long allowed to sleep, it had been all but forgotten. The following summary of Charles's other arbitrary measures employed to extort money from his subjects is given by a modern historian of the public revenue: Large fees were annexed to new-invented offices. Every county was obliged to maintain a muster-master, appointed by the crown, for exercising the militia. The vintners were driven, by the terrors of fines and prosecutions, to submit to an illegal imposition upon all the wine they retailed. An ancient duty for furnishing the soldiery with coat-and-conduct money, which had long been abolished, was revived. It was intended to coin base money, and to circulate it by proclamation. Heavy fines were imposed in the Star Chamber and High Commission courts. Sir David Fowles was fined 5000l. for dissuading a friend from compounding with the commissioners of knighthood. Thirty thousand pounds were exacted from those who had trespassed upon an obsolete law against converting arable lands into pasture. Encroachments on the king's forests were punished in a similar manner. Proclamations were issued commanding the nobility and gentry to retire to their country seats, and not to spend their time idly in London: if convicted of transgressing this arbitrary regulation, they were severely mulcted by the Star Chamber. It was contended that proclamations had equal authority with laws; and such as ventured to disobey them were heavily fined, and, in some instances, condemned to the pillory. In short, more tyrannical steps would hardly be taken by the greatest despot on earth."* It was calculated that, from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, Charles's entire annual revenue had amounted, on an average, to not less than 895,000l., of which about 210,000l. arose from ship-money and other illegal exactions.

After the dispute between the king and the parliament came to a contest of arms, both parties of course sought to raise money for carrying on the war by any means that could be made available. Besides what he received from the private contributions of his adherents, and from pawning the jewels of the crown, Charles made use of his military power in levying assessments in those parts of the country where his authority was established. The financial operations on the other side, however, were on a much more extensive scale. The Long Parliament began by voting supplies of six subsidies and a poll-tax (estimated as equivalent, in all, to twelve subsidies, or about 600,000.), the produce of which, though nominally granted, after the usual form, to the crown, was paid into the hands of a board of parliamentary commissioners, by whom it was actually in great part expended in the support of the war against the royal cause. Large sums were also obtained from the voluntary contributions of the people, who eagerly brought in both money and plate, and every article, down to the thimbles and

Sinclair's History of the Public Revenue, i. 269.
VOL. III.

bodkins of the women, that could be melted and turned into coin.* All persons, indeed, were called upon to furnish what aid they could in money, in men, in horses, in arms, in victuals, and other warlike stores, to the public necessities, on a pledge that the value should be repaid to them on the restoration of peace, and that the debt should in the mean time bear an interest of eight per cent. These first voluntary contributions, and those that were some time after raised for the relief of the Irish Protestants, are estimated to have amounted to about 480,000l. Recourse, however, was soon had, when it became evident that the war would not be brought to an end in a single campaign, to a regular system of taxation, which, under the name of the monthly assessment for the maintenance of the army, produced alone a much larger revenue than had ever before been collected in the kingdom from all other sources together. This assessment varied from about 35,000l. to 120,000l. per week in the first year of the war; it was continued under the name of a land-tax throughout the protectorate, and its entire produce in the nineteen years from November, 1640, to November, 1659, is stated to have been not less than 32,172,3211. Another new species of tax, first imposed in 1643, under the name of the excise, being originally a duty upon beer, ale, wine, tobacco, raisins, sugar, and a few other articles of luxury, to which, however, were afterwards added bread, meat, salt, and other necessaries, is calculated to have produced 500,000l. a-year. The tonnage and poundage duties, together with other customs upon the export and import of commodities, yielded probably nearly as much. A tax of 4s. a chaldron upon all coals that left the port of Newcastle brought in about 50,000l. a year. From the Post-office, first established in 1635, about 10,000l. a-year was derived. A singular impost, called the weekly meal, being the price of a meal a week, which every person was commanded to pay into the Treasury, produced 608,4007. in the six years during which it was exacted. The profits, also, of wardship and all the other old feudal prerogatives of the crown, with the exception only of purveyance, which was given up, continued to be rigorously exacted until the courts of wards and liveries were abolished by the Rump parliament, in 1656. To these and a few other regular sources of revenue are to be added various occasional supplies, of which the principal were 1,850,000l. from the sale of the crown lands, houses, and forests; about 3,500,000l. from the sequestration for four years of the revenues of the bishops, deans, and inferior clergy; above 10,000,000l., it is said, but surely with much exaggeration, from the subsequent sale of churchlands; 850,000l. from the incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; above 4,500,000l. from sequestrations of, or compositions for, the estates of private individuals in England; 1,000,000/.

