for that as Zecchius alleadgeth multa adjumenta sunt ti necessaria ut dominium intus externe Tueri valeat many things are necessary for a Prince to defend his Dominions at home as well as abroad Or if any should be willing to have it to be no duty would be such strangers to the Scriptures the right interpretation and meaning thereof as to think that the fifth Commandement extendeth onely to parents natural when any shall have a minde to respect them or to let their Fancies run as wild as the zealous reformer did at Crâ—ydon in the beginning of the grand Rebellion when he would have prohibited the reading of that and the other Commandments in the Decalogue by alleaging that they were made by the Bishops they cannot if they will not throw away their Reason and understandings but acknowledge that if Uriah could rationally conclude it to be unfit for him to go to his own house and take the comfort of it when his Lord Joab and the servants of his Lord the King were incamped in the field and hath been ever since applauded for it It cannot be thought to be correspondent to the greatness and Majesty of a King or the duty of his subjects that he should want those ordinary and no very chargeable respects and conveniencies of Pourveyance or Compositions for them and the priviledge to have his goods in progress or upon removals carryed for him at easie rates by his subjects and such as hold of him or have been raised and brought to what they have by the bounties and Royal influences of him and his Princely Progenitors and protected and defended by them when as many of the Nobility and Gentry of England do enjoy those or the like services from their Tenants for letting them heretofore have good penniworths of them or in hope that they may hereafter be good unto them and should not at all grumble or grudge to perform those duties and remunerations to their King whose honor and jurisdictions they are sworn to defend and maintain when they can do it willingly to others upon lâ—sser hopes or gratifications and that he hath already and may as well deserve it as that great and honorable family of the Cliffords late Earles of Cumberland whose heir the Lady Anne Clifford Countess of Pembroke Dorset and Mountgomery doth at this day of her obliged Tenants in the North whose Carts are not to be denyed at any removal from her Castle of Skipton in Craven in Yorkshire by certain proportioned journeys to her Castle of Appleby in Westmerland where her Tenants in that County are to furnish yearly six hundred Hens or a groat for eveâ—y Hâ—n and six hundred Bushels of Oats distinguished or called by the name of Sergeant Oats and those in Craven as many Hens or six pence for every Hen or as others who take benefit by such or the like retributions Customs and usages in other parts of England or the North thereof as Boon Hens c. at Sheffeild in the County of York once the inheritance of the
Warwickshire belonging to some Religious house where they were to Mow three dayes at the charge of the house three dayes to Plow and at the charge of the house to reap one day and to have a Wether Sheep or eight pence or twenty five loaves or peices of bread one of the best Cheeses in the house and a measure of Salt and if any horse Colt were foled upon the lands he was not to be sold without licence nor were any of the Tenants to marry a daughter without licence and by the custome of the Township of Berstanestone in Warwickshire horse Colts foled upon the land were not to be sold without licence for which a penny was to be paid nor any of their daughters to be married without licence c. which in divers old Charters and confirmations of our Kings and Princes do frequently occur may evidence that such or the like were once undeniable duties to their Kings and Benefactors and onely released in favor of those which were the owners and proprietors of the lands and priviledges and being now enjoyed were formerly regalities and rights inherent and vested in the Crown of England should retain no liberties or priviledges for himself And that the Quit Rents as they are now called taken by the owners and proprietors of some of the Abby and Religious Lands for Eleemosinae's or Alms-money given by Founders or other charitable persons many a sum of money formerly paid for Mortuaries Pardons Indulgences Pitances or Pourveyances and Oblations which are at this time kept on foot and received under the name and notion of Quit Rents might put them in mind how necessary it is for them to perform the duty of Pourveyance to the King being the heir and successor of many of those which gave them And how unbeâ—oming the duty of subjects pertaking the benefits thereof it would be that the King whose Royal Ancestors Saint Edward the King gave for ever to the Abby of St. Edmonds Bury the Mannor of Mildenhall in Suffolk to buy wheaten bread for the Monks to prevent their necessities of eating Barly bread which he perceived them to do when he came once to visit them King John gave for ever to the Abby of St. Albans and King Edward the first as many other Kings of England have done to other Monasteries and Religious houses gave and confirmed for ever to the Abby of St. Edmunds Bury divers Mannors Lands Tyths and yeerly Revenues of a very great yeerly Revenue to maintain their Hospitalities Pitances and Liuâ—â—es of servants and for the relief of strangers and poor people coming thither should now have his own Hospitality and the means to support it taken from him And that if all the customes priviledges and Royalties as they are called which are now performed and willingly assented unto by Tenants and enjoyed by the Lords of other Mannors by the power and priviledges derived unto them from the King his Royal Progenitors were truely represented and brought to a publike view together with all the priviledges liberties exemptions and immunities granted unto the Cities Boroughs and Towns Corporate of England it might be wondered how they that enjoy so much so many liberties favours from the King his Royal Progenitors by grants or prescribed Indulgences should think there could be any reason to deny him those his most just necessary and ancient rights and liberties of Pourveyances or Compositions for them when at the same time they are so carefull to preserve and keep their own And it would be something more then unfitting that the King whose Royal Ancestors have allowed so many of his subjects those priviledges and liberties should be debarred from a greater right and legal liberty in his own case or when he should make his progress to Chester should be refused that priviledge more ancient then the Conquest of having of every Yard land two hundred Capons or Caponets a fat or stand of Beer and a certain quantity of Butter which as appears by the book of Domesday were by custome or Tenure to be provided for him and not enjoy as much liberty as Hugh Earl of Chester did when he could priviledge Nigell de haulton his Constable and his heirs Quod omnia quae ad praedicti Nigelli opus erant necessaria emant ministri sui ante omnes alios in Civitate Cestriae nisi praenominati Comitis ministri praevenerint sine cujuscunque contradictione that his servants should in the City of Chester without contradiction have a Prae-emption before any but the Earles servants and Officers or as the Abbot of Burgh who had a Pâ—aeâ—emption in all necessaries concerning the Abby a priviledge to pay an half penny cheaper then others in every hundred of Herring or the Abbot of St. Albans who was by the Charter of King John to have a prae-emption for any of his provisions to be bought in London as well as any of the Kings Officers the Abbot of St. Edmonds Bury having a like priviledge for his Fodder Corn. That the King of England whose Royal Ancestor King Aethelstane was able to give to the Church of Beverlye quasdam avenas vulgariter dictas Hestcorn percipiendas de Dominiis Ecclesiis in illis partibus certain Oats commonly called Hestcorne to be taken out of his Demeasnes and the Churches in those parts which by the dissolution of the Religious houses are now probably claimed and enjoyed by Laymen and did in Anno Dom. 936. ex sua Regalitate by his Kingly authority saith the History of that Foundation give towards the Hospitality and relief of the poor coming to the Hospital of St. Peters or St. Leonards in York de qual bet Caruca Arante in Episcopatu Eboraci unam Travam bladi out of every yard land of errable in the Bishoprick of York one Thrave which is four and twenty sheaves of Corn Et ex consensu Incolarum Episcopatus Eboraci Rex habuit saith that Historian Travas praedictas sibi successoribus suis sic quod exterminaret lupos patriam devastantes and was ofterwards granted by the consent of the inhabitants upon condition that he would destroy the Wolves which wasted that Country Erat siquidem in Diocesi Eboracensi tanta adtunc multitudo luporum quod omnes fere villanorum bestias devorarunt for there were in that Diocess such a multitude of Wolves which King Aethelstane thereupon destroyed as they almost devoured all the Beastes and Cattel belonging to the Countrimen should now that the County and Bishoprick of York have in all the after ages and successions of our Kings not onely received of them many and greater benefits but have been by their many good Laws and Governments protected and defended from all manner of Wolves be denyed so small an observance or retribution as the Pourveyance or Compositions for them which were charged upon that County or Bishoprick did amount unto and at the same time do either not
