Tenants to permit them to pay their respects and obligations unto them in that way or upon a New-years day or when they shall invite them to a Christmas dinner or doe them any courtesie to bring them a present of Capons or Chickens or the like or when they come to welcome them home from London or have any request how little soever to make unto them are afraid to approach them without bringing some offering or mediation though it be but a bottle of such pitifull wine as the Vintner of the next Market Town can furnish them out of a Vessel but little bigger And the Lord of the Manor of Harrow in the County of Middlesex had in Anno 21 R. 2. a Custome belonging to that Manor that by summons of the Bayliffe upon a Generall Reap day or Magna precaria then so called the Tenants as well free as Copiholders should yearly amongst them doe 199 dayes work for the Lord within the Manor and every one having a Chimney should send a man thither for that purpose and where there is no Custome to oblige it or the like some curtesies amounting to near as much are as often to be found as the love and good will to a Landlord or a man of quality or fear of his ill will or displeasure Nor is it unusuall for Parishioners to help a Parson or Minister of a Parish to reap and carry in his corn or to fetch coals or wood for him many a mile distant And will be as much and more according to the dictates of right reason as for a Patron of the Advowson of a Church to be for ever entitled to the presentation of it because his Ancestors or those under whome he claime did at the first build and endow it with the Glâ—be land and their own Tythes though the Parson presented by him unto it is to repair the Chancel and the Parishioners tax one another to maintain and keep the other parts of the Church in good reparations or that the Patron and Ordinary should in a vacancy charge the Glebe with some yearly payments Or for those that have Grants of Fairs or Markets or enjoy them by prescription to take their Toll which unless there be found a speciall custome that the Sellers should doe it is to be paid by the Buyers and money for Pickage and Stallage or for Toll called Travers or passage by some wayes and Thorough Toll for driving or passing through some Towns c. And the Assistances Aids or Contributions in his Majesties Pourveyance and Composition for his house-keeping may be as much and more warranted by the rules of right reason as they are in matters of Policy and well ordering of some Societies and subordinate Governments in and concerning the Kingdome and as they are when the Merchants of the English Staple at Dordrecht and Hamborough do tax and receive a certain summe of money upon every English Cloth sold beyond the seas and to imploy that and the admittances and making free of Apprentices of the old or new Hanse And the Fines assessed upon the Infringers of any Orders of the Companies to defray the charges and support thereof or as the Lord Mayor of London for the time being by Custome or Charter of the City takes for Scavage or Shewage of all Merchandise brought to London a certain rate by the Tonne or Pack so much as amounts to above three hundred pounds besides the profits of the Tolls Pickage and Stallage of Fairs and Markets with an allowance of fourscore pounds out of every one of the 8. Coal-meaters places and for Cattle brought to Smithfield to be sold and Eels Fish and Corn imported and many other things towards the charges of his extraordinary housekeeping for the credit and honor of the City in the time of his Maioralty which the simplest and poorest Citizen never grumbles at but acknowledgeth to be for the good of the City the Company of which he is free for he must alwaies in the year of his Maioralty be â—aken in as a Freeman of one of the twelve antient and principall Companies of the City as the Mercers Goldsmiths Groâ—ers Cloth-workers Fishmongers c. though before he was free of some other Company largely contributing to the charges of him and his Pageants upon the day of his Initiation or Lord Maiors day so as the twelve Companies are every year never able to escape a great part of the charges of that day and besides an allowance of five hundred pounds or a considerable summe of money towards that years expences out of the Chamber and Revenues of the City hath the Livery men of every of the many Companies or Corporations of Trade bringing him 40 s. in retribution of a Dinner and a small silver spoon of the sixth part of the value every Citizen of any considerable Estate taxed and contributing to the charges of Triumphant Arches or Entertainments of their King or Prince upon extraordinary occasions every Company bearing and helping out the charges of the Livery-men Wardens and chief of their Company many rich Bachelers or men so called though some of them are married created in the Lord Maiors Company only for the service of that day paying six pound a man and others of that Company paying four pound a man to be of the Budge and to wear their Gowns faced with a furre so called and the other Companies have Bachelers created or chosen for that day out of the Yeomanry so stiled which besides their something extraordinary charges in Feasts at their admissions and in apparrel and habiliments for that day doe likewise contribute to the charges and worship of their particular Companies for that day which enables them to drain the Capons White-broath puts them in a capacity of most couragiously storming the Custards in their Grusty Garrisons and of the better overseeing of the Company and Mystery of their Trade at their no seldome comfortable meetings and rejoycing in the creatures the Lord Mayor having also the benefit of great Fines of four hundred pounds or more a man imposed upon twenty or thirty in a year or too many more then need who after such time as his Lordship in his Fishing for Fines hath drunk unto them shall be unwilling or not think themselves fit to be an Alderman or Sheriffe And as consonant and more agreeable to right reason as the quarteridge of never less then five pence every quarter of year and twelve pence per annum to be distributed as their Company pleaseth to the poor paid by every Freeman of which there are very great numbers to every of their Halls or Companies two shillings and six pence for binding and thirteen shillings and four pence for making free of every Apprentice six pence per annum for every Yeoman or Freeman of the Company under the Livery and two shillings per annum of every one of the Livery towards the expences of their Barge when with as much magnificence
as they can they doe with Trumpets Drums and Musick by water in their several Barges adorned with the Banners and Arms of their Companies or Gilds conduct and attend their Lord Maior to be sworn at Westminster although the City of London and every Company in London are abundantly or very well endowed with lands of inheritance of a great yearly value and great stocks of money by Gifts and Legacies And no less reason then the imposing of a penny upon every Broad Cloth brought to sale to Blackwell-hall in London to be paid to the Chamberlain of London to the use of the City for Hallage which the Judges of the Kings Bench in Mich. Terme 32 33 Eliz. in the Chamberlain of Londons Case adjudged to be lawfull because it was as they then declared pro bono publico in regard of the benefits which the Subjects enjoyed thereby and for the maintenance of the weal publick and can not be said to be a charge to the Subject when he reaps benefit thereby and resembled it to Pontage Murage Toll and the like which as appeareth by the book of 13 H. 4.14 being reasonable the Subject will have more benefit by it then the charge amounts unto and that the Inhabitants of a Town or Parish may without any Custome make Ordinances and Bylawes for the reparation of a Church or High-wayes or any thing which is for the weal publick and in such cases the greater part shall bind all the rest And as much to be approved as the wages of the Knights of the Shires and Burgesses coming to Parliaments which are taxed and levied of the Counties Cities and Boroughs some few as those which hold any Lands parcel of an Earldome or Barony only excepted and the charges of the Convocation or Clergy assessed upon the Clergy The Synodals Procurations Proxies and payments made and paid by every Minister to defray the charges of the Arch Deacons in their Visitations every year and the Bishops every three years who are enabled to recover them by the Statute of 34 and 35 of Henry the eighth cap. 19. Oblations Easter and other offerings for the further supply and maintenance of the Ministry Tributes Customes and allowances to Governors of Colonies and Plantations as Virginia New-England Barbados c. or 10 s. or some other rate given by Merchants to the Consuls at Venice Smirna Aleppo Ligorne c. towards their support to assist them in the matter of Trade and procuring Justice from the Superiors of the Territories The Pensions Admissions and Payments in the Universities and the severall Colleges and Halls therein for their support with Taxes also sometimes imposed for publick Entertainments of the King Queen Prince Chancellor of the University or some other Grandees although every Colledge and Hall is endowed with large yearly and perpetuall Revenues in Lands the Admittances yearly Pensions and Payments together with the sale and rent of many Chambers in the Inns of Court Chancery or Colledges or Houses of Law towards the maintenance charges and support of the honour of those Societies and contributions not seldome made and enforced towards publick Treatments and Masques the payments and rates in Parishes for Pews Burialls tolling a passing Bell or ringing him and his companions at Funerals which if not enough to defray the charges of the many Feasts and Meetings of the Church-wardens and Petty States of the Parish repairing of the Church new painting and adorning it buying new Bell-ropes casting one or more Bells building the Steeple something higher or making a sumptuous Diall with a gilded Time and Hour-glass are sure enough to be enlarged by a Parish Rate or Tax more then it comes to Or that which is paid by the poor Tankard or Water-Bearers at the Conduits in London where every one payeth three shillings and six pence at his admittance and a penny a quarter towards the support of that pittifull Society Or those contributions sic magna componere parvis to represent great things by small and the vegetation or manner of the growth of an Oak by that of the lowly Shrubs which are made by a more impoverished sort of people the Prisoners for Debt in Ludgate by Orders and Constitutions so necessary is Government and Order and the support thereof even in misery of their own sorrowfull making in their narrow confinements that the Assistant which is monethly chosen by all the Prisoners to attend in the Watch-hall all day to call down prisoners to strangers which come to speak with them change money for the Cryers at the Grates keep an accompt in writing what money or gifts are every day sent to the Prisoners or given to the Box to charge the Steward with it upon the Accompt day see the Accompts truly cast up the Celler cleared by ten of the clock at night of all Prisoners and the Prisoners to be at their Lodgings quietly and civily hath his share of six pence allowed out of the Charity money every night whereof two pence is to be for the Assistant two pence for the Master of the Box and the other two pence allowed in mony or drink unto him which is the running Assistant or unto the Scavenger for bearing 2 candles before him at nine of the clock at night and rings the bell for Prayers is the Cryer for sale at the Markets for the Charity men of light bread taken by the Lord Maior or Sheriffs chumps of Beefe or any other things sent in by the City Clerk of the Market and unsized Fish by the water Bayliffe with many other small employments for which his Salery is four shillings eight pence per moneth and two pence out of the sixteen pence paid by every Prisoner at his first coming And the Scavenger who is to keep the house clean hath for his standing Salery five shillings eight pence per moneth two pence for every Prisoner at his first coming out of the sixteen pence table-money by him paid and a penny out of every Fine imposed upon offenders for the breach of any orders Every Prisoner paying at his first coming besides many other Fees fourteen pence for entring his name and turning the key five shillings for a Garnish to his Chamber-fellows to be spent in coals and candles for their own use or for a Dinner or Supper and sixteen pence to one of the Stewards of the House for Table-money out of which candles are to be bought for the use of the House every night set up in places necessary c. notwithstanding that it hath above 60 l. per annum belonging unto it charged upon lands in perpetuity and many other considerable and misused Legacies which have been setled and bestowed upon that should be well priviledged Prison And as much and more reasonable as the generall protection and defence is above any particular and the publick benefits do exceed any that are private as those payments and services which being derived from gratitude or retribution for
