A laud tax for a year was imposed of a shilling a pound; two shillings a pound on two thirds of the salaries of offices; fifteen shillings on every hundred pounds of bankers' money and stock; an additional excise upon beer for six years, and certain impositions upon law proceedings for nine years.
The parliament had never before been in a more liberal humor; and never surely was it less merited by the counsels of the king and of his ministers.[*] * This year, on the 3d of January, died George Monk, duke of Albemarle, at Newhall, in Essex, after a languishing illness, and in the sixty-third year of his age.

He left a great estate of fifteen thousand pounds a year in land, and sixty thousand pounds in money, acquired by the bounty of the king, and increased by his own frugality in his later years.

Bishop Burnet, who, agreeably to his own factious spirit, treats this illustrious personage with great malignity, reproaches him with avarice; but as he appears not to have been in the least tainted with rapacity, his frugal conduct may more candidly be imputed to the habits acquired in early life, while he was possessed of a very narrow fortune.

It is indeed a singular proof of the strange power of faction, that any malignity should pursue the memory of a nobleman, the tenor of whose life was so unexceptionable, and who, by restoring the ancient, and legal, and free government to three kingdoms plunged in the most destructive anarchy, may safely be said to be the subject, in these islands, who, since the beginning of time, rendered the most durable and most essential services to his native country.

The means also by which he achieved his great undertakings, were almost entirely unexceptionable.
His temporary dissimulation, being absolutely necessary, could scarcely be blamable.