494.
v Bacon, vol.iv p.

362.
v* Monson, p 267.
When any levies were made for Ireland, France, or the Low Countries, the queen obliged the counties to levy the soldiers, to arm and clothe them, and carry them to the seaports at their own charge.

New-year's gifts were at that time expected from the nobility, and from the more considerable gentry.[*] Purveyance and preemption were also methods of taxation, unequal, arbitrary, and oppressive.

The whole kingdom sensibly felt the burden of those impositions; and it was regarded as a great privilege conferred on Oxford and Cambridge, to prohibit the purveyors from taking any commodities within five miles of these universities.

The queen victualled her navy by means of this prerogative, during the first years of he reign.[**] Wardship was the most regular and legal of all these impositions by prerogative; yet was it a great badge of slavery and oppressive to all the considerable families.