[38] Rushworth Abr. ii. 341; _Clarendon State Papers_, i. 600. It is said by Heylin that the clergy were much spared in the assessment of ship-money. _Life of Laud_, 302.
[40] _Id._ xix. 512. It may be curious to mention some of these. The best turkey was to be sold at 4_s._ 6_d._; the best goose at 2_s._ 4_d._; the best pullet, 1_s._ 8_d._; three eggs for a penny; fresh butter at 5_d._ in summer, at 6_d._ in winter. This was in 1634.
[43] Rymer, xviii. 33, _et alibi_. A commission was granted to the Earl of Arundel and others, May 30, 1625, to enquire what houses, shops, etc., had been built for ten years past, especially since the last proclamation, and to commit the offenders. It recites the care of Elizabeth and James to have the city built in an uniform manner with brick, and also to clear it from under-tenants and base people who live by begging and stealing. _Id._ xviii. 97.
[48] Rushworth Abr. iii. 123; Whitelock, p. 35; _Strafford Letters_, i. 374, _et alibi_. See what Clarendon says, p. 293 (ii. 151, edit. 1826). The second of these tells us, that the city offered to build for the king a palace in St. James's park by way of composition, which was refused. If this be true, it must allude to the palace already projected by him, the magnificent designs for which by Inigo Jones are well known. Had they been executed, the metropolis would have possessed a splendid monument of Palladian architecture; and the reproach sometimes thrown on England, of wanting a fit mansion for its monarchs, would have been prevented. But the exchequer of Charles the First had never been in such a state as to render it at all probable that he could undertake so costly a work.
[52] Roger Coke's _Detection of the Court of England_, i. 309. He was Sir Edward's grandson.
[55] Hudson's "Treatise of the Court of Star-chamber," p. 51. This valuable work, written about the end of James's reign, is published in _Collectanea Juridica_, vol. ii. There is more than one manuscript of it in the British Museum.
In another treatise, written by a clerk of the council about 1590 (Hargrave MSS. ccxvi. 195), the author says: "There was a time when there grew a controversy between the star-chamber and the King's Bench for their jurisdiction in a cause of perjury concerning tithes, Sir Nicholas Bacon, that most grave and worthy counsellor, then being lord-keeper of the great seal, and Sir Robert Catlyn, knight, then lord chief justice of the bench. To the deciding thereof were called by the plaintiff and defendant a great number of the learned counsellors of the law: they were called into the inner star-chamber after dinner, where before the lords of the council they argued the cause on both sides, but could not find the court of greater antiquity by all their books than Henry VII. and Richard III. On this I fell in cogitation how to find some further knowledge thereof." He proceeds to inform us, that by search into records he traced its jurisdiction much higher. This shows, however, the doubts entertained of its jurisdiction in the queen's time. This writer, extolling the court highly, admits that "some of late have deemed it to be new, and put the same in print, to the blemish of its beautiful antiquity." He then discusses the question (for such it seems it was), whether any peer, though not of the council, might sit in the star-chamber; and decides in the negative. "Ao. 5to. of her majesty," he says, in the case of the Earl of Hertford, "there were assembled a great number of the noble barons of this realm, not being of the council, who offered there to sit; but at that time it was declared unto them by the lord-keeper that they were to give place; and so they did, and divers of them tarried the hearing of the cause at the bar."