The mistaken recompense, or, The great damage and very many mischiefs and inconveniences which will inevitably happen to the King and his people by the taking away of the King's præemption and pourveyance or compositions for them by Fabian Phillipps, Esquire.

The mistaken recompense, or, The great damage and very many mischiefs and inconveniences which will inevitably happen to the King and his people by the taking away of the King's præemption and pourveyance or compositions for them by Fabian Phillipps, Esquire.

Table of contents

Title page

TO THE Old-fashioned and True-hearted Gentry, and others of the English Nation, and all who are wel-wishers to the Honour and Happiness of it.

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BY the Laws and Custome of England as well as of other Nations where Monarchy, or the right way and order of Government hath any thing to do, the King hath a Controll of Markets, may regulate & order the price & rates of victuals & houshold provisions, and hinder it from being excessive: As likewise may the Lords of Manors in their Leets, the Sheriffs in their Tournes, the Justices of the Kings Bench, Justices of Peace, and Justices of Assize at the Quarter-Sessions and Assizes by an authority derived from him.

Which when it was better observed then now, made the Market Rates about the fourth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to be, if any thing at all, but little different from her price, or those Compositions for her houshold Provisions, which by agreement made by the Justices of Peace of the severall Counties, with the Offficers of her house were to be furnished according as the Counties were more or less distant from London, the place of her Residence, and the profits which they received thereby in the improvement of their Lands, and selling their Commodities at greater rates unto others.

And was the cause, besides the duty and obligation of it, that the Kings Praeemption which should not be denyed, as long as civility and good manners, and the Fifth Commandement shall continue or be in use amongst us.

[Page]And the Royall Pourveyance, (warranted by the Lawes of God, Nature, and Nations, aswell as by the Civil Law, the universal and refined reason of the civilized part of the world, and the Common Law of this Nation:) having dwelt here amongst us above the age of Methusaelah: and as Retributions and Gratitudes in signe of subjection, paid and allowed in other Nations by the Heathen and Savages as well as Christians, were not in the right use of them, untill our late Times of Rebellion and Confusion taken to be either a grievance or burden unto the people.

For that which (besides the designes of the Levelling Party, and such as were the professed Enemies of Monarchy and Majesty, and the ill Impressions which they have cast into the minds of such who have too much believed them,) hath made them to seem that which they are not. Hath been the Rack and Enhaunce of the Rents of Lands by the Nobility, Gentry, and Landlords.

The increase of Servants and Labourers wages, and the high rates imposed by Tenants and Farmers upon victuals and houshold Provisions which (if it were not for the pursuit of pride and vanity, and the peoples racking of one another to maintain it,) might be afforded cheaper then it was in the 4th year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. And as they are now raised to immoderate rates and prices do make a Desert in our Land of Canaan, and a generall Enhaunce of all things in the midst of a plenty; wherein every one is sure to be a gainer or saver, but the King.

Who by the loss of his Praeemption and Pourveyance is made to be the only Sufferer, and as to the Market rates in a worse condition then any Lord of a Manor or Clark of the Market.

[Page]To his damage, besides the Loss of hono [...] in his house, and many other inconveniencies of more then one hundred thousand pounds per annum.

Which may appear by a true and exact Calculation or Estimate following.

In 35o. Eliz. the difference between the Market and the Queens Rates in the Composition made for the Pourveyance, (the Spices, and Grocery-ware, excepted which doth now yearly cost the King three thousand pounds per annum) was but Twenty five thousand, Twelve pounds four shillings eight p [...]nce.

When the price of the Oxen as they a [...]e now bought, is three to one, more than they were then, of the Lambs eleaven to one, Fat Sheep four to one, Chickens eleaven to one, Wheat five to one.

In Yorkshire and some other remote Countreys, the price of the Oxen near four to one, and in Suffolk, and other Southern Countries, course Butter then at something less then two pence half-penny a pound, now six pence a pound.

Which difference betwixt the Kings price and the Market price but according to three to one, will after the Rate of Twenty five thousand pounds per annum, multiplyed three times over; Amount unto one hundred thousand pounds per annum, and make the Kings loss to be as much, and the Counties (especially many of them which are neer adjacent to London) so much and a great deal more, the gainers by selling to their fellow-Subjects after those more then formerly enhaunced Rates.

And what wanted in those Provisions or Compositions served in by the Counties (for that did not reach [Page] to the defraying of all the Charges in the house,) as to Dyet, and Servants Wages, and the buying of some Utensils and necessary Houshold-stuffe to be used in the affairs of the Houshold.

Being supplyed by some yearly Assignations and Additions out of the Royal Revenue, and some of them by several Acts of Parliament: And King Charles the Martyr, after a putting down of more then a third part of the Tables and Dyets in the Royal houshold, as they were in the Reign of King James his Father, and putting many of the servants unto Board-wages, with some short and prejudicial allowances for their Dyets ( [...]hich lessened his charge as to the Dyets, as much as Thirty thousand pounds per annum, and was the cause of as much losse to the servants) making his Assignation, together with what the Compositions for the Pourveyance, did then amount unto (which in the difference betwixt the Kings price and Market rates, at that time was estimated to be less then fifty thousand pounds per annum,) to be one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the defraying of the charges of his House-keeping.

In which yearly charge of the Houshold, the King allowing seventy thousand pounds per annum towards it.

And the benefits by the compositions for the pourveyance, as to what the Countries paid, (and as to what the King saved by it,) being reckoned but at Fifty thousand pounds per annum, which is much too low.

There will by the taking away of the Prae-emption and Pourveyance, or Compositions for them be not only that Fifty thousand pounds per annum, in damage and loss to the King, but a great Addition of losses, and damage, as followeth, viz.

For the Carriages now, that the price is raised two in three and more then formerly incumbred. per ann.-

3000 l.—0s.—0d.

And when there shall be Progresses, will at the least amount unto two thousand pound per ann. more-

2000 l.—0s.—0 d.

The Venditions, which were the over-plus, and what was not spent or used of the Provisions of the Countyes; with the profit of Hydes, and Tallow, &c. & were usually sold towards the furnishing of other occasions of the house; as for buying of Linnen, and other Necessaryes and Utensils thereof per ann.—

12000 l.-0 s.-0 d.

The profit and benefit of lean Cattle, served in at small prizes, and heretofore Fatted in the Kings Pastures at Creslow in Buckinghamshire; the Rent deducted. per ann.—

1000 l.-0 s.-0 d.

And was wont besides to furnish for the Stables as much Hay as was worth. per ann.—

300 l.—0 s.-0 d.

And as many fatt Cattle sold as yearly yielded.—

1000 l.-0 s.-0 d.

The Kings Pastures and Fatting grounds at Tottenham-Court in Middlesex, and Sayes-Court in Deptford in Kent, yielding for the aforesaid uses more then the now Rent which is reserved upon them. per ann.—

500 l.—0 s.-0 d.

[Page]Allowances in satisfaction of Diet now made unto eight great Officers or principal Men of the houshold for their Tables and Diet after the rate of four pounds per diem. being 1560 l. to every one of them, and the Moyety or one half thereof reckoned at 730 l. and multiplyed by eight, amounting unto per annum.—

5800 l.—0 s.—0 d.

Allowances made unto 7 next principal Officers of the house in recompence of their Diet and Tables after the rate of 30 s. per diem to each of them being 547 l. 10 s. 0 d. and but the Moyety or one halfe thereof brought to accompt, which is—273 l. 15 s. 0 d. and multiplyed by 7. amounts unto per annum.—

1915 l.— 5s.—0 d.

(Besides many other allowances unto divers others of the houshold who had formerly three dishes of meat allowed them every day in the year not here reckoned.)

For Board wages to many other Officers and Servants in the Royal Family, whose wages when there was Diet in the Court to suffice all the Servants of it▪ and reteyners unto it; will fall farre short of what they will have a necessity aswell as reason to demand. per annum.—

6000 l.—0s.—0d.

[Page]The Compositions of the Brewers of London and the adjacent Villages, in lieu of a groat for every quarter of Malt which they brewed, which was formerly paid, and is now remitted by reason of the Excise. per annum.—

3500 l.—0s.—0d.

The Excise which the King pays for his own Beer per ann.—

300 l.—0s.—0d.

The 2 d. a piece every day to as many poor people at the Gate, now given more then formerly, by reason of the fragments of the Tables, put down, and other Charities heretofore allowed them taken away per annum.—

140 l.—0s.—0d.

The future and continual enhance of prices assisted by that accursed way of poundage of Twelve pence in every pound for all that he buyes or payes for; which he will be sure to pay for at the last, though others are constrained to abate and pay for it at the present.

And his too often buying upon credit and paying for many things as much as an interest of 15 or 20 per cent.

Which put together may in the usual & annual expences of his houshold instead of the 50000 l. (if so much) were contributed by the pourveyance, amount unto little less then a half more then formerly [Page] laid out in most parts of his provision, and a th [...]d part in the residue, he being now enforced to purchase the victuals and food for Himself and his houshold, at a far greater rate then any of his Subjects.—

20000 l.—0 s.— 0 d.

Besides what may be added, for the tricks & pilferings of inferiour Servants of the houshold, and their taking indirect courses, and advantages to make up, or recruit their Losses and the damage which the King may susteyn by having such his servants Metamorphosed and turned into hunger-starved Ratts, which will be nibling and gnawing at every thing which they can come at; and may be catched, but are not to be destroyed by drowning or poisoning.

And the loss and diminution of the Honour of the King in his Royal Houshold, which is, and ought to be inestimable, and as much beyond a valuation.

As the Honor of a Sovereign Prince, is, and ought to be above, and beyond that of the vulgar, or any private person,

Which may bring us to this conclusion

That although Fifty thousand pounds per annum were in the granting of a Moyety of the Excise to the King, his Heirs or Successors intended to be allowed for the Pourveyance or Compositions for them which did cost the Kingdome yearly, and Communibus Annis, but Twenty five thousand and twelve pounds, or thereabout, in the 35 year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; and in the third year of the Reign of King James not much above Forty thousand pounds per annum; and in the [Page] Reign of King Charles the Martyr, at the most but fifty thousand pounds per annum; [...] whether more or less, is not to be found in the Receipt or yearly Income of that Revenue of the moyty of the Excise.

For that the totall of the clear yearly profit of the moyety of the Excise, allowed unto the King for the Exchange of his Tenures in Capite, and by Knights service, and the Pourveyance or Compositions for them, doth not amount unto (the charges of the Collection deducted) above One hundred and twenty thousand pounds per annum.

Is likely to be lesse by reason of an universall poverty of those which should pay it, making a large accompt of many desperate Arrears, and of the Farmers in many places letting it three or four times over to others under them, and so very much racking and oppressing of the people; (if but half of what is complained of be true) as many private Families do to avoid the gripes of the Excise-men, and the knavery of the Common Brewers, set up Brewhouses for their own occasions.

And will be too little for the exchange or purchase only of such a principall flower and support of the Crown, and an eminent part of the Royall Prerogative, as the Tenures in Capite and Knight-service are, which in yearly revenue yielded him above One hundred thousand pounds per annum.

And for that the Power, Might, and Majesty of a King being unvaluable, is not to be ballanced by any thing which is not as much.

So as the damages and losses susteyned by the want of the Pourveyance or Compositions for them, besides what shall be paid more then formerly for the charges [Page] of the Stable, impressing of Workmen for the Kings occasions by the Master [...] of the Works, the King now paying every Workman eighteen pence, or two shillings per diem, when it was before but twelve pence, and the charges more then formerly in the Pourveyance for the Navy, Ship-Timber, Ammunition, and carriage thereof, &c. and many other losses not here enumerated, will be no less then the sum of One hundred seven thousand and fifteen pounds five shillings.

And a too certain Totall of that which is here valued and brought to accompt, besides the unvaluable honour and power of the King, loss and ruine of his Servants, and what indirect courses may intice them unto.

Which needs not be doubted, when as by an exact and carefull accompt given unto the Lords in Parliament, in or about the third year of the Reign of King James by Sir Robert Banister Knight, then one of the Officers of his Houshold, of what was yearly saved to the King by the Compositions for the Pourveyance over and above the yearly value of what it cost the Countries (when the rates were both in the Country and City of London not by a third part, and in many things a half and more, so much heightned as now they are; and a project of purchasing the Pourveyance from the Crown for Fifty thousand pounds per annum was in agitation) there appeared to have been yearly saved▪ by the Compositions and Commissions for Pourveyance the sum of Thirty four thousand eight hundred forty six pounds▪ ten shillings and six pence; and in the Office for the Stable Two thousand six hundred ninety and eight pounds; which made a Totall of Thirty seven thousand five hundred forty and four pounds ten[Page]shillings and six pence; and probably might be the reason that that unhappily after accomplished designe did then vanish into nothing.

1. Nor will the yearly damage & losses of the people in the totall arrive unto a lesse, when they shall finde the moyety of the Excise not amounting to One hundred and thirty thousand pounds per annum in the utmost extent and income of it, without deductions or defalcations to the Officers imployed by his Majesty therein to be doubled and made as much again upon them by the fraud and oppression of the Brewers, little malt put into their Beer, and ill boyling of it, and lesser measures sold by the Inkeepers and Alehousekeepers: And yet the Brewers being paid the Excise of Beer and Ale by the housekeepers and Retailers, as much as they do pay to the King, and a great deal more, by reason of the Excise of three Barrels of Beer, and two of Ale in every twenty, allowed them will not think it enough to cozen and abuse the people whose good and evil, and profit and loss is included in that of the Kings, unless they do also by false Gaugings concealed Brewings, and other ill Artifices, use all the wayes and means which they can, to make themselves great gainers by deceiving the King as well as the people, and will like too many of their fellow Citizens, the great Tax-Improvers and Advantage-catchers of the Kingdom, be sure to be as little loosers by it as the Fox would, if a monthly Assessement should be set upon him for his subterranean Boroughes and dark Labirinths; or the griping Usurer, the biting Broker, and the knavish Informer would be if an yearly Imposition or Tax should be layd upon their ungodly and oppressive gains and Imployments.

[Page]2. Neither will the peoples loss & damage be lessened when there shall be a scarcity of Food & Provisions at the Markets in regard that the Kings Officers and Pourveyors for his Houshold shall now be constrained to buy his Houshold provisions in great quantities at the Markets or Shops in London, or in the Counties adjacent, which were wont to be served in kind by the several Counties of the Kingdome.

3. And there shall be an enhaunce of prices and Market-races, which since the acquittall or laying down of the Pourveyance or Compositions for it, are already about London and Westminster found to be at the least two pence in a shilling more then it was before; which being a sixth part, will when it shall be raised and made to be an ordinary rate through the adjacent Counties to London and Westminster make no inconsiderable burden or charge to the Inhabitants, and a greater, if either all or some part of that more th [...]n formerly raised price, shall by necessity or imitation, and the vast and excessive pride of most sorts of people, diffuse and spread it self into all other parts of the Kingdome, and a great deal more if those insana praetia, unreasonable rates, shall, as they are most likely, by the high rack of the Rents of Lands, Servants, and Laborers wages, and all manner of Commodities which are sold, either for the Belly or the Back, or for necessity or pleasure, creep and climb higher and higher, untill pride and excess shall have made our heretofore more prudent and frugall England, by too many of her Natives want of money, for want of wit, to be a Bankrupt.

Which may well be suspected, when as experience, the Mistress of Fools, but the guide and direction of wiser[Page]people, hath assured us that the price extorted from the King will make the Nobility pay the dearer; and the rates which their example will enforce or entice the Gentry to pay, will infect and prejudice the Marketings of the Common and buying part of the people; as we have lately seen in the rates and prices of Horses; not by reason of any exportation or sca [...]city, manage or fitness for warre, or extraordinary swiftness for running or races; but by the careers of Prodigality, Humour, Affection, or Fancy of too many of the Nobility or Gentry, mounted from ten or twelve pounds price for a horse for a man of worship within thirty years last past, to the ordinary rate of 20, 30, 40, or 50 l. and sometimes 100 l. which hath unnecessarily drawn some hundred thousand pounds sterling out of the purses of such who are but small friends to their own Estates, in bidding too much, and accustoming the Sellers to demand or insist upon such excessive and reasonless rates and prices.

4. And by the want of Progresses, when the King not having his Pourveyance or Compositions for them, and Carriages as formerly, sha [...]l not be so able as he should, to make our Pool of Bethesda itinerant, and visit the severall Parts of his Dominions, either for his recreation, or the better survey and inspection of the Government, and his peoples grievances, as King Alfred, King Edgar, and King Henry the first, and all their Successors, his Majesties Royall Progenitors were wont to do, whereby to diffuse their comforts and graces, with which many a Family, and many a Town and Corporation have been blessed and bettered; and otherwise would not have had an opportunity to obteyn them.

5. When there shall be necessities and poverty put [Page] upon some hundreds of Families, which were either his Majesties Servants, or in relation unto them; and upon many an Housekeeper in Westminster, and the Neighbourhood of the Kings Residence, who have had a great part of their subsistence by the influence of it.

6. And the Peoples damage and losses shall likewise be heightned and increased by the many cravings and projects which the wanting or necessitous part of the Kings Court may trouble both him and his people withall.

7. Or by the casting the King into importunate and irresistable necessities; and forcing the Lyon to hunt and range the Fields and Forrests, and prejudice the people more then otherwise he would in the quest and pursuit of what is but his own; or to couch and lye down in his den, and resolve to lay his paw upon what are his own rights, and be less liberall in his favours.

8. Or by denying him what is his own, be, for want of a lesser summe of money for defraying of necessaries, a cause of raising Subsidies, or Taxes, which cannot be so equally or justly charged, as to even, and make them to be no more then the summe of money demanded, and to be furnished.

9. And by compassing and encircling their Sovereign with wants and pressures more then would otherwise be, if he had either his own, or a sufficient supply, make themselves the efficient causes of what they compleyn of; and by being stubborn, stiffneck'd, unquiet, and disobedient, instead of duty and retributions to a gracious King for the daily blessing of peace, plenty, protection, pardons, and multitudes of favours, gifts, and grants, out-do the ungratefull Israelites in [Page] murmuring with Quails in our Mouths; not in the Deserts of Arabia; but a more plentifull Land then that which was said to flow with milk and honey.

And a cause also of increasing their own Taxes which are more many times the impositions by themselves upon themselves then impositions of their King, and rendring themselves thereby as much guilty of folly, as they that will not be diswaded from planting and sowing Weeds and Tares and will notwithstanding come weeping home from their expected better harvest, for that their Carts are not pressed down with sheaves of Corne and Wheat, and their labour was but to fool themselves.

All which and many more inconveniences losses and damages to the people by the Kings want of the Royall Pourveyance or Compositions for them, which was the smallest and least chargeable part of an yearly thankfulness and oblation which ever was given to a King by a people, would neither happen nor needs to be at all.

If they would but remember the days of old, the kindness of the King and his Royall Progenitors, and the chearfully heretofore paid Duties and retributions of their forefathers, and take it for some of their happiness that they are not by God Almighties displeasure for their unthankfulness put in minde of their former miseries by any new adversities, or made to keep an yearly Passeover with bitter Herbs, And now that the Royal Revenue hath been so much impaired by a continual bounty unto many of themselves or their Ancestors and their supplyes of it doe fall very short of what was expected or intended, and the Fifty thousand pounds per Annum intended as a Recompence for the Pourveyance or Compositions for them proves to be [Page] not only not a recompence sufficient but a meer nullity, and if it had come up as high as it was supposed appears to be but a damage and a Canker or Gangreen eating up or taking away too much of the rest of the Kings Revenue.

Be sorry that it is so, and make haste to returne again those little oblations unto their King, when London, and 12. or more adjacent Counties unto it do yearly gain 20 times more by the Residence of himself and his Courts of Justice then they doe amount unto, and doe unto him in the easing of his burdens, as he and his Royal Progenitors have done unto them in any of the complained of burdens of them and their Forefathers, by many times laying to sleep some good Laws & Constitutions, which though at the making thereof they were most just and rationall, would now by the rise of silver two to one more then formerly,Gervasius Tilburiensis. & the change of Times and Customes, be very prejudiciall and burdensome unto them. As King Henry the First did by no Law or Act of Parliament, but his own good will and promise, calculated only for that present Age or Reign; but since observed by all his Successors, in the change of his rent provisions into Rents of money; many of which being now and ever since paid in small quit-rents, made that part of the People very great gainers,Assisa panis & cervisiae, and a Statute for punishing the breach thereof by Pillory and Tumbrell Anno 51 H. 3. and that King and his Heirs and Successors to be loosers more then Fifty thousand pounds per annum, or the greatest extent of the Nations yearly charge for the Royall Pourveyance, or Compositions for them did ever amount unto.

And as the Asise of Bread, Bear and Ale in 51 H. tertii, which holds no proportion with the now Assize or rules for Bakers and Brewers, but very much differs from it, and exceeds it, was not for many ages past, [Page] and in some plentifull years in our memory kept, when Corn, Wheat and Malt did fall within the virge or direction of that Act of Parliament, or Ordinance rather of the King, without an Act of Parliament.

Nor did hold those kind of Trades to the Assize made and appointed by King Henry the 7th. nor by any Act of Parliament or otherwise, restrain the Shoemakers to the prices appointed by the Statute of 25 Ed. 3. (repealed in the 5th year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth) when there was an allowed transportation of Leather, and scarcely half so many Cattle bred in England, and brought from Ireland and Scotland; nor any Leather at all imported from Russia, as it is now in great quantities, when they do now by their own and the Tanners knaveries, and enhaunces, take for a pair of shoes, which in the Reign of King Edward the 2d. might be bought for the use of a good Knight or Gentleman, for a groat,Rot. Fin. 11 E. 2. Cokes 1. part. Institutes 70 and in Yorkshire for some of the best Gentry of that County in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth but for little more; where also a pair of shoes for a Lady of a good Extraction and Quality, were in the begining of the Reign of King James sold for sixteen pence; and a pair of shoes for a man in the memory of middle aged men were made and sold in London for two shillings six pence, and eight groats a pair, no less then four shillings eight pence at the lowest, and many times five shillings and six pence, or six shillings a pair; which (as Mr. Richard Ferrour hath judiciously and ingeniously observed) doth yearly cheat and cozen the people, besides the inconveniences by ill wrought and half tanned Leather, six or seaven hundred thousand pounds, or a Million Sterling per annum; which might well have been spared, or better employed.

[Page]And be as willing to ease his burdens and grievances, as Queen Elizabeth, that mirrour of Women and Princes, was in theirs, by the repealing of so much of the Statute for limiting the wages of labourers in the 25th year of the Reign of King Edward the Third (when Churches, Castles and Abbies we [...]e wont to be built) as concerned the wages of Labou [...]ers that Master Masons, Carpenters, and Tylers should take but three pence a day, and others of that Trade but two pence a day; a Tylers boy a peny per diem;Rot. parl. 25 [...] ▪ 3. m. 56. that none other should take above a penny for a days work; for mowing five pence, for reaping of Corn in the first week of August two pence, and in the second week, and unto the end of that moneth not above three pence: And by the making of an Act of Parliament that the wages of Artificers and Labourers, then six times more then they were at the time of the making of the said Act of Parliament in the 25th year of the Reign of King Edward the Third, should be yearly assessed by the Justices of the Peace, and Magistrates in every County, City, and Town corporate at their Quarter-Sessions, with respect unto the plenty and scarcity of the time, and other circumstances necessary to be considered; for that (as the praeamble thereof declared) the wages and allowances limited and rated in former Statutes, were in divers places too small, and not answerable to that time, respecting the advancement of the prices of all things belonging unto Artificers and Labourers; that the Law could not conveniently, without the great grief and burden of the poor Labourers and hired men be put in execution, and to the end, that there might be a convenient proportion of wages in the times of scarcity and plenty.

Which was the cause that King James by an Act of [Page] Parliament made in the first year of his Reign, upon compleynt, that their wages were not rated and proportioned, according to the plenty, necessity, and scarcity, and respect of the time, as was politiquely intended by the said Queen Elizabeth, did amongst other provisions, give a further power & authority to the Justices of Peace in every County at their Quarter Sessions, from time to time, to limit and regulate the wages and hire of Labourers and Artificers (although their wages and hire were then much encreased, and are since very excessive, and immoderate) which by an Act of Parliament made in the third year of the Reign of King Charles the Martir, being continued untill the end of the first Session of the then next Parliament, is for want of continuance expired, and did repeal, as Queen Elizabeth, and other of our Kings also did, many an Act of Parliament in regard of Inconveniences or damages arising to the people or because they did not answer the expectations of the makers thereof.

