government, and for faults of the King, though some of them were misfortunes; and both the misfortunes and the misgovernment (if any were) were the faults of the Parliament; who, by denying to give him money, did both frustrate his attempts abroad, and put him upon those extraordinary ways (which they call illegal) of raising money at home.
A. You see what a heap of evils they have raised to make a show of ill-government to the people, which they second with an enumeration of the many services they have done the King in overcoming a great many of them, though not all, and in divers other things; and say, that though they had contracted a debt to the Scots of 220,000l. and had granted six subsidies, and a bill of poll-money worth six subsidies more, yet that God had so blessed the endeavours of this Parliament, that the kingdom was a gainer by it: and then follows the catalogue of those good things they had done for the King and kingdom. For the kingdom they had done (they said) these things: they had abolished ship-money *which cost the kingdom 200 thousand pounds a year*; they had taken away coat and conduct money, and other military charges, which, they said, amounted to little less than the ship-money; that they suppressed all monopolies, which they reckoned above a million yearly saved by the subject; that they had quelled living grievances, meaning evil counsellors and actors, by the death of my Lord of Strafford, by the flight of Chancellor Finch, and of Secretary Windebank, by the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of Judge Bartlet, and the impeachment of other bishops and judges; that they had passed a bill for a triennial Parliament, and another for the continuance of the present Parliament, till they should think fit to dissolve themselves.
B. That is to say, for ever, if they be suffered. But the sum of all these things, which they had done for the kingdom, is: that they had left it without government, without strength, without money, without law, and without good counsel.