Roturiers des Villes non Franches Bourgs Villages a proportion des biens du Taillable sans qu ' il ait estè besoin d' asembler les Estats pour ce suiet those kind of Taxes are paid by the third Estate or Commonalty that is to say by the Inhabitants or common people of the Towns and Boroughts not infranchised or freed from it by the King according to the proportion of their goods or moveables without any assembly of the Estates to that purpose except in Languedoc Provence Burgogne Daulphine and Brittaine where when the King and his Councel have resolved what the Tailles shall be les terres immeubles seulement sont Taillables the lands and immoveables only are tailleable and their near friends the Scots did long agoe so well like of gratitude as they enacted and held it to be a good Law that Lands holden in few Ferme pay and ane certain zierly dewty nomine Feudi Firme may be recognosced be the Superior for none payment of the few dewtie and that twa maner of waies the first ex provisione naturae contractus by operation of law and the nature of the contract for the few Fermorer not pay and his few Ferme for his ingratitude and unthankfulnes Tinis and forfaltis his few Ferme be the disposition of the Law quhilk as zit was not in practique and use in Scotland And the English Landlords were so unwilling to part with any priviledges which brought them in any power gain or profit as where they held any of the Kings antient Demesnes in Fee Farme and the King did cause his antient Demesnes to be Tallied the Lord or Fee Farmer under him would sue forth the Kings writ commanding the Sheriff that in case the lands were auntient Demeasne hucusque consueverit Talliari and was untill then accustomed to be Tallied that rationabile Tallagium ei habere faceret de libere Tenentibus suis in manerio praedicto sicut prius fieri consuevit he should cause the Freeholders of the said Manor to pay unto their Lord such reasonable Tallage as was accustomed And with as much or more reason were the Pourveyances or Compositions for them allowed and established as the hitherto never complained of in Parliament or accompted to be grievances Herezelda Herriot services or Herriots which Skene an Author of great authority amonst the Scots defineth to be gratuitae donationes quae ab husbando seu agricola datur domino suo ratione dominij reverentiae the free gifts or remunerations of the Tenants to their Lords in the reverence and respect which they bear unto them Which the Hollanders those grand contesters for Liberties doe call Laudemia and notably increase their small Revenues in lands with them And in England saith the learned Spelman Non nisi post mortem husbandi solvitur is only paid after the death of the Tenant and differs from a Reliefe for that a Reliefe is in case of Inheritance but an Herriot in a lesser Estate as for life c. and being formerly and in the Saxon times of a greater value by the giving or paying to their Lords Shields Swords Spears Helmets Horses furnished and money according to the several qualities and estates of the Tenants have been since by the example and indulgence of our Princes imitated by the Nobility and Gentry reduced to the best horse or beast and if none to the best houshold stuffe but so greedily attached or seldome remitted by the Landlords as the poor mans single Ewe Lamb in the parable of the Prophet Nathan to David or a Cow which should give the lamenting Wife and Children some nourishment and sustenance are seldome able to escape their Bailiffes or such as are sent to fetch them And if it be reason for the people to make such payments and contributions and observe such respects to their Landlords and subordinate Governors or Superiors as much and greater surely ought they to pay unto their Pater Patriae the protector and defender as well of those that receive those duties as of those that pay them and are and should be enough to awaken and rouze up their gratitudes and imprint in their memories the never enough to be requited benefits and blessings received by our Kings and Princes as much as if with a forfeiture upon the not doing or observing those Agreements they had been as strongly annexed and incorporated into our Lands and Estates as that of the Service or Conditions of Lands given to hold by the Tenures of Knight service which as some Civilians hold ipsi sanguini cohaerent are inherent in the very blood of the Tenants which being the most noble gentile rich and better sort of the people were when the Pourveyance was in being the most fit and likeliest to be charged with the Payments or Contributions towards it and were therefore in several Kings Reigns sometimes singly and often charged with publick Ayds or Taxes and very much more then other of the people as twenty shillings for every Knights Fee granted by Parliament to King Richard the first six and twenty shillings eight pence for every Knights Fee to King John and as much at another time to him towards his Warres in Wales twenty shillings upon every Knights Fee towards his Voyage into Normandy and forty shillings at another time and as much twice assessed in the Reigns of King Henry the third towards his Warres in Gascony twenty shillings upon every Knights Fee by Henry the fourth the Warres in Scotland by King Edward the first and Edward the second and of France by King Edward the third and the personal and chargeable services of most of the Nobility and Gentry therein probably procuring them some relaxation of not having their Fees or Lands so charged as formerly And besides other incidents belonging thereunto are by the Fewdists said to be so more then ordinarily tied up unto gratitudes and the more especiall duties and obligations thereof as such a Tenant forfeits his Lands in Fee Si percipiat magnum periculum domino imminere ultrò sine requisitione servicium non offert if he perceived any danger imminent or likely to happen to his Lord and did not of his own accord offer his service to prevent it or if his Lord were a Captive or in prison ought to contribute towards his redemption or if he should happen to fall into distress was to relieve him as farre say some of the Fewdall Laws which by stipulation or paction being not at the first agreed upon or included in the General words of defending the Lord and his Dignity was with many other their gratefull observances afterwards particularized and deduced from such customes as gratitude only had in process of time introduced and as much as amounted unto the Moiety of one years Rent or si dominum in acie periclitantem deseruerit if he left his Lord in the field and was ingratefull And by our Laws of England if
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
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
pay one per cent for provision of Fortresses In the Kingdom of Barnagasso the King hath besides Silks and Cloth of Gold and other precious things for Tribute Horses and payeth himself 150. Horses to Pretious or Prete John Emperor of Ethiopia of whom he holdeth The Kingdom of Oghy besides a Tribute of Gold and Silver sendeth him yearly a thousand Beeves In Ethiopia the Prete or Emperor upon the coming or returning of Embassadors gives order to his Subjects or Vassals to furnish them with provisions for their Journey and not long agoe commanded one to whom he had but a little before given a little Lordship containing not above 80. Houses and two Churches to furnish an Embassador with five hundred Loads of Corn a hundred Oxen and a hundred Sheep The Gozagues do yearly pay to their King besides great quantities of Gold and Silver a thousand Beeves alive The Maldives do yearly pay unto their King the fifth part of the grains which they sowe and give him a Portion of their Coco's and Limmons and besides their Taxes compound also for fruits and honey The Princes and great men in Japan do contend who shall give most to the Caesar and almost impoverish themselves by their Presents All the houses in the City of the Kings Residence are by the King taxed towards the making of Fortresses In Firando in Japan when any forraign Merchants are by the King invited to see Playes and publick Shows they send Presents to him and every forraign Merchant that comes thither may not sell his goods untill he hath carried a Present to the Emperor And when any of the Kings white Elephants are brought unto him the Merchants in the City are commanded to come and see him and bring every one a Present of half a Ducat which altogether amounteth to a great sum of money In Industan when the Mogol goeth abroad or in progress euery one saith Sir Thomas Roe by whose house he passeth is to make him a Present Sir Thomas Roe himself doing it when the King or Mogol rode to the River of Darbadath All the Persian Merchants doe bring their goods first to the Mogol who buyes what he pleaseth and after his Officers have set the rate they may sell to whom they will All men strive to present him with all things rich and rare and no man petitioneth him for any thing empty-handed and thereby come to preferment some giving him one hundred thousand pounds in Jewels at a time The King of Achen commands those of Tecoo to bring thither their Pepper which none may buy but he and puts off his Surat commodities in truck to them at what rates he pleaseth and oftimes sends his commodities to Priaman and Tecoo enforcing them to buy them at his own rates none being suffered to buy or sell before he hath vented his own At Bantam the Governor or Protector so called useth to send in the Kings name to the people to serve him with sacks of Pepper some a hundred some fifty some ten some five at the Kings price which was a Riall less in a Sack then the Merchants paid Divers bring Presents of Rice and Cashes and some bring imbroidered cloth for the Kings wearing Nor were the more civilized part of the Heathen only accustomed to the way of Pourveyance or bringing provisions or presents to their Kings and Princes but the wild and savage part of them were by the Lawes of nature and glimmerings of the light of reason taught to doe it In Mexico in the West-Indies and its large Dominions under the Emperor Montezeuma containing 100 Cities and their Provinces the people did pay a certain yearly Tribute to the King for water brought by pipes into the City Those that hold lands did yearly pay unto him one third part of their fruit and commodities which they had or did reap as gold silver stones dogs hens fouls conies salt wax honey mantels feathers cotton and a certain fruit called Câ—cao which they there used for money also all kinds of grain Garden-herbs and fruits Some Towns paid 400 burdens of white Mantles others great Tropes of wood full of Maiz Friâ—oles c. some four hundred burdens of wood others four hundred planks of Timber some every six moneths brought four hundred burdens of Cotton-wool and others two thousand loads of Salt two hundred pots of Honey twenty Xacaras of Gold in powder and some a Truss of Turkie stones and paid besides the King of Alzopuzalco a Tribute of Firre and Willow-trees towards the building of a City Divers Provinces are bound to provide fire-wood for the Kings house amounting unto two hundred and thirty weight a day which was five hundred mens burdens for the Kings particular Chimnies they brought the Bark of the Oak The Incas or Indian Kings before the coming of their unlucky loving friends the Spaniards had their Tributes yearly brought unto the Court and when any work was to be done or any thing to be furnished for the Incas the Officers knew presently how much every Province Town and Family ought to provide and by their Registers strings and knots knew what every one was to pay even to a hen or burden of wood And as Inea Garzilasco de la Vega a Native of Cozco relates in his book of the antient customes of those Countries did amongst other Tributes make and furnish clothes and Arms to be used in warr In Virginia the Weroances under-under-Lords or petty Kings did hold their lands habitations and limits to Fish Foul or Hunt of their soveraign King Powhatan to whom they pay Tributes of Skins Beads Copper Pearl Dear Turkies wild Beasts and Corn. And in all Savage Countries the English Merchants and Navigators as Mr. Edward Winslow a man afterwards too well known amongst the plundering and mistaken godly at Haberdashers Hall hath related at his return from thence doe make presents to the Savage Kings In New-England the Sachims or Lords are subject to one Sachim to whom they resort for protection and pay homage neither may any make warre without their privity every Sachim knoweth the bounds and limits of his Country and that is as his proper Inheritance and out of that if any of his men desire Land to set their corn he giveth them as much as they can use and puts them in their bounds Whosoever hunteth or killeth any venison which is there much of their food he bringeth him his Fee which is the fourth part of the same if it be killed on the Land but if in the water then the skin thereof Once a year the people are provoked by the Pinieses Knights or Councellors of the Sachims to bestow much corn on the Sachim who bring him thereupon many Baskets of corn and make a great Stack thereof In Florida where they all goe naked and doe but litle exceed the beasts of the field in understanding and want the wit of most part of the Nations of the world to cover their nakedness they can notwithstanding
upon any expedition by land or sea he was to have out of that Manor twenty shillings to feed his Buzcarles Mariners or Seamen or took for every five hides of land or that then esteemed honorable quantity of land a man with him But howsoever if that of Canutus discharging Pourveyance were a Law neither altered nor repealed it did but like his Laws touching Ordeal and delivering over the Murderer to the Kindred other of his Laws which proved to be unpracticable rather make the matter worse then better by his renouncing Pourveyance in his own Demeasnes for that Law and Resolution of his did meet with so little observance as in the Reign of King William Rufus and a great part of the Reign of his Brother King Henry the First the Kings Servants and Court for want of their former provisions grew to be so unruly as multitudo eorum qui curiam ejus sequebantur quaeque pessundaâ—ent diriperent nulla eos cohibente disciplina totam terram per quam Rex ibat devastarent and a multitude following the Court took and spoiled every thing in the way which the King went there being no discipline or good order taken Et dum reperta in Hospitiis quae invadebant penitus absumere non valebant ea aut ad forum per eosdem ipsos quoruÌ„ erant pro suo lucro ferre ac vendere aut supposito igne cremare â—ut â—i potus esset lotis exinde equâ—rum suorum pedibus residuum illius per terram effundere aut aliquo alio modo disperdere solebant and when they could not consume that which they found in the houses whereinto they had broken made the owners carry it to the Market and sell it for them or else burnt their provisions or if it were drink washed their horses feet with it or poured it upon the ground in so much as quique preâ—ognito regis advenâ—u sua habitacâ—l a fugithant every one hearing before hand of the Kings coming would run away from their houses which probably bringing in a dearth or scarcity of coâ—n might be the cause of the Tenants of the Kings Demeasne Lands bringing in the later end of the Reign of King Henry the First for then it was and not before as it appears by Edmerus and William of Malmsbury who lived in his time to the King their Plowshares instead of Corn to Court on their backs and making heavy complaints of their poverty and misery procured that King to change their Rents which before were used to be paid for the most part in corn cattle and provisions and were wont abundantly to supply his houshold occasions and with which in primitivo regno statu post conquisitionem the Kings of England from the Conquest untill then did plentifully as Gervasius Tilburienâ—is who lived also in his Reign hath related defray the charges of their Courts and Housholds into money with six pence in the pound overplus left the value of the mony should afterwards diminish but whether Canutâ—â— his Law were then in force or not or could be sufficient to abrogate those Jura Majestatis Rights or Prerogatives of our English Kings we find King Henry the first after those disorders in his greatest compliance with the English and his need of their aid to defend him against the pretensions and better Title of his elder Brother Robert Duke of Normandy and