And may as little grudge the King his Pourveyance, or Compositions for them, though the richer part of the people, who are only contributory to the Pourveyance or Compositions for them, may by their own excessive raysing of all manner of prices of houshold provisions, and their unreasonable gains by it, seem to be something more then formerly burdened with it; as they did the late King Charles the Martyr his indulgence to them, and dispensing with a Decree made in the Starre-Chamber in the 11th year of his Reign, by the Lords of his Privy Councel, and other the Judges of that Court, after consultation had with Judge Hutton and Judge Croke (who were well known to be very great well-wishers to the peoples just and legall liberties) and [Page] the other reverend Judges and divers Justices of the peace of the Kingdom, confirmed by the Kings Letters Patents under the great Seal of England, which did forbid the Vintners to dress any meat for their Guests or Strangers, and limited the Inkeepers of London and Westminster, and within ten miles distance thereof, unto six pence for a day and night for Hey for a horse, now [...]shamefully and unconscionably raised by themselves unto eight pence; and six pence for a peck of Oats not measured by Winchester measure, but the knavish peck of the Ostlers (to whom the dying horses might well bequeath their Halters) at the rate of eight groats a bushell, when they have many times bought them in the Market at Twelve pence a bushell, or less. And directed that that Ordinance should continue in the County of Middlesex, untill it should appear unto the Justices of the Kings Bench, and in other Counties and Places to the Justices of Peace, that because of the increase of prices in the parts adjoyning, greater rates should be necessary to be permitted; and that thereupon other rates should from time to time be set; and being set, were commanded, and enjoyned to be strictly and duly observed, untill they by the like authority should be altered.

And might be as little troubled at his Pourveyance, as they were with his Royal Fathers remission, or not putting in execution the Assise (in imitation of one which was made in anno 12 H. 7.) made in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, by the advice of the Lord Burghley, and other of the Lords of her Privy Counsell) of Flesh, Fish, Poultry, butter, and most sorts of Victuals, and houshold Provisions; as also of Hey and Provender: and another likewise set and made by the Judges of the Kings Bench in or about the first [Page] year of his Reign, by the advice of all the other Judges of England, at the instance of Mr Noy his Atturney-Generall.

Which might perswade us to be something kind to our selves, and our posterity, in being kinder unto him; for that the losses and damage to the King and his People without the addition of their losses by the taking away of the Tenures in Capite, are and will be so very great and evident; and the loss of the King may by a necessity of their supplying of it, be in the end a means of doubling or trebling the losses of the people, and should therefore deterre us from any endeavours to eclipse our Sun, and bereave our selves of the light and comfort of it; and diswade us from the purchase of so many mischiefs and inconveniences as have already happened; and are like to multiply upon us, by making our selves the most unhappy Instruments of the dishonour of our King and Country in the diminution of the accustomed grandeur and magnificence of his Court and Hospitality, wherein plenty and frugality, largess and providence, satiety and sobriety, honour and hospitality, were so excellently and rationally combined, and confederated, as the best of Oeconomies; and the greatest vigilance, daily care, and inspection in the most methodicall and best ordered House and Family of England, or any other the Kings Dominions, consisting of 10 or 20 persons, or a lesser number (a few being commonly the easiest governed) could never arrive unto [...] [...]erfection of government, and good order of the Kings Houshold, consisting of a numerous Retinue of above One thousand or twelve hundred persons, and many of them of the best extraction, and noblest houses of the [Page] Kingdom, where besides the charge of his most pious and devout yearly Maundy, or washing as many poor mens feet every year upon the Thursday before Easter as he is years old, & giving unto each of them a Jowl of Salmon, a Poll of Ling, 30 red Herrings, and as many white, 4 six peny loavs of bread, Cloth for a Gown and a Shirt, a pair of new Shoes & Stockings, a single penny, and a 20 shillings piece of Gold: Two pence a piece was given to poor people every day at the Gate, besides the Kings Alms-dish every meal from of his Table, and the fragments carefully gathered up from the many Tables of his Servants, put into an A [...]mes-basket, and daily distributed unto them by two Officers, yearly kept in pay and pension for that purpose: Six Mess of Meat, 240 Gallons of Beer, and as many of loaves of Bread, with a liberal proportion of Sack and Claret as wast; and entertainment for all comers for the Kings honour, where were great yearly Festivals, the Lord Stewards Table completely, and more then ordinarily furnished during all the time of the sitting of the Parliaments, to entertain such of the Lords and Commons as would come thither to dinner, and where when the Nobility and Persons of quality in the absence of Parliaments, came either to attend the King, or petition him in any of their Affaires, they were made the Guests at some of the Tables of his great Officers, as well as those of meaner ranks were at the Table of the lesser: And the Chambers and Galleries searched for [...] strangers and fit persons as might deserve to be invi [...]ed to the Tables and Diet of his Servants, to the end that any that were fitting to partake of his hospitality might not be omitted. Embassadors which came sometimes two at once from severall forreign [Page] Princes found themselves royally enterteyned for certain days out of the diet and provision of the Kings house, (and nothing of State or Provision wanting at the same time in the Kings own Court or House) and attended with as great or more plenty & solemnity, then many of their Kings & Princes had at home, & where no Country Gentleman or Yeoman, which had contributed to the Pourveyance but at one time of the year or other, had upon all occasions of business at the Court, either with the King or his Servants, a large part or share of what he had contributed.

And was so gratefully and well accepted, as some have anciently, (when gratitude and thankfull respects were more in fashion than now they are) so highly esteemed the respects and favours of the Kings Servants and Officers, when they had occasion of business to his Court, as Robert de Arsic, a man of great note and eminency in the County of Oxford, did give Lands in Newton by a Fine levyed thereof unto one Robert Purcell, and his Heirs (who was then one of the Porters at the Gate of the Kings House or Court by inheritance, upon condition, that whensoever he and his Heirs should come unto the Court, the said Robert Purcell and his Heirs, whilst they should be the Kings Porters, should attend their coming, come out of the gate to meet them; and walk before them with his rod or staffe unto the Kings Hall, and at their return or going out of the gate, call for their horse or Palfrey, and hold their stirrup whilst they got up or mounted: and if the said Robert Arsic or his Heirs should send any Messenger to the Court, should as much as in them lay, and according to their ability, with their good word and well wishes, faithfully assist him: And was so unwilling to loose that [Page] Service or Duty as upon the refusall or omission thereof by the said Robert Purcell, he did in the 11th year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. bring an Assise or Action against him for it:Inter Recorda in Recept. Scaccarii inter Fines de tempore H. 3. (for as for our Industrious Speed setting forth in his History of England, that Rhese ap Gruffith Prince of Wales, coming out of Wales as far as Oxford, to treat of a Peace with King Richard the First,Speed Hist. of Great Britain. did take it in so high a scorn, and indignation that the King came not in person to meet him, as he returned home into his own Country without saluting the King, though Earl John the Kings only Brother had with much honour conducted him from the Marches of Wales thither, and that by that means the hopes of the expected peace vanished, and came unto nothing) hath observed that the meanest from whom love or service is expected, will again expect regard.

And therefore the care of our Kings was not a little imployed in that way of imparting of their favours, and increasing and cherishing the love and good will of their people, when King Henry the Seventh, whose troubles and tosses of fortune before he came unto the Crown, had together with his learning and princely education, made him a great Master in Policy, and good Government, and one of the wisest Kings that ever swaied the English Scepter, did in his prudent Orders concerning his Court and Houshold, and the State and Magnificence which he desired to be observed therein, communicated unto me by my worthy and learned Friend William Dugdale Esquire Norroy, M. S. in custodia Gulielmi Dugdale. King at Armes, out of an ancient Manuscript, sometimes in the custody of Charles de Somerset Knight, Lord Herbert and Gower, Chamberlain unto that King, amongst many other Orders for the honour of the King and his House, ordain that

[Page] If any straunger shall come from any Noble-man or other, the Gentilmen Huysshers ought to sette him in suche place convenient within the Kyngs Chamber as is mete for hym by the discrecion of the Chamberlain and Huyssher, and to comaunde service for hym after his degree; and the sayd Huyssher ought to speke to the Kings Almoigner, Kerver, and Sewer, to reward hym from the Kings Board; this is to say if the said Straunger happen to come whan the Kyng is at dynner.

Item, The Gentilman Huyssher, if there come any honourable personnes to the Kyng at any other tyme, they ought to call with thaym the sayd personnes to the Seller, Pantry, and Buttry, and there to commaund forth such brede, mete, and drynke, as by his discretion shall be thought metely for thaym; and this in no wise not to be with sayd in noon of thies Offices aforesayd, It is to the Kings honor.

Item, that no Gentilman Huyssher bee so hardy to take any commaundement upon him, but that it may be with the Kings honor, by hys discretion in these matiers to myspende the Kings vitail, but where as it ought to be; and if he doo, he is nat worthy to occupy that rowme, but for to abide the punishment of my Lord Chamberlain.

Item, A Gentilman Huyssher ought to commaund Yeomen Huysshers, and Yeomen to fetche bred, ale, and wine at afternoon for Lords and other Gentilmen being in the Kings Chamber, whan the caas so [...] shall requyre.

Which and the like Magnificences of Hospitality in the Houses and Courts of our Kings and Princes, supported by the Pourveyances without which the elder Kings of England before the Conquest, could not have been able to susteyn the charge of their great and yearly solemn Festivals at Christmas, Easter and [Page] Pentecost, when ex more & obsequii vinculo antiquissimo, as that great and learned Antiquary Sir Henry Spelman hath observed by duty and antient custome, the Lords and Barons of England did never fail to come to the Kings Palace (where the Magna Concilia & wittena gemotes & conventus sapientum, now called Parliaments, were at those times to be holden and kept) cum ad Curiam & personam ejus exornandum, Spelman Annotat. ad Concilia decreta & leges Ecclesiastica 349. tum ad consulendum de negotiis regni statuendum (que) prout fuerat necessarium & providere de rebus illis Rex solebat corona redimitus & profastu Regio se in omnibus exhibere, for the honor of the King and his Court who then with his Crown upon his head, and other Princely habiliments, did use to shew himself unto the people and advise what was necessary to be done for the good of the Kingdom. And was such an attendant upon the Grandeur and Honour of their Monarchy, as it began with it, and continued here amongst us till the Councill of some foolish and factious Shrubs had by a fire kindled in our then unhappy Kingdome, overturned our Cedars of Libanon, and made an accursed and wicked Bramble their Protector, and was so necessary to the Government and Authority of our Kings,Asser Menevensis de gestis Alfredi 19. & 23. and the encrease and preservation of the love and obedience of the people, as we find it neither repined nor murmured at in the Reign of King Alfred, who being of an almost unimitable piety and prudence, and to whom this Nation ows a gratefull memory for his division of the Kingdom into Shires and Hundreds, and for many a Politique Constitution, did (now almost 800 years ago) keep a most Princely and magnificent House, and a numerous company of Servants; gave enterteynment of diet and lodging to many of the sons [Page] of his Nobility, who were therein trayned up to all manner of Courtly and honourable exercises, had three Cohorts or Bands of Life-guards, every Cohort according to the ancient computation consisting, if they were Horse of 132, and of Foot, of a great many more; the first Company attending in or about his Court or House night and day for a moneth, and returning aftewards home to their own occasions, tarried there by the space of two moneths; the second Cohort doing likewise as the first, and the third as the second by their turns and courses, and had a good allowance of money and victualls in the House or Court of the King, who had his ministros nobiles qui in curio Regio vicissim commorabantur in pluribus ministrantes ministeriis, noble and great Officers in his Court, which attended in their courses, and took so much care also for them as in his last Will and Testament he gave cuilibet Armigerorum suorum, to every one of his Esquires 100 marks.Henry Huntingdon and William Malmesbury de gestis regum Angliae.

Or that King Hardi Canutus caused his Tables to be spread four times every day, and plentiously furnished with Cates, and commanded that his Courtiers, Servants, and Guests should rather have superfluities then want any thing.

That William Rufus when he had built Westminster Hall 270 foot in length, and 74 in breadth,Speed History of England. thought it not large enough for a Dyning Room.

King Richard the Second kept a most Royall Christmas where was every day spent 26 or 28 Oxen, 300 Sheep, with Fowl beyond number; and to his Houshold came every day to meat ten thousand people. as appeared by the Messes told out from the Kitchin unto three hundred Servitors,Stows Survey of London. and was able about two years before, when the Times began to be troublesome, [Page] to give a Guard of 4000 Archers of Cheshire with their Bows bent, and their Arrows hocked ready to shoot, Bouche of Court, to wit meat and drink, and wages of six pence a day then accompted a very great pay.

Or that King Henry the 7th. then whom the Kingdom of England never had a more thrifty Prince, did the morrow after Twefthtyde in a great Solemnity keep a Feast in Westminster Hall, where he being set at a Table of Stone (which remained untill the middle of our late Rebellion) accompanyed with the Queen and many Embassadours and other Estates,Stows Survey of London, & Chronic. Robert Fabian— 60 Knights and Esquires served 60 Dishes to the Kings Mess, and as many to the Queens; and served the Lord Mayor of London at a Table where he was set with 24 dishes of meat to his Mess.

And our succeeding Kings understood to be so much for the good and welfare of the people, as King Edward the Sixth, that great Blossome of prudence and piety, and all manner of Princely virtues, when a surfeit of Church Lands and Revenues, had like the coal carried into the Eagles nest, reduced the Royall Revenues into a consumptive and languishing condition, had by the advice of his Privy Council suppressed (but with no advantage to the Revenue or curing the diseases of it, as it then, and hath since happened in many of those pretended rather then really effected dishonorable Espargnes;Heylin History of the Reformation of the Church of England. witness the putting down of fourteen Tables at once by King Charles the Martyr, which gained in one year Thirty thousand pounds to some few of his Officers, who did advise him to do it; but nothing at all for himself) the Tables formerly appointed for young Lords, the Masters of Requests, and Serjeants at Armes, &c. he did not [Page] howsoever think fit to diminish or lessen any more of the Royall Hospitality.

And King James when he had by an over-great bounty to his Countrymen the Craving Scots, and their restless importunities, brought himself and Revenue into many streights, and was contented to seek out wayes of sparing, did in the inquest and seeking to abate the charge of his housekeeping, in his Letters to the Lords of the Councel, bearing date in November 1617. and pressing earnestly to have it done,Scrinia Ceciliana 198. & 199. to the end, that he might equall his charges to his Revenue, direct them to abate superfluities in all things, and multitudes of unnecessary Officers, and to do things so as they might agree with his honor; but concluded that there were twenty wayes of abatement besides the House, if they be well looked into.

Which may give us a Prospect, which a larger Treatise of the Antiquitie, legality, reason, duty, and necessity of Prae-emption and Pourveyance for the King, or Compositions for his Pourveyance, as they were used and taken for the provision of the Kings Houshold, the small charges and burden thereof to the People, and many great mischiefs and inconveniences which will inevitably follow the taking of them away, will more fully evidence how great a damage the King susteyneth by the want of them.

How unbecoming the Majesty and Honor of a King and his many Princely affairs and occasions it will be that the people should deny him that granted or continueth their Profits in Fairs and Markets the benefit of Prae-emption, which all Princes as well Christian as Heathen do enjoy, and is but conformable to the Tenor and meaning of the Fifth Commandement in the Decalogue, [Page] and the Honour due unto common Parents and Magistrates enjoyned thereby.

How unsafe to the peoples consciences, when they do by their Oathes of Allegeance and Supremacy swear to maintain and defend his Regall Rights and Jurisdictions not to allow his Prae-emption, [...], or forecheapum, and the [...] in the Saxon Times [...] signifying ante, & [...] prendere, which is Prae-emption, and was then (as it hath been ever since) so just and legall a part of the Kings Prerogative, as King Ina, who reigned here in the year 720. did by a Law prohibit,Spelman glossar. in voce Forefang, & LL. Inae ca. altero ante penult. Somners glossar. ad Brompton & alios veteres Angliae Historicos. that Fore fang, or Captio obsoniorum in foris aut nundinis, non ab aliquo fit priusquam minister Regis ea ceperit quae Regi fuerint necessaria, the taking or buying of Houshold provisions by others in Fairs or Markets before the Kings Minister or Pourveyor should take those things which were necessary for the King.

And was not then any Novel constitution, or acquired Right or Praerogative, or without a Divine pattern, but so inhaerent in Monarchy, and Kingly Government, and so becoming the duty and gratitude of Subjects, as we may find the Vestigia, or Tracs of it in the morning of the restored,Genesis c. 41. not long before drowned and washt world, when Joseph that great and happy Minister of State under Pharaoh King of Egypt did by the help of that Royal Right of Praeemption, keep the Lean Kine from eating up the Fat, and save that Kingdome, and many other neighbouring Nations from an irresistible famine and ruine.

And how contrary it will be unto the duty of Subjects to refuse him their Carts to convey his Carriages, unless they may have two parts in three more then formerly, when the Earl of Rutland, and Countess Dowager [Page] of Pembroke, and many other of the Nobility have not only their Pourveyances, but can have their Tenants Boon Carts upon any of their occasions for nothing; and every Lord of a Manor, or Parson of a Parish do seldom fail of as much or greater curtesies, or respects from their Tenants, or Parishioners, or that the Kings Harbingers should from some of the Tribe of Naball receive uncivill and churlish answers, that they are not to loose the advantage of six pence more which may be given by any other, or that his Pourveyors should not have the benefit of Praeemption, as one of them lately was refused in the buying of a Salmon, or be wrangled with; and have Fowl taken out of their hands, as one lately did, and when he was told it was for the King, could say he cared not a turd for him, or that his Officers should be exposed to the humours or incivilities of Clowns, Quakers, or disaffected persons.

And that strangers who have commonly and usually seen forreign Princes travailing in any parts of Christendome out of their own Territories and Jurisdictions to be by a generall and never intermitted custome, honourably and respectfully received in all Cities and Places of note, and presented with Wine Fish, and other provisions; such as the place and season of the year afforded, which even those Commonwealths, States, and Places of incivility, Trade and selfishness, such as Holland and Hamborough do never omit, should see the King of Englands Servants and Officers so little respected in their attendance upon him in his Journeys, or Progresses, as not to be trusted with a small hire of a Cart, unless like some beggars in the streets, buying an halfpenny or a farthing worth of pottage at a Cooks Shop, they do first lay down or pay their money for it.

[Page]And how ungrateful it will be (if they were not Subjects or obliged by the Laws of God, Nature and Nations to an obedience reverence, retributions and oblations to their Prince, to receive a daily and an hourly protection, and as many benefits and blessings as their almost alwayes craving necessities and importunities can get or obtain, or his munificent and ready heart and hand impart and bestow upon them.

And yet be so barren in their retorns or thankfulness, as when there is not a Family or Kinred in England, but hath at one time or other been raised or enriched by the King or his Royall Progenitors, or tasted of their favours or mercies, and that those who did eat and partake of his Pourveyance or Compositions for them, and were maintained by them, were for the most part their Sons and Daughters, or some of their Kinred or Generations, to deny him that which was such an antient and unquestionable Right, as all the Judges of England did no longer agoe then the third year of the Reign of King James, Sir Francis Moores Reports 764. declare it to be a Prerogative of the King at the Common Law, and was no less in the Times of our Saxon and British Monarchs, and so much in use in the Kingdom of Ireland, as it doth yet retain the custome of Pourveyance ad alendum Proregis Familiam, Camden 2. part Annalls of Queen Elizabeth. for the maintenance of the Lord Lieutenants House and Family, as an antiquitus institutum, an antient Constitution, & Jus quoddam Majestatis, Vide Act of Parliament or Declaration touching the Settlement of Ireland. a part of the Right belonging unto the Sovereign Prince and his Preheminence or Kingly Prerogative. And in their Act of Parliament lately made for the Settlement of that tossed and turmoild Kingdom, consented that the Lord Chief-Justice of his Majesties Court of King-Bench, the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer,[Page]and the Master of the Rolls, or any other of 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 Tithes forfeited unto, or vested in his Majesty, his Heirs and Successors, which have been formerly paid or reserved.

The furnishing of Carriages and Ships for publick uses are in Scotland justly numbred amongst those Regalities which are annexed to the Crown,Craig de Feudis apud Scotos dieg. 14. and was by the consent of the Estates there so called, allowed to conserve the dignity of that Kingdome the Borrough Mealis, Parliament James 1. c. 8. where quilibet Burgensis debet domino Regi pro Burgagio quinque denarios annuatìm & dicuntur incorporari annexique Fisco & Patrimonio Regis, every Burgess is 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,Spelman Glossar. in voce Borrow mealis. and are said to be incorporate and annexed to the Patrimony of the King and his Exchequer.

And the right of Pourveyance so little there esteemed to be a grievance, as in a Parliament of their King James the 4th holden in the year 1489. The Lords Spirituall and Temporall, and other his Lieges,2 Parliament King James the 4th. did declare, that it was the Kings property for the honourable sustentation of his house according to his Estait and Honour, quhilk may not be failized without great derogation of his noble Estait, and that his true Lieges suld above all singular and particular profit desire to preserve the noble Estait of his Excellence, like as it was in the time of his maist noble Progenitors of gud mynd.

And is conform unto that rule of reason which other Nations doe measure their Actions by; for in [Page] France, Choppinus de Domainio Regum Franciae lib. 1.15. as Renatus Choppinus, a learned French Advocat, saith it is Dominicum jus primitus sceptris addictum in necessarios Regiae mensae Aulae (que) sumptus & honorificum ad suum Imperii & inclitae decus Majestatis conservandum, a part of the Demeasnes belonging and annexed to the Royall Scepter, and appropriate to the necessary uses and provisions of the Kings Court, and Houshold for the honor and conservation of the Rights of Majesty.

Our long agoe old and worthy Ancestors, the stout hearted Germans, Tacitus de moribus Germanorum. did as Tacitus sua sponte & ex more viritìm conferre principibus armenta vel fruges quae pro honore accepta necessitatibus subvenirent, man by man of their own accord customarily bring or send unto their Princes Herds of Cattle, and some of the fruits of the earth as Presents and Oblations, which being taken for an Honour due unto them, did much conduce unto the defraying of their charges or necessityes: the people of Italy and the Princes and Nobility thereof did acknowledge them to be inter Regalia amongst the Regalities of the Emperour,Radenicus de gestis Frederici lib. 2. ca. 5. and the Law of the Empire, formerly of Rome, now of Germany, doth strongly assert the Praestationes Angariarum Plaustrorum & Navium, Besoldus de AErario principis & Bullinger de vectigalibus. &c. Pourveyance of Cart-taking, and impresting of Ships Regi competere ratione excellent [...]ae ejus dignitatis quae Regalia dicuntur, to belong unto the King by reason of the excellency of his dignity, Et multa adjumentaei necessaria ut dominium intus & externè tueri valeat, Zecchius de principat. administrat. and that many ayds and helps are necessary for a Prince to defend his Dominions at home as well as abroad. And is as much a Custome of Nations, as covering of the head, washing the hands, wearing of shoes, and retiring to rest or sleep in the [Page] night, & so usual as the Barbarians, some of whom have not so much good nature as to diswade them from selling their Children, like Calves or Cattle at a Market, or the savage part of the Heathen, who have not attained to so much of reason, as to perswade them the use of clothes and apparrel, are glad their Kings and Princes will accept of.

And the Inhabitants of that large Empire of Japan, Varenius de Regno Japan. who in many of their Nationall Customes and Actions, do delight to be contrary to the people of Europe, and most other Nations, as to have their Teeth black, when others doe desire to have them white; doe mount their horses on the right side; and not uncover their heads in saluting each other, but only unty some part of their Shoes and Sandals, and sit down when others do come to salute them, are notwithstanding unwilling to come behind other Nations in the Duty of Pourveyance and Honour of their Prince,

Practised & allowed by many approved examples in the sacred Volumes, where Melchizedeck King of Salem, Genesis c. 14. the Priest of the most high God, brought forth bread and wine to Abraham, and his houshold Servants in their little Army upon their return from the rescue of the righteous Lot, which was, saith the great Grotius, a Custome then in use amongst the neighbour Nations:Grotius Anonotat ad Genesin. that of Jesse the Father of David, who being commanded by Saul his King, when he was not in the Army, but enjoyed the blessings of peace, to send David his Son unto him, laded an Asse with bread and a bottle of wine, and a Kid, and sent them by David unto Saul; and not long after sending him into the Army to visit his Brethren, commanded him to take an Ephah, and1 Sam. 17. [Page] ten loaves, and carry them into the Camp unto his Brethren, and ten Cheeses unto the Captains of their Thousand.