very great sum of money which is reduced to an ordinary Revenue takes a Tax for the Chimneys or Fires in every house yearly to be paid towards the Wages of soldiers and an allowance to be made to such of the Nobility as attend the Vice Roy another Tax towards the Garrisons and a great Tax upon Silk and Cards Victuals and houshold provisions where the people having besides four thousand Barons or Titulado's with many petty Princes Dukes Marquesses and Earls to domineer over them do find the great plenty of that Country converted into a poverty of the common people Nor as the great Duke of Tuscany imposes besides other Assessements upon extraordinary necessitys eight per cent upon Dowries and as much upon the sale of all immoveables according to the full and real value the tenth part of the Rent made by houses or lands leased a rate upon every pound of flesh sold and upon Bills of Exchange and when he is to raise any great sum of money makes his list of all the rich men able to fuâ—nish it who not dareing to deny it are within twenty eight moneths after repaid by a general Taxe laid upon the people exacteth an Excise upon Roots and Herbs or the least thing necessary for the life of man bought or sold or brought to any Towns and a Tax likewise to be paid by every Inholder Brewer Baker and Artificer and of every man travailing by land or by water who pays money at every Bridge or Gate of a Town and if he doth not pay the Gabeller Arrests him and is ready to strip him naked to see what Goods he hath which ought to pay a Gabel Neither as the King of Spain doth in Milan where his subjects do the better endure their multitude of taxes by his moderating la voragine de gl interesse their grand usury cutting off or restraining le spese superflue superfluous expences havendo gli occhi apperti alle mani de Ministri and by the Magistrates keeping a strict watch and eye upon the Ministers of State and Justice who do notwithstanding so load and oppress the people as it is grown into an Adage or Proverb Il ministro di Sicilia rode quel di Napoli mangia quel di Milano divora the Governors and officials of Sicily do gnaw the estates of the people those of Naples eat them and those of Milan devour them Nor as in Spain where the people being Tantalized may hear of Gold and Silver brought from the West Indies and sometimes see it but it being altogether imployed to maintain souldiers Garrisons and designes in the services of their Princes never to be satisfied ambition of piling up Crowns Scepters and Titles one upon another as if they intended to give thier neighbor Princes no rest untill they had built themselves a Piramid of them passes away from the subjects like a golden Dream leaving them a certain assurance that the Gold and Silver of America hath but increased their Burdens and Taxes and that besides their servitios ordinarios ordinary and formerly accustomed services paid and done and the Subsidies called Des millions upon extraordinary occasions and necessities granted in their Parliaments or Assemblies of the Estates and the charges which the people are put to for librancas Warrants or Assignments for moneys to be paid like a late and ill invented way of Poundage here in England and the Eâ—comienda's or recommendations to Offices Places or Dignities or the Venteia or sale of them and the appointing Alcaldes or Officers of Justice in the Towns and Villages and Corregidors oâ— Governors to look to their obedience to Laws and Taxes and the profit of their inquisitions do pay the Alcavala or tenth of every mans estate first raised at a twentieth by Alphâ—nsus the twelfth in An. Dom. 1342. to expell the Moors and since though they be long ago driven away made a perpetual Revenue Collect out of all Lands Houses Goods Commodities which are sold and from Artificers Workmen Tavern keepers Manufactures Butchers Fishmongers Markets c. And for every thing sold or which they take mony for an Almoxariffe do take a tenth of all Foraign Commodities imported and exported a tenth of all Merchandize exported to the West Indies a twentieth when they come thither paid for importation Vectigalia decimaruÌ„ portuum siccorum or puertos secos a tenth of all Commodities carryed by Land out of the lirtle Kingdoms of Valentia Arragon and Navarre and out of Portugall into any part of Spain and from Spain into any of those Kingdoms two Ducats from the Natives of Spain and four of Strangers for every Sack of Wooll exported El Senneor-capo de la moneda a Real or six pence out of every six Ducats coyned in the Mint a Tax called the Almodraua out of the Tunny Fishes a great yearly Revenue out of salt El exercitio a tribute for the maintenance of the Gallies and Marriners la Monoda Forara which is seven Maravedis for ever Chimney a Tax upon Cards Quicksilver and Russet Cloth made in Spain and the Maestrazgos a great Revenue yeerly raised upon the Rents and Estates of the Knights of the Orders of St. Jago Calatrava and Alcantara'la Cruzava or benefit of the Kings selling of the Popes Pardons to eat Flesh in Lent or tiâ—es prohibited granted to maintain the charge of War against Infidels or Hereticks yearly yeilding eighty thousand pounds sterling the terzae or thirds out of the Lands and Estates of the Ecclesiasticks and Clergy for the maintenance of the wars and defence of the Catholick Religion over and above the Excusado or ordinary Revenue of a Tenth by the grant of the Pope of all the goods and Lands of the Church which yeildeth yearly six hundred and twenty thousand Duckets besides the State Artifices of getting Bulls or Warrants from the Pope to lay heavy Taxes upon the Clergy as in Anno 1560. to leavy every year for five years together three hundred thousand Crowns with a liberty of lengthning that time if the Pope should think fit to furnish fifty Gallies against the Infidels and Hereticks and two years after an Addition of four hundred thousand Duckets per annum and at another time three Millions for six years to be yearly paid by the Clergy vast sums of money yeerly raised out of their Wine and Oyl for some yeers insomuch as the Cardinal Ossatus complaining of it saith That nullus est Clerus in toto orbe Christiano qui majoribus oneribus prematur quam Clerus Hispaniae no Clergy in the Christian world is more oppressed with Taxes then the Clergy of Spain Doth not lay such Taxes or Impositions as the people of Portugal do bear by the Alfandega's or Impositions upon all Merchandize Corn excepted Imported upon some a tenth upon some a fifth and in some places some other parâ—s a Tax upon Wood Wine Oyl Fruit Flesh Fish Blacks or Negros servants or slaves
