I pretend not to determine exactly the amount of these supplies; because the value of a subsidy was continually falling; and in the end of her reign it amounted only to eighty thousand pounds,[*] though in the beginning it had been a hundred and twenty thousand.

If we suppose that the supplies granted Elizabeth during a reign of forty-five years amounted to three millions, we shall not probably be much wide of the truth.[**] This sum makes only sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six pounds a year; and it is surprising, that while the queen's demands were so moderate, and her expenses so well regulated, she should ever have found any difficulty in obtaining a supply from parliament, or be reduced to make sale of the crown lands.

But such was the extreme, I had almost said, absurd parsimony of the parliaments during that period.
* D'Ewes, p.

630.
* Lord Salisbury computed these supplies only at two millions eight hundred thousand pounds, Journ.

17th Feb.
1609.