The worst of women, the Witch of Endor made hast to kill her fat Calfe, 1 Sam. 25. took flower, and kneaded it. baked unleavened bread, and caused Saul and his Servants to eat.

The Moabites who were Davids Subjects, after he was King,1 Sam. 25. sent him gifts pro pace ac tutela, as gratifications for their peace and protection, and continued and paid it unto the Kings of Israel, untill after the Reign of Ahab King of Israel, 2 Sam. 8. Shobi Machir, and Barzillai in the midst of his afflictions by the Rebellion of his Son Absolom, sent victualls and provisions to him and his Army,1 Chron. 21. the dutifull and honest-hearted Araunah would rather give him his Oxen to sacrifice, then take mony for them: the Sunamitish woman would in honour and respect unto Elisha the Prophet, not only constrain him to eat bread, but advised her Husband to make a little Chamber in the Wall, and set for him there a Bed, 2 Reg▪ ca. 4. a Table, and a Stool, and a Candlestick, to the end that when he passed that way, he might turn in thither.

The Moabites having after the destruction of the Kingdome of Israel discontinued their Pourveyance, were in the judgements denounced against them for their pride exhorted by the Prophet Isaiah to an obedience,Isaiah 16. v. 1. & Grotius Annot ad locum. and to send the Lamb (viz. that Pourveyance) to the Ruler of the Land, which was Ezechiah King of Juda, the lawfull Heir of King David.

And the Children of Israel and Juda, after a return from a long and a sorrowfull captivity, could not when they bare burdens, and wrought with one hand, and [Page] held a weapon with the other, in their building and repair of Jerusalem, forget the custome of Pourveyance for the good Nehemiah their righteous Captain and Governour.Nehemiah 4.17.

Which might induce the people of England to cover their faces with shame, and blush through that thin-leafed Mask of a Recompence by the Excise, supposed to be given in Exchange thereof, when they can at the same time, whilest they denyed it to the King believe that the Pensions and Payments in Universities, Colleges, & Innes of Court & Chancery, for the honor of their Societies, and defraying of charges ordinary or extraordinary. The assistance or supports which the Lord Mayor of London, the Companies or Guilds of Trades therein, the Magistrates of every City, Burrough, or Corporation; and Church-wardens of every Parish, do by permission of him and his Laws exact and enforce for the credit or worship of their Societies and their maintenance and affairs one under another, and one of another to be as legall as they are necessary.

And the dignified Clergie, as Arch-Bishops,Mr. Stephens Treatise of Synodals & Procurations Bishops, Arch-Deacons, Deans, Prebends, and Canons, many of whom do enjoy Commendams, and Prebends, and yearly receive Pensions (some of which were for superstitious uses) Synodals, Procurations, money for Proxies, Cathedratica Quarta's, Episcopales Corredies, Somner Glossar in appendice ad Brompton & ali [...]s veteres Historicos Angliae▪ or Entertainment-money, Penticostalia, Waxscot, or Cyrick sceat, which in some places was recompenced by the yearly Tribute of Hens, or some other houshold provisions; and in many places do receive the long since abolished Romescot, or Peter-pence, and many other Emoluments, and the inferiour part of the Clergy their [Page] Mortuaries yearly Oblations, and many other Profits and Free-will Offerings towards their Hospitalityes and Housekeeping.

And many of the Laity can think it reasonable by privileges of some Religious-houses whereof their Lands before they were granted unto them by the Kings Royall Progenitors were parcell to pay in many places no Tythes at all, and in as many or more do claim and receive the benefit of a Modus decimandi, or paying a small rate or proportion for them▪ and in their own Leases and Grants, not only in former ages, but lately find it to be most for their benefit, to reserve as a convenience for their housekeeping, as their Ancestors or Predecessors formerly did their duties of work in Harvest, or payment of Muttons and Poultry, &c. And can retain their Rights of Patronage and Advowsons,Skaeneus tit. de Herezeldis in Quon. Attach. c. 15. Alciat. lib. 1. Parerg. c. 45. & Spelman Glossar. in voce Heriotum & Neostadius de Feudis Hollandicis. take and receive Herriots, which were gratuitae donationes domino suo datas ratione dominii, & reverentiae, the gifts or remunerations of Tenants to their Lords in the reverence or respect which they do bear unto them, after the rate of 4 or 5 l a Cow, many times the only remaining substance of a sorrowfull Widow and Fatherless Children, when the price of an Oxe was in the Reign of King Edward the First, and many years after but 5 s. or an eighth or tenth part of it. Reliefs and Chiefage, which Cowell understands to be pecuniae annuò datae potentiori tutelae patrocinii (que) gratiae; and the Tolls in Fairs and Markets, by his Grants, or by Prescription,Cowell interpret. verborum. or allowance (which do in yearly profit twice or thrice over exceed the charge of the Counties or Cities of the Kingdome towards the Pourveyance or Provision of the King and his Houshold, and the Owners of above three thousand and eight hundred Impropriations [Page] which originally were designed for hospitality, can require and receive Pensions, Synodals, Procurations, Proxie-money, and Waxscot money.

And very many of the Laity yearly demand and receive Romescot, Peter pence, or Chimney-money of their Tenants in some Manors, amounting unto a considerable value, which notwithstanding that by the Statute of 25 H. 8. ca. 21. it be forbidden under severe penalties to be paid any more to the Popes use, have since either by ignorance of their Tenants, or a custome of paying it to the Lords of such Manors, or their Stewards or Bayliffs, been collected or gathered to the use of the Lords of those Manors, & be very industrious in the enforcing the payment of Street-gavel, which in the Reign of King Edward the First was claimed by the Lord of the Manour of Cholmton in the County of Sussex, for every Tenants going out of the Manor, or returning unto it: and in many or some of their Manors do receive Quit-rents of their Tenants for Bordland, or provisions of victuals for their houses; Drofland, Mich. 4. E. 1. coram Rege. for driving their Cattle to Fairs and Markets; Berland, carrying provision of victuals upon the removall of the Lord of the Manor, or his Steward; Potura drinklan, or Scot Ale, Somners Treatise of Gavelkind. a Contribution of Tenants towards a Potation drink, or an Ale provided to entertain the Lord or his Steward (those charges being now defrayed by the Lords of the Manors) Cart-silver, Ward-penies, and Hoke-Tuesday mony (for a liberty probably of giving their Tenants or Bond-men leave to celebrate that day wherein the English did every where slay the Domineering Danes Gavel-Corn, Gavel-Malt, Gabulum mellis, Rent-honey, Oate-Gavel, or Rent Oates, Woodlede, for carrying home the Lords wood; Hidage, or an Arbitrary Tax imposed [Page] upon every Hide of their Tenants Lands, afterwards turned into an yearly payment; Gavel-Foder, for Litter, Hay, and Provender for his horses, paying of certain Cows,Cart. 17 H. 3. m. 6. in 2. parte Dugdales Monastic. Anglic. or a rate for them, quae dari solebant pro capitibus Utlagatorum, to redeem the forfeitu [...]e of Outlaws; Gavel or Rent-timber for the Repair of the Lords house; Gavel Dung to carry his Dung; Horse or Foot Average, carrying of the Lords Corn to Markets and Fairs; or of his domestique utensils, Smith-land, for doing the Smiths work; Gavel-erth, for t [...]lling some part of the Ground; Gavel Rip, to help to reap their Corn by one or more dayes; Gavel Rod, to help to make so many Pearches of Hedge; Gavel Swine, for feeding of Swine in the Lords Woods; Carropera, to work with their Carts or Carriages: Ale-silver in the City of London; Were Gavel, in respect of Wears and Kiddles to catch Fish, besides (which some have not long ago valued in the sale of their Manors) many Boons, Presents, and New-years-gifts, and other Retributions yearly given to Landlords or Lords of Manors, in lieu of their Pourveyance, who paying for it one to another, do receive and take Fines incertain at farre greater rates then antiently they were, and many times so unreasonably as the King in his Superiour Courts of Justice is many times enforced to regulate and reduce them to a moderation; and can also receive many other small yearly payments paid by Tenants in acknowledgement of favours or help received, or to be received; and demand and receive Quit-rents for Common Fines of some Hundreds, and for Fines pro non pulchre placitando, or pleading in their Courts so fair as they ought, prohibited to be taken by several Statutes made in the reigns of King Henry the 3d. [Page] and Edward the Third; receive in some places, as in the Counties of Cumberland, Westmerland, and some other Northern Counties a 20 penny Fine▪ and in Wales a Payment or Oblation called Mises, upon the death or change of every Landlord; and be at the same time unwilling, that the King should have any retributions or acknowledgements for one hundred to one favours and helps not seldome, but very often; nor to some or a few particular men, but to very many, and the universality of all his Subjects.

Be well contented that he should have no bette [...] a Bargain to release their Duties of Tenures in Capite, Knight-service and Pourveyance, which would have yielded and saved him at least Two hundred thousand pounds per annum, besides the vast yearly charge of a great part of his Guards, much whereof might be spared, if he had, as his Royal Progenitors had, the benefit, support, and accommodation of Tenures in Capite, and by Knights-service, which were so greatly & very necessary in the honour and incidents thereof, to the exercise of a just and well regulated Monarchy, and Royall Governments; and more advantagious then the decaying and every day diminishing Revenue of that Moyety of the Excise, which half or moiety from the time of the granting thereof, untill the last year, did yearly yield unto him but One hundred thousand and ten pounds, or thereabouts; and for this last year but One hundred thirty and three thousand pounds Sterling or thereabouts; (out of which, the Salaries & allowan [...] unto the Commissioners, Auditors, and Surveyors, &c. and many other defalcations are to be deducted) attended with the daily discontents of the Common people, and as a Fine and Income for that so greatly prejudiciall and inconvenient [Page] Bargain, release and abate unto the people more then a Million and a half Sterling mony due unto him for the Arrears of the profits of his Wardships and Tenures in Capite, and by Knight-service; and for the Arrears of his Pourveyance after the rate of Thirty five thousand pounds per annum charges to the people, six hundred and fifty thousand pounds Sterling; and if the charge thereof shall be deemed to amount unto Fifty thousand pounds per annum; may without any stretching of the accompt, be very justly reckoned to be no less then Nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling.

And take notwithstanding (as his blessed Father did, the profits of his Wards after a tenth part of the true yearly value of the Lands and his Ayds to make his eldest Son a Knight, and to marry his eldest Daughter, which the Socage Tenures are likewise obliged unto at a very low and easie proportion) very many of his Reliefs after the rate which the value and Rent of Lands were at four hundred years agoe, now that they exceed it Fifteen or Twenty times more in value then they were then; his Subsidies and Fifteens secundum antiquam taxationem, after the old and long ago accustomed old rates with considerations and abatements to be made in respect of Debts▪ Children, and weakness of Estates, when as the rates in every Parish, for the maintenance of the Poor, mending of Highwayes, repairing the Church, payment of Tythes for Pas [...]ure-groun [...]s, o [...] upon any other their Parochiall Duties, or occasions, are made and layd by the people themselves, and Justices of Peace by the Pound rate, as they call it, and to the utmost yearly value, and improvement, or very near it.

[Page]Receive his First-fruits and Tenths at great undervalues, Prae-fines, Post-fines, Lycenses and Pardons of Alienation at less then a Tenth. Take no more for the Fees of his Seals in Chancery, and the Courts of Kings Bench and Common Pleas, then as they were in the Reign of King Edward the Third, (now that every peny which was then, is more in value then three) and for the originall and Judiciall Writs in Wales no more then they were in he 34th year of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth; his Fines upon Formedons and Reall Actions, his Customes inward and outward at gentle and undervalued rates, allowing the Merchants notwithstanding a Twelfth part of their Wines, a Fifth of all other Commodities imported, and a Tenth of all that is exported, most of which particulars, in his so daily accustomed and continued favours seperately and singly considered, would either out-goe, or come very near up unto the charges which the Kingdom did yearly expend, and disburse for or towards the Royall Pourveyance: Allow [...] three or four pounds in every Pipe of Wine for Lekage: takes for his prisage of Wines brought into London for his two Pipes of Wine one before, and another behind the Mast in every Ship of every Freeman, being an Housekeeper of that large and largely privileged City, but seven pounds ten shillings for every Pipe of Wine, which is seldome less worth, if it be Sack, then thirty pound a Pipe, or four and twenty pounds a Pipe if it be Claret. And give [...] B [...]lls of Store to multitudes which have occasion to pass or repass (which is not seldome) into or out of the parts beyond the Seas, for their Trunks and other necessaries to be Custome-free.

Allows and permits the Dukes, Marquesses and [...] [Page] to enjoy their Creation money towards the supportation of their honour; and they as well as the rest of the Nobility, and all or many of the Gentry to enjoy great quantities of his Crown Lands, turned from small and easie old-fashion'd Reserved Rents upon Leases for Lives or years into Estates of Inheritance; and very many Liberties, as Fishings, Free-Warrens, Court-Leets, Court-Barons, Eschetes, Felons, Fugitives and Outlaws Goods, Deodands, Forfeitures, Waiss Estraies, Fines & Amerciaments, retorn and execution of Writs; and in some Manors, a liberty of receiving to their own use Fines for licenses of concord or agreement upon the making of Conveyances, and Post-Fines upon Fines leavied in the Kings Courts, Profits of the year, day, and wast, and all Fines, Issues Amerciaments▪ returned, set or imposed upon any of their Tenants in any of the Kings Courts,Rot. pat. 27 & 30 H. 6. or by any Justices of Assize, or of the Peace.

With many other Franchises, Liberties and Participations of his Regality, which they do now enjoy tanquam Reguli as little Kings in their several Estates and Dominions, in many of them, more by claim and prescription, allowed by the favour and indulgence of the King and his Royal Progenitors and Predecessors Kings and Queens of of this Nation, unto them and their Posterities, then by any any Grants they can shew for it, very much exceeding in yearly profit and con [...]ent, the small charges which they have used to have been at for the Pourveyance or Provisions for the Kings Houshold.

Take his Fee-farme Rents which do amount unto above threescore thousand pounds per annum; but according to their first and primitive small reservation, though the Lands thereof be now improved, and [Page] raised in some a ten, and in others a twelve to one mo [...]e then they were then accompted to be either in the intentions of the Donors or Donees, and many other his Fee-Farmes of some casuall Profits, and Revenues granted to Cities and Corporations, which do now ten to one exceed what they were when they were first granted.

Grant and confirme to the Vulgus or Common people many great immunities and Priviledges, as Assart Lands, and permit them to enjoy in his own Lands and Revenue large Common of Pasture, and Common of Estovers and Turbary in his Forrests and Chaces; and protect from oppression in that which are holden of their Mesne Lords, their Copihold Lands, Customes and Estates; which being at first but temporarily permitted and allowed & patientia & charitate in quoddam jus transierunt ▪ are now by an accustomed and continued charity, taken to be a kind of Tenant Right and Inheritance. Grants and permits many Charters of Liberties, Privileges and Freedoms to the Cities, Boroughs and Towns Corporate of England and Wales, and to the Lord Mayor and Commonalty of London, all Issues, Fines,Ex antiquo Codice M.S. de customes de London in Bibliotheca Cl. viri Galfridi Palmer Milit. & Baronetti Attorn. Generalis Regis Caroli secundi. and Amerciaments ret [...]rned and imposed upon them in any of the Kings Cours, freedome from payment of Tolls and Lastage in their way of an universall and diffused Trade in all places of England: and for a small Fee Farme Rent of Fifty pounds per annum for the Kings Tolls at Queen-Hithe, Billingsgate, and other places in the City of London, accepted in the Reign of King Henry the Third, suffers them to have and receive in specie, or mony towards their own Pourveyance, as much as would goe a good way in his.

Allows the Tenants in antient Demesn their Exemptions [Page] from the payment of Toll for their Houshold Provisions,Coke Comment. in Artic. super Chartas 542 543. which in the opinion of Sir Edward Coke was at the first in regard of their helping to furnish the Kings houshold Provisions: and suffers the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Colleges and Halls therein; Colleges of Winchester and Eaton, and the Re [...]ients in the Cinque Ports, Act of Parliament for Subsidies in 3 & 4 Car. primi. and Rumney Marsh, to enjoy a Freedom from Subsidies.

Who, together with all the people of England, may by the Accompt of benefits received by, and from him, and his Royall Progenitors and Predecessors, know better how to value them, if they had not received them; and if he should but retire himself into himself, and withdraw his bounties from us.

Or take his Customes and Imposts inward and outward, Reliefs, Ayds, Subsidies, Fifteens, Tenths, and First-fruits, Profits of his Seals, P [...]ae-fines, Post-fines, Licences, and Pardons for alienation of Lands, Fines upon Fo [...]medons and reall Actions, at the full value and rate which the Law will allow, and the rise of money might perswade him unto; or take all occasions to invade or clip the peoples Liberties and Privileges, as they do his.

Charles Loyseau traictè des Seigneuries.Or seise and take advantage of the forfeitures of our sufficiently misused Fairs and Markets, which without the many inconveniences of Barrage, Billets peages, or Tolls taken at many places as they pass thither; as the people of France, and our Fashion makers are tormented with, do yield and save the people yearly in that which otherwise would be lost some hundred of thousands pounds per annum, or should withdraw his favours and countenance from the Trade which our Merchants have into forreign Parts since the Reign of Queen Mary, [Page] by the benefits and blessings of the Leagues and Alliances of him & his Royall Progenitors made with forreign Princes, continued with a great yearly charge of Embassadours Ordinary and Extraordinary sent and received, and render it to be no no more then it was in the beginning of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the difference of the gain of forreign Trade and Merchandize, betwixt the little which was then, and that which is now, by reason of the East-Indie, Turkie, Muscovie, Ligorne, and East-land Trades, and our many flourishing American Plantations would appear to be some millions sterling money in a year.

And were notwithstanding never so gratefull to our King for it▪ as the English Merchants of Calais were, whilst King Edward the Third caused the Staple of Wool to be kept there, who so ordered the matter, as the King spent nothing upon Souldiers, in defence of the Town, which was wont to cost him eight thousand pounds per annum; and the Mayor of that Town could in Anno ▪ 51 of the Reign of that King, furnish the Captain of the Town upon any Rode to be made with one hundred Bill-men,Stows Survey of London. and two hundred Archers of Merchants and their Servants, without any wages.

Or if the Peoples Liberties, acquired by the munificence and Indulgence of our Kings since the making and confirming of our Magna Charta, in the ninth year of the Reign of King Henry the Third,9 H. 3. now 437 years ago, when they took it to be for their good as well as the Kings, to give him a Fifteenth part of all their Moveables (not by a conniving and unequall, but a more real and impartiall Taxation, in recompence, and as a thankfull Retribution for their Liberties [Page] then granted and confirmed) which are now as many again, or do farre ex [...]ed them, were bu [...] justly value [...] ▪ or if the benefits accrewed unto forreign Merchants, or those of our own Nation, by the Char [...]a Mercatoria, granted by King Edward the First in the 31 year of his Reign to the Me [...]chants Strangers, and confirmed by Act of Pa [...]liament in Anno 27 Ed. 3. for the releasing of an antient Custome and Duty to the Kings of England, of permitting their Officers and Servants to take what the King pleased out of Forreign Commodities, and Merchandize brought into England upon payment of such rates as he pleased, which amount unto no small yearly profit for an Exchange and grant by the Merchants Strangers of three pence per pound (now called the Petit Customes) of all forreign Merchandises imported, except Wines; for every Sack of Wool forty pence, for every 300 Wolfels forty pence, and for every last of Leather to be exported half a mark over and above the Duties payable by Denizens, were but rightly estimated.

Or the benefits which the Subiects of England have had and received by the Act of Parliament made in Anno 14 Ed. 3. granting that all Merchants, Denizens and Aliens may freely and safely come into the Realme of England, which before they could not, or durst not adventure to do without speciall licence and safe conduct under the great, or some part of the Seal of England, with their Goods and Merchandize, and safely tarry and return, paying the Subsidies and Customes reasonably due: together with the ease and benefit, but to the great loss and damage of the Crown, which the Merchants of England as well as those of forreign Parts have by the loss of Calais since Queen Maries [Page] time, and the remove of the Staple from thence, whither all Goods Exported out of England were to be first brought, & a Custome Inward the second time paid, and for so much (which may be believed to be the greatest part) as was again from thence Exported into other Countries, the Customes a third time paid, which made the Customes and Subsidies only for Goods Exported in the later end of the Reign of King Edward the Third, and during the Reigns of King Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, and the beginning of the Reign of King Henry the Sixth, as appeareth by the Records of the Exchequer to amount unto threescore, or threescore and ten thousand pounds per annum, which according to the valuation of mony at this day, saith Sir John Davies, Sir John Davies Treatise of Impositions. the ounce of Silver being raised from twenty pence unto five shillings, would amount unto two hundred thousand pounds sterling per annum. And the difference betwixt the payment of Customes and Subsidies then paid three times over for one and the same thing, and the payment of it but once, as is now used, with many other great benefits beyond a valuation not here particularized.

And consider how unworthy it would be for the Natives and People of England, after many Knights Fees, and Lands freely given and granted by the Kings Royall Progenitors to their Forefathers and their Heirs, to be holden by Knight-service and in Capite; of which, if the sixty thousand Knights Fees, and more reckoned by antient Authors, should be no greater a number then ten thousand, and valued but at twenty pounds per annum, as they were reckoned in anno primo Edwardi secundi, they would amount unto two hundred thousand pounds per annum; and if but at [Page] three hundred pounds per annum, which is now the least [...]mprovement, would amount unto three Millions per annum, besides great quantities of other Lands being twice or thrice as much more in the severall Reigns of his Majesties Royall Progenitors, freely granted and given unto othe [...]s of them and their Heirs to be holden in Socage, to endeavour to extinguish the right use of them, and forget their Obligations to their Prince and Common Parent, and his Royall Progenitors.