his couâ—ting of them unto it per libertates quas sanctus Rex Edwardus spiritu Dei provide sancivit by the antient Lawes and Liberties of holy King Edward which he had granted them and a promise to grant them any other retaining his Pourveyance and putting it into better order for as William Malmesbury hath recorded it Curialibus suis ubicunque villarum esset quantum a Rusticis gratis accipere quantum quoto praetio emere debuissent edixit transgressores vel gravi pecuniarum mulcta vel vitae dispendio afficiens directing and ordering those of his Court in whatsoever places he should abide what and how much they were to receive from the Country people gratis and without money and at what prices and rates they should buy other things under great penalties of money or punishment by death and was optimatibus venerabilis provincialibus amabilis reverenced by the Nobility and beloved by the common people and in his Charter which was for a gâ—eat part of it the original of our Magna Charta where omnes malas consuetudines quibus regnum Angliae iniuste opprimebatur inde aufert he took away all the evill Customs with which England was oppressed Et quas as the Charter saith in parte hic posuit and which were in part recited and with which the discontented Barons Nobility of England claiming their antient Liberties were so well contented in the 14. year of the Reign of King John when Steven Langton Archbishop of Canterbury produced it unto them as gavisi sunt gaudio magno valdè juraverunt omnes quod pro hiis libertatibus si necesse fuerit decertabunt usque ad mortem they greatly rejoyced and swore that they would if need were contend unto death for those Liberties there is no mention of any evil in Pourveyance nor any order for the taking of them away And might as justly rationally continue in the Raign of King Henry the second his Grandchild as that custome or usage for the Bishops and dignified Clergy to take their provisions of the Inferior Clergy and their Carriages or Carts which Pope Alexander in a Councel or Synod held at Rome where were present the Bishops of Durham Norwich Hereford and Bath and divers Abbots sent from England did notwithstanding many complaints not against the Pourveyance it self but the immoderate use of it onely limit and restrain them secundum tolerantiam in illis locis in quibus amâ—liores fuerint redditus Ecclesiasticae facultates in pauperibus autem mensura tenenda to be moderately taken in such places as had more large possessions and Ecclesiastical Revenues and less of those who were in a poorer condition and then and long before the Domini hundredorum Lords or great men having the command or jurisdiction of Hundreds uti comes aut vicecomes as the Eaâ—l or Sheriff of the County had multa inde auxilia tributa sectas aliasque praestationes cum ad utilitatem tum ad voluptateÌ„ CerereÌ„ nempe frumentuÌ„ receperunt c and received many aids tributes and Pourveyances aswel conducing to their profit as pleasure cujus hodie nomine Annuum penditur tributum pecuniarum for which now there is a certain rent in mony paid Nor could the rights of Pouâ—veyance Prae-emption be any thing less then denizend in Scotland or the Northern parts of our British Isles when as the Civil and universal Law of the World was there so long ago entertained and yet continues the great Director and Guider of their Justice where in
Anno 1487. in an Act of Parliament made by King James the third anent strangeâ—s bringing in victuals and utheris merchandice it is provided that quhair any victuals of merchandise cummis gaining for the King that his Comptroller after that the price be maide with the strangers sall have sa meikle of the first and best as is needful to the Kings proper use for the quihilk full payment but delay and their learned Craig in the Reign of our King James doubts not to reckon the Angariâ— Parangariae plaustrorum navium praestationes furnishing of Carriages and Ships for publick uses inter ea quae Regalia dicuntur quae in annexo patrimonio numerantur amongst those Regalities which are annexed to the Crown of Scotland eo quod ad conservandam Regni dignitatem ex consensu ordinum constituta sunt in regard that by the consent of the Estates is thereby conserved the dignity of the Kingdom And their Ceâ—sus Cani Rent or Provision quhâ—â—t beir aytes or uther kind of victuals reckoned by Bolls of Wheat and Chalders of victuals not yet forsaken or laid by may induce any man to believe that they were well acquainted with those just and ancient observances And in that Charter of our King Johns at Running Mede near Stanes being the same word for word which was after so long and bloody warres confirmed by King Henry the third which was made when his weaker forces were ready to be encountred by a farre stronger of his boysterous Barons there is no denying of Prae-emption and the reasonable part of Pourveyance the former of which as long as the fifth Commandement in the Decalogue and the acknowledgements and respects of inferiors to superiors the honor due to Kings Patribus Patriae and the common civilities of mankind shall continue in force and be practised and unrepealed is certainly to be continued and should not be disturbed by any the Sons of men who would preserve the honour and dignity of their Prince and Common Parent for it was there only agreed that nullus constabularius vel Ballivus noster capiat blada vel alia Catalla alicujus nisi statim inde reddat denarios No Constable or Bayliff of the King shall without present payment take any Corn or Cattle of any mans aut respectum inde habeat de voluntate venditoris unless the Seller should be contented to give day for it Et nullus Ballivus noster vel Vice-comes vel alius capiat equos vel caretas alicujus pro cariagio faciendo nisi reddat liberationem antiquitus statutum scilicet pro careta ad duos equos decem denarios per diem pro careta ad tres equos quatuordecim denarios per diem And that none of the Kings Bailiffs Under Sheriffs or other take any mans carts or horses for the Kings carriages without paying the antient rate or Livree appointed that is to say for a Cart and two Horses ten pence a day and for a Cart and three Horses fourteen pence Nor did the Conservatores libertatum Angliae enforced upon King Henry the third in his troublesome Reign make any quarrels or restrictions concerning it In Charta Foreste made at the same time no Foster or Bedil was to make Scotaâ—â— or gather Garb Oats Corn Lamb or Pig nor any gathering but by the view and oath of twelve Rangers the Exception allowing the things in casibus non exceptis and proving that such things might in such manner be then reasonably and lawfully taken And in that Kings Regin Writs were frequently sent to the Sheriffs as appeareth in the close Rolls to make provisions of Mutton Puletry Geese Eggs c. against Christmas and other principal Feasts and sometimes to the Chamberlains of London to make provision of wine Spices and Furres to be paid de denariis Regis and at other times to some others to make provision of Corn Bacon c. for fortifying a Castle promising that the Sheriff should make payment and be allowed upon his accompt out of the profits of the County so as although the provisions for the Kings own Houshold or for publick uses were not taken without monies to be paid for them yet they were as it may well be supposed at reasonable prices and by a priviledge or prerogative of Praeemption and not alwayes at such prices as the avaritious humour of the Sellers should exact when the Sheriffs in their Turns or Leets might compel them to reasonable rates And Sir Edward Coke will hardly be brought off from a mistake in alledging in his Comment upon the Statute of Articâ—li super Chartas that when the Kings of Englands provisions began to fail and could not be had as formerly out of their own Demeasnes there were Markets kept at the Court gates which being not in the Reign of King Henry the first who changed his Provision Rent into money doe not appear to have been afterwards in his time or of the next succeeding Kings Stephen Henry the 2. Richard the 1 or King John and King Hen. 3. who needed not to have made use of his Sheriffs to have furnished his Christmas or other houshold provisions if Markets with that decency and regard which belonged to a Kings Court where those great Kings and a daily confluence of their then no small Nobility with their usual Trains and Attendants and many times forreign Princes or their Ambassadors were to pass had been or were then kept at the Court gates for Britton who wrote in the Reign of King Edward the first only saith that the Clerk of the Market or he which was to look to the measures was to goe with his Standard from Market to Market when he found the Market to be within the Virgâ— otherwise to make the Bayliffs to appear before him Tertio Ed. 1. ca. 7. it was enacted that of Prises taken by the Constables or Castellanes upon such folk as be not of the Towns where the Castles are no Constable or Castellane from thenceforth should exact any price or like thing of any other then of such as be of the Town or Castle and that it be paid or else agreement made within forty daies if it be not an antient price due to the King or to the Castle or the Lord of the Castle Tempore Ed. 1. ca. 2. It was ordained that no Officers of the King or of his Heirs should take Corn Leather Cattel ot any other goods of any manner of person without the good will and assent of the party to whom the goods belonged And ca. 3. the King granted for him and his Heirs that all Clerks Lay-men of the Land should have their Laws Liberties and free Customes as largely and wholly as they have used to have the same at any time when they had them best And if any Statutes have been made by him or his Ancestors or any Customes brought in contrary to them
for his kindness shewed unto him in the Land wherein he had sojourned Araunah bowing himself with his face to the ground before King David when he asked him to buy his threshing floor and being willing not only to have given it him if he would have accepted it as a King and unto the King as the Text saith the Threshing floor but Oxen also for burnt sacrifice And The custome of Strangers much more to be observed by Subjects who are under greater obligations in the Queen of Sheba's presents of an hundred and twenty Talents of gold and of spices very great store and pretious stones which she had before hand prepared and brought with her and gave him at her departure or in acknowledgement of her entertainment And of Naaman the Sirians pressing the Prophet Elisha very hard after he was cured of his leprosie by no long or troublesome medicines to take a blessing of him which may be understood to be no less an offer then a good part of ten talents of silver six thousand pieces of gold and ten changes of raiment which he took with him when he began his journey unto him to seek his cure And more expressions of thankfulness then the Royal Pourveyance amounteth unto may certainly be due unto the King who doth not as many great and small Princes or States usually do in Germany and Italy build Forts upon some or many rivers or passages which may streighten incumber or terrifie Merchants with their Merchandize or other men that travail in the day time or at other seasonable times upon their occasions and affairs to enforce a Toll or payments of money nor make a Sundt or Baltick of the Auss or passage from Bristow to Wales or out of Lincolnshire over the Humâ—er to Hull or at Barwick or Newcastle or in the passage betwixt Dover and Calais which might yeild him even of Strangers a benefit or profit as considerable or very neer as much as the Danish King doth of the Sund. Suffers not the people to be troubled in their going to Markets Fairs or passing to fro with their goods or inland Commodities or Merchandize with any such paages payages or monies as are now paid by Passengers through the divers great and small many several Territories of the Nobility or Lords of Manors in France for carriage of Goods or Merchandise some of which payments are called Barrage by reason of a Barre put cross the way or Billets in respect of a Billet which is hung upon a tree to denote the entrance into another Territory or Pontage for the passage over a Bridge or Prevostè for the Customes or Rights due in their passage to the Lord of that Jurisdiction or the Travers which is paid by every one which carrieth any thing to sell out of the Manor Jurisdiction or Territorie and altogether doe make so great a trouble to the Carters Voituriers Passengers or people and the affairs of Merchandise loosing much time in paying their Billets almost in every Parish as they pass finding out and tarrying for those that are to receive it and in some places having Souldiers or some hungry and almost starved companions placed to receive it and Billets hung out many times where they should not and being constrained thereby to seek by-wayes to escape such their too farre extended exactions and hazard themselves if catched to pay une grosse amende more then otherwise they should as the Commonalty and poor People of France who have little more for their hard labours and drudgery to comfort them then a Lenten or slender dyet all the year with Taxes Rags and Apish fashions had rather pay another Tail or Tax to the King or twenty times as much to the Lords in their petites soâ—erainetès little Royalties then to be so much incumbred Which our Traders and Travailers are not at all troubled with but are excused at Markets and Fairs Cities or Towns of Trade by a Toll which is more antient then the Conquest or a few Centuries are now taken by the King where he or his Progenitors have not granted them away unto others at the same or some easie rates which they were at some hundreds of years or long agoe when the price of a fat Sheep or Mutton was but twenty pence and the Toll in some places for they vary according to custome at one half penny a Sheep amounted unto a fortieth part of the then value of a fat Sheep which is now not seldome rated and sold at 20 s. and may therefore be the more contentedly paid and if raised up together with the Pickage and Stallage and for the Pennes to the now rates of victuals and provisions would according to the difference betwixt the then small value of silver and that which is now more then twice as much and at 5 s. and a penny the ounce and setled again in the Crown from whence it first came to many Lords of Manors some of whom doe make 80 l. per annum by it go a great way towards the loss or charges which the Counties doe pretend were laid upon them by the differences betwixt the Market prises and the rates which they did in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth agree by their Compositions to serve in the provisions for her and her Royall Family or if raised up proportionably unto the price which it bears in the Markets and Fairs since those Tolls were first set and imposed which must needs be understood to have a greater respect to the value then the numbers or what they have been enhaunced since the 24. year of the Reign of Henry the eighth after the ounce of Silver was raised to five shillings when a pound of Mutton was by Act of Parliament not to be sold above a half penny farthing and in Anno 34 of Henry the eighth 25 Boards or Stalls in the Stocks Market in London for Fishmongers paid rent yearly to the City 34 l. 13 s. 4 d. and for eighteen Butchers Boards or Stalls one and forty pounds sixteen shillings and four pence or the Reign of King Henry the first which was long after the custome of paying Toll when the rate or price of a Mutton for the Kings provision was secundum constitutâ—m modum according to the then valuation and rate set at no greater a price then four pence so great a difference had two hundred years betwixt that and the Reign of King Edward the second made in the rates and provisions for victuals would make an encrease of the rates for Pickage and Stallage and for Toll as much or more after no greater a rate then twenty shillings for a fat Mutton which is now often exceeded as five to one and come up very near unto the pretended loss or difference in serving in the provisions for the Kings house And if it did not may be well afforded and was abundantly recompenced by the indulgence of his Royall Progenitors King John and King
