The chief part of government to which she attended, was the extorting of money from her people, in order to satisfy his demands; and as the parliament had granted her but a scanty supply, she had recourse to expedients very violent and irregular.

She levied a loan of sixty thousand pounds upon a thousand persons, of whose compliance, either on account of their riches or their affections to her, she held herself best assured: but that sum not sufficing, she exacted a general loan on every one who possessed twenty pounds a year.
This imposition lay heavy on the gentry, who were obliged, many of them, to retrench their expenses and dismiss their servants, in order to enable them to comply with her demands: and as these servants, accustomed to idleness, and having no means of subsistence, commonly betook themselves to theft and robbery, the queen published a proclamation, by which she obliged their former masters to take them back to their service.

She levied sixty thousand marks on seven thousand yeomen who had not contributed to the former loan; and she exacted thirty-six thousand pounds more from the merchants.

In order to engage some Londoners to comply more willingly with her multiplied extortions, she passed an edict prohibiting for four months the exporting of any English cloths or kerseys to the Netherlands; an expedient which procured a good market for such as had already sent any quantity of cloth thither.

Her rapaciousness engaged her to give endless disturbance and interruption to commerce.