See ante, p. 290

3 Y

from compositions with delinquents in Ireland; about 3,500,000/. from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland; besides other large sums derived from compulsory loans, the decimation tax, or tenth penny, exacted from all malignants, as they were called, by Cromwell's major-generals, and the military plunder of the royalists. In all these various ways the parliament is asserted, but the account is drawn up by the opposite party, and may be strongly suspected of great exaggeration, to have, in the course of the nineteen years, drawn from the people the vast amount, for that time, of above 83,000,000l., being at the rate of nearly 4,400,000l. per annum. Of this, however, * Of this, however, only

part went to defray the proper expenses of the state. Cromwell's income is stated to have been about 1,500,000l. from England, 143,000l. from Scotland, and 208,000l. from Ireland, making in all an annual revenue of nearly 1,900,000l. An extraordinary expenditure was, of course, incurred so long as the war lasted; but neither the cost nor the waste of that state of things is supposed to have swallowed up the larger portion of the large sums that came into the hands of the government. If we may believe the representations both of the Royalists and of the Presbyterians, the parliament itself was the great deep into which the ever-flowing stream of confiscation and plunder chiefly poured itself. There may be some tendency to over-statement in these allegations of partisans bitterly hostile to those whom they accuse, and

See the account in Sinclair's Hist. of Rev. i. 284-286.

themselves excluded by circumstances from all share in the good fortune which they affirm their enemies to have enjoyed; but what they say is very probably, to a considerable extent, true. When the parliament became the dominant, or rather sole, authority in the state, the members voted wages to themselves, at the rate of 4. aweek for each, to be paid out of the public revenue; and it is affirmed that they afterwards came to distribute among themselves about 300,000l. a-year under this name. Large sums of money, lucrative offices, and valuable estates were also bestowed upon many of the leading members. According to Walker, the Presbyterian historian, Lenthall, the Speaker, held offices which yielded him between 7000/. and 80007, ayear; Bradshaw had the royal palace of Eltham and an estate worth 1000l. a-year for the part he took in the trial of the king; and a sum of very nearly 800,000l. was publicly expended in other free gifts to the saints. There can be no doubt, also, that much peculation was practised by many members of the various parliamentary committees, which, with scarcely any real responsibility, were appointed to manage the different branches of the public revenue; and, indeed, in a time of such confusion and dislocation of the whole frame of government it was impossible that advantage should not often have been taken by private individuals of the public calamities.

History of Independency.

HE most authentic and comprehensive account we have of the foreign commerce of England at the

commencement

the present period is contained in a discourse, or essay, drawn up by Sir Walter Raleigh, and originally presented by him, in manuscript, to James I. soon after his accession.* The main object of this small treatise is to point out the circumstances to which the Dutch owed their commercial superiority, and to urge upon the English government the adoption of the same methods; but in pursuing this argument the author takes occasion to give a very full and minute delineation of the trade carried on by each country in all its branches. Some little allowance is perhaps to be made here and there for the bias of a mind occupied with and pleading for a particular object; but in general there is no reason to suppose that Raleigh's stateObservations concerning the Trade and Commerce of England with the Dutch and other Foreign Nations.

ments, the substance of which, in so far as they relate to his own country, we shall now proceed to extract and condense, are, to any material extent, overcharged.