for murage or repair of the walls of Towns as Ipswich Harwich Newcastle upon Tine Ludlow c. or Cities as London Norwich York Bristol c. which must of necessity raise the rates of commodities brought thither to be sold and by the same power or authority remit or release them and being granted to many Cities or Towns but for three of seven years or as to London for five years or some other short term since expired is as may be feared under a colour of custome or praescription as yet continued Or being Soveraign of the British seas to take weekly for all Herring taken therein six pence for every Ton and the like for other fish every three weeks either of his own Subjects or forraign Nations or for his Admiral under him to take the tenth of all the Prizes or Ships of his Enemies taken at the Sea and money for Anchorage paid by every Ship for their quiet riding in the river of Thames or any of the Kings Harbours And with as good reason as the Burrow Mealis in Scotland where quilibet Burgensis debet domino Regi pro Burgagio quinque denarios annuatim dicuntur incorporari annexique Fisco patrimonio Regis every Burgess was to pay five pence per annum for his mealis which Sir Henry Spelman interprets to be a Farme appropriated to buy provisions in regiae mensae apparatum for the Kings Table or Houshold and are said to be incorporate and annexed to the Patrimony of the King and his Exchequer Or as the Provost of Edenburgh or other borough Towns in Scotland may take and receive four pence upon every quarter of Malt of ilk Brewster quhe brewes aill all the zeir four pennies and for â—ne halfe zeir twâ— pennies As the Apprisers of flesh are appointed to apprise it at the Kings price ilk dayes of the Markets and to admit the eath of the â—â—sâ—er in that matter And as by the Statutes of King David the second it was ordained that for relief of the inward parts of the Realm quhair woll hes course and quhilks ar burdened with customes and that the remanent parts of the Realm may be made equall with them in all services and burdings It is Statute that certain sommes and quantities of victuall quhareof there is abundance in these utward parts sick as Marts beir and sicklike sall be taken up zeirly at the Chamberlains command to the expenses of the Kings house according to the prices quihilk in auld times used to be taken up in these places Queen Mary the Lord Governour and Lords of secret Counsell havand respect to the great and exorbitant dearth risen upon the will and tâ—me Fowles ordained the prices thereof as 5 s. Scottish the Swan the black Cock and gray hen six pennies twenty of their pennies being but two pence the Woodcock four pennies and the dousâ—n of Laverocks and uthers small birds four pennies c. And by as good reason as King James the sixth his Majesties Grandfather confirmed the Acts of Parliament made by his noble Progenitors for the stanching of dearth of Victuals and setting order and price on all Stuffe and ordained all Earls Lords Barons as well within regality as royalty and their Bailles to landwart and the Provestes and Bailles of all Bâ—rrows and Cities to cause the said Acts to be put to due execution every ane within their boundes and Jurisdiction respective makand and constitutand them Justices to that effect with power to make and appoint Statutes and Ordinances for the special observation of the saidis Acts at every head Court zierly Assigned money and victuals of several Shires and places in Scotland to the keeping of the Castles of Edinburgh Dunbartane Strivilinge and Blacknes Declared the tenths of all Herrings taken in the Scottish Seas to be due unto him as King of Scotland and all infestments and Alienations in few ferme or utherwaies and all dispositions quhatsumever in all time bygane and to cum of the Assise Herring to be nil and of no avail because the said Assise Herring pertanis to the King as ane part of his Customes and annexed property And by as much or a greater warrant or assent of reason as King Henry the 5. of England did in a Patent or Grant of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland to James de Boteler Earl of Ormond authorise him ad victualia sufficientia necessaria pro expensis hospiâ—ii sui ac Soldariorum suorum in quocunque loco infra terram predictam per Provisores hospitii sui alios ministrossuos unacum Cariagio suâ—ficienti pro eisdem tam inâ—ra libertates quam extra feodo Ecclesie duntaxat excepto pro denariis suis rationabiliter solvend capere providere juxta formam diversorum Statutorum de hujusmodi provisionibus ante haec tempora factorum to take victuals sufficient and necessary for the expences of his Houshold and his Souldiers by his Pourveyors and other Ministers in any place whatsoever in Ireland with carriages sufficient for the same as well within liberties as without the Fees of the Church only excepted at reasonable prises according to divers Statutes made concerning provisions And was so well grounded upon Law and reason as all the succeeding Lord Lieutenants or Deputies of Ireland have ever since not wanted those necessary priviledges to attend their high honourable trusts imployments could so little be parted with in the 19. year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth when Sir Henry Sidney was Deputy of Ireland as the Earl of Desmond the Viscount Baltinglas other unquiet spirits refusing to pay the provision or Ceasse as they there called it for the Lord Deputies house the Souldiers in Garrison which the learned Camden saith was exactio rei Annonariae certo pretio provisions to be furnished at a certain rate or price ad alendum proregis familiam militesque praesidiarios for the Lord Lieutenants or Deputies Families the Souldiers in Garrison quasi non exigenda nisi ex authoritate Parliamentaria as not due unless it were ordained by authority of Parliament sending over their complaints into England the Lords of the Privy Council upon the hearing bate thereof committed them and those which remained in Ireland and had sent them were in like manner imprisoned untill they should submit to the payment and furnishing thereof for that it appeared by the Records of that Kingdome to be antiquitus institutum an antient constitution jus quoddam Majestatis a part of the right appertaining to the soveraign Power Praeeminence or Kingly Praerogative quae legibus non subjicitur nec tamen legibus adversatur ut Jurisprudentes judicarunt which being not against the Laws was not to be subjected to them saith that worthy Historian the Queen then only ordering the Lord Deputy to use as much moderation as he could in taking those Provisions or Pourveyances And as
of the King Arch-Bishops Earls Barons and the most eminent men of the Kingdome with candles or torches burning in their hands in Westminster Hall denouncing excommunication direfull curses and Anathema's against the Infringers thereof by the candles or torches flung upon the ground and wishing that so their souls might burn in hell And the same Magna Charta being by thirty Parliaments since confirmed and accompted to be part of the peoples Birthright It can be no less then the greatest of reason that those his Liberties and Priviledges mentioned and agreed therein should be as well preserved unto him as those of the people unto them and with the greater reason in that his were alwaies his own and many of theirs but newly granted them And that he was not in the confirming of Magna Charta without some care of preserving his own rights and priviledges as appeareth by his Writ or Proclation better in former times then now obeyed sent unto the Sheriff of York in these words Cum probis hominibus nostris libertates concesserimus per Cartas nostras in quibus continetur that which we have of that excellent Law and Charter being by many learned men believed to be but a Transcript quòd nihilomninus salve sint omnibus libertates liberae consuetudines quas prius habuerunt libertates nostras de quibus maxime specialis mentio in Cartis praedictis facta non est nobis volumus inviolabiliter observari unde tibi districtè praecipimus quatenus omnes libertates nostras usitatas tempore domini Johannis Regis patris nostri quas quidem nobis non subtrahimus ex speciali mentione facta in praedictis Cartis nobis facias firmiter observari nullius obstante reclamatione sicut usitatae fuerunt temporibus antecessorum nostrorum maxime tempore predicti patris nostri wherein he having granted that their Liberties which they had before should not be prejudiced commanded him that all his Liberties and Priviledges which were not specially mentioned and granted away in those Charters should be specially observed notwithstanding any allegation to the contrary as they were used and accustomed in the times of his Ancestors and especially in the Reign of his Father King John For the reason which gives Aaron and his Sons the Clergie their Tythes and Pourveyance should perswade the people to think the Composition for Pourveyance to be no burden when as it is as short of the Tithes as one unto a hundred And it should be reason if any thing can be reason and it be not fled after Astraea into the upper Regions and left some counterfeit and false resemblance instead of it that all or many or most of the males and men of England and such as in the Court Leets and elswhere have taken the Oath of Allegiance which all the men of England and their generations are so born under as by the Laws and Customes of England it is and ought to be as Connaturall and Congaeniall unto them and the Oath of Supremacy to maintain and defend the Kings Rights and Jurisdictions and all the Citizens and Freemen of London and other Cities and Corporations of England taking an Oath to the like purpose all the Freeholders of the Kingdome holding of him immediately swearing in their homage and fealty to doe him service and be faithfull unto him all the Copiholders holding of him swearing unto him their Fealty and all the Freeholders and such as hold of their mesne Lords by Knights service or Socage in their homage and fealty unto them excepting their allegiance and duty to the King should have as great a care not to deny him those parts of his Jurisdictions Praeeminences and just rights as they would not to perjure and forswear themselves or bring the curses and woes attending such grievous sins or the breach of that part of Magna Charta upon the heads of them and their posterities which a Kings assent to any Acts of Parliament for the taking away or extinguishing such individua annexa Coronae jure diadematis potestatis atque authoritatis inseparable parts of Majesty and the Rights of his Crown Regal power and Prerogative If any Law or Sanction could enable him to that which all Laws both Civil and Common doe deny will not be sufficient to acquit or discharge for although the dispensation of Oathes by those to whom and for whose benefit they were made be in some cases allowed by the Canon Law and some Roman Casuists doe believe that violation of oathes have been well dispensed withall by those for whose interest and benefit they were made it will not be hard to determine in the greatest veneration of Parliaments which are to be obeyed actively or passively and of whose acts no man is so much as to think evil that Laws of that kind when they shall be by importunities and necessities made or enacted against the Lawes of God and right reason cannot give an absolution for oathes violated nor if they could be excused for the not payment of those most necessary duties to their King and common Parent in foro humano in this world will ever be excused in foro animae in the next And if the Parliament in Anno 18 Eliz. took it to be for the good of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge that the Colleges Halls and Houses for Students therein should receive the third part of their Rents in Corn and Mal◠and ordered them so to doe and that their Tenants who had then have since such comfortable Bargains and Leases under them as every man is glad to purchase or get them and inroll themselves for their Tenants wherein if a deer year comes once in 7 or 10 years and their Bargains happen to be so much the worser as the prises which are to be ruled according as the like was sold the Market day next before the Rent day exceeds the former or cheaper prices the yearly profit notwithstanding of their Lands being alwaies more then the Rent and six or nine cheap years to one may pacifie their complaints or grudgings the King certainly may expect as much or more care to be had of him and his house-keeping as there was of the Universities Colledges and Halls and not to be denied in his particular of Pourveyance or compositions for it that which every man thinks reasonable in his own Nor to be made so great a sufferer under those heaps of mischiefs and inconveniencies which by the great and excessive rates and prises put upon victuals and household provisions daily more and more encreasing doe assault and lessen his too smal a Revenue Neither should be rendred more helpless and in a worser condition then the Lords of Leets Sheriffs in their Turns Justices of Peace in their Counties Magistrates in Cities and Towns Corporate Judges in their Circuits the University of Oxford who hath liberty to punish the breakers of the Assise of Bread Beer and Ale 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