And in too many of their Actions and business cozen or beg all they can from him; and in stead of saying Domine quid retribuam, Lord what shall I render unto thee for all thy benefits, make it the greatest of their care, imployment, and business, not only to take, but keep from him all they can, even at the same time when they had obteyned of him an unparralleld Act of Indempnity and Oblivion, and to to forget all their evil designes and offences intended or committed against him and his blessed Father, and to pardon and give them as much as fifteen or sixteen millions sterling in the Arrears of his own Revenue and two or three hundred millions Sterling at least for the forfeiture of theirs. And might have remembred, how they promised him their lives and fortunes, and to be his Tenants in Corde; and with what a Princely and Fatherly affection he told their Representatives, that he was sorry to see so many of his good people come to see him at Whitehall, and had no meat to feed or entertain them; and how ashamed and unwilling they are in their ordinary and daily Actions and Affairs to come behind or be upon the score one to another in their reciprocations, retributions, and retorns of gratitudes, and take it to be a disparagement not to out-vie or undo one [Page] another therein: how willingly they can part with their money to their children at School, to make Oblations, or Presents to their School-masters at their Intermissions or Breaking up of School at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsontyde; a course newly invented by School-masters to better their Allowances and Incomes; and chargeable enough to the Parents, as may appear by the Offerings at a Christmas, made unto some Capital School-Masters, which have singly amounted unto five or six hundred pounds, which with the Beds and Furniture, and silver Spoons to be brought thither by the Boarders, and left behind them at their departure, do make as great or a greater charge to many Parents, then what they were ever rated for the Pourveyance: And how accustomed and willing an expence all people are desirous to put themselves unto pro honestate domus, for the good and content of any Inne, Tavern, or Alehouse, to make them some recompence for but coming into those houses upon any occasion or necessity of business. And can notwithstanding so readily finde the way to that unchristian River of Lethe and sinne of unthankfulness, which God and all good men do abhorre, and the most fierce and savage of the Beasts of the field, & Fowls of the Ayr do scorn to be guilty of, and make it their business to desire the King to foregoe his Pourveyance, and take a seeming recompence of fifty thousand pounds per annum for it of the moyty of the Excise to be raised out of the Moans and Laments of the multitude, which are the labouring and poorer sort of the people, to free richer and better able from their heretofore small Payments or Contributions in Cattle, and other Provisions for the Royall Pourveyance, now that England enjoyeth a [Page] greater plenty then ever it did by some hundred thousand Acres of Fenne Lands drained, many Forests and Chases deafforrested m [...]ny Parks converted unto Tillage or Pasture, great quantities of other Lands inclosed; and as much or more of Abby and Religious Lands retorned into Lay-hands, fewer Taxes and publique Assessments by one to ten, then are in the Kingdomes and Dominions of Spain, France, Empire of Germany, and other Kingdomes and Principalities of Christendome, the Republique of Venice, and that Corporation of Kings, the States of Holland, and the united Provinces, greater Improvements of Lands and prices for the fruits of the Earth, then former ages ever saw, or attained unto, ten to one more Cattel, Sheep, Swine, and Poultry fed and sold in England then formerly; a freedome from the Popes and Romes former and many & daily heavy Taxations, carrying away much of the Revenues thereof, the universality of the people 10 or 20 times richer in moveables and household Furniture then ever their Forefathers were, every man of 10 or 20 l. Land per annum, now having one, if not many pieces of Plate in his house (heretofore not to be found but in the houses of the Nobility or persons of great quality) many Alehousekeepers, a piece of Plate, if not as many as his occasions call for, instead of Black po [...]s; every Artizan a piece or more of Plate; and many of the richer sort of Citizens, Merchants, and Retaylo [...]s, do take themselves to be disparaged & the Sons of contempt, if they have not half; and others almost all their Table-service in Silver Plate, their Dyning Rooms, and Lodging Chambers, richly hung with Tapestry of 30, 40, or 60 l. a suit, too many of their Wives hung with Pearl Neck-laces, [Page] Diamond Lockets, and the most costly sort of Jewels, and little Tablets of their Husbands Pictures richly enameld or set in gold at the charge of 25 or 20 l. a piece, to hang at the outside of their hearts; and some of the retailing part of them think they come to farre behind their betters, if they have not a kind of S [...]ate or Carpets to spread within their Chambers or Apartments, or shall not be enough talked of or looked upon if they have not an Indian Foot-boy with a Coller of Silver about his neck to attend them; and their delicacies and wantonness better attended then the afterwards destroyed and vagabond Jews ever had, when the Almighty sent his Prophets to preach, and inveigh against their excessive pride and wickedness, a greater by many degrees more then heretofore increase of Trade, untill our long and accursed Rebellion spoyled it; more money put by Countrymen, and such as were not Traders, to Interest and Usury (which may shew how great an overplus many have beyond their necessary expences) then former ages were acquainted with as much Wood and Timber sold in our late times of prodigality, as would have bought the Fee-simple and Inheritance of all or the greatest part of the Lands of the Kingdome, many Rivers made navigable, and Havens repaired, the loss of Cattle, and damage by Inundations and some unruly Rivers prevented by several Statutes o [...] Commissions of Sewers, Depopulations prohibited, many an unjust Title in concealed Lands made good after sixty years quiet possession, Interest for money lent, reduced to a lower rate then formerly; and Brocage forbidden, divers Statutes restraining Aliens not being den [...]zend to Trade or keep Shops, the bringing of silver Bullion into England by our Merchants [Page] encouraged, transportation of Gold and Silver prohibited, Merchants of Ireland and Aliens ordained to employ their moneys received in England upon the Commodities thereof, many great Factories and Trades erected and encouraged, the Lands of Wales greatly improved, and freedome, formerly denyed, had of Trade and Commerce with them; the Marches of Wales secured from the Incursions of the Welch and the Northern Counties from those of the Scots; abundance of Markets and Fairs granted more then formerly; great store of Cattle brought in yearly from Ireland and Scotland; and many a good and beneficiall Law and Act of Parliament made to remedy the peoples grievances, and better enabling them to performe those very ancient and legall duties of Pourveyances, or Compositions for them.

Which may with us be understood to be the more reasonable, when the Pourveyance or Compositions for them in England, if they did yearly charge the people, or amount unto, as they did not, fifty or sixty five thousand pounds per annum, or thereabouts, did not yearly draw out of their Pu [...]ses or Estates so much as that which is yearly laid out in their buying of Babies, Hobby-horses, and Toyes for their Children to spoyl, as well as to play withall: or in the yearly charge of the Counties in the amending of the High-wayes, Treatments given to Harvest folk, Expences of an Harvest Goose or Seed-Cake, given to their Plowmen; and keeping a Wake or Parish Feast every year, or the monies which the good women in every Parish and County do gladly rid themselves of in their Gossipings at the Birth of their Neighbours Children, and many other most triviall, chearfull, and pleasing disbursements; and nothing [Page] near so much as this last years excess in the wearing of Perrukes or Periwigs; some at three pounds, others at five or ten pounds price, which Clerks, and the smallest size of Tradesmen and Journymen, Apprentices, Ba [...]be [...]s, and Vintners boys must of necessity have to hide their heads and little wit is. Or in the womens long & needless Trains, or unreasonable length of their Gowns (every Lady or Gentlewoman, or many ridiculous proud Citizens Wives being certainly not Dutchesses or Countesses, or allowed to have their Trains carried up) to shew the length of their vanities, and informe the Common people, who do with abhorrence behold them how much better it would be to bestow that ten or twenty pounds per annum, so foolishly expended, upon the Poor in charity and almes deeds, then to make their tails the Beesoms or Deputy-Scavengers of the streets or places where they walk; or the mony which hath been lately expended in altering or putting too many of the Common people into the low crowned little Hats or flat Caps, to cover the folly of every Absalom or Inhabitant in a hideous bush of hair or Periwig; or their adorning them with as many Ribbons, as the vanities they are guilty of: or in the yearly or never murmured at charges or expences of almost all sorts of people, as well in the Countries as Cities, in the exchanging or following of Fashions, as if they were to make all the hast possible they could to purchase them, lest there should not be fools enough in the Nation, or that the ridiculous French Ape should not have enough to be of his Livery or Retinue.▪

And as to the severall kinds of all those severall particulars, would make the foot of the Accompt to be a great deal more then that of the Pourveyance [Page] or Compositions for them, which was so easie and petit, as in most of the Counties of England it was many times not singly rated or assessed, but was joyned with some other Assesse. And in Kent, where ten or twenty times more being gained by the Kings residence at Westminster, more was paid then in any one County of England, was so little felt and regarded, as a Tenant paying One hundred pounds rent per annum for his Land, did not think it worth his care to reckon it to his Landlord, and demand an allowance for it. The Counties and Places which did pay most towards the furnishing of the Kings Household provisions, being those which abound most with them, and were the greatest gainers by their neighbourhood to the constant residence of the King and his Courts of Justice: And those which were more remote, had but little charged upon them, as all the 13 Shires of Wales but three hundred sixty pounds per annum, Herefordshire One hundred eighty pounds per annum, and that large County of York as big as three others, but four hundred ninty five pounds per annum.

And may tell us how irrationall and uneven it will be for the people of England to rank with or above the care of their souls and Religion, their endeavours to preserve their Liberties, Customes and Privileges, some of which are hard and severe enough, as the forfeiture of the Widows Estates for life in their deceased Husbands Copyhold Estates of Inheritance for marrying a second Husband, unless they shall come into the Court Baron of the Lord of the Manor riding upon a Black Ram, and acknowledge such a fault committed: or the custome of the Manor of Balshale in the County of Warwick, where the Lord of the Manor was to divide [Page] the Goods and personall Estate of the deceased, with his Wife and Children: the custome of the Manor of Brails in the same County, not to marry their Daughters, or to make their Sons Priests without licence of the Lord of the Manor: or of the Manor of Brede in the County of Sussex, where the Widows are not to be endowed, or have dower of any of the Lands of their first Husband, if they shall marry again. The custome of some Manors that the Copiholder shall not sell his Lands unto a Stranger, untill he shall have first offered it unto the next of Kin, or Neighbour ab oriente solis, dwelling on the East side of him, who giving as much as others would do for it, are to have it: or where the Copiholder is to give his Lord a certain summe of money towards his charges in the time of Warre; or to forfeit his land, if summoned unto the Lords Court, & doth wilfully make default: or that the Lord or Lady of the Manor of Coveny in the County of Cambridge, should have for every Fornication or Adultery committed in the Manor, a Lecherwyte, or penalty of 5 s. and 2 d. for selling a Hog without licence of the Lord of that Manor;Ad Cur. tent. ibid. Anno 5 & 8 E. 3. and five shillings for a Licence for any one of the Tenants Daughters to be married. And yet do all they can to infringe and abolish those iust, ancient, and legall Rights and Privileges of the Kings which should protect and defend them and theirs; and being rationabilia & legitimè praescripta most reasonably and lawfully prescribed ought to be inviolabilia, quia nec divino juri nec legibus naturae, & Gentium, sive municipalibus contradicunt, Glos. in verb. us (que) ad hoc tempus C. Servitium 18. q. 2. inviolable when they contradict not the Laws of God, Nature, and Nations, and the Laws of the Land, as if all that is to be found in our Laws, and reasonable Customes should be only to [Page] protect the peoples Rights and Liberties, and the inferiour Members of the Body Politique, and to diminish and abrogate that of the Kings, the superiour more noble, and therefore the more to be respected; or as if the power of a Prince should be the better when it is weakest; a blind or decrepit pennyless Captain or Generall more usefull for their Warres then a Sampson a David, or a Solomon as full of Riches as W [...]sdome, and a Wooden Sword more for that purpose then one of Iron and Steel, or that of Goliah.

How unjust as well as unreasonable it would be for the People of England, to rack and raise the Rents and rates of their Lands and Commodities, & increase their own Revenues and prices of victuals and houshold provisions, five or six to one more then it was when the Compositions for the Pourveyance was agreed upon in the third or fourth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, and lay the burden thereof only upon the King, make him to be as an Amorite or Stranger in our Israel, and his own dominions, paying an enhaunced and oppressing Rate and Interest for food and provisions for himself and his houshold: and to receive his rents and other monies due unto him after the old rate, and buy at the new, take little more then four pence instead of a shilling in every summe which is paid him, and pay twelve pence for every groats worth which he hath occasion to buy, and drive or inforce him by buying all by the penny, and being left to the mercy of the Sellers to such a prejudiciall necessity or custome as would certainly undoe and ruine all the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, Tradesmen, Mechanicks, and People of England, if they should but imitate him. And would without the help of our S [...]taries or Levellers, have [Page] ere now destroyed and ruined the two famous Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, those great Lights and Fountains of Learning in our Nation, and have brought their Towring Colledges Halls, and glorious Buildings into their Rubbidge, or little more then a story to talk of as Travellers sometimes do of the heretofore University or Publique School of Stamford, if the Act of Parliament in 18 Eliz, had not better provided for them, and ordained, that a third part of the rents of the Lands belonging unto them, should be for ever reserved and paid in Corn, Malt, and other Provisions at their election.

Or now to deny it him, when as if he or his Father, or Royall Progenitors could have foreseen any dislike or complaining of such an ancient and unquestionable Right of the Crown, he or they might by a restraint of their Bounties and Indulgencies have made themselves not only savers, but gainers by it; or reserved more then that in their multituds of Grants and Fee-Farme Rents.

And did never as Cromwell, that dissembling and devouring Hiena or Wolfe of the Evening, dig or teare up by the roots as many of our Laws and Liberties as he could, upon a pretence of defending and protecting them, call our Magna Charta in the worst Latin that ever Brewer or Englishman spake, Magna Fartae, imprison the Lawyers that pleaded for the Peoples liberties, and was so little sensible of their being tired or impoverished with Taxes, as he could, when he was lieutenant Generall of the Army of Reforming Harpies, give some Gentlemen of the County of Bedford, who complained of their heavy burdens, and the poverty of that County, no better an answer or ease, [Page] then that he would never believe they were unable to pay Taxes as long as they could whistle when they did drive their Plows and Carts.

Nor did after the horrid Murder of his Father, and his own Exile and sufferings by an almost twenty years Rebellion of the greatest part of his Subjects, (grown rich with the plunder and spoyl of those that adhaered unto him; and having destroyed the Sheep, can now as if they were innocent, appear in Sheeps clothing,) enforce those that rebelled against him and his Royall Father to compound, as King H. 3. did his Rebellious People (all but the unhappy Robert Ferrers Earl of Derby, the Heirs of Simon de Mountfort Earl of Leicester, and some few others) for their pardons or redemption of their forfeited Lands, by his Commission, or dictum de Kenelworth, according to the nature of their several Delinquencies, so as the greatest Fines should not exceed five years, and the lowest not be less then two years of the then true yearly value of their Lands and Estates, Neither as the late pretended Parliament and Oliverian Tormentors of all that were good, did in a more severe manner, when they forfeited, and would not permit many of the Loyall Party at all to compound, and constrained the rest to compound for a supposed fighting against the King, when it was well known, that they did really fight, and suffer for him; made them to pay great and excessive Fines, some according to a third, and others a half of the full yearly value of their Lands and Estates; and others in what arbitrary way they pleased for their personal Estates, and moneyes due unto them: And after they had proceeded so farre in the ruining of them, and granted them a slender Act of Oblivion, choaked with a great [Page] many of Provisos, did upon the loyall Attempts of some of them, to recall their King and Liberties, Decimate, and make those also that had not therein offended their Masterships of Sin and Rebellion, to pay and compound for a Tenth of their Estates, as if Loyalty had been a sin, and like that of Adam, the first Inhabitant in the world, been to be punished in all the loyall Party, and their Generations, squeese their Estates, or require any Contributions, or Summes of money of them more then of all the Loyall Party, towards the payment of many hundred thousand pounds sterling in Arrear, to themselves and the Souldiers which had been before imployed to ruine him, when after his most happy Restauration, he was contented for the quiet and welfare of the Nation to pay it out of his own Revenues & the publick and generall Contributions.

Nor did in his Act of Parliament for a generall Pardon and Indempnity insert any Proviso for their good adhaering towards him and his Royall Crown and dignity; or compel them as is usually done in cases of Pardons for Felony or Manslaughter to find Sureties for their better behaviour towards him and his People.

But gave way unto his extraordinary mercy and compassion to a People who in the Career of their Sins, Rebellion, and Rapine, could not find the way to pity the sad condition of their Souls, Bodies, and Estates, and in all that concerned the good and welfare of his People, was willing to imitate and remember that Maxime of his blessed father the Martyr, that the Peoples Liberties did strengthen the Kings Prerogative, and that the Kings Prerogative is to defend the Peoples Liberties; And was lately heard to say, that he would not, if he might, be absolute, or not restrained in many things by the [Page]Laws which he or his Royall Progenitors had made or granted, that the Laws of England were the b [...]st Laws in the world, that if the wisest men in the world had been appointed to make Laws, they could have made no better; and that if they had not been made, he would most willingly make the same again.

How little would be gained to the people by denying him the Pourveyance, or Compositions for them, who hath a just, most antient, and legall right to those their small Retributions, if he should restrain the bitings and oppression of their Markets and Merchandize, or by his removing his Residence and Courts of Justice from Westminster, make London and her twelve adjacent Counties, viz. Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Southampton, Essex, Hertford, Bedford, Cambridge, Huntington, Buckingham, and Northamptonshires, to loose more then forty times as much every year by it: Although he should not abate or bring down the rates of Rents and Provisions so low as King Edward the Sixth did intend to do,Sir John Heywards History of King Edward the 6th when to satisfie some of the discontented Commons and People in Armes and Rebellion against him, he did undertake, that there should be an Act of Parliament in the next ensuing Parliament, to lessen and reduce the Rents of Lands (scarce half so high and unreasonable as now they are) to what they had been forty years before.

And how unequal it would be, that the People should by infringing of the Lawes, and by the improvement and high rack of their Lands and Commodities, take advantage of their own doing of wrong unto others, and that the Citizens of London, and the Inhabitants of the twelve adjacent Counties should desire his Residence to be so near his Chamber of London, [Page] and make him by the taking away of his Pourveyance so great a looser by it; when if like the Sun in the Firmament, he should diffuse and carry his light and heat to all the parts of his Kingdom, and not make London and its neighbou [...]ing Counties an East or West-Indies, and the rest of the Kingdome to be as a Greenland, either by removing his Courts and Residence to Worcester or Ludlow towards Wales, or to York, the People of London, and the neighbouring Counties would as soon lament his absence and removall, as he would find the ease and benefit of it: as his Royall Father King Charles the Martyr did in the year 1640, when he was at Newcastle with his Court and Army in the Borders of Scotland, where the rate or price which he allowed at London for the Provisions of his Houshold, according to the Compositions for the Pourveyance, appeared to be so much above the Market rates, as the People brought it in so plentifully, as he was enforced by his Proclamation to forbid the bringing in of such an overplus.

And may to their cost hereafter believe that they shal be as little gainers by that small yearly sum of mony, which they do but think they shall save by the not paying the Compositions for the Pourveyance, or by the Kings acquitall of it, as they have been, or may be in his release of his Tenures in Capite, and by Knights service; when they dream of that which may be imagined to be a benefit; but when they are waking, will never be found to be so, and will in the yearly expence or accidents of the better and richer part of the People in the charges of finding Offices, defraying the Fees of Escheators and Feodaries, many Writs Process, and Suits in that which was the Court of Wards and Liveries, and their [Page] payment of Rents & Compositions for Wardships will not be enough to satisfie, or set against the very many great oppressions, mischiefs, and inconveniences which since the taking away of that Court, and the Tenures in Capite and by Knights service have fallen upon the Orphans or fatherless Children of that part of the People and their Estates, when the Wolves shall be made the Keepers of the Lambs, and every indigent or wastfull father in Law shall be a Guardian to those whose Estates he makes it his business to spend and ruine, or to transferre upon his own Children: and the charge and trouble of Petitions at the Councell Board, or more tedious Suits in Chancery to be relieved against them; the pay of more Life-guards, or a small standing Army (to keep the People within the bounds of their duty, and secure good Subjects from the mischief intended by the bad) frequent Musters of the Trained Bands more then formerly, and of an Army to be hired upon an occasion of an Invasion, or the transferring the sedem belli, or miseries of warre into an Enemies Country, much whereof would not have needed to be, if the Tenures in Capite, and by Knight-service, those stronger Towers and Forts of our David, those Horsemen and Charriots of our Israel; and alwayes ready Garrisons composed of the best and worthiest men of our Nation; not hirelings taken out of the Vulgus, nor unlettered, unskilfull, and uncivilized, nor rude or debauched part of the people; but of those who would fight tanquam pro aris & focis, as they and their worthy Ancestors ever used to do, for the good and honour of their King and Country, and the preservation of their own Families, as being obliged unto it by the strongest tyes and obligations of [Page] law and gratitude, which ever were, or could be laid upon the fortunes Estates, Souls and Bodies of men, that would have a care but of either of them.

Or to put in the Ballance against the benefits which they had in the preservation of their Woods, recording their discents and titles to their Lands, and many a Deed and Evidence which would otherwise have been lost, or not easie to be found, and the help and ayd which their heirs in their infancies have never failed of in all their Suits and Concernments.

And the seldome abuses of some naughty Pourveyors, and the complaints thereby do not any thing neer amount unto the immense gains of the people, of some millions sterling per annum, in their vast improvements of their Lands and Estates by the rack and rise of rents enhaunce of Servants and Labourers wages, and all commodities in all parts of the Kingdome before and since the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the Compositions for the Pourveyance were made and agreed upon, may seem but a very small yearly Retribution to the King or his Royall Progenitors for permitting so much as shall be reasonable of it: And the People of England might better allow him those small and legall advantages, which are, and will be as much for publique good as his own, then they do themselves in many of their own affairs one with another in many of their particular & private ends & advantages; wherein the will and bequests o [...] the dead & their Hospitalls, Legacies, or Gifts to charitable uses, are not, nor have been so well managed as they ought to be.

As may be instanced in those multitudes of charitable Legacies or Gifts in lands, originally cut out and proportioned to the maintenance of certain numbers [Page] of poor, or for some particular uses, which by the increase and improvement of Rents before and since the dissolution of the Abbies, Religious Houses, and Hospitals, did very much surmount the proportions which were at the first allowed, or intended for them.

And with more Reason and Justice, then the City of London, and many of their Guilds and Fraternities do now enjoy divers Lands which were given for Lamps, and other superstitious uses, for which they compounded by order of the Councell Board with King Edward the Sixth for twenty thousand pounds, Heylins History of the Reformation of the Church of England. and more then that, which that and many other Cities and Towns do take and receive for Tolls, which being many times only granted for years; or upon some temporary occasions are since kept and retained as rights: besides many Gifts and Charitable Uses since the dissolution of the Abbies and Religious Houses, amounting to a very great yearly value, which by the improvement and rise of Rents, beyond the proportion of the Gifts, or the intention of the Givers, have been either conveyed by J [...]yntures or leases to wives or children, or much of the overplus which came by the improvement, or concealed Charitable Uses, converted by the Governours of many a City and Town Corporate, to the maintenance of themselves, the Worship of the Corporation, and many a comfortable Feast and Meeting for the pretended good of the [...] people thereof, who are but seldome, if at all the better for it. Some of which not to mention any of greater bulk or value, may appear in a few instances instead of a multitude of that kind, dispe [...]sed in the Kingdom as two Closes of Land, or Meadow Ground lying in the Parish of Shoreditch in the County of Middlesex, given by Simon Burton, Citizen [Page] and Merchant-Taylor of London, in the year 1579. unto St. Thomas Hospital upon condition,Stows Survey of London. that the Governors of the said Hospitall should yearly give unto 30 poor Persons of the said Parish, on the 21, 22, or 23 dayes of December for ever the summe of eight pence a piece. Mr. William Hanbury, Citizen and Whitebaker of London, did by a Surrender in the year 1595. give unto Elizabeth Spearing certain Copihold Lands in Stebu [...]heath and Ratcliffe in the said County, to pay the Parson and Church-wardens of the said Parish for ever, to the use of the poor People there, two and fifty shillings yearly, which by consent of the Parish, is by twelve pence every Wednesday weekly bestowed upon the Poor abroad. And Mrs. Alice Hanbury Widow by her will did in the same year give unto Mr. George Spearing a Tenement in the said Parish, wherein William Bridges a Taylor then dwelled, upon condition that the said George Spearing, his Heirs and Assignes should yearly pay to the Churchwardens of the said Parish and their Successors, to the use of the poor and impotent People, thirteen shillings and four pence.

And that whether the King be enough recompenced, or not at all recompenced for his Pourveyance, it would be none of the best bargains for the Subjects of England, or their Posterity, to exchange or take away so great and n [...]ssary a part of his Prerogative, or support of Majesty, as the Pourveyance or Compositions for them were, which in the Parliament in the 4th year of the Reign of King James, were held to be such an inseperable Adjunct of the Crown, and Imperiall dignity, as not to be aliened, and some few years after believed by that incomparable Sir [Page] Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, to be a necessary support of the Kings Table, a good help, Sir Francis Bacons letter to the Duke of Buckingham. and justly due unto him: And the Learned both in Law and Politiqu [...]s in other Nations as well as our own, have told us that such Sacra Sacrorum (is Baldus) and Individua (as Cynus) termeth them, which Jurisconsultorum communi quodam decreto, Baldus in proaemio seudorum & in Consil. 274. lib. 3. Cynus in l. si viva matre de bonis matern. Bodin de Repub. lib. 1. Besoldus dissert. politic. Juridic. de Juribus Majestatis, ca. 9. by an uncontraverted opinion of all Lawyers, nec cedi, nec distrahi, nec ulla ratione ababienari a summo principe posse, cannot (as Bodni saith) be granted away, or released, no [...] by any manner of way alienated or withholden from the Sovereign Prince; nec ulla quidem temporis diuturnitate praescribi posse, nor by any length of time prescribed against him; and are therefore by Besoldus calcalled Imperii & Majestatis Jura & bona regno conjuncta incorporata, seu corona unit a quae princeps alienari nequit; the Rights of Empire and Majesty, and the goods and part of the Crown so incorporate and united unto it, as the Prince cannot alien them; which to attempt would not be much different from the endeavours to restrain a Prince by a Law not to receive or demand any Subsidies, Oblations, Civilities, or Respects from his People; which like a Law against the Word of God, or contra bonos mores. would by the opinion of our no less Judicious and Learned Hobart, Bacon, and Hutton, be voyd and of none effect, for the Presents and good will of Inferiours unto their Superiours, (not bribes to corrupt Justice) either for favours done or to be done, is one of the antient and most noble Customes which mankind hath ever practised, and began so with the beginning or youth of the world,Genesis c. 43. as we find the Patriarch Jacob sending with his Sons to his then unknown Son Joseph, besides the mony [Page] which he gave them to buy corn in Egypt, a Present of the best fruits of the Country, a little Balm, and a little Honey, Spices and Myrrhe, Nuts and Almonds.

