their articles to market, would enter into the history of the arts of grinding the labouring class of society; a remnant of feudal tyranny! The very title of this officer became odious; and by a statute of Edward III. the hateful name of purveyor was ordered to be changed into acheteur or buyer! A change of name, it was imagined, would conceal its nature! The term often devised strangely contrasted with the thing itself. Levies of money were long raised under the pathetic appeal of benevolences. When Edward IV. was passing over to France, he obtained, under this gentle demand, money towards "the great journey," and afterwards having "rode about the more part of the lands, and used the people in such fair manner, that they were liberal in their gifts;" Old Fabian adds, "the which way of the levying of this money was after-named a BENEVOLENCE." Edward IV. was courteous in this newly-invented style, and was besides the handsomest tax-gatherer in his kingdom! His royal presence was very dangerous to the purses of his loyal subjects, particularly to those of the females. In his progress, having kissed a widow for having contributed a larger sum than was

expected from her estate, she was so overjoyed at the singular honour and delight, that she

doubled her benevolence, and a second kiss had ruined her! but in the succeeding reign of Richard III. the term had already lost the freshness of its innocence. In the speech which the Duke of Buckingham delivered from the hustings in Guildhall, he explained the term to the satisfaction of his auditors, who even then were as cross-humoured as the livery of this day, in their notions of what now we gently call "supplies." "Under the plausible name of benevolence, as it was held in the time of Edward IV. your goods were taken from you much against your will, as if by that name was understood that every man should pay not what he pleased, but what the king would have him;" or, as a marginal note in Buck's Life of Richard III. more pointedly has it, that "the name of benevolence signified that every man should pay, not what he of his own good will list, but what the king of his good will list to take *." Richard III., whose busi

* Daines Barrington, in "Observations on the Statutes," gives the marginal note of Buck as the words of the duke; they certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the

ness, like that of all usurpers, was to be popular, in a statute even condemns this "benevolence" as a new imposition," and enacts that "none shall be charged with it in future; many families having been ruined under these pretended gifts." His successor, however, found means to levy "a benevolence;" but when Henry VIII. demanded one, the citizens of London appealed to the act of Richard III. Cardinal Wolsey insisted that the law of a murderous usurper should not be enforced. One of the common-council courageously replied, that " King Richard, conjointly with parliament, had enacted many good statutes." Even then the citizen seems to have comprehended the spirit of our constitutionthat taxes should not be raised without consent of parliament !

Charles the First, amidst his urgent wants, at first had hoped, by the pathetic appeal to benevolences, that he should have touched the hearts of his unfriendly commoners; but the term of benevolence proved unlucky. The resisters of tax

veracious ones but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity. The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy quaintness is Buck's,

ation took full advantage of a significant meaning, which had long been lost in the custom; asserting by this very term that all levies of money were not compulsory, but the voluntary gifts of the people. In that political crisis, when in the fulness of time all the national grievances, which had hitherto been kept down, started up with one voice, the courteous term strangely contrasted with the rough demand. Lord Digby said "the granting of subsidies, under so preposterous a name as of a benevolence, was-a malevolence." And Mr. Grimstone observed, that

66

They have granted a benevolence, but the nature of the thing agrees not with the name." The nature indeed had so entirely changed from the name, that when James I. had tried to warm the hearts of his "benevolent" people, he got "little money, and lost a great deal of love." "Subsidies," that is, grants made by parliament, observes Arthur Wilson, a dispassionate historian, "get more of the people's money, but exactions enslave the mind."

When benevolences had become a grievance, to diminish the odium they invented more inviting phrases. The subject was cautiously informed

that the sums demanded were only loans; or he was honoured by a letter under the privy seal'; a bond which the king engaged to repay at a definite period; but privy seals at length got to be hawked about to persons coming out of church. 66 Privy seals," says a manuscript letter, "are flying thick and threefold in sight of all the world, which might surely have been better performed in delivering them to every man privately at home." The general loan, which in fact was a forced loan, was one of the most crying grievances under Charles I. Ingenious in the destruction of his own popularity, the king contrived a new mode, of "secret instructions to commissioners * They were to find out persons who could bear the largest rates. How the commissioners were to acquire this secret and inquisitorial knowledge appears in the bungling contrivance. It is one of their orders that after a number of inquiries have been put to a person, concerning others who had spoken against loan-money, and what arguments they had used, this person was to be

These "Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General Loan" may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.