preserve and increase their Husbands estates not to waste or destroy them would if they might injoy their spending humors in the wasteful course of their lives be able to consume the value of all or the greatest part of the Lands and Estates in a County But however such kind of people shall so misuse their estates and Talents our Kings Princes being to guide their Actions by higher more transcendent rules then any of their Subjects did in the better times of vertue and Hospitality are not certainly to be restrained in the magnificence and state of their House-keeping nor to have the means whereby they should do it diverted or diminished when as Alexander the Great answered some that â—ound fault with the greatness of his gift or bounty to a mean man The gifts of Kings are not altogether to be proportioned according to the men who receive it but of the King that giveth it and as the Duke of Savoy said unto King Henry the fourth of France when he found him unwilling to grant or remit unto him the Marquisate of Saluces Kings do wrong the greatness of their courage if they shall not give great things For if there were no necessity of a largeness of heart and expences in Hospitality in the Nobility and Gentry of this Nation they would not be good Subjects to blame it in their King nor honorers of him unless they should as they ought and are enjoyned by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy maintain and defend his Honor and Jurisdictions who by the preeminency of his Imperial Dignity is not to want that which should help to support and adorn it when as to that and the preservation of his people who are to subâ—ist and be protected by his welfare honor and happiness there will be a real and very great CHAP. V. Necessity that the King should have and enjoy his Ancient Right of Pourveyance or Compositions for them FOr that there is and should be always a necessity to observe the Laws of God Nature and Nations right reason and the Laws and reasonable Customes of England and of honoring and obeying the King and keeping him from mischiefs and inconveniencies and that the members of the body Politick should as every part of the body natural doth be willing to assist and contribute unto the good and well being of the head and better part of it And although that sin the fruitful parent of all our evils and miseries be not in numero eligibilium or to be put within the pleas of necessity yet goodness vertue and the duties of holy life are propter se expetibilia for their real benefits and excellencies to be desired and thirsted after as the Hart panteth and thirsteth after the water brooks And it would be neither wisdom nor goodness in the people to subject the King to an yeerly loss of seventy three thousand six hundred seven pounds fourteen shillings and seven pence which he did the last year loose in his house-keeping by the want of his Pourveyance or Compositions for them and by the excessive Rates and Prices of Provisions for his houshold which were put upon him by the avarice and ill custome of such as sold or furnished them besides his greater then formerly charge of Carts and other parts of the Royal Pourveyance and drive him thereby into wants of money which may either cause him to be more sparing then he would be otherwise in his Royal favors bounty indulgences and Charity to his people or to seek after and take those many legal and just advantages to support himself in his Kingly Office which the Law affords and cannot be denyed him or give a greater liberty or attention then otherwise he would to his necessities or the designs or invention of those who by finding out ways of supply to an over-burdened and insufficient Royal Revenue may shew the people their errors in the denyal of just rights and duties and by putting him to inconveniencies exceedingly increase and multiply their own and that it would be much better to imitate the prudence of Abigail who to make some recompence to Davids keeping safe all that appertained to her husband Nâ—bal so that nothing was missing whilst he was a wall unto him and his people by night and by day made haste and took two hundred Loaves two Bottles of Wine five Sheep ready dressed five measures of parched Corn an hundred Clusters or Lumpes of Raisins and two hundred Cakes of Figgs and intreated him to accept of the blessing or present which she had brought unto him then the indiscretion ingratitude and folly of her Husband Nabal and consider that even the Beasts of the Forrest would think themselves more happy and safe when the Lyon shall have his Food and Dyet provided for him and his family then that he and the young Lyons should roar for hunger and that it would be better for the Shephard to bring him a Lambe or two of the Flock then to enforce him in the extremity of hunger to come and take away three times as many more and carry to his Den. That the Turks may as they have for many ages past rejoyce in the foolish covetousness of the Citizens of Constantinople whose generations may curse and abominate their selfishness and then supposed wisdom in denying their Emperor money and means to defend them bewail the loss of Greece and weep unpittied for their children when they are by the command of that grand Tyrant of the Mahometan Empire taken from them and driven like heards of Cattle and Flocks of Sheep never more to know or remember their parents or be of the Christian Religion to his Serraglio where the Males are bred up in the service of his wars or civil affairs and many of their daughters made to be his Concubines And the French may lament their ill usage of their King Charles the seventh in his great extremities in refusing necessary Aids to resist the successes of our English Conquering forefathers which brought the Pesantry and lower ranks of that â—ince Gabelled and over Salted people not only to their present miseries and that fertility of Taxes which is since most fatally rivetted and entailed upon them but the loss of all their liberties Experience having told our Progenitors how much the necessities and wants of some of our Kings and Princes have heretofore given way to the excursions of some of their servants and Ministers upon the rights and liberties of the people which made the Lords and Commons in Parliament frequently in sundry Ages and Parliaments past to take a great care for the support and honor of their House-keeping the preserving of the Kings Rights and Revenues and the punishment of such as were any cause of the waste or diminishing of it And that a supply of the Kings wants or for the payment of his debts could never yet nor can be so Arithmetically made or proportioned either as to what was past or to come as
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
or avarice by taking advantage of some particular persons folly or over-bidding and keeping up the excessive rates of the Market to the same or a more unreasonable price and not being willing to let them fall again to a lower price though there be plenty and reason enough to do it unlawful combinations and confederacies of Trades men to raise their prices or cause their wares to be made Slight or insufficient unconscionable adulterating of Commodities and making them seem what they are not to raise the greater prices evil Artifices of Forestallers of the Markets Ingrossers and Regrators who for their own ungodly gains can make a dearth and scarcity in the midst of plenty and like Caterpillars spoil and devour the Hopes of the years fertility the Landlords racking of rents and the price of all manner of houshold provisions and other things raised by the Tenants to enable them to pay them an universal pride and vanity of the Nation and enhaunce of prices to support them plunder miseries and desolations of War numberless tricks and deceipts of Tradesmen and fraud of the common and Rustick part of the people in the Counties neer London in keeping many of their Cattel half a mile or some little distance from the Fairs untill the Evening or much of the day be spent to make them to sell at greater rates frequent deceits of stocking or Tying up the Udders of Kine a day before hand to make them swell and seem to give great store of Milke And as many other tricks of Trade and deceit as the Devil and deluded consciences can invent And truely looked upon as causes or concurrent parts of the cause of the now grand and most intollerable inhaunce of the rates and pâ—ices of Victuals houshold provisions and other Commodities there will be little or no room for the supposed plenty of Gold and Silver to be either a cause or so much as any part of a cause of it Nor can be well imagined when as notwithstanding that betwixt the middle of the Raign of King Henry the eight and the beginning of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth the Gold and Silver Mines of the West Indies had by the Spanish cruelty to the Indians and their almost extirpation afforded such quantities of these baites of Satan and temptations as two hundred and sixty millions of Gold did appear by the Records of the Custom house of Sivill to have been brought from the West Indies into Spain all the plenty of that riches either by our Merchants bringing in of Bullion from Spain and its other Kingdomes and Provinces by Commerce or return of Merchandize did not so in England raise enhaunce the rates and prices of Victuals and houshold provisions but that we finde the Parliament of 24. H. 8. ordaining that Beef Pork Mutton and Veal should be sold by the weight called haber dupois no person should take for a pound of Beef or Pork above one half penny nor for a pound of Mutton or Veal above half penny farthing did believe they might be reasonably so afforded And the rates of Victuals and houshold provisions notwithstanding so increasing as in the yeer following It was ordained That Governors of Cities and Market Towns upon complaint to them made of any Butcher refusing to sell victuals by the weight according to the Statute of 24 H. 8. ca. 3. might commit the offenders toward untill he should pay all penalties limitted by the said Statute and were enabled to sell or cause to be sold by weight all such victuals for ready money to be delivered to the owner and if any Grasier Farmer Breeder Drover c. should refuse to sell his fat Cattel to a Butcher upon such reasonable prices as he may retail it at the price assessed by the said Statute The Justices of Peace Maiors or Governors should cause indifferent persons to set the prices of the same which if the owner refused to accept then the Justices c. should binde him to appear the next Term in the Star Chamber to be punished as the Kings Councel should think good And the same Parliament Enacting That upon every complaint made of any enhauncing of prices of Cheese Butter Capons Hens Chickens and other Victuals necessary for mens sustenance without ground or cause reasonable in any part of this Realm or in any other the Kings Dominions the Lord Chancellor of England the Lord President of the Kings most honorable Councel the Lord Privy Seal the Lord Steward the Lord Chamberlaine and all other Lords of the Kings most honorable house the Chancellor of the Dutchy of Lancaster the Kings Justices of either Bench the Chancellor Chamberlains under Treasurer and the Barons of the Kings Exchequer or seven of them at the least whereof the Lord Chancellor Lord Treasurer the Lord President of the Kings Councel or the Lord Privy seal to be one should have power and authority from time to time as the cause should require to set and tax reasonable prices of all such kinde of Victuals how they should be sold in gross or by retail and that after such prices set and taxed Proclamation should be made in the Kings name under the great Seal of the said prices in such parts of this Realm as should be convenient for the same Was not of opâ—nion that the plenty of Gold and Silver were any cause of the enhaunce of the prices or rates of Victuals but did in the preamble of that Act declare That forasmuch as dearth scarcity good cheap and plenty of such kinde of Victuals happeneth riseth and chances of so many and diverse occasions that it is very hard and difficult to put any certain prices to any such things yet nevertheless the prices of such Victuals be many times enhaunced and raised by the greedy covetousness and appetites of the owners of such Victuals by occasion of ingrossing and regrating the same more then upon any reasonable or just ground or cause to the great damage and impovershing of the Kings subjects Siâ— Thomas Chamberlaine qui mores hominum multorum vidit urbes who by his several Embassages fâ—om England into Foraign Countries in the Raigns of Kiâ—g Henry the eighth and King Edward the sixth was not a little acquainted with the customes of other Nations aswell as his own did in the Raign of King Edward the sixth in a Treatise entituled Policies to reduce the Realm of England unto a prosperous wealth and estate dedicated unto the Duke of Somerset then Lord Protector assign the causes of the high prices and dearness of Victuals far less then what is now to be abasing of Coyn and givâ—ng more then Forty pence for the ounce of Silver ingrossing of Commodities the high price of Wooll which caused the Lords and Gentlemen being by the suppressing of the Abbies and liberality of King Henry the eight waxen rich to convert all their grounds into Sheep Pastures which diminished Victuals ten Lordships to the great decay of Husbandry