Saul when he thought not of ever being a King, whilst he was busied in the enquiring for his Fathers Asses,1 Reg. ca. 10. v. 15. & 25. did not think fit to goe unto Samuel the man of God, who was then accompted honourable, unless he had a Present to bring him.

Most of the People of the East brought Presents unto their Kings, as was seen in the splendour and greatness of Solomon; and sine quibus, as Grotius saith,Grotius Annotat. ad vet. testamentum. Reges non adire solebant, did not without presents come a near their Kings; and was a Custome long after not forgotten by the Kings or Wisemen coming out of the East to worship & adore our blessed Saviour at his Birth.

The Persians in their Kings Progresses, did munera offerre neque vilia vel exilia, neque nimis praetiosa & magnifica, AElianus Hist. variar. lib. 1. Brissonius de regno Persiae lib. 1. bring him Presents neither precious nor contemptible, from which etiam Agricolae & opifices, Workmen, and Plowmen were not freed in bringing Wine, Oxen, Sheep, Fruits, and Cheeses, and the first Fruits of what the earth brought forth, quae non tributi, sed doni loco censebantur, which were not received or given as Tributes, but as Oblations and Free gifts, which made the poor Persian Synetas, when he met with Artaxerxes and his Trayn in the way of his Progress, rather then fail of something to offer, hasten to the River, and bring as much water as he could in his hands, and with a chearfull countenance, wishes, and prayers for the health of the King present it unto him.

Nor was not so altogether appropriate unto those Eastern Countries, where God spake first unto his People, and the Sun of his Righteousness did arise; [Page] but was long agoe practised in England, where the custome was, as Gervasius Tilburi [...]nsis, Gervasius Tilburiensis. who wrote in the Reign of Henry the Second, and lived in the Reign of King Henry the First, informs us upon all Addresses to the King qua [...]dam in rem & qua [...]dam in spem offerre, to present the King with some or other Presents, either upon the granting of any thing, or the hopes which they had that he would do it afterwards: And so usually as there were Oblata Rolls or Memorialls kept of it in the Reign of King John, and some other the succeeding Kings, and the Queens, or their Royall Consorts, seldome escaped the tender of those gratitudes of Aurum Reginae, Money or Gold presented unto them, as well as unto their Kings, and was a Custome not infrequent in the Saxon times, as appeareth by our Doomsday Book, the most exact and generall Survey of all the Kingdome, and so little afterwards neglected, as it was paid upon every Pardon of Life or Member, and so carefully collected, as it was long after in the Reign of King Henry the Third by an Inquisition taken after the death of Gilbert de Sandford, 20 H. 3. who was by Inheritance Chamberlain to the Queens of England, found that he had amongst many other Fees and Profits due unto him and his Heirs, by reason of that office six pence per diem, allowed for a Clark in the Court of Exchequer, to collect and gather the Oblation or Duty.

Neither can there be any reason given why the Clergie, for whom God the ratio rationum incomprehensible wisedome and greatest perfection ordained so great a Pourveyance for them in their Tythes and Oblations, should enjoy it, and his Vice-gerent and Protector of them be without it, the Nobility, and many of the Gentry, and Laity not want it either in kind, or [Page] some other satisfaction for it, and all Cities, Corporations, Guilds, and Societies furnish out their grandeur and greatness derived only by reflection from that of the Kings▪ and he only be deprived of that which should maintain his hospitality, and was so usefull to all other King [...] and Princes for the gaining of the affections of the People, Et a concilier (as L [...]i [...] de Orleans saith) L' amour de [...] subject [...] quil [...] [...] par le bouche & d' leurs le pe [...]ple au [...] & les p [...]ds a lateste pour affirmir le corps politique, Lois d' Orleans ouuertures de Parlement ca. 8 et le l [...]er par▪ une grac [...]use voire necessaire correspondence; and to procure the love of the people, who are taken by the mouth, and to fasten them unto the King, and the Feet unto the Head, strengthen the Body Politique, and unite all the parts thereof by a loving and necessary complyance, when he doth at the same time yearly pay and allow some thousands of pounds for the support and Pourveyance of his Councel in the Marches of Wales, Exodus 22. v. 29. and his Judges and Justices of the Peace, and other Officers in the Kingdom for the administration of Justice.

Or for us to think that when God in his Government of his chosen people of Israel, in that his most righteous Theodratie, did command them not to delay the offerings of the First of their Ripe Fruit [...] and of their Liquors, and of their Oxen and their Sheep, and ordained,Deut. 24. v. 19, 20, 21. that if a Sheaf were forgotten in the time of Harvest, they were not to goe again to fetch it; and when they did beat their Olive trees, they should not go [...]ver it again ▪ and gathered their grapes, they should not gle [...]n them, for they should be for the [...]tranger, the F [...]therless▪ and the Widow, he would now be well pleased with such an unworthy sparing and avarice of Subjects, in withholding their Oblations from his Deputies, and disabling them [Page] from relieving the Strangers, the Fatherless, and the Widows.

And that the rates of his houshold provisions being much the same, or very near unto those which were agreed upon by the Justices of Peace of every County (who cannot be understood to be any Strangers to the rates and Market prices of every County) might not be now as cheap afforded as they were then,Stows Survey of London. or when they were cheaper in the [...]3▪ year of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth, now not much above 130 years agoe, when 24 great B [...]eves were provided for a great and pompous Serjeants Feast at Ely house in London, where the King, Queen, and many of the Nobility, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London were present, (such provisions being then probably at a greater price then ordinary,) for 26 s. 8 d. a piece from the Shambles, a Carcase of an Oxe at 24 s. one hundred fat Muttons a [...] [...] s. 10 d. a piece, one and fifty great Veals at 4 s. 8 d. a piece, four and thirty Porks at 3 s 8 d. a piece, ninety one Pigs at 6 d. a piece. Capons ten dozen at 20 d. a piece, Kentish Capons nine dozen and a half at 12 d. a piece, Capons course nineteen dozen 6 d. a piece, Cocks of gross seaven dozen & nine at 8 d. a piece, Cocks course fourteen dozen and eight at 3 d. a piece, Pullets the best at 2 d. ob. a piece, other Pullets 2 d. Pigeons thirty seaven dozen at 10 d. a dozen, and Larks, three hundred and forty dozen at 5 d a dozen; if the Magistrates of England, who are trusted by the Law with the Assi [...]e and correction of the rates and prices of victuals and houshold provisions, and the punishment of Ingrossers, Forestallers, and Regrators, did not sleep over their duty; or too many of the Justices of Peace, and Lords of Leets did not finde it to be more for their [Page] own advantages to improve and raise their Lands to the highest rack, rather then reduce those now exorbitant rates and prices into that order which the Laws and Statutes of England do intend they should be.

There being no just cause to complain of our payments to the King for his Pourveyance, or any other of his necessary affairs, when the cry and daily complaints of our want of money, is not so much by reason of our want of Trade, as our want of wit, by mispending that which should regularly and orderly maintain us and our Families; and it is not our want of Trade, but our too much trading in pride, excess, and superfluities, which hath brought the Nation into that Hectique Feaver, and almost incurable Consumption, which hath now seised upon the vitalls of it, and would be very evident, if a strict accompt and view were taken of what hath been needlesly and vitiously spent within these last twenty or thirty years more then formerly in Apparrel, Diet, Wine, Tobacco, Jewels, Coaches, new Fashions; greater Portions given with Daughters, then our Forefathers could either have given or thought fitting; increase of Servants, Artificers and Labourers wages; gaming by women as well as men, great interest and Brocage paid for money, and buying upon Trust to support their vanities; and twenty millions sterling lately spent in the enterteynment of the Devil, and a most horrid Rebellion, and seeking for a Liberty; to loose all our own Liberties, and may give us to understand, that if we had that money again, which was so foolishly mispended, those that could then lay it out, and now want it, might subscribe unto this undenyable truth, that there would be greater riches and less necessities [Page] seen in England, then in any other Nation, and enough and more then enough to drive the Trade thereof; and that whilst the back and belly have vyed who should be most inordinate and profuse, the improvement of Rents, Wages, and Commodit [...]s, have been to no better a purpose then to improve our vices, and the Nationa [...]l as well as particular miseries and damage, which are and will be the never [...]a [...]ling concomitants and consequents of it: For no reason can be given why we should not as chearfully submit to any thing that tends to the support of the King and the Honour [...] Nation, as every Citizen of London and man of Trade will do to the furnishing of Pageants or publick [...] for the honor and Reputation of their City or Company, or as the Universities sometime do in an Entertainment of the King, or their Chancellour, though they did at the same time contribute to the Pourveyance; or as the People of England did in the 5th year of the Reign of King Edward the 6th, when the Queen Regent of Scotland [...]n her return out of France thither, desiring to take her Journy through England was by the City of London presented at her fi [...]st coming with Muttons, Beefe, Veals, Poultry, Wine, and all other sorts of Provisions necessary for the Entertainment of her, and her no small Train, Heylin Ecclesia restaurata, or History of the Reformation of the Church of England. fol. 114. even to Bread and F [...]well; and when she departed to goe for Scotland, was after great and Princely Entertainments by the King at Whitchall conducted by the Sheriffs of London, to whose care the King had committed it, as farre as Waltham, and by all the Sheriffs of all the Counties through which she passed, untill she came unto the Borders of Scotland, her Enterteynment being provided by the Kings appointment at the charge of the Counties.

[Page]Nor can it be for the honour of the English Nation to come behind the Jews, that stiffe necked and Rebellious Race of Mankind in their kindness and returns unto their Kings and Princes, who notwithstanding that pedagoguy and hard hand of Government, which the Almighty in his eternall Wisdome found necessary to put upon them in their releasing of Servants, and letting their Lands lye untilled every seaventh year, permitting their Debtors and Mortgagors or Ven [...]ors in every Jubile, or 50 year, to enjoy their Lands and Estates, and to be at liberty: their many and many times Free-will and Thanksgiving Offerings,Levit. ca. 1. v. 2, 3. & Levit. 2, 3. & 25 Exod. 21, 22, 23, 29 Peace-Offerings, Sin-Offerings, costly Sacrifices, Feasts unto the Lord, and Journeys to Jerusalem, the Offerings which were brought and prepared for the building of the Tabernacle in such aboundance (a readiness and zeal not now to be found amongst us, as formerly in the building of Churches, or repair of the Cathedral of St. Paul) as God directed Moses by a Proclamation to restrain them from bringing any more: and their Males appearing three times in every year before the Lord not empty handed and their very large Offerings also at the Dedication of the Temple,Deut. 15. & 16. when Solomon their King invited them unto it, and their Corban or money, often given to the Treasury of it, could not forget their respects and duty to their Kings in their Presents or Pourveyance for them and their Houshold.

When God would not suffer the Majesty of Kings, shining as the beams & reflections of his divine Majesty upon the face of Moses when he came down out of the Mount from his conference with him to be abated or lessened, but shewed his care of it in the severe punishment of the gain-saying of Corah, Dathan, & Abiram, and their [Page] saying that Moses took too much upon him; and is, and ever hath been so essentiall, & very necessary to the preservation of Authority and Government, and the Subjects and People under it:1 Sam. 15. as Saul, when he had incurred the displeasure of God and his Prophet Samuel, desired him not to dishonour him before the People. And David, when he heard how shamefully his Embassadours had been abused by the King of Ammon, ordered them to stay at Jericho untill their beards were grown out. 2 Sam. 10.

The Romans, who being at the first but Bubulci and Opiliones, a rude Company o [...] Shepheards & Herdsmen, and were looked upon as such a base and rude Rabble, as the Sabines their Neighbours scorned to marry, or be allyed with them, did afterwards in their growing greatness, (which like a torrent arising from a small assembly of waters, did afterwards overrun and subdue the greatest part of the habitable World;) hold their Consuls in such veneration, as they had (as Cicero saith) magnum nomen, magnam speciem, magnam majestatem, as well as magn [...]m potestatem, as great an outward respect and veneration as they had authority, and were so jealous and watchfull over it, as their Consul Fabius would rather lay aside the honour due unto his Father from a Sonne (of which that Nation were extraordinary obse [...]vers) then abate any thing of it, and commanded his aged Father Fabius, the renowned rescuer and preserver of Rome, in a publique Assembly to alight from his Horse, and do him the honour due unto his present Magistracy, which the good old man, though many of the people did at the present dislike it, did so approve of, as he alighted from his horse, and embracing his Son,Plutarch Apothegm. said, Euge fili sapis, qui intelligis quibus imperes, & quam magnum magistratum susceperis, [Page] my good Son, you have done wisely in understanding over whom you command, and how great a Magistracy you have taken upon you.

And our Offa King of the Mercians in An. Dom. 760, an Ancestor of our Sovereign, took such a care of the Honour and Rights due unto Majesty, and to preserve it to his Posterity, as he ordained,Speed Hist. of Britain, & Leiger Book of St. Albans. that even in times of Peace, himself, and his Successors in the Crown, should as they passed through any City have Trumpets sounded before them, to shew that the Person of the King (saith the Leiger Book of St. Albans) should breed both fear and honour in all, which did either see, or hear him.

Neither will it be any honour for Christians to be out-done by the Heathen in that or other their respects and observances to their Kings, when the Romans did not seldome at their publique charge erect costly Statues,Zonaras in 2 part. Annal. Suetonius in vita August. Cassiodorus, lib. 6. Epist. 7. & Rosinus de Antiquitat. Rom. 54. and Memorialls of their g [...]atitude to their Emperours, make chargeable Sacrifices, ad aras & in aedibus honoris & virtutis, in their Temples of Honour and Virtue, could yearly throw money into the deep Lake or Gulfe of Curtius in Rome, where they were like never to meet with it again pro voto & salute Imperatoris, as Offerings for the health and happiness of their Emperou [...]s; and all the City and Senate, Calendis Januarii velut publico suo parenti Imperatori strenas largiebant, did give New years-gifts to the Emperour as their publick Parent, & bring them into the Capitol, though he was absent, and make their Pensitationes, or Composition for Pourveyance for their Emperours to be a Canon unal [...]erable.

Or by the Magnesians and Smirnaeans, Selden ad Marmora Arundeliana who upon a misfortune in Warre hapned to Seleucus King of Syria, could make a League with each other, and [Page] cause it to be engraven in Marble pillars, which to our dayes hath escaped the Iron Teeth of time, majestatem Seleuci tueri & conservare, to preserve and defend the Honor and Majesty of Seleucus, which was not their Sovereign or Prince, but their Friend and Ally.

Nor any thing to perswade us that our Forefathers were not well advised,Mat. Paris 549. when in their care to preserve the honor of their King and Country, they were troubled and angry in the Reign of King H. 3. that at a publick Feast in Westminster-Hall, the Popes Legate was placed at the Kings Table, in the place where the King should have sate, or when the Baronage, or Commonalty of England, did in a Parliament holden at Lincoln, in the Reign of King Edward the First by their Letters to their then domineering demy-God the Pope, who was averse unto it, stoutly assert their Kings superiority over the Kingdome of Scotland, and refuse that he should send any Commissioners to Rome, to debate the matter before the Pope in Judgement, which would tend to the disherison of the Crown of England, the Kingly Dignity, and prejudice of the Liberties,Walsingham Hist. Angl. 85. Customes, and Laws of their Forefathers, to the observation and defence of which they were ex debito prestiti juramenti astricti, bound by Oath, and would not permit, tam insolita & praejudicialia, such unusuall and prejudiciall things to be done against the King, or by him if he should consent unto it.

Or when the Pope intending to cite King Edward the Third to his Court at Rome, in Anno 40 of his Reign, to do homage to the See of Rome for England and Ireland, and to pay him the Tribute granted by King John, the whole Estates in Parliament did by common consent declare unto the King, that if the Pope [Page]should attempt any thing against him by process, Rot. Parl. 40 E. 3. m. 78, 9. or other matter, the King with all his Subjects should with all their force resist him: And in Anno 42 of King Ed. 3. advised him to refuse an offer of peace made unto him by David le Bruse King of Scotland (though the War [...]es and frequent incursions of that Nation were alwayes sufficiently troublesome & chargeable) so that he might enjoy to him in Fee the whole Realm of Scotland, Rot. Parl. 42 E. 3. m. 7. without any subjection, and declared that they could not assent unto any such Peace, to the disherison of the King and his Crown, and the great danger of themselves.

Or that William Walworth he gallant Mayor of London, whose fame for it will live as long as that City shall be extant, was to be blamed, when he could not endure the insolency of the Rebel Wat Tyler in suffering a Knight whom the King had sent to him to stand bare before him, but made his Dagger in the midst of his Rout and Army teach his proud heart better manners.

Or Richard Earl of Arundel [...]nd Surrey did more then was necessary, when as he perceiving before hand the after accomplished wicked designe and ambition of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster, and titular King of Leon and Castile, Rot. Parl. 17 R. 2. did before the downfall of that unhappy Prince King Richard the Second, complain in Parliament that he did sometimes go arme in arme with the King, and make his men wear the same colour of Livery that the Kings servants did.

Or that it was ill done by the Parliament in the 14th. year of the Reign of that King, when they petitioned him, that the Prerogative of him and his Crown might be kept, and that all things done to the contrary might be redressed: Or that the Lords Spirituall and Temporal, and Commons in Parliament assembled in [Page] the 16th year of the said Kings Reign, did not well understand the good of the Kingdom, when upon a Debate and consideration of the Popes Usurpation and Incroachments upon the Kings Regalities, and his Holiness Provisions made for Aliens and Strangers by the benefices of the Church of England, 16 R. 2. they did unanimously declare, that they and all the Leige Commons of the Realm would stand with the King and his Crown and Regality in the cases aforesaid, and in all other cases attempted against him his Crown and Regality, in all points to live and to dye: Or that our forefathers were not to be imitated in their stout assertions of the Rights of their Kings and their Regalities,Coke 1. part. 5. Reports. 26 when in their zeal thereunto Humphry Duke of Glocester, when the Pope had wrote Letters in the Reign of King Henry the Sixth in derogation of the King & his Regality, and the Churchmen durst not speak against them, he did throw his Letters and Missive into the fire and burn them.

Or that it can be well done by us to withhold from him that small retribution of Pourveyance (which is a Duty established by a fourfold obligation, composed of a Right or Duty, a very antient Custome backt by the Laws of God, Nature, and Nations, the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy, and a contract made and continued by the people to their Kings, built upon the best and greatest of considerations, which the Prophet David in the 15th Psalm, if it had not been (as it is) beneficiall to the people, but to some loss or damage, adviseth not to be broken) and enforce him for want of it to give over his Housekeeping; and deprive him of that Loadstone which might amongst many other of his daily graces and favours, attract and draw unto him the love and affections of his people, & the most iron & rusty [Page] hearted Clowns; or leave our Trajan no wall for his [...]erba Parietaria, sweet smelling flower to grow upon.

Or that it can be any honour for our Lords and Ladies, who received their honour from the King and his Progenitors,M. S. Francisci Junii fil. Francisci Junii in diatrib. de vocibus Lord & Lady. and were in the Saxon Times called [...] and [...], Lords and Ladies from their Hospitalities, and giving of bread, to see, and not seek or help to remedy the greatest dishonour which in the consequence of it was ever put upon the Fountain of honour and a King of England, in Solio, in his Throne and full possession of his Kingdome; and so much the more and without an example, because it is not in the Time of a Rebellion, but a happy Restauration, and in the time of Peace, after an end or conclusion of an intestine and barbarous Warre; and so notorious as it hath been told in the Streets of Gath and Askalon, and stirred up some unmannerly fancies and pictures made by some of our envious Neighbours in reproach of it.

Or that there can be any reason that those that think it reason that the King should recompence them for their losses and damages susteyned in his service, in doing their duty unto him, should not be as willing to give him an ease in his losses by any agreement made with them, which proves to be prejudiciall, or a damage unto him: or that we may not give our selves in assurance, that the Baronage of England, 20 H. 6. who in a Parliament in the 20th year of the Reign of King Henry the Third, refused to consent to an Act of Parliament for the legitimation of such children as were bot [...] before marriage to Parents afterwards married, and clapping their hands upon their swords, cryed una [Page]voce, with one voice, nolumus mutare leges Angliae, we will never consent to change the laws of England, would now, if they were living, say more, and bewail the downfall of the Honor of their King and Country: And not only they, but all the then hospitable Gentry and Commonalty of England.

Lament to see so good and gracious a King allied to all the greatest Houses, and Princely Families of Christendome, by a discent farre beyond the most antient of them, and an extraction of blood equalling, if not surpassing the greatest of them, and as well deserving of his People, want the means to support a Magnificence as high and illustrious as any of his Royall Progenitors, and not to be able for want of his Pourveyance to give his Servants Diet or Wages; and that some of the principall of them,Vide Oath of the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Kings house. as the Treasurer and Comptroller, being sworn by the Orders of the House, that all things in the Kings House be guided to the Kings most worship, and that they search the good old rule worshipfull and profitable of the Kings Court used before time, and them to keep, and better if they can; should have so much cause as they have to weep, as the Priests did at the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and complaining that the beauty is departed from the Kings house, his Servants are become like Harts that find no Pasture, and they that did, feed plentifully are desolate in the Streets.

Wonder what wild Boar out of the Forrest, or Fox out of the Wood have so destroyed and laid wast the Vineyards and the Gardens, the Beds of Spices, the Roses of Sharon, and the Lilies of the Vallies; that some of our Temples should be gloriously re-edified, and our Zion repaired, and yet the glory of our Solomon and his [Page] housekeeping not restored, but his Servants ruined and their names, as to their pay and maintenance blotted out of the Registers,Cantic. 2. that the Winter should be past, the Rain over and gone, the Flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of the Birds come, and the voyce of the Turtle heard in our Land; and the State and Magnificence of our Solomon and his Royall housekeeping, which would have heretofore astonished a Queen of Sheba, should be now most needlesly exchanged for a desolation, and bear all the marks upon it of a languishing Honour.

That the Courts and Palace of our most gracious King Charles the Second, by a mischance of quitting his Rights of Prae-emption and Pourveyance, or Compositions for them, should as to many of its Attendants, have all the year turned into an Ember week, and be about Noon or Dinner time, like the silence and want of Company at Midnight; or a representation of the middle Isle of the Cathedrall of St. Pauls in London, destitute of all its Walkers or Company but such as had nothing to buy their Dinner withall; which heretofore begot the reproachfull adage or saying usually cast upon such men of distress and necessity, that they dined with Duke Humphrey upon a Traditional mistake, that the Monument of Humphrey Duke of Glocester was in the middle Isle of St. Pauls Church in London, when it appears by the Armes engraven therein to be a Beuchamp Earl of Warwick.

And that the King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland should be necessitated to make a small Room in White hall, a place to eat his meat in, and be contented with ten dishes of meat for the first and second Courses for him, and his Royall Consort at Dinner, [Page] when most of the Nobility have as much or more, and the richest part of the Gentry, and most of the rich Merchants and Tradesmen of London do not think such a proportion in their ordinary way of Diet to be more then sufficient.

And might remember that the Royall Pourveyance is, and hath been as well due to a Prince in his Palace, as in the Field or his Tents, and more deserved by a Prince in the time of Peace, and protecting us in the blessings enjoyed by it, then it is, or can be in the time of Warre, when every man is willing enough to offer it to a marching Army, that doth but hope and endeavour to defend them. And that God was so displeased with the refusers of it, as he resolved, that an Ammonite or Moabite should never enter into his holy and blessed Congregation, because they met not the children of Israel with bread and water in the way when they came forth out of Egypt. Deut. 23. v. 4.

