[612] Fuller, The Holy and Profane State.
[613] The Standard of Equality in Subsidiary Taxes and Payments, London, 1647.
[614] S. P. D. Ed. VI., Addenda IV., p. 26: “Subsidies and duties must be levied on that border for your service, and they are loosed by oppression of your officers.”
[615] Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907, pp. 139–140.
[616] Gairdner, L. and P. Henry VIII., xi. 1244. See the remarks about Cromwell: “Item, the false flatterer says he will make the king the richest prince in Christendom.... I think he goes about to make him the poorest.”
[618] Letter to Mr. Cecill from Sir Anthony Auchar, quoted by Russell, Ket’s Rebellion, in Norfolk, p. 202.
[619] Miss Leonard (Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series vol. xix.) quotes Coke, Institutes, Book III., p. 105 (1644 ed.), and S. P. D. Chas. I., clxxxvii., No. 95: “The decay of tillage and houses of husbandry are the undoubted causes and grounds of depopulation, and a crime against the Common Laws of this Realm, and every continuance thereof is a new crime.” But the words “against the Common Laws" are hardly to be interpreted strictly.
[620] S. P. D. Eliz., vol. cclxxxvi., Nos. 19 and 20: “He is a great taker of advantages. He granted a lease to his brother, who dying a year past, he sued his brother’s wife to overthrow the lease to the undoing of her and her children." For a strong expression of these views see Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part II., 1575, Nov. 20. Lord North to the Bishop of Ely: “My lord, it wilbe no pleasure for you to have hir Majestye and the Councell knowe howe wretchedly yowe live within and without your house, howe extremely covetous, how great a grazier, how marvellous a dayrye man, howe ritche a farmer, how grete an owner. It will not lyke yowe that the world knowe of your decayed houses, ... of the leases you pull violently from many, of the copyeholdes that yowe lawlesslye enter into, of the fre land that yowe wrongfully posese.... Yowe suffer no man to live longer under yowe than yowe lyke him.”
[621] Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue, p. 1: “Farmer, I have heard much evill of the profession, and to tell you my conceit plainly I think the same both evill and unprofitable ... and oftentime you are the cause that men lose their land and sometimes they are abridged of such liberties as they have long used in mannors.”