subdued and conquered as they were enforced to be shaved and wear their hair shorter their Lands being given away to his Normans the greatest part of the Nobility and Gentry extirped many of the common people glad to be vassals and Tenants to those Lands which before were their own and had nothing to recompence their losses but the retaining of their good old Laws and their Masters and Conquerors having gathered all the money and riches of the Kingdom into their Chests and possessions there was after the harrassed English had gained some peace and that the long languishing Olive branches began again to recover their Sap and Verdure so small an improvement of the rent of Land amongst the Normans plenty of money as in the valuation of Lands in the sixteenth year of the raign of William the Conqueror there was such a wonderful small value put upon Lands fifty or sixty and more to one less then it is now the commodities and Cattel raised thereupoâ— being in all probability proportionable thereunto as in Drayton no unfruitful place in Cambridgeshire the Abbot of Croyland had fourteen or fifteen yard Lands twelve Villaines three Bordmen three Soccage Tenants and two Meadows which in the time of Edward the Confessor were of the value of five pounds per annum and at that time but four pounds and ten shillings In the Raign of King Henry the first which began his Raign in the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred when the Normans had something more improved their Lands and possessions their plenty of money made out of the English miseries did not banish their cheapness of victuals and provisions but left them at those small rates of one shilling for the Carcase of an Ox and four pence for a sheep and no more for the Provender of twenty horses the Denarius or English penny then being probably as the Roman which was but the fourth part of an ounce of Silver which in coyn or money made no more then twenty pence In the latter end of the Raign of King Richard the first who began his Raign in Anno Domini one thousand one hundred eighty nine and after his redemption from his imprisonment by the Emperor of Germany in his return from the Holy Land when money was so scarce in England as to make up the sum of one hundred thousand Marks for his ransome the Church Plate and Chalices were pawned an Oxe or Cow was but of the price of four shillings a Hogg ten pence a sheep of the finer Wooll ten pence and six pence of the courser In the Raign of King Edward the first whose raign commenced in the year of our Lord God one thousand two hundred fifty two when there was as much plenty of mony as peace and an increase of Trade under his â—appy and prudent Government Scotland conquered and subdued and such a plenty of money as some Esterlings or men of Germany from whom our Sterling money is well conjectured by Sir Henry Spelman to receive its denomination were here imployed to coyn our money the Market price of an Oxe was eight shillings and six pence twenty six seames or sums or horse-loads or quarters of Barley was at fourty three shillings a quarter of Oats for fourteen pence and the yearly value of an Acre of Meadow was in Buckinghamshire apud altum firmam at the Rack but eight pence per Acre and so small a power had the plenty of mony then upon the price of victuals as upon the payment of mony agreed to be paid upon a Bond or Deed which was not likely to be for any long time as the Case at Law tempore E. 1. Cited in 9. E. 4. informs us the price of a quarter of Barley which was at the time of the making of the Bond or Deed but three shillings a quarter was before the time of payment for it come to be thirty and two shillings a quarter which might happen from some other causes and not at all by reason of any extraordinary store of money which the Kingdom was then blessed withal In the eighth year of the Raign of King Edward the second which was in the year of our Lord God one thousand three hundred and fifteen a Parliament was assembled at London where all or most of the Prelates and great Lords of England were with the Commons assembled â—aith Thomas Walsingham ad tractandum de statu regni alleviatione rerum venalium a matter now moâ—e then ever necessary to consult of the State of the Kingdom and the taking down the price of victuals which saith Walsingham was then so high ut vix posset vivere plebs communis as the common people could scarce live and would have been in a worse condition if the Landlords had then let their Lands at the Rack or beyond the value as many of them do now and many of the houshold provisions had been sold as they are now more then twenty times and others ten or fifteen times more then they were then where it was ordained that an Ox not fed with grain should be sold for sixteen shillings and if with grain and fat for four and twenty shillings and no more a fat Cow of the best sort for twelve shillings a fat Hogg of two years old three shillings and four pence a Mutton fat and shorn for fourteen pence and for one that was unshorn one shilling eight pence a Goose for two pence half penny a Hen for a penny and four Pigeons for a penny And though immediately after in the same year there followed such a very great famine as Flesh and Corn were scarcely to be had Hens and Geese seldom found Pigs and Swine wanted Food and Sheep dyed of the Rot or Murrain yet a quarter of Malt was sold for a Mark and a quarter of Corn for twenty shillings and upon the great dearth which happened in the next year after making such a famine as Horse-flesh was good Diet for the poor and causing a repeal of the Act of Parliament which was made the year before touching the price of Victuals three quarts of strong Beer was then sold for three pence and of small for two pence which in that sad and horrid famine the Magistrates of London understood to be so unreasonable as they prohibited it to be sold at so high a rate in the City and ordained that no more then three half pence should be taken for three quarts of strong Beer and a penny for small and the King by his Proclamation likewise commanded that in all parts of the Kingdom three quarts of Beer should not be sold for more then a penny In the 21. year of the Raign of King Edward the third notwithstanding any enhaunce of prices made or occasioned by the great famine which was in the eight and ninth years of the Raign of King Edward the second his Father and the continuance of it for four or five years
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
forgot the mercies and wonders of the Almighty or that they would have been brought to any manner of beliefe that ever they should have been able to bear so great and so intollerable as they would have called it a burden And yet now that time and custome like Milo's Calf carryed untill he be a Bull and being a Bull found to be no heavyer then when he was a Calf the burthen is not so heavy at the last as they would have believed it would have been at the first because the people have hitherto made shift to bear it by cheating or impoverishing one another and by laying the burden one upon another will dispendio reipublicae to the not to be avoyded loss and ruine of the Commonwealth be for some time longer able to endure it if the rich may grinde and devour the poor and the King now his Pourveyance is taken away must bear the greater part of the burden That if the King before he had granted the greatest Act of Pardon Bounty and Indempnity that ever any or all the Kings of England had done before him to a company of Factious and Rebellious people who had out done either Sheba or Shimei or any of the sons of Zeruâ—ah and deserved less then any of their forefathers unless the murder of his Royal Father and all the groundless obloquies and reproaches which they could cast upon him the banishing persecuting of himself his brethren murder and ruine of his loyal subjects and dispossessing him of his Estate Kingdoms and Revenues for twelve years togeâ—her and all things endeavoured which might load him or them with scorn and indignities can by any Fanaticks or Factious people be proved which it never can to have been by dispensations or communication with God and a living and walking in the spirit had taken in again to the Crown all those forfeited Rights Franchises and priviledges which had been heretofore too liberally given or granted from it and reserved a ten times greater Pourveyance then is by any now complained of the people of England would have been so glad with their Quailes as they would have blamed themselves for murmuring without a cause either before or after they had them And that those who could adventure to transgress the Laws which by their Idolized Covenant they bound themselves to observe and buy Places and Offices in the Kings houshold the greatest part of the profits whereof were made by the Kings allowance of Dyet may now that many of those Dyets and Tables are taken away come to a better understanding of the necessity and right use of Pourveyance and Compositions for them That the allowance of fifty thousand pounds per annum proposed as a recompence for his losses in the want of his Pourveyance is not to be found in the moyety of the Excise of Ale and Beer settled upon him and his heirs and successors for that the benefit thereof will not make amends for what he lost by his Tenures in the yearly Revenue thereof for as to the honor regality and right use of it that and Ten times more and all that could be given in money or an yearly rent would not have been enough for the purchase That thrice the sum of fifty thousand pounds per annum cannot ballance so great a loss and damage as the King sustains by his remitting of the Royal Pourveyance or Compositions for them That the splendor and magnificence of the Kings house cannot be so well supported by any certain yearly allowance in money nor the Squeeze and enhance of the Markets be so well escaped as they will be by that most easie laudable and accustomed way and establishment of the Royal Pourveyance or Compositions for them and that it can be no less then an undenyable truth and reason that it is the duty and should be the care of every good subject to further rather then hinder the Royal Pourveyance or Compositions for them That the mischiefs and inconveniences of taking away the Royal Pourveyances or Compositions for them have so visibly and often appeared to every unprejudiced eye or judgement as there is scarce an Englishman unless it be Cornelius Holland one of those that helped to kill the heir for his inheritance and would rather have Pourveyance to be a grievance then that he should fail of getting to him and his heirs Creslow Pâ—stures in Buckinghamshire which were appropriate to the fatting of the Kings lean Cattle for the provision of his houshold as every man may well conclude that it will be more for tâ—e good and ease of the people who can never be rich or happy when their Prince is poor or necessitous and if they love themselves are to love and support him that the King should have his Praeâ—emption and Pourveyance or Compositions for them then that he should be so much dishonored or oppressed as he is already and like to be more and more for want of it Which should be numbred amongst those ancient and legal priviledges and rights belonging to soveraignty puâ—chased by the cares and labors of our many English Kings and Monarchs with the hazard of their lives fortunes and estates in the preservation of the wel-fare of the people and a Monarchy which is of more then one thousand years continuance and being a duty ought to be more cheerfully submitted unto then any Ordinances By Laws or Customes of any Cities Borough Towns or Corporations or those of the Lords of Mannors by Grant Allowance or permission of Royal Indulgences or those of the City of London that great ingrosser of Liberties and priviledges who besides their Court of Wards and Orphans which yeildeth them very great yearly profits and advantages do receive take amongst many other things not here particularly mentioned by a Grant of King Henry the third of his Tolles at Queen Hithe Belines Gate and Downgate and else where in the City of London for a small Fee Farm Rent of fifty pounds per annum if enjoyed by so good a title which were formerly taken for the Kings use For every Tun of Beer carryed from Billingsgate by Merchant Strangers beyond the Seas four pence out of every hundred of Salmons brought to Queen Hithe by foraigners or such as are not free of the City two Salmons for every thousand of Herrings bought in Shops an haâ—f penny twenty six Mackarels out of every Mackarel Boat one Fish out of every Dosser of Fish not having in it Mullet Ray Congre Turbut c. Two Salmons out of every Bark which bringeth Salmons out of Scotland some Sprats out of every Boat or Barke with Sprats two pence of every Oyster Boat out of every Bark or Boat of Haddocks twenty six Haddocks out of every Ship or Bark laden with Herrings from Yarmouth two hundred Herrings for all kind of Fish brought to London after the same rate as was paid to the King at London Bridge for every Ship Bark or Vessel not belonging to London or
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
pay those Thraves of Corn which would far exceed the Pourveyance charged upon that County or have compounded for them or do pay them to such as have obtained Grants of the Lands and Revenues belonging to that Hospital Or that he whose Royal Ancestor King Henry the second took a care as appears by the black book in the Exchequer that the Barons of the Exchequer who were then taken to be a part of the Kings houshold should have their provisions at easier rates then others Et de victualibus suae domus in urbibus Castellis maritimis nomine consuetudinis nihil solvunt Quod si minister vectigalium de hiis quicquam solvere compulerit dummodo presens sit serviens ejus qui suis usibus empta fuisse oblata fide probare voluerit Baroni quidem exacta pecunia restituetur inde in integro improbus exactor pro qualitate personae pecuniarum penam luet and pay nothing for custom for the victuals or provisions for their houses in Cities Castles and Maritime places and if any Officer should compell them to pay any thing for them whilstâ—their servants were ready to testifie and prove that they were bought to their use the money was to be again restored and the party so wickedly exacting it amerced or fined according to the quality of his person And that our succeeding Kings and Princes causing a Pourveyance and provision of Diet to be made for the Justices of Assize Justices of the Peace at the Assizes Sessions by the Sheriffs in every County making an allowance for the same out of the Exchequer Q. Elizabeth in Anno 1573. finding that to be troublesome inconvenient for the Sheriffs ordained that charge to be defrayed out of her Coffers as may appear by a Copy of a letter from the Lords of her Privy Councel communicated unto me by my worthy and learned friend Mr. William Dugdale and here inserted and that expence being since ordered to be defrayed out of the Fines and profits of the Counties after the rate of four shillings per diem at the Assizes Sessions to every Justice of the peace and two shillings per diem to the Clerk of the Peace and the King being at more then 10000 l. per annum charges to the Judges of the superior Courts at Westminster who by their Circuits do to save his people a great deal more charges cause a cheap and impartial Justice to be twice in every year brought into every County and is at many other yeerly expences to others in the administration of Justice for which Cromwell and his fancied Parliaments thought a large yeerly allowance to be little enough makes an yearly allowance of one thousand one hundred and six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence per annum to the Lord President of Wales and the Justices attending that Court for the provisions of their Diet with an allowance of Dyet to the Justices of Wales in their great Sessions twenty four shillings per diem to the Domestick Clerks or servants of the Lord Chancellor an allowance of Forty Marks per annum to the Kings Remembrancer in the Exchequer which may shew what cheapness was formerly for the diet of himself and of his eight Clarks who ought to table with him the like for the Treasurers Remembrancer and his twelve Clarks and to the Clark of the Pipe five pence per diem for his diet every day when he sitteth in Court and the like to the