That it was reckoned as a crime upon the People of Israel, Judges 8. v. 35. that they shewed not kindness to the house of Zerubbaal, namely Gideon, according to all the goodness which he shewed unto Israel.

That it was not only Solomons stately Throne of Ivory over-laid with the best Gold, 1 Reg. 10. & 2 Chron. ca. 9. adorned with the Images of golden Lions, that supported it, nor the Forty thousand stalles of horses for his Chariots, and twelve thousand Horsemen, and the Tributes and Presents sent from many of the Nations round about him, but his Royall Pourveyance and Provision for his Houshold, the meat of his Table, sitting of his Servants, the manner of their sitting at meat; and the attendance of his Ministers and their Apparel, which among many other necessary Circumstances of State and Emanations [Page] of Power and Majesty, joyned with the other parts of his Regall Magnificence, raised the wonder in the Queen of Sheba, and took away her spirits from her.

That to overburden our Head, or heap necessities upon him, may bring us within the blame and censure of the Judicious Bodin, a man not meanly learned in Politiques,Bodin de Repub. 6. who decrying all unbecoming Parsimonies in a King or his Family, delivers his opinion, that sine Majestatis ipsius contemptu fieri non potest ea res enim peregrinos ad principem aspernandum, & subditos ad deficiendum excitare consuevit, that to lessen the number of a Kings Servants, or Attendants cannot be done without a contempt or diminution of Majesty it self, which may cause Strangers to despise him, and his own Subjects to rebell against him.

That our Ancestors the Germans did well understand what a benefit the Common people had by the Princes Honour and Reputation, when they were so zealous of it, and ipsa plerun (que) fama belli profligant, many times found it to be a cause of lessening or preventing Warres.Tacitus de moribus Germanorum, ca. 13, & 14. And St. Hicrom was not mistaken when he concluded, that ubi honor non est, ibi contemptus, ubi contemptus, ibi frequens injuria, & ubi indignatio, ibi quies nulla; where there is not honour there is contempt▪ and where there is contempt there are Injuries,Hieron. Epist. and where anger and wrath are, there is no manner of quiet. That it must needs be a Prognostick of a most certain ruine to the Nation to be so addicted to our pride and vanities, as to take all we can from the head to bestow it upon the more ignoble and inferiour Members: Or to be so infatuated, and so farre fallen out with reason, as to believe that they can enjoy either health or safety, when the Head hath that taken from it, which should procure it.

[Page]That our Ancestors who were so great Observers of their duties in the payment of their Tithes, as to take more then an ordinary care to give and bequeath at their deaths a [...],In LL. Canuti 102. & Dugdales Warwickshire illustrated, 679. & 680. or Symbolum Animae, as a Mortuary or Compensation pro substracti [...]ne decim [...] rum person [...]lium▪ nec non oblationum, for Tithes and Offerings (the Pourveyance for those which served at the Alta [...]) negligently or against their wills forgotten, & to such a value as their dextrarium ferro coopertum, best horse carrying the Armes (not Escutcheons) of its Lords and Master; or if the party deceasing were no [...] of so great an estate, gave meliorem bovem, his best Oxe, and with such a solemnity as those or the like Mortuaries were led or driven before the Corps when it was carried to be interred; or if not given in specie, were sure to be redeemed with money; of which Thomas de Bello Campo Earl of Warwick, in anno 43 of the Reign of King Edward the Third was so mindfull, as he did by his last Will and Testament,Dugdales Warwickshire illustrated, 317. give to every Church within his multitude of Manours his best Beast which should then be found, in satisfaction of his Tithes forgotten to be paid, would ever have made it their business to withdraw or hinder their Oblations and Duty of Pourveyance to God Almighties Vicegerent, the Keeper of both Tables, and the Protector of them; or rejoyce in the Bargain which hath been made for the Kings acquittal of it; or by plowing over the roots or by the filthy smoke and vapours of some particular private ugly Interests, have rejoyced in blasting and destroying that Royall Oak of Hospitality, which like the mighty Tree in Nebuchadnezars Vision reached unto Heaven, Dant. 4. and the sight thereof to the ends of all the Earth, had fair leaves and much fruit, yielding meat for many; [Page]under which the Beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the F [...]wls of heaven had their habitation, to the end they might make their own fi [...]es, and wa [...]me themselves by the withered and dead boughs and branches thereof.

Or that the People of England, who were wont so much to reverence and love their Kings, and to remember benefits and favours received from them, as to give Lands and other Hereditaments in pe [...]petuity to pray for the health of their Kings,Ex veteri libro M. S. Prioris de Spalding in Comitat. Lincoln▪ in Bibliotheca Antonii Oldfeild Baronetti. as amongst many others which may be instanced, Ivo Tallebois post decessum Gulielmi Anglorum Regis donavit Deo & sancto N [...]cholao pro animabus ipsius Regis ac Regine Matildae uxoris ejus ad augmentum victus Monachorum sanctae Mariae de Spalding decimam Thelonei & Salinarum de Spalding, gave t [...]e Tenth of his Tolls and Salt-pi [...]s to pray for the souls of William the Conqueror and Queen Matilda his Wife.

Mauserus Biset, Sewer to King Henry the First, gave likewise in perpetual Almes 22 Acres of Land,Spelman glossar. 405. in voce Marletum. Dugdales Warwickshire illustrated. Pat. 27. & 30. H. 6. and half of a Mar [...]e-pit, to pray for the souls of his Lord King Henry, and of him, and his Wife.

And as Geffrey de Clinto [...] did in the Reign of King Henry the Third, and William de Whaplode in or about the 27th year of the Reign of King Henry the Sixth, should be so willing to un-English themselves, and by a loathsome and ugly ingratitude, and for the saving & sparing of so inconsiderable an yearly charge, as their Oblations in the Royal Pourveyance, or Compositions for them amounted unto, make us to be every day more and more a by-word, reproch, and scorn to the Nations round about us, and entail upon us those dishonors, mischiefs, inconveniences damages and accumulations [Page] of evils, which may sooner be foreseen and prevented then remedied.

And to fasten it on, and be very sure not to fail of it, will be content so as with the rich man in the Gospel, they may fare diliciously, live wantonly, and give entertainment to all their excesses of pride and vanity, to make themselves slaves to sin, and fool away their happiness: and if Lazarus be after his death carried with Angels into Abrahams bosome, it shall never trouble them untill death, and the fate of mortality shall bring them to be at leisure to think better of it.

Can without any remorse of conscience, fear of Hell, honor and welfare of their Nation, care of Heaven after ages or posterity, see the piety good old virtues Customes and Manners of England murdered, and do all that they can to extirp and destroy them root and branch.

And whilst too many of our Gentry can leave the Jack-daws to be Stewards of their formerly better employed stately well-built houses in the Country, bring their Wives and Children to London, and make some little Lodgings, or hou [...]es there to be their residence to learn what vices are most in fashion; spend fifty or one hundred pounds at a time in a Treatment or Tavern at London, and be cheated and cozened an half or a third part in the reckoning, make a Feast at their Lodgings or Houses enough to puzle Lucullus, or Vitellius, Cooks or Professors in the Art of Gluttony at three or five hundred pounds charges. have their Oleo's Haut gousts Ambiges, costly Gallimauphries, or Hotch potches laid altogether in a dish, and that dish so big as the door must needs be taken off the hinges to make a stately passage to bring it [Page] in; and after some hours spent in heightning and pleasing their appetites, and adoring Bacchus their drunken Diety, can let some of their Mortgaged Mannors and Lands run about the streets by day and night, in Coaches with dores and glass Windows, and be at the yearly charges of maintaining a couple or more of Coach-horses, as much fatted and pampered more then needs to be, as would provide more then a yoke or two of fat Oxen to kill at Christmas, when they shall be so good as to observe such Christian Festivals; and instead of four or six proper serving men, as their old hospitable Grand [...]ires had in constant pay or salary to attend, or fight for them, upon no Tavern or Alehouse [...]ray, or Quarrels, but just occasions, have only one or two Foot-boyes dressed up like some ridiculous Antiques to wait upon the Coach, by getting up before or behind it.

Can see virtue and honestly only laid up in Books and Speculations, and be read as Romances and things impracticable; truth reason, and conscience greatly talked of and a part of almost every mans daily pretences, but used as vagabonds incertilaris without any habitations, and very little to be seen, but the names of them made use of (as the Gibeonites did their mouldy bread, old shoes and garments) only for the people to cozen and cheat one another. Trade, the great Diana of our Ephesus, by a strange abuse of it, come to be the greatest cheat, oppression and tyranny of the Nation; and Gods providence vouched for their thriving by it; the numbers of the poor and oppressed daily multiplyed, pri [...]e, knavery, cheating and complement, those termini convertibiles (not mercy and truth) kissing each other, and making a League to cozen and deceive all [Page] such as are not of their trim society.

Amos 1. v. 6.And whilst they are chanting to the sound of the viols, drinking wine in Boules and stretching themselves upon their Couches, can without any brotherly kindness or compassion behold the sighing of the poor and needy, the widows and the fatherless, the misery of multitudes and those that have none to help them, will not deal their bread to the hungry▪ nor bring the poor which are cast out into their houses, Isaiah 58. v. 6, 7. will not cover the naked, but hide themselves from their own flesh; will not undo the heavy burdens, nor let the oppressed go free.

But do all that they can, not only to banish the Kings hospitality, and his accustomed Royalties and magnificence from his Court and Palaces; and as if he and his Servants were in a continual [...]it of a fever, enforce them by withholding his Pourveyance or Compositions for them (whilst they themselves do feast and revel in their own houses) to a thinne and sparing diet; and as to many of them, none at all, but to destroy the greatest and best part of the Hospitality of the Nation, which was wont to make those su [...]ves & potentes benificentiae nexus quibus seu compedibus animi illig [...]ntur, those gratefull (as Marsellaer very well observeth) impressions of benefits,Marsellaer de legatis. which do as it were charme and oblige the minds and affections of mankind: A custome so antient, as it was no stranger [...] to Abraham, the friend of God, when he sitting in his Tent dore in the Plains of Mamre, invited the three then unknown Angels, and feasted them; nor to the Father of the Excellent meek and humble Rebecca, when as Abrahams Servant or Embassadour was so well as he was enterteyned before it, was known from whence he came, and what his message was, and which the Jews [Page] ever after were so unwilling to part with as the good Nehemiah many ages after could in his then no great plenty or felicity, keep a great house, hospitality, Nehemiah 5.17. and many tables, aswell for the Heathen, as 150 of the Jews and Rulers, and hath been justly accompted to be such a religious duty, as St. Paul allowed of the Agapes love or neighbourly Feasts, and exhorted the Hebrews to let bro [...]therly love continue, Hebrews 13. v. 1. & 2. and not to be forgetfull to entertain strangers; for thereby some (meaning their old father Abraham) have unawares entertained Angels.

And being the love and delight of the Almighty that gave us all good things which we possesse, was also the Treasury and keeper of the peoples love; and as much as concerned peace, and good will unto men, a part of the blessed song of the Angels at the Birth of our Redeemer; and in our Ancestors dayes was best of all supported by a generous and well ordered frugality, and by the old Romans held to be so Essential to government, as they spared no cost in their Epulis, or Caresses of the people; and was for many Ages past congeniall and connatural to the English Nation, who are abundantly taken with it, and justly accompted to be such an handmaid to Piety, as Geffery Earl of Essex, and Eustace his Wife did in the Reign of King Henry the second grant to the Nunnery of Clarkenwell totam decimam totius victus & procurationis (provisions saith the Learned Sir Henry Spelman) illorum & domus suae & familiae suae, Selden hist. of Tithes, 319, 320. Spelman glossar. in voce procuratio. the Tithe or Tenths of all the victuals and provisions of their house and family.

And Maud of Mandevill Countesse of Essex and Hertford, Selden hist. of Tithes, 320. in the beginning of the Reign of King H. 3. confirming the said Grant, doth it in more express words, viz. ubicun (que) fuerimus de panibus & potibus, & carnibus &[Page]etiam de piscibus, wheresoever they should be of bread, drink, fl [...]sh, and fish: And was such an effect of the magnificence & grandeur of the minds of the English Nobility, as Roger Earl of Warwick in the 23. year of the Reign of King Henry the first did grant unto Richard the Son of Jvo his Cook, afterwards taking the Sirname of Woodlow from their residence at Woodlow in the County of Warwick (besides the Mannor of Woodlow with divers Lands and Priviledges thereunto belonging; and a Yard land in Cotes in the County aforesaid, given by the said Earle to him and his heirs) the Office of Master Cook in his Kitchin to him and his Heirs,Dugdales Warwickshire illustr [...] ted 373. & ex ipso autograph. which his Father theretofore held with all Fees of his Kitchen belonging to the Master Cook both in Liveries and Horses, as the Esquires of his Houshold then had, of which Alan the Son of that Richard being also in the said Office in the house of William Earl of Warwick Son of the said Earl Roger, who it seems could produce no Charter in writing thereof, obtained a grant and confirmation of the said William Earl of Warwick of the said Mannor, Lands, and Office, for which the said Alan gave unto the Earl ten shillings in money, twelve Ge [...]se, and a Fikin of Wine; And a late experience, (if antiquity had been altogether silent) of the benefits which do come by it, hath sufficiently declared unto us the no dull operation or impulse of it, in that since the happy Restoration of King Charles the second, and the Kingly Gove [...]nment, a Gentleman high born, and of a great [...]xtraction retiring into a Country where some part of his Estate doth lye, about one hundred miles from London, did by an Housekeeping and Hospitality becoming him, and his great Ancestors so winne the hearts and love of the people, [Page] though they were of a different Judgement and profession of Religion, which usually bege [...]s more animosities and ill will then it should do, as he became their darling whilst he was with them, and their sorrow and cause of tolling their Bells backwards, as a signe of some disaster, when he had occasion for a little while to leave them.

And a Gentleman, or Faber fortun [...] suae, one that but lately had made his fortunes, in as remote a Country from London, and of some new fangled opinions in Religion distastfull enough to many in his Neighbourhood, did only by a charity of giving unto some numbers of poor people of the place wherein he lived, Beef and Pottage at his door twice or thrice every week in the year, so gain the love of the people, as they that would not otherwise have shewed him any love or favour, did not deny him either of them.

When as too many can lay aside and neglect the care of obliging and gaining the hearts and affections of their Neighbours and Tenants, and making any shift to furnish and provide the excess and sinfull superfluities both of the belly and the back, will not let the belly want it, nor the back be without it.

And those that have no mind or will to pay or make the King any recompence for his Pourveyance or Compositions, can without any grudging see the Pourveyance of the City of London, that Queen that sitteth like the afterwards unhappy City of Tire upon many waters covereth all our Island, and her Citizens by seeking to buy as cheap as they can, and to adulterate as much as they can, and sell as dear as they doe, all their wares & commodities, can make a costly enhance of all manner of houshold provisions, and extending their desires [Page] and attempts for that purpose to the remotest parts of the Kingdome, do by ingrossings, combinations, and other unlawfull Artifices of Trade, bring the fatness of the Flock, and the delicacies of Sea and Land to feed and furnish out the Luxuries of her own Inhabitants, and such as have a will to be infected with it, and make the whole Island to be too little to maintain her vice and avarice, insomuch as Salmons, which at Monmouth, being above 100 miles distant from London, were wont to be sold there for ten groats a piece, are now before hand bespoke and bought up by some Londoners, or their Agents for ten shillings a piece, and the Towns-men that did before e [...]joy a priviledge that all the Salmons brought to that Market should be first brought to the Kings Bord, and no Forreigner suffered to buy any untill the Town were first served, can now see themselves bereaved of their Prae-emption as well as the King is, whose Progenitors did at the first bestow it upon them.

In Lincolnshire, above 70 or 80 miles from London, do so ingross and precontract for all wild fowl, Ducks and Mallards, as the Gentry of that Country where they are bred, and should have some cheapness & plenty of them, are resolving to be Petitioners to the Justices of Peace at the next Quarter-Sessions, that the Heglers and men of London may not be suffered to raise the p [...]ices of their Wild-fowl, nor carry them out of the Count [...]y untill it be first served.

And as if all were not enough to enrich themselves, and undo others, can upon any accident or occasion, or but a supposi [...]on of things which may happen, make and dresse up their pretences and supposed causes of p [...]ices to be ra [...]sed and e [...]hanced, to the great [Page] oppression and burden of all that are to buy of them, and but upon a late likelihood of Warres betwixt us and the Netherland united Belgick Provinces, whilst we are Masters of the Seas, and not under any probability of having our Seas disquieted, or Trade interrupted, have so greatly before hand raised the rates and prices of Sea-coal, Sprats, Salt, and the most part of transmarine Commodities, as they that shall believe that those and many more of their exactions which they will put and enforce upon the people by reason of a probability of that Warre, will without any just cause or reason for it in a short time amount unto more then six hundred thousand pounds, may well be understood neither to prejudice the truth, or their judgements in it.

And if that, and such lately or more then ever practised courses shall not be enough to raise and swell the rates and prices of all sorts of Provisions and Commodities in London, and the Counties within 100 miles or more of the circumference of it, the unreasonable and extorting reckonings and Items of the Cooks and Vintne [...]s in London and Westminster, and their Suburbs, to their prodigall and unthriving Guests who (in a custome near of kin to madness or the biggest sorts of follies which other Nations do never or so little use as they wonder at it) do first eat their meat and delicacies, and leaving themselves afterwards to the curtesies, and as little co [...]science of the Cooks and Vintners, what they shall pay for it, will be sure to be a means to raise the rates and prices of victuals, and by their example impose it upon others, as high as the sharking of those that ask it, and the e [...]siness and carelessness of those that yield un [...]o it can lift it.

And whilst they can pay their duties and rents of [Page] Blackmail and Cornage in many of the Northern Counties, which were at the first only yearly paid unto their Landlords for their protection against the Scottish Incursions now not at all either feared or endured;Spelman glossar in voce Mails. and there and in other places pay Tithes though many times more in valuation then they were one hundred years agoe, three shillings four pence per annum for respits of Suit of Court, when there are not any Courts kept for many years together, or not all; and Toll in many Cities and Corporations, which being granted for some few years for Murage, or the repairing or building of the walls of some Cities or Towns, is, as is to be feared, yet continued and taken, though the walls being almost ruined, and in their rubbidge, do now only serve to build houses upon, can willingly take the benefit of their small Quit-rents for Mannopera and Carropera Precaria, and Harvest work to some Landlords who for many years have neither had Corn nor Hay to cut or carry; and for other services anciently due unto the Lords of Leets and Manors, which may now be believed to have been compounded for at easie and small rates, when as some of the Tenants of the Church Revenue of Canterbury, did pay but a penny per annum for that which was a rent of Twenty Eggs,Lambard Itinerar. 212 now sold in London for a penny an Egg; and for Hens and Benerth, which was a service of the Cart and Plough but sixteen pence per annum; and do yet notwithstanding as many services perhaps as were bought or compounded for by their Quit-rents, though at the same time their Lords, if they would truly execute the power intrusted unto them by the King and his Laws, might in their Court Leets hinder and restrain their unreasonable and excessive rates and prices in the [Page] sale of victuals and houshold provisions; pay the hundred penny,Spelman glossar. in voce Scot. which is a peny given to the support of the Bayliffs and Officers of Hundr [...]ds, though in many of them no Hundred Courts at all a [...]e kept, a Scot or Tax towards the maintenance of the Sheriff and his Officers, who by their many illegall courses and exactions, are not to seek the way to provide for themselves, Ward-peny and Brigbote for watching and warding, and amending of Bridges,Idem glossar in vocibus Ward-peny & Brigbote. Spelman glossar. in voce Romescot. although they be yearly assessed in their Parishes for the same things; much of the Romescot, or Popish Chimney-money, after the rate of a penny for every Chimney, which when it was ancienly paid in England, notwithstanding some opinions that it amounted unto a far greater summe, was but 300 Marks) though by the Statute of 1 Eliz. it be forbidden. And for Rode Knights,Idem glossar. in voce [...] Rode-knight or the service of being retained and and tied by their service or customes to attend their Lord or his Lady, or Wife in their journeys, or to Church, though many of them will notwithstanding for good will, and in hope of favours or benefits from their Landlords, if they be Justices of Peace, Deputy-Lieutenants of the County, or of such eminence and power as to be able to do them good or harme, be offering those, or many other services, and glad when they are accepted.

The Merchants in London can pay Scavage or Shewage, Spelman glossar. in vo [...] Scavage. which amounteth unto some hundred pounds per annum profit to the City of London, for leave to shew or expose their Wares or Merchand [...]zes to sale, though they do privately sell their Wares and Commodities in their Dwelling-houses or Ware-houses, and every petty Tradesman and Retailer hath, as a Freeman of the City, as much liberty at all times to expose to sale in [Page] his Shop, or in his House any Commodities or Wares belonging to his Trade.

The people of most Parishes can pay ten times more to the Poor then they did but forty years agoe, and willingly contribute; (and it is very well done to ease their Ministers, who is but seldome troubled with a great Benefice) to the providing of Surplices, Church-Bibles, and Service-books, though the Parsons or Impropriators have the Tithes and Glebes, and can every where without any complaint or murmuring, allow and rest contented with the Pigeon-houses of the Lords of Mannors, and of other private men, though they do yearly eat and devour as much Wheat, Barley, Beans, Peace and Oat [...] of the Neighbourhood, as the Pourveyance or Comp [...]sitions for it for the Kings House, and Provender for his horses, do yearly cha [...]ge the people.

And whilst they can endure to pay more for their victuals, apparel, and necessaries, Servants and Artificers wages, and all that they have occasion to use through all the affai [...]s of humane life and occasions, only because they that demand it, will not, or say they cannot afford it cheaper, and be cheated and cozened yearly as much as will amount unto some hundred thousands of pounds sterling by false measures and weights, by the sleepiness and fellow feeling of the Guilds or Fraternities of Companies of Trades, & the carelesness and connivances of the Clerks of the Markets, will notwithstanding murmur and repine at every little Oblation, Payments, and Duties to their King, be as unwilling as they can to be satisfied of the reason of it, but make Hue and Cry after them: And when as a lea [...]ned Gentleman hath well observed, that the greatest care of good Subjects and Christians should be to fear God, and [Page] honor the King, do make it their business & best of their gains to cozen the King and the Church, and when shame hath not yet so left the world, as to leave it without some little startling or blushing at the being known, or discovered to have cozened any body, will never at all be ashamed to have cozened the King all they can.

Which kind of publ [...]que villany the Civil [...] Law so detested, and desired to punish, as they reckoned but a debtor to the Exchequer or Emperors Treasury, being farre more innocent then those that cozen or defraud it amongst the number of the most heynous offenders tanquam minxerit in patrios [...]ineres, Vzzonius de mandatis principum, cap. 7. §. 1. as one who had pisssed upon his Fathers (or Countries) Ashes; and as Murderers or Adulterers, denyed them the Sanctuary if they sought it of the Church.

And when the Kings Royal Progenitors have taken so much care to prevent the decay of Tillage, as by the Statute of 25 H. 8. cap. 13. to ordain that no man should keep more then two hundred sheep upon any land taken to farme ▪ and for the increase of Tillage plenty, and cheapness of Corn, did by the Statute of 2 Ed. 6. cap. 13. ordain that no Tithes should be paid for wast or Heath ground improved unto Tillage, untill seaven years after the improvement, by the Statute of 4▪ Jac. cap. 11. made a Provision for Meadow and Pasture, and the necessary maintenance of husbandry▪ and tillage in the Manors, Lordships, and Parishes of Merden, alias Mawerden, Boddenham, Wellington, Sutton St. Michael, Sutton St. Nicholas, Marton upon Lugg, and the Parish of Pipe in the County of Hereford by the Statute of 7 Jac. cap. 11. That none should spoil corn and grain by untimely Hawking: and by another Statute in the same Parliament, [Page] That Se [...]-sands might in Devonshire and Cornwall be fetched from the sea to manure Lands, paying reasonable duties for the passage through, or by other mens Lands with Boats and Barges. And the Assize of Bread throughout the whole Kingdome is by the Statute and Ordinance of 51 H. 8. to be yearly made and regulated by the Baker of the Kings house, do take all the care they can, that the Bread for his Houshold, and Oats and Provender for his horses may be at the dearest rates, and a great deal more then any of his Subjects do pay.