licencia an unbounded licence in the Magistrate to Tax the people and a licence to the people in stead of a liberty to Trade and cozâ—n one another makes them so patient to undergo those vectigaliâ— ac Collationes aliaque servilâ—a onera Taxes payments and servil burdens which otherwise they would be unwilling to endure All or most of which being continued and lying heavy upon them upon pretences of debts incurred for the publike to be paid or otherwise have made such a dearth of all houshold provisions as that notwithstanding that their huge Granaries at Amsterdam are always stored with abundance of Corn to transport and sell to all other Nations and Kingdoms where they finde any scarcity or want of it a family of ten persons more then one half whereof have been young children have this last Winter amongst other Victuals as Flesh Fish Roots c. been inforced to spend 17 s. sterling in a week in ordinary and common bread and twelve shillings sterling within the same Circle of time for Turfe or Firing and the generality of the Nation are sinking so fast into a poverty as by an exact account taken thereof there have been this last year more then in any of the former years above eighty thousand Pawns brought into the publike Lumbard at Amsterdam and may teach them and all the world at last how great the difference will be betwixt a natural and hereditary Prince governing by the known Laws of a Nation and with less charges and that which is onely upheld by the power of money and Taxes to make and preserve an interest for those who are the only gainers by it Did not in any of his necessities as some of his predecessors Kings of England have done in theirs both before and since the Conquest continue and take the Tax of Dane gelt laid to expel that Nation out of England after they were quieted and returned home nor as many of the English Lords of divers Mannors have done and do to this day require and take of their Tenants Peter pence or Chimney money amounting in some Mannors to considerable summes though it was long since abolished by Act of Parliament and was not to be taken in that kind or for that purpose nor doth by wars or impositions impoverish his people as some of his neighbors have done or made them to complain as the common people of Normandy did not long ago that they were une uraye Anatomy de corps humain auquel ne reste plus que les os le Peau encore foulez like an Anatomy of a mans body which had nothing but bones and skin left upon it and that also foul enough but hath made them in the generality richer then himself and more abounding in plenty and riches then any Nation of Christendom And being the son and heir of the Crowns and Kingdoms as well as afflictions of his Royal Father King Charles the Martyr who in the Halcion and peaceable days of the former part of his Raign did so much abhor the mode or manner of an Arbitary Government as he did imprison in the Tower of London that Monarch of Letters and Learning the great Selden together with Mr. Oliver St. John for but having in their custody or divulging a Manuscript or discourse written by Sir Robert Dudley a titular Duke of Tuscany and an English Fugitive of the way and means how to make the King a great Revenue according to the manner of Gabels or Taxes in Italy borrowed by Mr. St. John out of Sr. Robert Cottons famous library where it had otherwise slept and caused his Attorney General to exhibit a Bill in the Star Chamber against the now Earl of Clare the said Mr. Selden and Mr. St. John for the publishing of it though but in Manuscript and was so far from any action desire or intention of a Tyrant as when he might like the Dairo or Emperor of Japan have wallowed in riches and pleasures and as a Minotaur have fed upon the liberties of the people if he would have but delivered up the Church of England and his subjects and their after generations as slaves to the Arbitrary will Government of a Rebellious part of the people calling themselves a Parliament he did on the contrary not only most constantly endure all the miseries dangers ignominies which they could cast upon him but rather then he would betray or give up their Religion Laws or liberties laid down his life as a sacrifice to preserve them and havâ—ng before his death established our excellent Laws of Magna â—harta and made them stronger and more binding then ever they were before by confirming them and other their liberties and customs under the name and notion of their petition of Right and at the signing or ratification thereof used a saying or sentence deserving to be written in Letters of Gold which he called his Maxime and declared to be his own That the peoples liberty strengthens the Kings prerogative and that the Kings prerogative is to defend the peoples liberty did not for all those unparalelled sufferings and great Misusage of his Father and himself take any advantage of those that forfeited their interest in those excellent laws and liberties but pardoning all their transgressions restored them to all that they could but so much as pretend unto And notwithstanding that he and his Royal predecessors had quamplurimisdonis largitionibus by their very many favors and bounties to such as deserved well of the Commonwealth and had been instrumental in the preservation or promoting the good of it given away the most part of the Crown Lands and many of their Regalities doth not make an Aeraâ—ium or Treasury of mony for himself or his own particular use out of his own revenues separate from that of the publike as Lewis the 12. of France did but doth with that very small part of his Lands which remaineth and his legal and undenyable rights and prerogatives without any Taxes or Impositions laid upon the people other then what is assented unto by themselves and their representatives in Parliament bear and support the burden and continual charges of the Government and affaires thereof Which should rouze and stir up the hearts and affections of his people of England and perswade them who have now and had before the Taxes raised to improve Rebellion fewer Taxes and impositions laid upon them then any Nation within the walk or perambulation of the Sun and are the freest and do enjoy more liberties immunities and priviledges then any people of the world not to deny or withhold from him and of his just Regalities rights and preheminences but think it to be more necessary for their good and well-being to permit him to enjoy his Prae-emption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them then that which many of our Acts of Parliament have done to enjoyn the repairs of Havens and Peers as was in the last Session of Parliament for the Peer
exemption by an Assessement to be made for that purpose Or by the West Indians in Guaxara who by order of the high Justice do deliver unto Fryers travailing that way if they have no money Horses to ride on or to carry their carriages or provision without money so that at their departure they write it down in the Town book what they had spent and not abide above four and twenty hours in the Town where by a contribution their expences are defrayed Or by the old Irish one of which being a Tenant of Termonland or Land belonging to the Church and unwilling to change his old customes for new said to the Bishop of Dermot of whom he held his Lands non debet dominus mutare censum antiquum sed si careat rebus necessariis vaccis pinguibus c. debet ad nos miâ—tere Et nos debemus subministrare nam quaecunque nos habemus Domini sunt nos etiam ipsi illius sumus My Lord ought not to change his ancient Customes Rents or services due out of the Land but if he wanteth necessary provisions for his house and family as fat Cows c. we ought to furnish them for whatsoever we have are his and we our selves are the Lords Or by the modern Irish or inhabitants of Ireland who notwithstanding the Pourveyance or Compositions for Pourveyance and Prae-emption allowed to the Kings Lord Lieutenant of that kingdom could since the abolition of that most useful necessary custome in England offer if Fame did not mistake her self an yeerly supply of 3000. Irish Oxen or Cattel towards the support of the King and his Family and have besides in their Act of Parliament lately made for the execution of his Majesties Declaration for the setlement of that kingdom consented That the Lord Chief Justice of his Majesties Court of Kings Bench the Lord Chief Baron of his Majesties Court of Exchequer and the Master of the Rolles or any other his Majesties Officers of that Kingdom for the time being shall and may have and receive such Port Corn of the Rectories Impropriations or Appropriate Tythes forfeited unto or vested in his Majesty his heirs â—nd successors which have been formerly paid or reserved Or by the Scots a people never as yet exceeding or so much as keeping even pace with their neighbors of England in civilities kindness and gratitudes who when their King Malcolme who raigned in Scotland in Anno Dom. 1004. had given and distributed all the Lands of the Realm of Scotland amongst his men and reserved na thing as the Act of Parliament of 22 Jac. 3. beareth in property to himself but the Royal dignity and the Mute hill in the Town of Scone could give and grant to him the ward and relief of the heir of ilke Baron quhan he sold happen to deceis for the Kings sustentation And did notwithstanding so well esteem and allow of those ancient rights of Pourveyance or Compositions for them as in the Raign of their King James the 4. in the year of our Lord 1489. The Lords spiritual and temporal and uthers his Leiges did declare in Parliament that it was the Kings property for the honorable sustentation of his house according to his Estait and honor quhilk may not be failized without great derogation of his noble Estaite and that his true lieges suld above all