Comptroller of the Pipe should be now put to seek his own Provisions or Pourveyance at the dearest most disrespectful rates or that the Kings servants and Officers of his houshold in whose honor or dishonor the Majesty whom they serve as that of David was in the reproach of his servants or Embassadors sent to the King of Ammon is not a little concerned should now for want of the Pourveyance or Compositions for them complain that the beauty is departed from the Kings house his servants are become like Harts that finde no Pasture and they that did feed plentifully are desolate in the streets And that the servants of the Abbot of St. Edmunds Bury were in a better condition when as he could allow John de Hastings the Steward of the Courts of his Mannors who claimed the said Office by inheritance a Provision when he came at night unto him for eight horses and thirteen men with an horse load of Provender and Hey sufficient Wine and Beer twenty four Wax Candles in the Winter time and twelve in the Summer eight loaves of Bread for his Greyhounds two Hens for his Hawks pro se hominibus suis honorabilem sustentationem in Cibo potu and an honorable provision for himself and his servants in meat and drink And as those of the children of Israel which returned from the Captivity lamented the difference betwixt the glory of the first and second Temple bewail the desolation of the house wherein the Kings honor dwelled and the alteration reducing of it to what it is now from that which it was in the raigns of Queen Elizabeth King James or King Charles the Martyr And that Foraigners and Strangers who were wont so to magnifie and extoll the Hospitality state and magnificence of the King of Englands Court and house-keeping as that Philip Honorius after an exact survey of many other Kingdoms and their Policies hath publikely declared that no Nation in the world goeth beyond our Brittain in the honor of the Kings Court and houshold in maggior numero di servitori con maggior distinctioni d' officii e gradi multitude of servants Officers and distinction of degrees and cannot be ignorant of the respects and honor done by all Nations to Foraign Princes though no Monarchs or their superiors in their passages and journeys through any Towns or Cities beyond the Seas by making them presents of Wine Fish Oats and the best of houshold provisions which those places afforded and that even those mechanick souls of Hamborough and Amsterdam can think it worthy their imitation shall finde the King of England whose Ancestor Offa King of the Mercians in Anno Dom. 760. would be so little wanting to himself and his posterity in the preserving the honor and rights of Majesty as he ordained that even in times of peace himself and his successors in the Crown should as they passed thorough any City have Trumpets sounding before them to shew that the person of the King saith the Leiger book of St. Albans should breed both fear and honor in all which either see him or hear of him to be so scanted de ea sublimitate amplitudine augustaque illa Majestate in that honor and reverence which his predecessors would never abate any thing of as his Officers and servants like some Beggars who are not used to be trusted with a Mess of Pottage to be put into their hands when they buy it at the
of Supernumeraries cannot be lessened where the high State and Honor of a King is to be maintained which some great or publike occasions as at Coronations Funerals Triumphs c. onely excepted is principally to reside in his house or fixed Station and therefore it cannot be for the good of the people or be correspondent to the Majesty of a great King that a lesser number of Maces should be born before him or that there should not be so many servants of one the same imployment but if the grandeur and magnificence of the King could be served with a lesser number of servants the pretended surplusage would be necessary enough in order to the preferring and pleasing of his people and to give them encouragement to love and honor him which is their head and to make it their business to preserve and keep up the honor and gâ—eatness of the King and his Court which David in the order and placing of Officers and servants in the house and Temple of the God of Israel as well as in his own did not think impertinent as the several distributions and pluralities of Officers to places of one and the same nature will sufficiently evidence and to do otherwise would as little conduce to that Decorum which ought to be in a Kings Family as some indigested advice would do in the propounding that there might be a sparing of a great yearly charge of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners who were anciently those that served in War and ad latus principis in a pitched field or Battel and were by Covenant and Indenture which are frequently mentioned and to be found in the Records and ancient memorials of the Kingdom his Pensioners onely for that purpose because that the King is at a charge of a Life Guard which cannot comprehend and take in the uses for the Gentlemen Pensioners in their guarding the King within doors where there is a greater decency and honor in them and their service then can be in the Esau's or men of the Field and such as are onely useful in the direful Sacrifices to Bellona where the Majesty of a King is laid aside and by a present necessity exchanged for a sword and the bloody and unmajestick business of it and would be as little for the profit of a King within the Virge of that honor which shâ—uld encompass and attend him and his affairs as to suppose that the Master of the houshold which certainly hath been as ancient as the houshold it self and never but once for ought appears to the contrary intermitted and then by the cunning insinuation and self ends of one that was too instrumental in the introducing of our Trojan Horse is useless and supernumerary for that the Treasurer Comptroller Cofferer Clerks of the Greencloth and Clerks Comptrollers may amongst them and altogether discharge and supply the care and business of it which will appear to be no more then suppositions and pretences when as the Office of Master of the houshold which if well executed and as it ought to be is of most necessary use and of a greater Fatigue and trouble then any other of the houshold is not at all comprehended in the Lord Steward or great Master of the housholds place nor within the Offices of Treasurer Comptroller Cofferer Clerks of the Greencloth or Clerks Comptrollers but hath as all the rest of the Officers of the Greencloth have his peculiar and particular charge which is to inspect all the under Offices of the houshold and to be as a Corrigidor or Surveyor of those numerous Officers and servants which are therein unto which the other great imployments and high honor of the Lord Steward and the Treasurer and Comptroller who are of his Majesties Privy Councel will not permit them always to attend to call in question and prosecute the punishment of such under Officers and Servants and their irregularities as deserve it and keep a constant watch eye upon their actions and cause the daily orders and commands of the great Officers to be obeyed and executed by the inferior as well as the set and known Rules of the house which is now more then ever necessary and not to be wanted when there are so very great and many disorders which aâ—e heightned and more and more increased by the want of the Royal Pourveyances or Compositions for them and by the enhaunce of rates and prices of houshold provisions which do more infest the Purse and profit of the King then any supernumerary Officers and servants have as yet done and hinder him from regulating these unallowable improvements and as they are called Fees and perquisites of some Offices and Places in his Court by an Augmentation of the ancient Wages and Salaries of his servants now far too little and unable to support them in his service which the monys wasted in the damages and loss sustained for want of his Prae-emption and Pourveyances and by those otherwise remediless irregularities would have easily accomplished And all the people of England and their after generations may take it to be no less then their duty as well as their interest and if the irrational creatures were but to be Judges of it a common gratitude to endeavour all they can and to be willing that those ancient Rights should be continued and preserved to the King and his successors And having no small concernment in the honor of their Kings which by its Rays and Râ—flexions communicated unto them was and ever is and will be as necessary for the good and welfare of the King and his people as either Credit Cloths Jewels or any thing else they can have or adorn themselves withall when as their own interest or well or ill being is involved in the Kings May understand it to be no less their interest to uphold the honor of the King and his house then it was the interest of their forefathers who if they had not found it to be a more then ordinary concernment of themselves and every good subject to be assistant thereunto would not so often have been petitioners in several Parliaments and several Kings Raigns for the well ordering of the Kings house And being not ignorant how much all people are won and kept by hospitalities and benefits or lost for want of them should not be instrumental to mudd or stop the fountain but cherish rather keep the hospitality of the Kings house as carefully as the Romans did their Vestal fire and the Anciâ—ia or sacred Sheilds as some special part of the salus populi and believe that it was for the interest of the Nation that some Lords of the Kings Privy Council in the 21. year of the Raign of Henry the eighth even in the decay and expiring of Hospitality and almost all other the English vertues did amongst other Articles of Impeachment exhibited to the King against Cardinal Woolsey who kept a very large and ample Hospitality in his own house charge him that
sold Puertes secos or for goods or commodities carryed to be sold by Land a Tax upon Cards besides many Almoxariffadgo's laid upon the Towns and people a particular Tax upon Tunny Fish a third paâ—t yeerly collected of the Rents and profits of all the Revenues belonging to every City and Town in the Kingdom every one having some appropriate unto them and of Fines and penalties imposed upon any quenâ—s therein Doth not do as the Emperor and German Princes do by their people and subjects who besides the Dranksteur Bierrecht Biersteur or Excise upon drink and their Schoorstein oder Caming gelt or Chimny money Frawlensteur certain quantities of Wine appropriate to the Prince those many Consuetudines quae praestantur in recognitionem Dominii directi Jurium Dominicalium Customes and services which are to be performed to the Emperors or chief Lords of whom they hold and their Laudemia's Lehâ—wahrs or Reliefs which if it be a Hahe Lehâ—wahr is of great men or Estates a Twentieth penny in Ecclesiastical Fees or Revenues two Dollers per cent and in the Kleine lehne wahr or small Estates or Revenues a sixteenth penny and over and above what is paid for Licences of Alienation or for lehn gelâ— for a Liveâ—y or investiture into Lands Hanâ—â—ohn an Oblation for any thing written in a subjects favour by the Prince and Recht steur a payment of money towards the maintenance of the Courts of Justice do take Turkensteur a Tribute for war or defence against the Turks Krieg steur a Tax for the payment of souldiers Forst gelt Forrest money Mase gelt money paid for measures Malschwein for Swine Last gelt Ton money or gaging of vessels Pfâ—ug gelt a Tax upon every Plow Bâ—lcken gelt Timber money Haupt vizh money for the head of every Beast Zehenden vam Fleisch wein corne Erbsen Tenths of Flesh Wine Corn and Herbs Hausen gelt a Tax upon houses Frey gelt money upon the making men to be free Schuck gelt Shoo money Brucken gelt Bridge money â—eg gelt way money or for passage Aufâ—nauch gelt or Aufâ—arth money paid in Cities and Towns for being chosen into any Office or Magistracy and Abefarth Abschusz Ablosung when one removeth his Family or houshold from one City or Town to another and is to pay a tenth of any goods sold upon such removals Toll or Foriscapium to be paid by the buyer over and above the price agreed to be paid to the seller Accisz upon all Commodities sold and spent and a Land steur Tribute upon Lands which is ex voluntate superioris ob necessitatem supervenientem variantur imposed for the other as aide against the Turks and for payment of souldiers are to be by publike assent ordained at their Diets or Parliaments it the pleasure of the Prince and varied according to occasions or necessities And so many other Taxes and payments for the publike saith Bâ—soldus ut nominibus laboretur as there are scarce names enough for them so that as free and full of liberties as that Nation did heretofore suppose themselves to have been they do find by their Taxes and payments that the feathers which their Electors Dukes Margraues Counts Barons and Imperial Cities have eâ—ther taken by force gained by favor or purchased for money from the Imperial Roman Eagle which Crantzius and other good Authors do heavily complain of have but increased rather then eased the burdens of the common people Doth not as the King of the French who besides his Foüages or Chimney money which though they of Gulen did heretofore so little like of as they rebelled against our famous English Black Prince for imposing twelve pence upon every Chimney they believe in that and the other parts of France to be accustumez de toute Anciennete allowed by all Antiquity the services and profits Feodall le Paulet or a Tax of four Deniers upon every liuer or two shillings of the yeerly value of Offices profits of Prizes at Sea and of the Admiralty Tenths and first fruits payable by Ecclesiastical persons Escheates Ottroyes Licenses and Dons gratuits gifts or oblations and Regalities doth continue as perpetual a Tax called le Tailon imposed by King Henry the second in the year one thousand five hundred fourty nine to increase the Wages of the soldery in regard of the dearness of victuals and the burdens which the men at Arms or Gens d' armes did lay upon the Laborers and common people la Creüe or augmentation for the pay of the Army an Impost of the twentieth penny upon Wine sold in gross the eighth upon all in Normandy by retail and a Tax upon all drink now made a constant Revenue of the Crown a Tax upon every vessel of Wine which in the time of Julius Caesar had no Imposition or burden laid upon it carryed into Walled Towns or the Suburbs and to pay as much though it be transported from thence again before it be sold The Gabell upon Salt which being imposed by Philip the long with a Protestation that it should continue but a while and afterwards by Philip de Valois in the year one thousand three hundred twenty eight who declared that he intended not to incorporate it to the Royal Demeasnes being remitted by Charles the fifth in the year one thousand three hundred sixty nine is since made perpetual and annexed to the Royal Revenue and the King and his successors are become the only Merchants of Salt whereof every house is to take a certain proportion loaded with the Kings Taxe and Imposition upon it though it be more then he have occasion to expend the aequivalent or aequipollent which in Narbonne was granted for the abolition of an old Tax of the twentieth part of the price of all moveables sold by retail about the year one thousand four hundred and sixty and agreed to be paid by a Denier in every Liure not onely for all moveables but of Flesh and Fish sold by Retail and the sixtieth part of all the Wine bought to sell again and is paid in Auâ—ergâ—e for a liberty to buy their Salt where they please and to be exempt from the Tax and Imposition of buying it at the Kings Granaries or Salt Magazines being with Wine a great part of the natural commodities of the Country besides the other Impostes Entries or Customes to be paid in Towns or for Peages and passages by Land or Water la subsistance which in the Raign of King Henry the fourth and since have been leavyed pour faire subsister les soldats dans les quartiers d' hyver moyennant quoi on devoit estre exempt du logement de la Gens d' armes durant l' hyver to keep the souldiers in or to maintain them in their quarters all the Winter and to be exempt from the trouble of lodging them in their houses la solde dâ— 50 mille hommes a Tax for the wages of fifty thousand men first laid upon the Cities and Walled Towns