And although he and his Royal Progenitors and Predecessors have made the best provisions they could for the breed of Cattle, and cheapness of meat by the Statute of 24 H. 8. cap. 9. forbidding the killing of weanling Calves under the age of two years; That a milch Cow by the Statute of 2 & 3 Philip and Mary should be kept for every sixty Sheep, and a Calf reared for every 120 Sheep. By an Act of Parliament in 8 Eliz. cap. 3. That no Sheep should be transported: and by several Acts of Parliament, and otherwise, encouraged the drayning of huge quantities of Fenne Lands, and the imbanking of Marshes and Lands gained from the Sea, and his now Majesty hath of late to help the breeders and sellers of Cattle in their reasonable prices thereof, prohibited by an Act of Parliament the bringing in of any Cattle which were heretofore usually and yearly brought into England in great heards out of Scotland and Ireland, and doth yearly by his Royal Edicts and Proclamations, as many of his noble Progenitors, Kings and Queens of England, have usually done, enjoyned the strict observation of the Lent, will [Page] notwithstanding for want of his Pourveyance, or much of his houshold Provisions, as they ought to be served in kind, constrain him to pay in ready money intollerable dear rates and prices, for that which his Officers have occasion to buy for the Provision of his Household.

Who speed no better when they buy or provide his Fish of those who might have had so much duty and honesty as to afford it cheaper, when his Royall Predecessors by the Statutes of 13 E. 1. cap. 47. and 13 R. 2. cap. 19. ordained severe penalties upon those that do take and destroy Salmons, Lampries, or any other Fish at unseasonable times, or destroy the spawn of Fish.

By the Statute of 22 Ed. 4. cap. 2. That Salmons, Herrings and E [...]les be duly packed.

By the Statute of 11 H. 7. cap. 23. That Englishmen may import and bring into England Fish taken by Forreigners.

By the Statute of 2 Ed. 6. cap. 6. that no Officer of the Admiral [...]y should exact any thing of them which travailed for Fish.

By the Statute of 5 Ellz. cap. 6. Fishermen and Mariners shall not be compelled to serve as Souldiers upon the Land, or upon the Sea, but as Mariners, except in case of Enemies, or to subdue Rebellions.

By the Statute of 13 Eliz. cap. 10. allowed Sea-fish and Herring to be transported in English Ships with cross sails without payment of Customes.

By the Statute of 39 Eliz. cap. 10. ordained Aliens to pay for salted Fish, and salted Herrings to be brought by them into England, such Customes as shall be imposed in forreign parts upon the salted Fish and Herrings brought thither by Englishmen.

[Page]And our now gracious Soveraign mainteyns a great Navy to assert and defend his Dominion and his Subjects sole right of Fishing in the British Seas, and hath of late in the midst of his own wants for the better encouragement of his People to seek their own good, and that which our British Seas will plentifully afford them, given all his Customes inward and outward for any the retorns to be made by the sale of Fish in France, Denmark, and the Baltick Seas for seaven years from the first entrance into the intended Trade of Fishing.

And when the Mayor of Kingstone upon Hull, or his Officers can at the same time obteyn of them better penyworths, and according to the directions of the Statute of 33 H. 8. cap. 33. have so good a Pourveyance allowed them, as they can take of all Fishermen priviledged for every last of Herring xxd. for every hundred of salt Fish iiii d. for every Last of Sprats viii d. of every person not priviledged, for every Last of Herring i [...] s. iiii. d. for every hundred of Salt-fish iiii d. and for every Last of Sprats viii d. as they did before the making of the said Statute.

And when our Laws which have their life and being from the King and his Royall Progenitors, have by the Statutes of 3 and 4 Ed. 6. cap. 22. and 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 5. provided, that the prices of Butter and Cheese be not enhaunced, nor any transported without licence. That the prices of Ale and Beer shall b [...] [...]he Statute of 23 H. 8. be assessed at reasonable rates, and the Barrels and Kilderkins gauged. That Spices and Grocery Ware shall by the Statute of 1 Jac. cap. 19. be garbled, and not mingled. That Woods by the Statute of 35 H, cap. 17. & 13 Eliz. cap. 5. shall not be converted into Tillage or Pasture: And by the Statutes of 7 Ed. [Page] 6. cap. 7. & 47. cap. 14. that an Assize shall be kept as to the measures only of Coal, Tallwood, Bille [...]s, and Faggots.

And some of our Princes have given by their Charters many & great Liberties & Immunities to the Companies of Brewers and Woodmongers. And King James did in or about the 11th year of h [...]s R [...]ign upon his granting of some priviledges to the Town and Colleries of N [...]wcastle upon Tyne, cause the Host-men, or Oast-men of Newcastle to covenant to and with the King (which they have seldome or never at all observed) yearly to serve the City of London, and places adjacent with Sea-coals Winter and Sommer, at less then 20 shi [...]lings a Chaldron, and it was by the Statute of 32 H. 8 cap. 8. ordained, That none do sell Phesants or Partriches unto any but unto the Officers of the King▪ Queen, or Princes Houses, upon the forfeiture of 6 s. 8 d. for every Phesant, and 4 s. 4 d. for every Partrich; and did by their Charters, or allowances of Prescription grant Free-warren, and divers other Franchises unto divers Lords of Manors; yet matters must be so ordered, as the King, though he buy with ready mony, must be sure to pay dearer for his Butter, Cheese, Coals, Beer, Ale, Billet, Tallwood, Faggots, Grocery-ware, Rabbets, Phesants and Partriches, then any of his Subjects.

Took away by the Statute of 5 Eliz. the severity of the Statute of 25 Ed. 3. enjoyning small wages to Labourers and Artificers, and ordained, That the Justices in every County should by their discretion, according to the dearth or plenty of victuals, yearly at the Sessions held at Easte [...], assesse how much every Mason, Carpenter, Tyler, & other Crafts men, Workmen, and Labourers, should have by the day or year, and limit proportions of Wages, [Page]according to plenty or scarcity: and by an Act of Parliament made in the first year of the Reign of King James, did amongst other things give a further power to the Justices of every County to limit and regulate the wages and hire of Labourers and Artificers, according to plenty and scarcity, that Act of Parliament being since expired for want of continuance, yet the King in all his occasions and affairs for Workmen and Artificers shall be sure to pay them rates and wages at the highest.

Did by the Statute of 23 Ed. 3. cap. 6. provide, That Butchers, Fishmongers, Brewers, Bakers, Poulterers, and other Sellers of Victuals, should sell them at reasonable prices, and be content with moderate gains. And by the Statute of 13 R. 2. ca. 8. That all Majors, Bayliffs, Stewards of Franchises, and all others that have the order and survey of victualls in Cities, Boroughs, and Market Towns, where victuals shall be sold in the Realm, should enquire of the same. And if any sell any victuals in other manner, he should pay the treble of the value which he so received to the party damnified, or in default thereof to any other that will pursue for the same.

By the Statute of 25 Hen. 8. cap. 2. when but a year before Beef and Pork was by Act of Parliament ordained to be sold at an half penny the pound, and Mutton and Veal at an half penny farthing the pound, and less in Counties and places that may sell it cheaper, and complaint was made in Parliament that the prices of victuals were many times enhaunced and raised by the greedy avarice of the owners of such victuals, or by occasion of ingrossing and regrating the same more then upon any reasonable or just ground or cause, ordained that the prices of Butter, Cheese, Capons, Hens, Chickens, and other victual [...] necessary for mans sustenance,[Page]should from time to time, as the case should require [...], be set and taxed at reasonable prices how they should be sold in gross, or by retail, by the Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the Kings most honourable Privy Councel, Lord Privy Seal, Lord Steward, the Chamberlain, and all other the Lords of the Kings Councel, Treasurer and Comptroller of the Kings most honourable House, Chancellour of the Dutchy of Lancaster, the Kings Justices of either Bench, the Chancellor, Chamberlains, under Treasurer, and Barons of the Exchequer, or any seaven of them, whereof the Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the Kings Councel, or the Lord Privy Seal to be one, and commanded the Justices of Peace, and Lords of Leets to take a care that the prices and rates of victuals be reasonable: Yet the King must not have so much favour and kindness as the Tinientes or Magistrates in the Canar [...]es, or other parts of the Spanish Dominions, who by reason of their power and authority in the correction and rating of the prices of victuals, can have their provisions freely, and of gift presented unto them, or at small and reasonable rates and prices: or as the Lords of Leets, the Justices of Assise, Justices of Peace, Mayors, Magistrates of Cities and Corporations might have theirs, if they would but put in execution the Laws which are entrusted to their care and charges.

Nor can have any thing at reasonable rates, but is enforced to pay dearer for the provisions of his house then any of his Subjects; when as they that could receive his Majesties very large and unexampled Act of Oblivion, can only afford him in their Market rates, an Act of Oblivion for his protection and care of them, and for his many favours and helps in all their occasions [Page] and necessities, and for forgiving them many Millions of monies sterling, or the value thereof; and as unto too many of them are willing that our King and Head should in the rates of his victuals and houshold provisions bear the burden of their follies and irregularities.

Of which the plenty or scarcity of money cannot be any principal or efficient cause, as may be verified by an instance or example lately happened in Spain, where the calling down of money to the half value, to aswage the afflictions of a Famine, was so farre▪ from the hoped for effect of abating the prices of victuals, and houshold Provisions, as they are now well assured, that the covetousness of the Sellers and tricks of Trade have added more to the heightning of those rates and prices then any want or abundance of mony.

And it would therefore well become that part of the People of England, who by their intemperance and carelesness,Jeremy 49. v. 31. as i [...] they were that Nation which dwelt without care, against whom the Prophet Jeremy denounced Gods heavy wrath and judgements, have brought and reduced themselves and their Estates into a languishing and perishing condition, and turned their backs upon the honor of Hospitality, to take into their more then ordinary consideration,David Lloid in vita Antonii Brown militis. that Sir Anthony Brown, a Privy Councellor [...]to King Henry Eighth▪ did not deviate either from truth or prudence▪ when he said that others apprehension of the Kings greatness▪ did contribute as much to our welfare, Idem in vita Johannis Russel militis as our welfare it self ▪ or Sir John Russel, a v [...]ry valiant as well as wise Statesman, Comptroler of the Houshold of King Henry the Eighth, and afterwards Earl of Bedford, when he declared that the Courts of Princes, being those Epitomes through which [...]trangers look into Kingdomes, should be royally set out[Page]with utensils, and with attendance, who might possess all comers with reverence there, and fear elsewhere.

Or that the learned and reverend Sir James Dier, Idem in vita Jacobi Dier militis. Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common-pleas in the 25th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth committed an error, when in the sage and discreet rules left behind him in a Manuscript for the preservation of the Common-wealth, he advised that the Prince should often appear unto his People in Majesty, and that the Courtiers should keep good houses. And if they will do no more, to do but as much as the Beasts and Birds being irrational creatures, do by their bodies natural, make it their greatest care to protect and preserve the Head of our Body Politique, and the honor and dignity of it, and keep it above water.

And now that by his gracious Government, and return to us like the Sun to dispel the cold and uncomfortableness which the Winter of his absence had almost for ever fastned upon us.

—Cum fixa manet reverentia patrum.

Claudian a [...] quarto Consulat. honor▪

Firmatur se [...]ium juris priscamquè resumunt

Canitiem leges. —

when our Parliaments, and our just and ancient Laws are again restored.

— Claustris (que) solutis.

Tristibus exsangu [...]s andent procedere leges.

and released from their former affrights and terrors.

Not endeavour to abridge or endanger the hopes of our future happiness, by being to sparing unto him that was not so unto us.

—Jam captae vindex patriae

Claudian de Bello Getico [...]

Ut sese pariter diffudit in omnia regni

Membra vigor vivusquè redit color urbibus aegris.

[Page] and redeemed our happiness from its Captivity.

But rather imitate the Clergie of the Bishopricks of Gloucester, Heylin hist. Ecclesiae Anglicanae reformatae. Chester, Oxford, Peterborough, and Bristol, who in the fourth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, finding those Bishopricks to be much impoverished by the Earl of Leicester, and some other, who in their vacancies had gotten away a great part of the Revenues thereof, did by their Benevolences for some years after enable the Bishops thereof in some tolerable degree to maintain their Hospitalities.

Speed hist. of England.And our long ago departed Ancestors, who took it ill in the Reign of King John, (with whom they had so much and more then they should contended for their Liberties) that Hubert Arch-bishop of Canterbury should keep a better House and Feast at Easter then the King.

And that Cardinal Woolsey in the Reign of King Henry the Eight should keep as great a state at Court as the King, exercise as great an Authority in the Country for Pourveyance as the King, and forbid Pourveyance to be made in his own Jurisdictions, which made an addition to the Articles of High Treason, or great Misdemeanors charged upon him by the Commons in Parliament brought up to the House of Peers by Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert, afterward a learned Judge of the Court of Common pleas.

So that our King may not for want of his antient rights of Pourveyance, or an Allowance or Compositions for them, the later of which as a means to make so unquestionable a right and priviledge of the Crown of England to be alwayes gratefull and welcome to them, was fi [...]st designed,David Lloid in vita Davidis Brook, militis. set on foot & contrived by Sir David Brook Serjeant at Law unto King Henry the Eighth, and Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in the Reign of [Page] Queen Mary, and happily effected or brought to perfection in or about the 4th year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, be necessitated to retrench or lay down his Royal Housekeeping and Hospitalities, or deprived of his means of Charity and Magnificence, which Jacob Almansor the learned Arabian King, who lived in Anno 654. and conquered Spain, In the life of Almansor, translated out of the Arabick by Robert Ashley. J. C. was in his swarthy Dominions so carefull to preserve, as after that he had given audience unto Suitors, which were some dayes in every week, he usually caused a publique cry to be made, that all of them, as well rich as poor, should stay and take their refections; and to that end furnished Tables for them with such abundance of provisions, as became the house of so mighty a King.

And that if any forreign King or Prince should as Cecily Sister to the King of Sweden, and Wife to the Marquess of Baden, did by a far & a long Voyage come from the North into England to visit our Queen Elizabeth, Heylin hist. Ecclesiae Anglicanae reformatae ▪ and see the splendour of her Court (which as to her Charity, splendour, and Hospitality, though so oversparing in other things, and so unwilling to draw monyes out of her Subjects purses, as she lost the fair hopes and opportunity of regaining Calais, which was so much desired by her) was very plentifully and magnificent, and with the allowance of many more Tables then have been in the times of her Successors) they may return into their Country, as that Princess did with a wonder at it, and not be constrained to say as was once said of the glory of the Temple of Jerusalem, Who is left amongst you that saw this house in her first glory, Haggai [...] ▪ and how do you see it now; and that returning into the former good wayes, manners, and custome of England, we may not be damnati fat [...] populi, but, virtute renati.

[Page]And that to that end we shall do well to leave ou [...] new and untrodded By-wayes of Error, made by the Raiser of Taxes, Dan. 11. v. 20. and the Filchers of the Peoples Liberties in the Glory of anothers Kingdome, now we have so wofully seen, felt, heard, and understood so very many mischiefs and inconveniences already happened, and if not speedily prevented, are like to be a great deal more, and hearken unto the voyce and dictates of the Laws of God and Nature, the Laws of the Land and Nations, Reason and Gratitude, and let our Posterity know that the honor of our King and Country is dear unto us, and that whatever becomes of our own Hospitalities, we shall never be willing to let the Vesta [...] Fire of the British and English Hospitalities, although most of our own are either extinguished or sunk into the Embers, go out, or be extinct in our King Palaces, or to abjure or turn out of its course so great part of the Genius of the Nation, but that we shall continue the duties of Praeemption and Pourveyance, which are as old as the first Generations of Mankind, and as antient as the duty of reverence of Children to their Parents.

Dent Fata Recessum.

FINIS.

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§

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THE Mistaken Recompence; OR The great Damage and very many Mischiefs and Inconveniences which will inevitably happen to the KING And His PEOPLE, By the taking away of the KING'S Praeemption and Pourveyance, or Compositions for them.

By FABIAN PHILIPPS Esquire.

—Sic maesta Senectus

Praeteritiquè memor flebat metuensquè futuri

Lucan. lib. 3,

LONDON, Printed by R. Hodgkinson for the Author, and are to be sold by Henry Brome at the Gun in Ivy-Lane, 1664.

TO THE Old-fashioned and True-hearted Gentry, and others of the English Nation, and all who are wel-wishers to the Honour and Happiness of it.

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THe designe of these few sheets of paper in a second Justification of the Antiquity, Legality, Use, Right, Reason, and Necessity of the Kings Pourveyance, or Compositions for them, and a Demonstration of the many great Mischiefs and Inconveniences which will unavoydably happen both to the King and his People by the taking of them away, which was the endeavours of a larger Treatise, is not only to epitomize some part of what is therein already expressed, but to add many things which were before omitted, to the end that such as being imployed in the publique cares and concernments of the Nation, & have very little or no spare time at all to converse with books, or that those who do preferre the interests of their vanities or avarice before such better company, may with no great trouble or labour, read that which is more at large to be seen in the former Book: but to take off the Opinion and Objections lately made of some who would perswade themselves & others, that the Compositions for the Kings Prae-emption and Pourveyance either taken [Page] for the King, or served into his House in kind or money, or by allowances for them, were when they were paid or served, a great burden to the people, and none or very little profit to the King, by that time that the cozening of so many Officers and Servants in his Household, and their appetites of spoyl and rapine by their selling the Kings meat as well cooked and dressed as undressed, and of his bread, beer, and all manner of household provisions to the Inhabitants & Housekeepers in the parts adjacent were satisfyed, and other their purloyning and trimly varnished over pilfrings and disorders, which an unpaid Army, and the most unruly Camps of Souldiers or military men are not often guilty of; and the tricks and artifices of the Pourveyors and Managers of the houshold provisions which in Queen Elizabeths time made a Kentish Yeoman pleasantly demand of her, being in her Progresse, when she was pleased to talk a little with him, and he perceived she was the Queen, If it were she that did eat up all his Poultry, which upon her second thoughts and examination, and proof made of the knavery of one of her Pourveyors, procured him shortly after a legal and wel-deserved hanging. That too many of his Majesties Servants employed in the Affairs of his Houshold Provisions▪ are little better then Theeves in an yearly Pay or Pension, ravening Tartars, or neatly cozening Banyans; and that the Jews, or the most nimble Cut-purses, Jugglers, or Hocus-pocusses do not, if any thing at all, much out-do them. But that being said and imagined only, and not ever likely to be admitted into the virge of Truth or Evidence, will for the most part be proved to be meer suggestions contrived and cast abroad by the insinuations of some who do seek to preserve their own, as they deem it happiness, and increase of fortunes, by the ruine and miseries of multitudes, or such as [Page] will take up reports, as many Gentlemen do Tradesmens deceitfull Wares upon trust, and will prove to be no otherwise then as the blind man in the Gospel did in believing men to be walking Trees, when that which made them seem to be that which they were not, was his own mistakings, and by those, and other ungrounded scandalls, do as much service to the King by it, as the devouring Ingrossers do usually do unto the People, when they take away the more honest gains of the Retailers, to create unto themselves a liberty of imposing what rates they please upon them, and may be easily enough convinced by a discreet and juditious examination of particulars, h [...]aring of parties accused, survey of the excellent Orders and Government of the Royall Houshold, (which are so exact, and limiting every Officer to their Liveryes, or stinted proportions, as some antient and very able knowing Officers of the Houshold who do well deserve to be believed, have averred, and will be ready to assert that the Orders of the Kings House are so very watchfull, vigilant, and preventing of chea [...]s and cozenings, as without a [...] universal combination of all the Servants of the Kings House▪ which is never likely to be accomplished it is impossible that there can be so much as a Loaf or Manchet cozened from the King) and the daily care of the Lord Steward, White-staved Officers, and of the Green-cloth, although the yearly Salaries and Pensions be the same for the most part which were in the Reign of King Henry the Seaventh, when the Kings provisions were so near the th [...]n cheap Market rates and prices, as they had not so much as an aspect of grievance, when ten thousand pounds was a good Dowry for the Kings Daughter in marriage with the King of Scotland, Accompts inter Evidentia Comitis Oxon. ten pounds per annum a good Annuity for a Kinsman to an Earle, a penny was but reckoned to an Earle of Oxford by his Wardrobe [Page] keepers for a pair of Gloves for his own wearing, and the value of silver by the ounce was then but little more then half a Crown,Stows Survey of London. and but creeping up towards three shillings four pence the ounce: and Nicholas West Bishop of Ely in the 23th year of the Reign of King Hen [...]y the Eighth▪ keeping yearly one hundred Servants in his house, gave the Gentlemen and better sort of them but 53 s. 4 d. and to the inferiour sort but 40 s. per annum, and the next year after that the ounce of silver was brought up to 3 s. 4 d. a fat Ox was sold at London for six and twenty shillings, Beef and Pork for an half-penny a pound, and a half penny farthing a pound for Veal and Mutton, was by an Act of Parliament in that year understood to be a reasonable price, and with gain enough afforded; and due consideration shall be had of the necessary differences which are to be observed betwixt the Pensions, allowances and expences of many of the Nobility and Gentry of the best extraction and houses of the Kingdome serving and attending in the Kings House: those that stand before Princes, and are to be clothed, as the holy Book of God hath told us, with Silk and soft Raiments; and those that are none of these, but do serve and take wages in Houses and Families of private men; and that the Majesty and Honour of a King in the Order and splendour of his House is not to be reduced to the pattern of private Housekeepers, and the narrow and unbeseeming Customes of their smaller Estates and Families. That the wast of honor and the more then ordinary Fragments left in the Kings House, as the remainders of the Dyet provided for him and his servants for the food and sustenance of the Poor, and such as will be glad of it, are but the requisites and appurtenances to the Majesty and Honor of a King, that Sir Richard Weston afterwards Earle of Portland, and Lord High Treasurer [Page] of England, Sir John Wo [...]stenholme Knight, Sir William P [...]t [...], and others, commissioned by King James to make a Reiglement and Espa [...]gne in his house-keeping, being men of known and great experience in the management of their own Estates, could not then find any such things as have been since laid to the charge of the Kings Officers and Servants in his House, that the pretensions not long after of better husbandry in the Kings House by some niggardly contrivances, and serving some of the Tables with half a Goose instead of a whole, came to no more at the last then the obtaining of the pretenders self ends, and an Annuity of 500l. per annum for th [...] lives of the pretender & his wife, and the longer liver of them, that the Lord Chamberlain of the Kings Housholds yearly Fee of 100 l. the Treasurer of the Housholds yearly Fee of 123l.—14s. and the Cofferers yearly Fee of 100l. measured and proportioned to the antient and former cheapness and means of livelihood, would have even then been very deficient for the support of such persons of Honor and Quality, if they had not had at the same time some seldome falling expectations of other favours and rewards from a Princely Master, and a present liberal allowance for their Tables, which although it doth now stand the King, by the enhance of his rates and prices, in a great deal more then it did formerly, yet unto those that received those allowances for their Tables and Dyet, it is no more then formerly: for if an estimate were taken how much it would cost the King to make and encrease the Salaries and wages of his Servants and Officers of all ranks and sorts, which in all the several Offices and Places, and Dependencies about the persons of the King and Queen are above one thousand, all or most of whom did when the Tables and Diets were allowed, intercommune, one with [Page] another, and were with many also of their Servants fed with the Kings Victuals, and Houshold Provisions, to be according unto the rates of wages & Salaries, and as much as they are now taken and given in private Families and all were to be paid in money, and nothing in dyet, the Kings Treasury, Purse, or Estate would soon be brought to understand, that such increased Allowances, or other Allowances, Pensions, Wages and Salaries, which must according to the rise and enhance of all manner of things conducing to the support and livelihood of such Servants be now necessarily paid and given over and above the antient Fees and Salaries, would arise and amount unto more then all the charge of the Pourveyance or Compositions for them, whether it were thirty and five thousand pounds a year, or fifty thousand pounds per annum, which was laid and charged upon the Counties, or more then the King is unjustly supposed to be deceived or cheated by his servants, or those which do direct the affairs of his Houshold; when it cannot escape every private mans Judgement and experience in house-keeping that he that doth give his servants forty shillings per annum Salary, and as much more to be added unto it in certain Fees and Profits well known, and calculated to amount unto no more then another forty shillings per annum. doth give his servant but four pounds per annum in the totall, and is not at all cozened therein; and that it would otherwise be no Honour to the King, but a diminution of Majesty, and a temptation or necessity enforced upon his servants to deceive him, if the Serjeant of the Ewrie and the Serjeant of the Bakehouse, to mention but a few of many, should have but their antient and bare Salaries of 11 l.—8 s.—1 d. per annum, and want their antiently allowed Avails and Perquisites. That such short and now far too little Wages and Salaries to be given to the [Page] Kings Servants in their several honourable and worshipfull Stations, would be unworthy for them to receive, and dishonorable for the King to give.