singular and particular profit desire to prefer the noble Estaite of his Excellence like as it was done in the time of his maist noble progenitors of gud minde And did therefore think it neidful expedient and reasonable And did statute and ordain that full derogation cassation and annullation be maid of all Gifts Donations Infeftments Fewes life Rents given by his Hieness to quhat sumever person or persons sen the day of his Coronation swa that all Lands Rents Customes Burrow Mailles Fermeâ— Martes Mutton Poultery avarage carriage and uther Dewties that were in the hands of his Progenitors and Father the day of his decease notwithstanding quhat sumeuer assignation or gift be maid thereupon under the Great Seal Privy Seal or uthers be all utterly cassed and annulled so that the haill profits and Rents thereof may cum to the King to the honorable sustentation of his house and noble Estaite Or so much degenerate from the Brittaines our Ancestors and predecessors who were heretofore so glad of any occasions to express their love and honor of their Princes as when they made their progress or had any occasion to visit any of their houses they flung the doors off the Hinges and gave them open hearted and free entertainment Nor deny those respects and duties to our Kings which no other Nations do refuse to their Kings or Princes which may make us to be an hissing and reproach to other Nations and by using our head so ill to be esteemed as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 people without an head or the Sciopedes who are reported to have such large feet as they can when they please cover their head with it and never let it be said that when a factious and rebellious part of our people could in the year 1656. suppose it to be their Interest to exchange with Cromwell their Antichrist or Mahomet their Religion Laws and liberties for his Tyrannical and Arbitrary will and pleasure and petition him in their Conventicle or pretended Assembly of Parliament that he would besides the remainder of the Kings Queens and Princes Revenues not disposed of except Forrests and Chaces and the Mannors thereunto belonging and of all the Lands of Delinquents in the Counties of Dublin Kildare Clare and Katerlaugh the forfeited Lands in Scotland which were great and considerable two parts of the Recusants Lands in England not compounded for and all Debts Fines Penalties Issues and casual profits belonging to the Keepers of the liberties of England so miscalled which was by them and their fellow Usurpers setled upon him and was of it self a Revenue too great for all the Brewers of England to accept of ten hundred thousand pounds sterling per annum to be leavyed upon the people with such other supplies as should be needful to be raised from time to time by consent of that which they Nick named a Parliament and three hundred thousand pounds per annum to be raised for the charge of the Administration of Justice and support of Government which he thinking not enough to serve his wicked occasions designes or desires to â—lay or keep in exile the heir of the Kingdoms tells his dutiful Parliament at a conference in April 1657. that the charge of the Government would yearly amount unto ninteen hundred thousand pounds sterling and therefore though the war with Spain should cease desired that the thirteen hundred thousand pounds per annum might have six hundred thousand pounds per annum more added thereunto and that that could be willingly assented unto and all the Loyal party enforced and driven to submit
to those and as many more burdens and payments as should be necessary to keep them their posterities in a perpetual slavery we should when the Kings Revenue real and casual much enlarged since his happy Restoration and yet appearing not to be enough to go thorow with his important and necessary occasions and to amount but to nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum his Revenue in lands being also included take it to be consistent with the duty of subjects to put in dolio perforato a vessel that leaks more then ordinary or wants a bottom the remembrance of all the benefits and â—avors of our King and Soveraign Who hears no body say or do as that great Commander and as much a Gentleman Mounsieur de la Noüe did to his Grandfather the great Henry of France who finding himself much obliged unto him when he was King of Navarre and full of troubles for raising and bringing to his assistance one hundred horse well furnished at his own charges and unfurnished with money to recompence him sent a grant by Letters Patents unto him and his heirs of certain Crown lands lying neer unto his estate which the virtuous and generous la Noüe not thinking fit to receive brought back again to the King with these words Sire ce m'est beauecoup d' honneur de contentment de receuoir ces tesmoignages de la bonne vâ—lonte de votre Majestè je ne les refuserois pas si vos affaires estoient en estat de faire telles liberalites Quand je vous verray Sire au dessus vos Ennemis possedant des biens proportionnees a la grandeur de vostre courage de vostre naissance je receuroy de bon Caeur vous gratifications pour cette heure si vous vouliâ—z recompencer de ceste facon tous ceux qui vous serviront vostre Majeste seroit incontinent ruâ—nee Sir These testimonies oâ— your Majesties good will towards me and the honor which you have done me therein do very much content me and I would not refuse them if your Majesties affaâ—â—s and estate were in a condition to afford such bounties and when I shall see your Majesty to have overcome your enemies and possessing an estate becoming your grandeur and birth I shall be very willing to accept of your gratifications in the meantime if you shall go on in a way of recompencing in this manner all those which shall serve you your Majesty will be suddainly ruined and by no means would receive it but all his life after continued a great Warrior and suffering most heroically in the troubles and affairs of his Soveraign lost his life in them Or imitate Jesurum who like an Heifer waxing fat kicked against the cause of it or do as the Athenians taken by Philip King of Macedon did at the Battel of Chaeroâ—ea who could not remember his favors in releasing of them out of their Captivity unless they might have what they lost also restored unto them Or be guilty of a national Ingratitude the sin whereof being next to blasphemy the most ugly and horrid of all other sins which can be in a particular man was so abhorred by the heathen as Hippocratidas did as some wise Christians have since done wish it were made a crime as punishable as Felony Or so despoil our Land of its ancient vertue and love to their Princes as to have Nabalisme incouraged and our Araunahs and Barzillai's to dye childless and unimitated or suffer our selves to be misled by any Temptations of particular sparing or profits to do as some of the worser sort of the late reforming Traitors did pick out the choicest Jewels of the Crown and put in counterfeits in stead of them or hearken to the Syren songs of those who for an advantage which may before the account be cast up prove a greater disadvantage will suppose it to be for the good of the Nation to disuse and lay by those necessary duties and grateful acknowledgements of Pourveyance and Compositions for them to their King and Soveraign which Renatus Choppinus a learned French Advocate in his Treatise of the Domaines and Revenuâ— of France stiles Dominicum jus primitus sceptris addictum in necessarios Regiae mensae Aulaeque sumptus honorificum ad summi Imperii inclitae decus Majestatis conservandum a paâ—t of the Kings Domaine belonging and annexed to the Royal Scepter and appropriate to the necessary uses and provisions of the Kings Court and houshold for the honor and conservation of the Rights of Majesty And was with us in England in the Case of one Richards a Pourveyor combining with some Constables to charge the Country with more then the Pourveyance amounted unto for which he was grievously fined and punished no longer ago then in Michaelmas Term in 3 Jac. certified by all the Judges of England to be a prerogative of the King at the common Law and â—hat all the Statutes which have been made to correct abuses in Pourveyance took not away Pourveyance but confirmed it for quâ— tollit iniquitatem firmat proprietatem confirmat usum the taking away of the abuse confirmeth the Right and when the Reputation and credit of a Town and City shall be so dear unto the Inhabitants as they will to preserve ancient Customes supply the charges thereof with publike contributions as the Town of Yarmouth doth in entertainments frequently given to strangers