executed, and which Charles I., enraged by ill usage from his parliament, and reduced to the greatest difficulties, put afterwards in practice, to the great discontent of the nation.
The demand of benevolence was another invention of that age for taxing the people.

This practice was so little conceived to be irregular, that the commons in 1585 offered the queen a benevolence; which she very generously refused, as having no occasion at that time for money.[****] Queen Mary, also, by an order of council, increased the customs in some branches; and her sister imitated the example.[v] There was a species of ship money imposed at the time of the Spanish invasion: the several ports were required to equip a certain number of vessels at their own charge: and such was the alacrity of the people for the public defence, that some of the ports, particularly London, sent double the number demanded of them.[v*] * Bacon, vol.iv.p.

362.
** In the second of Richard II., it was enacted that in loans which the king shall require of his subjects, upon letters of privy seal, such as have "reasonable" excuse of not lending, may there be received without further summons, travel, or grief.

See Cotton's Abridg.p.170.By this law, the king's prerogative of exacting loans was ratified; and what ought to be deemed a "reasonable" excuse was still left in his own breast to determine.
*** Haynes, p.

518, 519.
**** D'Ewes, p.