And that the no inconsiderable summe of money which was yearly and usually saved by the venditions of the over-plus of the Pourveyance or Compositions for them, and imployed in the buying of Linnen and Utensils for the service of the House; the now yearly allowances for Diet to eight principall great Officers and to seaven of the next principall Officers, and what his Majesty payeth yearly to others for Board-wages, and what is enhanced and laid upon him by unreasonable rates and prices, now that his Officers are constrained to buy with ready money, and to pay a barbarous Interest and Brocage to provide it, compared with what he now spends in his private allowances for his own and the Queens Diet, and some other few yet allowed Tables, will make a most certain and lamentable demonstration, that the King and his Honor were gainers by the Pourveyance os Compositions for them, and very great loosers by the taking of them away. And that he did meet with a very ill Bargain by the Exchange of his Pourveyance or Compositions for them, for a supposed recompence of Fifty thousand pounds per annum intended him out of the Moiety of the Excise of Ale, Beer, Perry, &c.

But if the abuses committed by the Servants and Officers of the King within the house were so great, or any thing at all, as is pretended (for as to the Pourveyors, and those that act without dores, the Law hath sufficiently provided) they may certainly be rectified and brought under a reformation, without the abolishing or totall taking away of the right use of them, or that which cannot be spared, or by any means be abandoned, but may be dealt with, as we [Page] do by our Wines, Victuals, or Apparel, which as necessaries of life are in their right use to be kept and reteyned, notwithstanding any misusage of them.

Or if the Pourveyance or Compositions for them were so much diverted from the use intended by them, yet that will not be any reason for the quitting of them without a due exchange or recompence, for that if they were all of them, (as is meerly fained or fanci [...]d) mispent or misimployed yet those that do mispend them, and they that have the benefit of them (not that I would be an Advocate to justifie the selling of the Kings meat or houshold provisions unto any in the Neighbourhood, or any accursed cheatings of the King, which I wish might be punished as Felony) are neither Enemies or Strangers to the Nation, but the Kings Subjects and Servants, and the Children, Friends and Kinred of many of those which do contribute towards the Pourveyance or Compositions for them; and that which is so misimployed, serves instead of some other largesses, allowances, or connivencies, which are usually in Kings Houses; and whether well spent or mispent, being Oblations and Offerings of duty made by the People to their Sovereign, are not to be denyed or retrenched, no more then the misbehaviour of the Sons of Ely, with which the Almighty was so much offended, would have been any just cause of the Children of Israels forbearing to bring their Offerings.

It being no Paradox, but certain enough that those seeming, but not reall grievances to the People, by the Kings Prae-emption and Pourveyance, or Compositions for them, have no other source or originall, then the rise and enhance of the Markets, and all Victualls and Provisions, by which all the selling and richer part of the People are ten to one more gainers by the Kings Pourveyance or Compositions for them then they can be loosers, and are better able [Page] to bear it; and the poorer sort of the people were less grieved when it was not taken away, then they are now by the Excise of Ale, Beer, &c. which comes in the place or pretended recompence of it, that the Gentry and Landlords of the Lands in the Nation, who by heating of those Lands that were cold, drayning and drying of those that were wet and moist, watering of such as were dry and sandy, and planting of Wood and Fruit, have brought their lands to a greater increase and fertility, not yet come to its Acme or just height, then the former ages, and a thousand years knowledge or practise of our Forefathers, the Inhabitants of this Nation could before this last Age or Century wherein we are now▪ ever reach or attain unto: and the Landlords of Houses, Innes, Taverns, Shops, or Stalls in London, who have now by the increase of Tradesmen rather then Trade raised their rents ten or twenty to one more then what they were One hundred years agoe, might in some measure or moderation have taken their advantages of the improvements of their Lands, Rents, Houses, and Shops, without such an overstretching their Rents, as the Tenants where they have no Leases, but at will or from year to year in some Counties of England should be enforced, as many have lately been to throw up and forsake their Bargains; And that all or any of that over-high racking the Rents of Lands and Houses, or a supposed plenty of money, (which in the time of the greatest enhance and rack of rents, rates, and prices which ever England did see or endure, is now so scarcely to be found, as the universality of the people do heavily complain of the want of it) and the product or consequence of that evil in a like enhance of rates and prices by the Freeholders and Copyholders, who pay no rents, (as Farmers do) and by the Tenants of the King, Queen, Prince, or Bishops, & some [Page] of the hospitable and well minded Nobility and Gentry, the Tenants of the Church and Colledge Lands, and of Lands belonging to Cities, Corporations, Companies, and Hospitals, who have cheap and comfortable Estates and Bargains, and yet do all they can to imitate them, although they have no cause to do it, which would be much higher.

If all the Copihold Estates in England and Wales were at as great a rack of rent as the Lands of the most of Farmers.

If all the Privileges and Rights of Common Estovers and Turbary, Modus decimandi, and Exemption from the payment of Tythes and Tolls were abrogated.

And if the King should keep the same rule and measure of high rating and racking of his Revenues certain or casuall, as many Landlords do; Or make our East-India Merchants pay for their licence or priviledge of trading to the East-Indies, Sieur Colberts Remonstrance of the benefit of the Trade to be driven by the French in the East-Indies. all others being excluded for one and twenty years, a share or proportion amounting in the whole very near a Million sterling money, as the Dutch have made their East-India Company to do, could not be the only proper or efficient causes of that long-strided and swift progresse, and increase of the rates and prices not only of victuals and all houshold provisions, but of all manner of commodities, apparel and necessaries either for use or ornament.

So as we shall not conclude without premisses, or be thought to want a ground or foundation of an irrefragable truth, that Lucifer the great Merchant and furnisher of our sins and excess, and of the great and intollerable pride of all the degrees and ranks of men, women, children, and servants in the Nation, as far beyond the former ages as a Giant is to a Pigmee, or Pauls Steeple in London when it was highest, to the Pissing Conduit (as they call [Page] it) in Cheapside, and the avarice of the people to maintain it, together with the necessities attending their pride and vanities, have been no small part of the cause of it; for otherwise it would have been some difficulty to find or give a reason why we should not in England, a Kingdome, untill our late times of confusion, of the greatest peace and plenty in Christendome, be able to afford victuals, and all manner of provisions for the belly and back as cheap as in France, where notwithstanding the heavy oppressions and burdens of the Paysants, who do fare hard, and are ill clad; and by reason of the frugality of most of the Gentry, a Partridge may be bought for [...]our pence, and a Gentleman and his horse at night be very well entertaind for four shillings: or as in Spain, where a Bando is yearly made by the Corrigidores of every City and Place (which the Civil Law doth allow and direct,Lessius de Just. & Jur. lib. 2. cap. 21. n. 148. Cokes 4. part. Institutes 12 Ed. 4. c. 8. 25 H. 8. cap. 2. and our Laws of England do as to victuals also intend) setting yearly the rates and prices not only of all victuals and houshold provisions for the belly, and of fruit and Apples, but of all Commodities, as Linnen and Woollen Cloth, Silk, Knives, Ha [...]s, &c. where notwithstanding their continuall Warres, and multitudes of heavy Taxes to mainteyn them, there is a cheapness of victuals, and such an absence of deceit, as a child, or the most ignorant way as to measure, weight, and prices, buy and not be deceived. Or as is in the same manner done at Rome, Naples, Florence, Milan, and most of the Principalities of Italy, not so freed from publick Burdens as our more happy England is at this present; which neither would nor could be there ever submitted unto and obeyed as it is, if the pride and necessities, or avarice of the Landlords, and the pride of the Tenants (which the Pragmatico's forbidding the pride and excess of apparel, do in Spain [Page] very much eradicate) were not less then ours, and their frugalities more; and such restrictions and reglements thereby made to be the more tolerable and contenting.

And those that do like it more then they should, and shall be content to imploy their times in the pursuit of vanities, and means to mainteyn it, and forsaking the old and good wayes, and seeking gain, do sacrifice unto their nets, and burn incense unto their drags, may have that said unto them which the Apostle St. Paul did [...]n another case to the Romans; what fruit have the intollerable pride and excess of the Nation,Epist. Rom. 6. and the high racking of Rents to mainteyn it, brought unto those that have taken pleasure in it. And they that have so much delighted in it, may now, if they please, or at one time or another, understand whether they will or no, that the overmuch raising and stretching of the rents of the Lands and houses in England, since an excessive pride and folly of the people is come to be so much in fashion amongst us, have been no gain to the Nobility and Gentry, but will be a great loss and damage unto them by that time that the wastfull and prodigall part of them have bought and furnished their Houshold provisions at the dear rates of their Tenants and others, of whom they do buy them, and their apparel and other the Merchandises of their follyes of the Citizens and Trades-men; and not only therein bear the burthen of their own, but of the intollerable pride and gallantry of the Citizens, Tradesmen, Mechanicks, Artificers and their Wives and Children, and in all that they do buy of them, do contribute to the costly Pearl, Neck-laces, Diamond Lockets, and other Jewels, satten and cloth of silver Peticoats, plush Gowns, Embroderies, Gold-lace, Gorgets of threescore pounds a piece, and Lace of twenty or forty pounds a yard, worn by the Merchants, Drapers, [Page] and Mercers Wives, and the Silk-Gowns, Hoods, Laces, and over-costly Apparel of the Mechanick and Artificers Wives in their desires and ambition to live like the Nobility and Gentry, when no man can tell they are any, or ought to be.

That the enhance of all provisions of victuals brought to London out of the Countries, hath made the Country people pro [...]der then they should be, and the City Wares and Commodities dearer then otherwise they would be, and made the Citizens, in the pursuit of pride and luxury, run out of their wits and estates to purchase it.

That it was better in former times for the Artificers and Day-labourers, whose more moderate expences in their [...]veral conditions and qualities made them heretof [...]re with a fourth or fifth part of what they do now earn, greater gainers by their labours then now they are, and better for servants, whose far lesser wages then now, they will be contented with, did amount unto more, or as much as they do now gain, by reason of their former smaller expences in clothes and apparel.

The Tenants and farmers lived better when they plowed their Landlords lands, mowed, reaped, and helped in with their Harvests carried home their wood, and paid small rents, then they have or can do now that they are strained to the highest, those labours and services coming far short (if they were at the now rates to be hired or paid for) of the addition, which time and change of manners and customes have since made to their antient and unimproved rents.

That the people of England, if there had been no other ground or reason for it, might well have afforded to have given the King so much as they were yearly charged with the Pourveyance or Compositions for them for an acquital [Page] of more then twenty years arrears of it by the Act of Oblivion.

That if an estimate could be made of those Millions or summes of money sterling, which the en [...]hanced prices and rates of victuals and houshold provisions did amount unto yearly since the 24th year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, and what the rise of victuals and houshold provisions have come unto yearly since the Pourveyance and Compositions for them were laid down, and what it may more be stretched unto, if pride and price, not like Castor and Pollux, to bring our Ship into the Port, but to ruine it, should go on in that carreer it is now in, and private and particular interests more mighty and prevalent then all those imaginary monsters which Hercules is sa [...] to have subdued, and of a greater force then that Devil and his heard called Legion, which our blessed Saviour did dislodge out of the man possessed with them, shall be ayders and abetters of it. There is no man that hath not bid defiance to his reason and understanding, but will acknowledge that the people of England had better give ten times or more the yearly rate or value of the Pourveyancees or Compositions for them then endure the Impositions, which they have, or shall put one upon another whilest every man will seek to save himself and make his labour or commodity afford him as much as he can to recompence him for it.

That the unreasonable rates and prices put upon all the Kings occasions or services by Land and Sea, are and will be the cause of Taxations and Assessements in times of peace three to one more then formerly.

And the Levies of monies to hire Souldiers, and raise and maintain mercinary Armies, will amount unto and charge the Publick ten or twenty to one or more than [Page] when by the help and ready ayds of Tenures in Capite and by Knight service our gallant and well-armed Nobility and Gentry could upon any occasions of warre or distress either at home or abroad be sodainly summoned and made to appear from Ireland as well as from all parts of England and Wales.

And so readily as King William Rufus sitting at dinner in Westminster Hall, and hearing that Mayne a Town in Normandy was much distressed by a sodain Siege laid unto it by the French King,Speed Hist. of England. and resolving in the greatness of his mind not to turn his back towards it untill he had relieved it, could cause the wall to be broken down on the South side, and passing towards the sea coast, command his Nobility and Knights speedily to follow him.

That the unparrallel'd pride of almost all rancks and degrees of the people not permitted in France, Spain and other Neighbour Nations brings our Forreign Trade almost to nothing by the adulterating of our Commodities, and making them false and slight, and causing the charges to be much more then formerly in the work and making of them, pay of our Mariners and greater rates of victualling, so as we being not able to make our manufactures so cheap as other Nations, and making them slight and false, our Trade must of necessity more and more decay, and will never increase or be advanced, if the Dutch were banished out of the world, or ordered to trade only in the Bottom of the sea, and leave all the Surface or Top unto us; the cheap diet and clothing of their Common people, the neat and frugall diet, and the apparel of the Burgers, and those that they call the Gentry, giving them the advantage of under-selling us.

For we may be sure that there will never be cheapness of victualls, or houshold provisions, or good trading, and [Page] truly called plentifull living, if Citizens Wives, and some of no higher a rank then Sc [...]iveners, shall have their Trains born up at Funeralls, as if they were Countesses, or Baronesses, and give the world to understand by that Nove [...]int universi, that pride hath made them run out of their wits, and may in a short time, after that rate make their Husbands run out of their Estates. And if Taylors Wives may, as they are not now ashamed to do, wear Pearl Neck-laces of 100 or 120l. price, and some of the greater sort of that now too overbusied Profession, keep their Coaches, and make their Customers pay for it. A Linnen Draper being to buy an Horse for his own use must have one at no lesse a price then forty pounds: the Wife of a Sales-man, or one that sells Petticoats, Wastcoats, or Gowns, trimd, and made up in a seeming cheap, but a most deceitfull manner, for Servants, or people of ordinary quality, can wear a Neck-lace of forty pounds price: And some Shoemakers Wives do not think their Husbands do go to the Devil fast enough, if they do not so abuse the more honest intentions of their Trade, as to make their Wives learn to hold up their heads to shew their Pearl Neck-laces of forty or fifty pounds price, which is many times more then all the shoes in some of their Husband Shops are worth: Every Cook, every Alehousekeeper, and the lowest and meanest sort of Mechanicke and Handicrafts men, and their Wives, shall be permitted to vie in [...] Apparel, and manner of living with the Nobility and Gentry: A Frock-porters little Daughter shall go with her breasts and shoulders naked, white shoes, Coif and Pinner well laced, and all to be ribboned: and a Day-labourers Wife in the Country, within the infectious breath of the pride of London, wear her Taffata Hoods Gold and Silver-lace, and a Gorget not much below [Page] the yearly rent of the little Tenement her Husband is at night glad to rest his weary and durtied limbs in: and that there will be never any hope or possibility of any thin [...] ▪ but high rates and prices, vices and villanies, when th [...] do so hugely [...]ise and [...]ncrease by reason of the pride of the Nation, as the Keeper of the Bo [...]om [...]ss pit, and its everlasting burnings, may well rejoyce in the plentifull coming in of his Harvest and Merchandise; and that if there were nothing of wickedness to be found in the heart of mankind, that most fertill Seminary and seed-plot of it, and no other cause for it, the only excessive pride of the Nation would by a necessity of providing maintenance for it, be a cause efficient and impulsive to make or foment all manner of wickedness, fraud, cheating and cozenidg, drive the Wives and Husbands to betray one another, Servants their Masters, Children their Parents, Parents their Children, and Brothers and Sisters to forego all naturall affection, care and honesty one towards another.

That it is, and will be impossible by any Trade or Industry to mainteyn this Nation in either peace or plenty, when all the men in it shall in their Apparel, Dyet and Expences make it their business to live as the Nobility and Gentry do & most of the female Sex (Servants not excepted) shall not be contented themselves, or let their Husbands live in any quiet, unless they may live like Ladies and Gentlewomen, and be the Daughters of vanity and folly.

That at Paphus and Ciprus the old and antient Countries of venery as well as vanity, where their Daughters do, (as some Authors have written, and Travellers do report) entertain strangers by prostitution of their bodies, to get Dowries or Portions for some mad Husbands to marry them.

And in all the Luxuries and pride of Rome, Asia, [Page]Tire and Sidon, and all other the destroyed and ruined Nations by it, there were some distinctions in Apparel, Dyet, and Expences; some Servants distinguished by their Habit, and not all Masters or Mistresses to be found amongst them.

And that England being overchaged with a Generation of too many Proud, Lazi [...], and Lavish People, is not▪ nor ever will be able to maintain them without a sinfull necessity put upon the Nation, as there is too much already, to cheat and oppress one another to support them in it.

And should have more reason to believe then to doubt, that the honor of a Prince is the honor of a People, and the people so much concerned in it, that it was wont to be a cura curarum, one of the greatest cares of the Magistrates under Kings and Soveraign Princes seculis retroactis in the old and long ago past ages of the word attested by the hoary heads of time & antiquity practised by a Jus Gentium, universal Law of Nations, rude and untaught Indians not excepted, and continued to this day in many forreign parts, and most of the Western Nations, to give an especiall honor by gifts, enterteynments, and presents to Embassdours, who in those particular employments were but the images and representations of foreign Princes sent on Embasses unto theirs: And that we ought to take it to be a duty incumbent upon us not to want, or be to seek for as much goodness as the old Heathen Persians were Masters of when Artabanus told Themistocles the Graecian Embassadour that apud nos ea Lex praestantissima qua [...] venerati Regem tanquàm Dei effigiem jubet, with us▪ that Law which commandeth reverence to the King as Gods Image, is accompted to be the most excellent.

And therefore untill the wisdome of our Parliaments shall by some sumptuary Laws to be enacted, which may [Page] as easily be done, and put in execution, without any damage or loss unto Trade, or his Majesties Customes, a [...] those that were made and enacted in the Reigns of King Edward the Third, Henry the Eighth, and Queen Mary, unhappily repeald by King James, or those not long ago made and kept alive by our Neighbours of France and Spain, or lately ordained by the sage Venetians: Or by the Swedes, those strangers to the Sun, and Inmates of Snow and Ice, after they were grown rich and proud by the spoil and plunder of the unfortunate Germany, and a way may be found out to drive back, and reduce unto some Order, as formerly the unchristian liberty of pride now in fashion amongst us, which is so horrid and ridiculous as might turn the weeping and laughing Philosophers out of their humours, and make Heraclitus laugh, and Democritus weep; together with the daily more and more growing and encreaeasing high rates of victuals and houshold provisions, which is, and will be the sad consequence of it.

And is so fixt & pertinacious, as that the Kings own example of plain and uncostly Apparel, the care of the Church and Pulpits, the scourging & detestation of vice appearing in some of our Plays and Interludes, and the jeers and scoffs of some people as they meet with it in the streets, have not yet been able to bring or perswade too many of them into their wits again, the compass of their estates, and sobriety of their forefathers. We may wish and pray that all the Common people were in the moderation of their Apparel, Quakers, as they are called; that all our Market-folk, Tradesmen, Artificers, and Servants, as to the justness of their dealings, and buying and selling, were Quakers, and that it may not be our sad, and never enough to be lamented experience; that as Doctor Peter Heylin well observed,Heylin. hist. Ecclesiae Anglicanae domes reformatae. the afflictions of the Church of England in the Martirdomes [Page] and Persecutions of the Protestants in the Reign of Queen Mary, and the restoring afterward of many Godly Divines that fle [...] from it, brought [...] the Genevian Schismes and Discipline [...] since almost undone and [...] which were heretofore purp [...]s [...]ly [...]own and cherished to enervate and destroy [...]ona [...]chy joyned with th [...] [...]ll Manners and Customes of some Neighbour Nations, may not likewise by some that might be better Englishmen, and his Majesties better subjects▪ be more then should be endeavoured to be planted amongst us which being abundantly and sufficiently tri [...]d to be evill, did never, nor will ever attain unto the reason, right use goodness and perfection of our good old English Customes, amongst which is, and ought to be more especially ranked the honor and support of the Royall Court of England, Majesty, and honor of our King and Soveraign: Which the Romans, who would not endure any Common-wealth, Competitors, nor think themselves to be in any condition of safety untill they had ruined and destroyed Carthage, and those Commonwealths of Achaia, Athens, and Sparta, were so unwilling in the height of their glory, their Senate, Magistrates & Republick should want, as the Comminalty of Rome did in a popular Election, deny to make Elius Tubero, a most upright and just man, the Nephew of L. Paulus, and Sisters Sonne of the great and famous Scipio Africanus, Waler. Max. lib. 8. cap. 5. & Cicero in oratione pro Muroena. to be a Prat [...]r or Lord Chief Justice, for that he being imployed by Fabius Maximus publicquely to feast or entertain in the name and at the charge of the people of Rome, his Uncle Scipio Africanus in the preparing and making ready the Triclinia, or Tables lectulos punicanos pellibus [...]aedinis straverat, had covered the Carthaginian Beds whereon the Guests were to sit or lye, with Goat-skins; & pro Argenteis vasis[Page]samia exposuerat, and instead of silver Vessels made use of Earthen; which due observance of a Heathen Republique, being under no obligation of any Divine Praecepts or Examples to honour their Governours or Assembly of wise men, may teach us that are Christians how very necessary it will be to take more care of the Honour of our Prince, then of any our own estimations or honors, which for a great part of them are, or have been derived from him or his most noble Ancestors: and by so much the more for that the honor to be done unto him is every where to be found commanded, directed, exampled, and encouraged in and by those sacred Registers, the holy Scriptures, which are to conduct us through the Red Sea of the miseries and troubles of this life to that of a blessed and everlastingly happy in the heavenly Jerusalem, in the way whereunto will be no small helpers and assistants, the rendring to Caesar all his dues and rights, who is the protector of ours, a more exact and carefull observance of Religion, Laws of nature and Nations, right, reason, our Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy, and the love and honour of our King and Country, the n [...]w almost forsaken virtues of our Ancestors, and the good old Customes of England, which should not like some rustie pieces of old neglected Arms be hung up in our Halls, and now and then only talked of; or like as if they were some race of Wolves come again to inf [...]st us, or our profits, be hunted and persecuted, but recalled, revived, and practised; In which, as a fidus Achat [...]s, shall never be wanting the wel-wishes and endeavors of

FABIAN PHILIPPS.

Information about this book

Title statement

The mistaken recompense, or, The great damage and very many mischiefs and inconveniences which will inevitably happen to the King and his people by the taking away of the King's præemption and pourveyance or compositions for them by Fabian Phillipps, Esquire.

Philipps, Fabian, 1601-1690.

Edition statement

1664

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Text Creation Partnership,

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Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) :

Date

2005-03 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1).

ID [DLPS]

A54689

ID [STC]

Wing P2011

ID [STC]

ESTC R36674

ID [EEBO-CITATION]

15869289

ID [OCLC]

ocm 15869289

ID [VID]

104653

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Early English books online.

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(EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A54689)

Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 104653)

Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 1154:16)

Source

— The mistaken recompense, or, The great damage and very many mischiefs and inconveniences which will inevitably happen to the King and his people by the taking away of the King's præemption and pourveyance or compositions for them by Fabian Phillipps, Esquire., Philipps, Fabian, 1601-1690..

Extent

[24], 110 p.

Printed by R. Hodgkinson, for the author, and are to be sold by Henry Brome ...,. London :: 1664.. (Imperfect: some pages faded with loss of print.) (Reproduction of original in the Cambridge University Library.) (Includes bibliographical references.)

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