of quality comming thither and the Town of Droitwich in Worcestershire can allow the yearly profit of four of their Salt vats or portions of Salt so called for the like purpose shall endeavor all they can to lessen that of the Kings And the Gentry of Cheshire who are above those of many other Counties well known to preserve the ancient honor of the English Hospitalities and are accustomed to send provisions of meat one to another to help to bear out the charges of their entertainments when any of their friends come unto them will not do well to murmur at so small an yeerly contribution for the provision of the Kings houshold as ninety five pounds sixteen shillings eight pence per annum which is all was charged upon that County Nor can all the housekeepers of England who do well understand that the breeding and raising of their own victuals and houshold provisions by and out of the profits of their Lands are a great help to their house-keeping and makes it to be far cheaper and easie unto them then to buy all that they spend at the Markets where every one doth improve their gain and Commodities and put the loss and hardships upon the buyers think it to be their duty to put a necessity of these inconveniences upon the King which they do all they can to avoid themselves Or when the designs of profit or hopes of reciprocations of courtesies one from another do ordinarily invite the people in their commerce or affairs one
with another to a custome of some little favors or ease in their buyings and bargains as the Baker his one loaf of bread to the dozen the Brewer a Barrel of strong Beer at Christmas the Tallow Chandler his Christmas Candle the London Draper his handful or more then the yard called London measure and that of the hundred and ten pound to some hundred of things sold by weight and one hundred and twenty to others and the Vintners sending some Hippocras at Christmas to their yearly and constant Customers and the like can suppose it fit to save such a petty contribution as the Kings Composition for Pourveyance which throughout England do scarcely amount to so much as those small Civilities and being saved will probably be spent in pride and vanities or for worse purposes Or to weaken the hand of our Moses which they should rather help to sustain and strengthen and when all Nations rejoyce in the power might and Majesty of their Kings shall make it their business to eclipse or diminish it by cutting of our Sampsons locks and that which should promote it For if the men of Israel are said to do well when they perswaded their King Ahab not to hearken to the insolent demands of Benhadad the King of Syria to deliver him his silver and gold c. the people of England must needs be believed to do ill to deny the King so necessary a part of his Regality which was more precious then gold and silver and put him to a treble or very much greater then formerly expences in his houshold provisions when the mercies of God which have hitherto spared our transgressions accomplished our unhappy warfare broken the staffe of the wicked driven them far away that would have swallowed us up and restored our Princes and nobles and mighty men the men of war the Judges and Prophets the prudent and the ancient so as the light hath shined upon them that dwelt in the Land of the shadow of death our Cities have not been laid waste our vallies have not perished nor our habitations been made desolate should put us in mind to be more mindful of his Vicegerent and annointed and remember how much and how often he did threaten his judgements and brought many upon his chosen people of Israel for their ingratitude and how much he was offended with them for not shewing kindness to the house of Gideon and Zerubbaal according to all the goodness which he had shewed to Israel and that as Bornitius saith Quicquid boni homo civisque habet possidet quod vivit quod libere vivit quod bene quod beate omniumque rerum bonorum usu interdum etiam copia ad voluptatem utitur fruitur totum hoc benificium Reipublicae Civilique ordini acceptum est referendum that whatsoever a subject enjoys or possesseth that he lives and lives freely well and happily and abounds wâ—th pleasure and plenty are benefits proceeding from the Commonwealth and good order and government thereof And that omnis homo every man Et res singulorum in Republica conservari nequeant nisi conservetur res publica sive communis adeoque singuli sui causa impendere videntur quicquid conferunt in publicum usum every mans particular estate cannot be in any condition or certainty of safty unless the Commonwealth be preserved so that whatsoever is laid out or expended for the Commonwealth is at the same time laid out and expended for every mans particular and that St. Chrâ—sostom was of the same opinion when he said that ab antiquis Temporibus communi omnium sententia principes a nobis sustentari debere visum est ob id quod sua ipsorum negligentes communes res curant universumque suum otium ad ea impendunt quibus non solum ipsi sed quae nostra sunt salvantur That anciently and by the opinion of all men Princes ought to be supported by their subjects for that neglecting their private affairs they do imploy all their power and care for the good of the Common-wealth whereby not onely what is their own but that which is the subjects are preserved That the King whose Royal progenitor King Edward the third could take such a care of the honor and Pourveyance of the City of London as to grant to the Maior of London who by reason of the wars had not for two years received that great profit which he was wont to receive de mercatoribus Alienigenis illuc confluentibus of Merchants strangers resorting thitheâ— one and twenty pounds per annum de reddit diversorum messuagiorum shoparum ibidem out of the Rents of divers Messuages and Shops in London in relevamine status sui for the maintenance and support of his estate might have as much care taken if duty and loyalty should not be as they ought to be the greatest obligations of his more ancient rights and Pourveyance or Compositions for them And may consider that if such an inseparable right and concomitant of the Crown of England should hereafter appear not to be alienable by any Act or exchange betwixt the King and the people they and their posterities will have but an ill bargain of it if the Pourveyance or Compositions for them should hereafter by any reason or necessity of State be resumed and the Excise or imagined satisfaction granted as a recompence for that and the taking away of the Tenure in Capite and by Knight service should be retained That it cannot be for the good or honor of the English Nation that our King should be reproached as some of a light headed and a light heeled neighbor Nation observing his want of Pourveyance have of late very falsly that he had not wherewithall to buy bread for his Family Or that other Nations should think our English so Fanatick or improved to such a madness by a late rebellion as to embrace the opinion of Arise Evans that pittiful pretender to Prophesie and Revelations who when the men of the Coffee-house Assembly or Rota mongers were with their Quicksilver Brains together with some Rustick or Mechanick nodles framing a new Government or moddel for a Kingdom torn in pieces would likewise shoot his Bolt and publikely in Print advise that the best way would be to Elect some honest pâ—or man of the Nation to be King onely during his life and allow him but one hundred pounds per annum which would be a means to keep off all Plots and Treasons against him or any ambitions or designs to enjoy his Office and when he should die to chose another for the term of his life and so successively one after anothâ—r upon the same and no better terms or allowance Or that we have a minde to do by our gracious King as the Fifth-Monarchy-men do by their King Jesus who notwithstanding all their pretences of setting him upon his Throne are well enough content to gather what they can the while for