The ordinary trade carried on at this time by the Dutch with England employed not fewer than five or six hundred Dutch ships, but not a tenth of that number of English. But, besides, whenever there was in England a dearth of wine, fish, or corn, it was the custom of the Dutch immediately to load fifty or a hundred vessels with the particular commodity in request, and to dispatch them to all the ports of this kingdom, to reap the harvest of the high prices. In a recent dearth of corn Raleigh affirms that the merchants of Embden, Hamburgh, and Holland had in this way carried away, in a year and a half, from the ports of Southampton, Exeter, and Bristol alone, nearly 200,000l.; and he thinks that, from the whole of the kingdom, they could not have obtained less. than ten times that sum. The practice of these thoroughly commercial states was to monopolize, as far as they could, the transport of the produce of all other countries,-of Turkey and the East and West Indies, as well as of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy; and, carrying this merchandise to Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and other northern parts, to bring back thence corn and other bulky

commodities, which they stored up to supply the wants of England and the rest of the world. Amsterdam was never without a store of 700,000 quarters of corn, none of it of home growth; and it was remarked that a dearth of one year in England, France, Spain, Portugal, or Italy sufficed to enrich Holland for seven years after. Raleigh contends, nevertheless, that, if the proper methods were taken, England was much better situated than Holland for a general store-house.

He next proceeds to compare the trade in fish of the Low Countries and the adjacent petty states with that carried on by England. The most productive fisheries in the world were upon the coasts of the British islands; yet at this time, while the Hollanders sent to the four great towns on the Baltic, Koningsberg, Elbing, Stettin, and Dantzic, 620,000l. worth of herrings every year, England exported to those places none at all; nor any to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the ports of Riga, Revel, Narva, and other parts of Livonia, to which the Dutch sent yearly to the value of 170,000.; and scarcely 500l. worth to Russia, to which the Dutch sent 27,000l. worth; and none at all to Staden, Hamburgh, Bremen, and Embden, to which the Dutch sent, of herrings and other fish, to the annual value of 100,000l.; nor any up the Rhine to Germany, the people of which bought, every year, 440,000l. worth of herrings and other fish from the Dutch; nor any up the Meuse to Maestricht, Liege, &c., to which places the Dutch sold herrings every year to the value of 140,000l. ; nor any to Guelderland, Flanders, and up the Scheldt, all over the dominions of the Archduke of Austria, in which direction the Dutch sent annually 162,000l. worth; and not 2000l. worth to France, which took 100,000l. worth from the Dutch. In short, while, according to this account, the trade of the Dutch in fish brought them in annually not much under 2,000,000/., the English could hardly be said to have any trade in that article at all, except only, Raleigh omits to notice, to the countries washed by the Mediterranean, the great Catholic and fish-eating countries of Spain and Italy; but thither, also, the Dutch, he tells us, sent large quantities, although he does not specify to what exact amount.

In other important branches of trade the case was nearly the same. The Dutch sent nearly a thousand ships every year to the countries in the north-east of Europe with wine and salt, both chiefly obtained from France and Spain; England, with equal natural advantages, had not one ship employed in that trade. The timber trade of the Dutch, whose own country grew no wood, employed five or six hundred great ships; the English, with the same access as they had to the forests within the Baltic, neither exported nor imported a single cargo. Even the wool, cloth, lead, tin, and other native products of England were far from being turned to so much account as they might have been. As yet all the woollen cloth that went abroad was exported both undressed

and undyed. About 80,000 pieces of woollen cloth were annually sent to foreign countries in that state, the dyeing and dressing of which, as Raleigh calculates, was a yearly gain to the foreigner of 400,000l., besides about 150,000 northern and Devonshire kerseys and bayes (baize), the colouring of which would come to 100,0004. a-year more. These latter were dressed and dyed at Amsterdam, and then shipped for Spain, Portugal, and other countries, where they were sold under the name of Flemish bayes. Nor were our exports of all descriptions of native produce of any considerable amount in comparison with those of the Dutch. To Prussia and the other countries in the northeast of Europe, for example, the Dutch sent every year nearly three thousand ships, which found their way into every port town: we sent out in the same direction only about a hundred, the merchandise carried by which was chiefly disposed of in the three towns of Elbing, Koningsberg, aud Dantzic. No English ships carried any of the commodities of those countries to France, Spain, Portugal, or Italy, which two thousand Dutch merchantmen were constantly employed in supplying with them. In general the foreign trade of England for some years past had been decaying rather than extending. For seventy years a very considerable trade had been carried on with Russia: down to about the year 1590, store of goodly ships were wont to sail annually to that country; but, in 1600, only four had been sent out; and, in 1602, only two or three; whereas, the Russian trade of the Dutch had now come to employ from thirty to forty ships, each as large as two of the English, and all chiefly laden with English cloth, herrings taken in the British seas, English lead, and pewter made of English tin. To the isle of Wardhuus, on the coast of Finmark, eight or nine great ships used constantly to go to the fishing from England; in this year, 1603, only one had gone. Those native commodities, besides, that were sent from England to foreign countries were in by far the greater part exported in foreign bottoms.

