His total income for the year 1698–99 was £7650 4s. 3½d.—the curious accuracy of these sums does not seem to tally with the confusion to which I have referred—that is to say, about £40,000 of modern money. It may be interesting, while on this subject, to show some of the means common among the great nobles for filling their pockets. In 1697, for instance, we read that “My Lord Chamberlain Dorset has sold the keepership of Greenwich Park to the Earl of Romney” [James Vernon to Matthew Prior], and in the same year—this is when he was getting on in years and entirely withdrawing from politics—“Lord Dorset hath resigned his office of Lord Chamberlain to the Earl of Sunderland for the sum of ten thousand pounds,” but where was this sum to come from? not out of Lord Sunderland’s pocket; no, but “which his Majesty pays.” There was yet another method by which money might conveniently be raised: it is well illustrated by Dorset’s petition regarding the dues on tobacco:
To the King’s most Ext Maty
The humble Petition of CHARLES Earl of Middlesex.
Humbly Sheweth
That by the act [for preventing planting of tobacco in England and for regulating the Plantation Trade] all ships that shall return from any of yr Majties foreign plantations and not return to yr Majties Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and there pay the customs and duties ... shall be confisable and their bonds forfeited. That the Phenix of London, Richard Pidgeon Commander and several other ships have ... discharged merchandizes of the growth of yr Majties Plantations, in yr Kingdom of Ireland, so that by law they are forfeited as by the said Act produceable may appear.
May it therefore please yr Sacred Majty to grant yr Petitioner all forfeitures as well past as to come on accompt of the said Act, with power to depute such persons as he shall think fitting, to look upon and take care that no such abuses shall be in ye future.
[Knole MSS. 1671.]
To this petition I should like to add another, representing the other point of view, that of the unfortunate people who had the King’s soldiers quartered upon them in intolerable numbers, and were, as it appears, not refunded for the expenses to which they had been put. I add this the more willingly, as Dorset was commonly reputed the friend of the poor, and it is said of him that “crowds of poor daily thronged his gates, expecting thence their bread. The lazy and the sick, as he accidentally saw them, were removed from the street to the physician, and not only cured but supplied with what might enable them to resume their former calling. The prisoner has often been released by my Lord’s paying the debt, and the condemned been pardoned, through his intercession with the sovereign.”
To the Right Honble CHARLES Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.
The humble petition of the Innholders and Alehouse Keepers in the parish of Sevenoaks in the county of Kent, Humbly Sheweth,