enforce them in requital thereof and care of themselues to stretch as much or more the prices of their Cattel and Commodities because their Landlords were insatiable and did never think their Rents high enough raised as long as they could find any pretences to raise them higher or any one to give them the utmost penny when they should not be able to pay their Rents maintain their wives and children and have some little comfort or incouragement by their honest labours unless they should as much as they could make every thing as dear as they could and imitate or exceed them All which combining and strongly confederating together his mersere malis have brought many an evil upon the Kingdome made our Atlas burthen much the heavier the poorer sort of the people to be greatly impoverished and devoured like sheep and the landed and richer part like the Israelites with Quails in their mouths murmurring in the midst of their peace and plenty and thinking that to be thanks enough for them and all their Mannah And like those which distempering their bodies and breeding and causing their own diseases are unwilling to acknowledge themselves to be the Authors of what they complain of but would willingly make the aire and heavenly influences to be in the fault and when they make the high wayes the fowler by their own travailing and riding in them and the worse for the next that shall come after them will lament the deepness or foulness of them Or as Landlords which can grievously complain and wonder at the high rates of Flesh Fish Corn Butter Cheese and other houshold provisions at the Markets when the enhauncing of their own pride extravagancies and profit to maintain them and sequestring themselves from the virtues and hospitalitie of their more beloved and honored Ancestors when they have any thing to buy themselves will not as they should lay the blame upon their own letting their Lands by exact and strict measures of the Acres Rods and Perches to the utmost rack and farthing and in many places by as much indiscretion as unconscionableness apportion and limit the wood which the Tenants are to burn or use by the loads as if it were something more pretious or to be brought by degrees to be weighed by the pound or ownces and will have more rent many times to be paid for it then can possibly be made of it with as many nomine paenes and impossible to be kept Covenants and restrictions as hard-hearted curiosity and diffidence can contrive and invent to the sometimes ruine or great losses of the Tenants in their endeavours to improve and make their Farms yeild as much as their Rents doe amount unto which necessitates them to sell every thing which they have to sell at the highest rates And by so letting their Lands at the highest rent and ten times higher then their Grandfathers some only few good and worshipfull imitators of their Progenitors virtues excepted or as much as can be gotten are not only the greatest cause of the enhaunching of all prices of provisions but by making another as great an advantage to themselves Do when as they do not pay Rents as their Tenants doe for the Lands out of which they raise their commodities add to the prejudice of the Buyers by holding of them up to the rates and humour of the Markets and getting as much as they can possible for what they themselves do sell and send to the Markets And by such or the like profitable and beneficiall customes which are sweet in the mouth or unto the taste but may be bitter in the stomach or digestion of making their benefits by the losses or oppression of the Buyers which at the Markets with those reckoned and included which are at home and to be fed with what is bought or brought from thence are forty for one that are sellers and those that have either Lands of their own or at a Rent are not one in every twenty for those which have not have very much enlarged their own Estates and impoverished the Commonalty Wherefore all those of our Nation which like the wanton at last unhappy Sybarites now troubled with a great deal more under a slavish government and dominion of the Turks then the crowing of the Cocks in the night time to disturb their sweet sleeps or repose which once they were so foolish as to account an inconvenience would but summon in their consciences and a right understanding of causes and effects to the Tribunal of reason and observe the dictates of that and common right The Praeemption which was never used to be denied to praeheminence but alwayes attended it as an insepeperable Concomitant and Consequence and so esteemed to be rational as the rude and unmannerly Dutch with their heads in a piece of a Rug and their good manners running out of their knees can afford it to the lowest rank of their Heeren self-created Lords or States or to a Schepen or Sindic Sheriffe or Recorder of a Town would not be found to be a grievance and where any Priviledges as there ought to be many are associate and incorporate with Soveraign Majesty the King of England under whose grants and allowance only every Seller as well as Buyer at Fairs and Markets claims and enjoyes the liberty of buying and selling should not himself be unkindly used or his Pourveyors debarred the liberty of a first Buyer which was in Anno 720. or thereabouts understood to be so necessary and inherent to Kingly authority and Supereminence the reverence respect and duty belonging unto it and a priviledge so just and reasonable and becoming Subjects to be well contented with and the Regality of Kings not to part with as King Ina one of our Saxon Kings did by a Law prohibit Fore Fang or Captio Obsâ—niâ—rum quae in Foris aut Nundinis ab aliquo fit priusquam Minister Regis ea caeperit quae Regi fuerint necessaria the taking or buying of houshold prouisions by others in Fairs or Markets before the Kings Minister or Pourueyor took those things which were necessary for the King the words of that Law as the learned Sir Henry Spelman hath in the Version rendred them de Fore fang 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Saxon signifying ante or before and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prendere or to take i. e. de preventione decrevimus per totam Angliam quod idem judicium teneri debet We ordain that this Law of Prevention or Praeemption be firmly holden throughout all England And is more fit to be allowed unto the King whose just Rights and Jurisdictions every man is sworn or ought to swear to maintain and defend If there were no fifth commandement in being or any other Praecept in Scripture to honour and obey the King then unto Lords of Manors having Markets and Fairs belonging unto them or the Lord Maior or Sheriffs of London or the Magistrates of any other City or Town Corporate in England
for a greater observance is certainly to be tendered unto the King even in that particulâ—r of Praeemption which may well be believed by all that are not Quakers whose Tenants all the people of England are mediately or immediately by some or other Tenure Then that which is usually done to Lords of Manors Justices of Peace or Country Gentlemen by their Tenants or poorer sort of Neighbours who if they chance to catch any Woodcocks or Partridges in any of those Gentlemens Lands will bring them to their â—ouses to sell at such cheap and easie rates as they shall please to give for them and if which seldome happens they should carry them to the Markets and not thither are sure enough to be chid for it and crossed and denied in any greater matter which they shall have to doe with them And is but that or a little more curtesie which Butchers Fishmongers and other Tradesmen selling victualls or provisions in great quantities and all the year or often unto their constant Customers will not for their own ends fail to doe or neglect or to sell unto them at easier rates then unto others and find themselves to be many times no loosers by it insomuch as some have lately well afforded to sell to a constant Customer for great quantities at the same rate it was 40 or 60 years before And the Compositions of the Counties for Pourveyance to serve in Beefe Mutton Poultry Corn Malt and other provisions for the Kings Houshold and the maintenance and support of it at a more cheaper rate then the Markets yeild which when they were first set was but the Market rate or a little under long agoe made and agreed upon by the greater Officers of the Kings Houshold and some Justices of Peace in every County and easily and equally taxed and laid upon the whole and not upon any particular man which was poor or of a small Estate not fit to bear it May be with as much and more reason allowed and chearfully submitted unto as those many now called quit rents or Rent services which the most of our Nobility Gentry and others not for some few of them doe yet hold some of their Tenants to their antient and reasonable Customes doe receive and their Tenants easily and willingly pay for their several sorts of â—apola Gavels or Tributes charged upon their Lands before and since the Conquest in Kent a County recounting with much comfort of their many Priviledges and beneficiall Customes and most parts of England as Gavel Erth to Till some part of their Landlords Ground Gavel Rip to come upon summons to help to reap their Corn Gavel Râ—d to make so many perches of hedge Gavel Swine for pawnage or feeding their