call there Dairo for all Cattle which are brought to Florence In Hungarie which hath been in this and the foregoing Century or Age an Elective Kingdome in the House of Austria the Coloni Faâ—mers or Husbandmen and common-People are obliged ad gratuitas operas labores sex dierum to work six dayes for nothing in the fortifying of Castles and Garrisons anno 1600. propter penuriam Annonae defectum jumentorum by the scarcity of victuals and defect of Horses and Cattel for Carriages the States of Hungary not being able to promise certam vecturam victualium what victuals they could carry and provide did hope if God send them more plenty quod non deâ—runt regnicolae qui praetio quantum fieri potuit victualia convehent that the Inhabitants of the Kingdome would take care that victuals may be provided and carried as cheap as may be The Swedes who do boast themselves to be the remaining parts of the Ostrogothes are an Elective Kingdome are omnia tributa census Regidebita vehere transferre juxta Regis voluntatem to carry and bring to the King his Tributes and Rents which are there much in provision or where else he shall please to dispose of them And by that grand guide of Reason the Civil Law which in all the Kingdomes and Provinces of the Christian World is the Cynosura or Pole-starre by which for the most part their Governments are steered and directed That custome of Pourveyance for the Princes private as well as publick use was ever so inseparable and usual and so little scrupled at or complained of as it grew to be as universal as it was antient and in the later time and old age of the Civil Law as well as the morning youth and age of it to be justly accompted to be principis privilegium gloriosae militiae currus et naves accipere subditorum pro vehendo res de loco ad locum si sibi necessarium fuerit tam pro casu suo quam probello a Priviledge and Right due to Princes and the publick welfare to imprest and take Ships and Carts of their Subjects when there shall be need as well for their own use and occasions as in times of warre Et si naves plaustra tempore exercitus occultentur poterunt confiscari de jâ—re talem confiscationem esse legitimam saith Ferettus who wrote no longer agoe then in the Reign of the Emperour Charles the Fifth and our King Henry the Eighth cum agatur de honore commodo universali ac de principis Imperiâ— and if Ships and carriages or carts should be hid whereby they might not be taken for the use of the Army they were by Law to be confiscate and such a confiscation is lawfull when the publick honor and profit are concerned or they are seized by the Princes order And Ulpian saith ad onus fructuarii pertinet si quod ob transitum exercitus penditur si quid mâ—nicipio nam solent possessores certam partem fructuum municipio viliâ—râ— preâ—io addicere et ad fructuarium haec onera pertinebant it belongeth to the Tenant or Farmer if the Army pass that way to pay contribution and also to a Garrison for the Tenants and did use to send in a certain part of provisions at cheaper rates then ordinary And in oneribus patrimoniorum etiam hospitâ—m susceptio ponenda est the lodgings and free-quarter of persons imployed for the use of the publick were likewise to be born plerumque enim militibus supervenientibus vel publicis personis ea iter facientibus hospitia in civitatibus praebere oportuit and commonly if any Souldiers or publick persons travailed that way they were to have lodgings free-quarter in Cities Et ab his oneribus quae patrimoniis vel possessionibus indicuntur neque numero liberorum neque ullo alio privilegio quem excusari and from which publick charges which are laid upon mens Patrimonies or Estates no man was to be excused by having many children or by any other priviledge Ab hoc tamen hospitiis recipiendi munere militibus veteranis medicis Philosophis vacatio immunitasque principum constitutionibus indulta est from which notwithstanding old Souldiers Physitians and Philosophers or poor Scholars were only so favoured by the Prince as to be exempted In Spain a Kingdom very fruitfull in Taxes and never or seldom parting with any that have been once raised or charged upon the people witness their Cruzado's for the holy warre and Assessments for the expelling of the Moors there is a Consilium or Tribunal which hath cognizance and judgeth de Annona concerning corn and other provisions And the King continueth to this day which might spare contribution towards the maintenance of his house a decimam omnium vaenalium tenth of all sorts of things which are sold imposed by King John ob belli subsidium upon occasion of a warr in Anno 1366. In Portugal the King hath his publick Tolls and Alfandega's ex quibuscunque vaenalibus out of all victuals and commodities of some a tenth some a fifth and of others some other part The Commonwealth of Venice so mingled and as well as may be composed of an Aristocratie Democratie and a small part of Monarchy and with such a harmony and content of her Citizens as the Doge or Duke Senate and Magistrates rather then the common people are by many worthy Authors and Writers reported to enjoy a most clear and satisfying liberty have their Proveditori All-sale who rent the Salt-pits and take care that the City be served at reasonable rates their Signori della Grascia who do supervise Cheese Bacon and salt things Signori del vino who look to the condition and rates of all kind of wines and a sort of Aediles called delle ragion vecchie whose office it is to entertain forraign Ambassadors or Princes and to defray their charges at the publick expence of St. Mark and their Signori delle biaâ—i who are to take order that the City be well provided with a sufficient proportion of wheat and other grain And their Duke having speciem regiam non potestatem the shew of a King only but little of the power and qui aulam non alit ut liberi principes sed congruam solam familiam though he keeps not a Court as free Princes doe but only a private Family hath ex publico aerario a yearly Salary and the greater because every year he is to feast the Principal of the Senate and nè ullus praeteritus videatur veteri instituto ac lege constitutum est to the end that none may seem neglected by an antient Law and Custom is to send every winter five wild Ducks to every Citizen that hath voice in the great Council The States of the United Provinces in the Netherlands who are well contented to call themselves Hooge Mogende and Groot
Mogende great and high and mighty Lords like a Corporation of Kings govern the people by a false perswasion of liberties under more burdens and Taxes then they ever endured under their Earles of Holland and Friesland and their German and Spanish Monarchs can in their Low-country and levelling humour and the ill measure which they take of reverence to their betters afford the Prince of Orange and his Court and Houshold which is not small a freedom from Excise upon the buying of all provisions for his house which after the rate of its griping would goe a great part of the way to as much as what the King of England saves by his Pourveyances and the like to the Queen of Bohemia her Retinue and Court when she was resident amongst them Embassadours of forraign Princes the English Company of merchants of the Staple their Armies common Souldiers when they are â—n the field or a Leaguer for all their victuals and such like provisions their ships and men of warre at sea and to the University of Leyden for their Wine and Beer The States Generall having great and fitting stipends from their several Provincâ—s whom they represent in an Assembly or standing Counsel at the Hague and the Deputies of every Province sent to the Hague when their Comitia or as it were Parliaments are there assembled have each of them four Florens or our eight shillings a day allowed them the Princes of Orange besides their great places of Captain General by Sea and by Land which yielded them great profits as well as power had 1000 pounds sterling a moneth stipend eâ— cum in castris agebant et in ipsa erat expeditione when they were in the Leagure or any service of warre had for a present given them forty thousand Florens being almost four thousand pounds sterling for a Present or Honorary magnaque pecuniae vis quâ— centum millia persaepe excedebaâ— in eundem conferebatur and a great sum of money over and above which many times was more then one hundred thousand Florens or ten thousand pounds sterling for Spies Intelligence and other necessaries without any accompt to be given for it which stipends of the Prince of Orange and the States of Holland or the Duke of Venice including their charges of Diet Servants and Retinue and all other necessaries belonging to the honor of their imployments being paid in money or raised by Taxes or Excise out of the people have no other difference with the Pourveyance or Royall provision for Kings or Princes but that the stipends are in money and a gross summe large enough to take in all occasions and necessaries and most commonly more then needs And as to that particular being a great deal more then the Pourveyance or compositions for it would amount unto many times falls more heavy upon the people in the lump then it doth or could in a Pourveyance by distribution of it into small parts for that Commonwealths and those Free States or Combinations of governing and taxing are never no loosers by making finding or taking advantage of necessities or catching opportunities of burdening the people and getting such overplus as may either help to enrich their Treasuries and furnish out their magnificence in publick or too often their private and particulars wherein our cunning Church-wardens and Epitomes of Free States in their Parishes and the Grandees of some of our Cities and Corporations are very well instructed In the German Empire now much lessened in its antient rights and preâ—ogative by granting them away to several Princes Hanse Towns and Imperial Cities by indulgences necessity of State affairs or want of money the Angariae and Parangariae duties of furnishing horses and carts upon any publick necessity are not denied to the Emperor and upon occasions of warre extraordinariae collationes prastantur que Fodron appellantur et ea appellatione non solum pabulum equorum quod Futter vocatur set et frumentum hordeum aliaeque res ad Imperatoris exercitum victui extraordinary provisions called Foder are furnished which in the German or high Dutch signifieth not only horse meat but corn barley other food for the Emperors Army Et aliorum sententia verior esse videtur qui dicunt extraordinariam collationem quae pro Imperatoris Utilitate et necessitate indicitur supra ordinarias et statas indictiones census et tributa And the better opinion is that Pourveyance or Provisions may be taken for the necessary occasions of the Emperor over and above his Tributes or what is paid unto him And as that excellently learned D. Weymondus now deceased Chancellor to the Prince Elector of Brandenburgh was pleased to inform me at his late being here together with Prince Maurice of Nassau Embassadors from that Prince Elector prae-emption and a power of ordering moderate rates and prices in the Markets is passim in tota Germania now in use in all Germany as well by the Emperor as the Electors and many other lesser Princes And if the French who have yet their Terms des droits de Bordage of provisions which Tenants were obliged to furnish for the Kings Houshold and their grand Provost de l' hostel Lord Steward of the Kings house met priz et taxe a pain vin viandes foin et avoine had in the year 1654 power to rate the prices of wine victuals hay provender and all things appertaining to the provision of the Kings House And were wont to be very wary in parting with Regalities have by any ill advice turned away the honour of hospitality and that magnificence and good which ariseth thereby to their Kings and Princes and put their Court to board-wages which falling short or coming to be ill paid or long forborn will but starve the Houseshold and so keen the appetite and projects of the Court when they shall be every day pursued by their own necessities and put in mind to make what shift they can for themselves as that Nation which is already over-spread with Taxes as with a Garment may in due time if they doe it not already easily acknowledge the difference betwixt this Kingdome and its just Laws and Liberties and the present mode or fashion of that which by departing from their antient and better Laws and Constitutions is now for the most part cut into Tallages and Commands in warre Titles and Outsides of honor and Offices granted not to the deserver but the best Chapman and betwixt making Pourveyance for the Kings Houshold and necessaries to support his Regalities and paying as many kinds of Gabels and Impositions instead of it as there be weeks in the year and the rich and plentifull living of our English Yeomen Francklins and Farmers and their Paysants whose hardship and beggerly way of living makes them to be but as Slaves to their Gentry and Nobility And the dependencie of the Noblesse or the Nobility and Gentry upon the King for charges and places making them so little able to
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