193) the reason assigned for this particular sum.

"From thence my lord treasurer came to the price; and here he said, that the king would no more rise and fall like a merchant.

That he would not have a flower of his crown (meaning the court of wards) so much tossed; that it was too dainty to be so handled; and then he said, that he must deliver the very countenance and character of the king's mind out of his own handwriting; which before he read, he said he would acquaint us with a pleasant conceit of his majesty.

As concerning the number of ninescore thousand pounds, which was our number, he could not affect, because nine was the number of the poets, who were always beggars, though they served so many muses; and eleven was the number of the apostles, when the traitor Judas was away; and therefore might best be affected by his majesty: but there was a mean number, which might accord us both; and that was ten: which, says my lord treasurer, is a sacred number; for so many were God's commandments, which tend to virtue and edification." If the commons really voted twenty thousand pounds a year more, on account of this "pleasant conceit" of the king and the treasurer, it was certainly the best paid wit, for its goodness, that ever was in the world.
Amidst all these attacks, some more, some less violent, on royal prerogative, the king displayed, as openly as ever, all his exalted notions of monarchy and the authority of princes.

Even in a speech to the parliament where he begged for supply, and where he should naturally have used every art to ingratiate himself with that assembly, he expressed himself in these terms: "I conclude, then, the point touching the power of kings, with this axiom of divinity, that, as to dispute what God may do, is blasphemy; but what God wills, that divines may lawfully and do ordinarily dispute and discuss.