Swine in the Lords Woods Gavel werk which was either Manuopera by the person of the Tenant or Carropera by his Carts or Cariages Harth-silver Chimney-money or Peter-pence which some Mesne Lords do yet receive Were Gavel in respect of Wears and Kiddels to catch Fish pitched and placed by the Sea coasts Gavel noht or Fother or Rent Foder which did signifie pabulum or alimentum ut Saxones antiqui dixerunt and comprehended all sorts of victuals or provisions as the old Saxons interpreted it for the Lord probably in his progress or passing by them and was in usage and custome in the time of Charlemaigne the Emperor about the year of our Lord 800. when the people of Italy Regi venienti in Italiam solvere tenebantur pro quo saepe etiam aestimata pecunia pendebatur were to provide Foder or provisions for the King when he came into Italy in liew of which money to the value thereof was sometimes paid and was long after taken to be so reasonable as it was by the Princes and Nobility of Italy acknowledged in an Assembly to be inter Regalia as a Prerogative due to the King And after the Conquest for Aver Land or Ouver Land carriage of the Lords Corn to Markets and Fairs or of his domestick utensils saith the learned and Judicious Mr. Somner or houshold provisions of the Lord or his Steward when they removed from one place to another sometimes by horse Average sometimes by foot Average one while within the Precinct of the Manor thence called In average and at other times without and then called Out Average whereupon such Tenants were known by the name of Avermanni or Bermanni Smiths Land holden by the service of doing the Smiths work the not performing of which several services so annexed to the said several sorts of Lands and their Tenures made them to be forfeited which though not exchanged and turned into Rents Regis ad exemplum in imitation of the indulgence and favour of King Henry the first to the Tenants of his demeasne Lands either then or shortly after but many of them as appeareth by Mr. Somner continuing in Kent to the Reign of Henry the third others to Edward the first and Edward the third and some in other places to the Reign of King Henry the sixth and in all or many of the Abbies and Religious Houses untill their dissolution in the later end of the Reign of King Henry the eighth notwithstanding that the Lords of Manors and Leets receiving those free or quit Rents as they were called of their Freeholders and Tenants belonging unto their several Manors in lieu and recompence of those services did or ought in their Court Leets twice a year holden cause to be presented and punished any unreasonable prises for provisions or victuals sold in Markets Fairs oâ— otherwise or if they have not Leets are when they are Justices of Peace authorised to doe it and by that untill their Interests perswaded them to let their Tenants use all manner of deceipts in their Marketings and get what unreasonable prises they pleased so as they themselves might rack their Rents farre beyond former ages might have had their provisions untill this time at as low and easie rates as the Kings prouisions and Compositions were at when they were rated and set by the Justices of Peace in the severall Counties and all others of their Neighbourhood might also have enjoyed the benefit of the like rates which the Law intended them And the King may as well or better deserve and expect as many Boons or other services as the Nobility and other great men of the Kingdome doe notwithstanding many Priviledges and Indulgences granted by their more liberall Auncestors and better bestowing their bounties to their Tenants And to be furnished with Carts and Carriages at easie rates as well as the Earl of Rutland is at this day for nothing upon any removall from Belvoir Castle in Lincolnshire to Haddon in Darbyshire and elsewhere from one place to another with very many Carts of his Tenants which are there called Boon Carts when as all Lords or Gentlemen of any rank place or quality in the Kingdome doe take it to be no burden or grievance to their
rates and prices for victuals and houshold provisions In France the Paysants which are the greatest part of the people will tell us that there is mony little enough and that there would if it were not for their Hydras and multitudes of Taxes and Gabels be cheapness enough of all manner of houshold provisions when their Wines and flesh notwithstanding that or any supposed plenty of money are cheap enough In Scotland the moneys and riches which that Nation gained from England by King James his coming to the English Crown and the bounties of that King and his Son King Charles the Martyr with the three hundred thousand pounds sterling for brotherly assistance given to a factious and Rebellious part of them by a party of Covenanting English Rebels to ruine their King and the race and posterity of their benefactors together with the two hundred thousand pounds sterling far exceeding the pay as well as wickedness of their Master Judas given them to sell their pious and distressed King who in a confidence of their Covenanting pretences Faith and promises had fled to their Army for refuge which with the help of his loyal English subjects might easily have preserved him as well as themselves from the miseries and destruction which afterwards happened never appeared to be any cause of the dearness of victuals and houshold provisions more then ordinary or what proceeded from other accidents or causes In Germany where the Bavarian Silver Mines have of late made a plenty of it and every petty Prince and principality hath a regality and priviledge of coyning their Dollars are much allayed and mixed with a baser mettal and their Hanse and Imperial Cities do enjoy a great commerce by Sea and Land they do not complain of the high rates and prices of victuals and houshold provisions The Kingdom of Sweden whose Copper Mines are their Indies and do furnish plenty of Copper money with a value in its weight and materials as much as their denominations which the coyns of Gold and Silver necessarily requiring an allay and some mixture are never blessed with hath in a plenty of that base money no high rates or prices upon their native commodities but 〈◊〉 reasonable as fish enough may be bought for three pence to dine twenty men Rome which receives the money as well as feet of many strangers is the Mart or Forum for the dispatch of most of the Ecclesiastical and too much of the civil affairs of the Catholike Nations and by her claimed Vicariat or Lieutenancy from Jesus Christ and an Empire in Ecclesiastical affairs hath her Taxes Tenths first fruits Oblations Jubilees Indulgences pardons and other attractions of money large Territories Church Land Revenues and the disposal of many priviledges and principalities and famous Channels cut for the Gold and Silver of the Catholike and most enriched Nations to run into the Ocean of its ever filling and never emptying Treasury can at the same time whilst she fits as Queen and delights her self in the several Magazines and Store-houses of her abundance of riches enjoy a very great plenty and cheapness of houshold provisions The Commonwealth of Venice with her wonderful Amass of Treasurs by which she hath for some years last past made wars with the gâ—and Seignior the Behemoth and Leuiathan of the East doth notwithstanding as she did before those wars bless her inhabitants with a competent cheapness The Kingdom of Naples and Dutchy of Milan who with their Garrisons and Armies of Spaniards to the natives in a forced and unwilling obedience are the expenditors and wasters of much of the King of Spaines incomes from India and other his Dominions do not finde that to be the cause or occasion of any dearth or high prices of victuals amongst them The grand Duke of Florence with his great commerce and riches brought into that Country by granting of great priviledges to his Port of Legorn and the Merchants of other Nations trading thither filling his subjects and people with more then formerly and ordinary plenty of money did not thereby so establish the unhappiness of buying their victuals and provisions at unreasonable prices but that there as well as in other principalities and Provinces of Italy which by the Trade of Legorn and neighborhood of Rome and her Ecclesiastical Merchandize are greatly enriched there is so little reason for an enhaunce of the prices and rates of food or provisions as they can be honest gainers by an easie Banda or Reiglement of what is to be paid for them In Spain where the common people do onely hear of the arrival of many millions of Gold and Silver from the West Indies and have little of that but