Raleigh's essay probably attracted very little regard from James or his ministers at this time; but some attempts seem to have been made a few years afterwards to carry certain of his recommendations into effect. Nevertheless English commerce continued in a languishing state during the whole of this reign; no really important measures were taken for its revival and encouragement; on the contrary, the very evil which Kaleigh had most deprecated, the burdensome amount of the customs,-was, in the penury and short-sightedness of the government, augmented instead of being alleviated. One or two new trading companies were, however, incorporated; and the colonisation of different parts of America, which was more or less successfully proceeded with by the enterprise of private individuals, if it produced scarcely any results for the present, was laying an ample foundation of

commercial as of all other greatness for a future

age.

Captain James Lancaster, who had sailed from England in April, 1601, in charge of the first adventure of the newly-established East India Company,* made his re-appearance in the Downs, with the two largest of his four ships full laden with pepper, on the 11th of September, 1603, having previously sent home the other two with cargoes composed partly of pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, partly of calicoes and other Indian manufactures taken out of a Portuguese carrack which Lancaster had fallen in with and captured. The admiral, as he was called, had been well received by the king of Acheen, in Sumatra, who had concluded a commercial treaty with him, and granted all the privileges that were asked; but the great length of time, nearly two years and a half, that the adventure had occupied, and still more the obstructions of various sorts which kept the goods from being all disposed of, and the accounts finally wound up, for about six years longer, prevented the company from deriving either much ultimate profit or any immediate encouragement from this first attempt. Additional capital, however, having been, though with difficulty, raised, the same four ships were again sent out in March, 1604, under the command of Sir Henry Middleton, who did not return till May, 1606, and then only with three of his ships, laden with pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmegs, the fourth having been lost on the homeward voyage. In the mean time a licence in direct violation of the company's charter had been granted by the king to Sir Edward Michelborne and others, allowing them to send out ships to trade with Cathaya, China, Japan, Corea, Cam

See vol. ii. p. 791.

baya, and any other countries in the same quarter of the globe not already frequented by the English; and Michelborne had actually sailed for China in December, 1604, and, although he did not succeed in reaching that country, had made his way as far as to the Oriental Archipelago, whence he returned to England in July, 1606, bringing with him little else than the plunder of some small Indian and Chinese vessels, which he had attacked with no more regard either to the right of other nations or the character of his own than if he had been a common pirate. Disgusted by this illusage on the part of the government, in addition to the disappointment of their hopes of large and speedy returns from the subscriptions they had already risked, and influenced also somewhat by the popular outcry that was raised about the impolitic and destructive nature of the new trade, which, it was affirmed, besides occasioning an unusual mortality of the seamen, would, if persisted in, prove a wasteful drain both upon the treasure and the marine of the country, most of the members of the company were now inclined to put up with their losses and to have nothing more to do with the business. The spirit of others, however, still clung to the hope of better success; and a new subscription having been opened, three more ships were sent out in March and April, 1607, and two more in March the following year. Neither of these attempts was very fortunate the two vessels that sailed last, indeed, were both lost at sea, although the crews and a small part of the cargo of one of them were saved; but a single ship, the Expedition, which sailed in April, 1609, under the command of Captain David Middleton, brought home, about two years after, so valuable a cargo of nutmegs and mace as to produce a divi