Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/30

circulation, the proportion of alloy was fifty per cent., and in the end, the silver currency would have to descend to half its nominal value. But the entire descent, though inevitable, was not to be accomplished at once. To relieve the shock (so the Government pretended), the first fall was made a partial one. A resolution was taken in council on the 30th of April that the shilling in future should pass for ninepence, and the groat for threepence. May.But anxiety for the convenience of the public was not the only cause of the delay in the completion of the operation. The treasury was as usual exhausted. The economy which had been attempted in the household had been more than defeated by the cost of the gendarmerie, as the force was called, which the council had been obliged to raise for their protection. The wages, food, and clothing of nine hundred men were added to the ordinary expenditure, and the revenue, which had been unequal to the usual demands upon it, was now hopelessly deficient. 'Purveying,' by which the Court was accustomed to supply its necessities, by taking what it required from the farmers at statute prices, had been forbidden by Act of Parliament.^[1] The prohibition had not been observed for the Court, it was said, must live, and the King had no money. The royal purveyors continued to take at their pleasure, paying exactly half the market prices for everything.^[2] But rapacity of this kind could supply

1. 2 and 3 Edward VI.
2. 'To show what hurt cometh by provisions to the poor man it shall not need; experience doth make it too plain. But, for example, the purveyors alloweth for a