a great deal of black money or Maravedis their great rates for flesh do not arise from the abundance of their money either of the one kinde or of the other but from the barrenness of the Country and the little use thereof procuring no dearness in their Oranges Olives and Lymmons and other fruits and delicacies of that mountainous Country In the East Indies which is one of the Suns darlings whether our English Merchants carry more mony then they should where their mountains hills bring forth great quantities of precious stones and Jewels Gold and Silver and bestows upon them an abundance thereof enough to adorn themselves and the people of the utmost Isles there are no high rates put upon food or victuals In China where there is no want of money they have Rice and other meat for the sustenance of man very cheap and to be had for almost nothing in the Philippina Islands three Hens were sold not long ago for a Rial which is no more then six pence English mony a Dear for two Rials and a Hogg for eighteen And our Countriman Mr. Gage in his journey in Anno 1625. from St. John de Ulhua to Mexico in the West Indies where the world had as it were laid up its Treasures of Gold and Silver found Beef Mutton Kid Hens Turkies Fowles and Quailes to be so plentiful and cheap as he was astonished at it nor was it any store of money in Virginia which heightened there for some times the prices of all things but the Merchants giving greater sums of money to the Savages then they needed neither in New England in Anno 1636. when a Cow was sold for two and twenty pounds which the next yeer after upon the arrival of more might be had for eight pounds And as little is any supposed plenty of money in old England when three millions of Gold too much of which is since transported were coined here betwixt the yeers 1622. and 1630 and two hundred thousand pounds per annum brought hither from Spain to be coined for some years betwixt that and 1640. now no more coming so long a voyage to our Minâ— the cause or reason of those excessive and intollerable pâ—ices and rates of victuals and houshold provisions even to an oppression of the buyers and
great Talbots or as the Prior of Canterbury did of his Tenants who in every Manor were bound ex antiqua consuetudine providere Priori ibidem de quodam Palifrido competenti tempore novae creations suoe by ancient custome to present the Prior at his election or first admittance a Palfrey fitting for him Or which the Prior of Rochester did of his Tenants of the Mannor of Haddenham in the County of Buckingham who by ancient custome in the eighteenth yeer of the raign of King Edward the third were to Mow and make the Lords Hey Weed his grain in his demesnes pay certain Rent Corn called Booting Corn and five hundred threescore and three Eggs at Easter which in Anno 18 H. 6. were by an agreement made with the Prior of Rochester released for the sum of three pounds and an increase of Rent from thence forward viz. for every Yard land twelve pence every half yard land six pence every Cotland eight pence and every worthy some Tenants so called four pence which is to this day paid and continued And being besides obliged by their customes to the works and services following viz. That every Tenant holding a yard land and the Tenants of two half yard lands ought to plough the Demeasne lands of the Lord two days in the year viz. in Winter and in Lent for which they were to have their dinner allowed by the Lord every Tenant holding a yard land ought in harvest upon a flesh day as also upon a Fish day to be assigned by the Reeve or Bailiff to find two able persons every holder of a half yard every Cotland or Cottogea and every worthy ought to finde the same day one able and lawful person with Hooks or Sickles to reap the Lords Grain in his Demeasnes for which they were to have their dinner allowed them at the charge of the Lord or his Farmer every yard land ought to carry half a quarter of the Lords grain to Oxford being about twelve miles distant to Wallingford neer as much or to Wickham being about ten miles distant being Market Towns near adjoyning to Haddenham and all the Carriers were to have one penny in common to drink the morrow they ought not to work every yard land ought to carry to Marlow eleven quarter of Grain of antient measure at three tearms of the year to be quit from all things by six weeks after and to carry the Lords grain from his demeasnes into his Barn from the furthest field four loads from Dillicot field six loads and if they carry nearer then all the day if it please the Lord also if the Lord shall buy Wood every Yard land ought to carry two loads of Wood from the place into the Lords Yard so it be ready to carry before the Feast of St. Michael otherwise each Yard land should onely carry a horse load so as they may in one day go and return and all that week they should remain quiet likewise if the Lord should build houses he ought to buy Tymber and the men viz. his Coppyholders ought to bring it home viz. each hide every day one Load untill the whole be carryed so as they may in one day go and return also if it please the Lord to send for fish four hides ought to be summoned and two shall go for fish to Gloucester which is about six and thirty miles from thence and other two shall carry it to Rochester upon their own cost and they should remain quiet until they return all the Cotterels and worthy Tenants ought to wash the Sheep of the Lord and to sheer them and fully to perform all thereunto belonging and have nothing therefore and if a theif should be taken in the liberty of the Lord the Cotterel Tenants should keep him And were so due and of so long a continuance as though the Tenants some few onely excepted which would not pertake of the Composition and are still contented to do their work and carriage services did upon a reference made by King James to Henry Earl of Manchester Lord President of his Councel in Anno 1624. to hear and determine the differences betwixt Sir Henry Spiller then Lord of the said Mannor and the Tenants concerning that and other matters within a short time after viz. in the first year of the raign of King Charles the Martyr agree for a Release of the said services not acquitted in Anno 18 H. 6. to pay yeerly unto the Lord of the Mannor and his heirs after the rate of three pence for every Acre and a penny for every Messuage or Cotage which had no land belonging unto it Or as many the like beneficial customes and priviledges at this day enjoyed by the Lords of some thousands or more of Mannors in England which beloned unto the Abbies and Religious houses for which they have quit Rents or other payments not unlike the Compositions for the Royal Pourveyance Or that the Steward of the Kings house should not if the Kings Pourveyance and Prae-emption had not been remitted by Act of Parliament have authority to do as much as the Steward of the Kings house did about the eighteenth year of the Raign of King Edward the second notwithstanding so great priviledges immunities and exemptions granted and confirmed to the City of London command that no Fishmonger upon pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of his goods and chattels should go out of the City to forestall any Sea or fresh fish or send them to any great Lord or Religious house or any person whatsoever nor keep from coming to Town untill the hour appointed for selling be past untill the Kings Achators or Pourveyers should have made their Pourveyance to the use of the King Or that the King of England whose Royal Ancestor King Richard the first did not onely give to many Religious houses as to the Priory of Royston in Cambridgeshire divers exemptions and priviledges to be free from Carriages c. but de Regalium domorum aedificatione ac omnimoda operatione of works towards the repair or building of the Kings houses Ac ut silvae eorum ad praedicta opera aut ad aliqua alia nullo modo capiantur that their Woods or Timber should not be cut or taken for that or any other purpose and whose other Royal Progenitors have abundantly furnished diverse Abbies Religious houses with priviledges to be free of Carriage by Carts Summage upon horses de Thesauro ducendo Convoy of the Kings Treasure de operationibus Castellorum Pontium Parcorum Murorum work to be done in the building or repairs of Castles Bridges or Walls de vaccarum solutione quae dari solebant pro Capitibus utlagatorum and the payment of certain Cows or Cattel to redeem the forfeitures of Outlaws and exemptions from payment of Fumage or Chimny money Lestage or licence to carry away from Markets what they had bought or in release or discharge of customes such as at Beleshale in