So that the established church was deprived of all power and prerogative, notwithstanding the express promise of James, who had declared, immediately after his landing, that he would maintain the clergy in their rights and privileges.
JAMES COINS BASE MONEY.
Nor was the king less arbitrary in the executive part of his government, if we suppose that he countenanced the grievous acts of oppression that were daily committed upon the protestant subjects of Ireland; but the tyranny of his proceedings may be justly imputed to the temper of his ministry, consisting of men abandoned to all sense of justice and humanity, who acted from the dictates of rapacity and revenge, inflamed with all the acrimony of religious rancour.

Soldiers were permitted to live upon free quarter; the people were robbed and plundered; licenses and protections were abused in order to extort money from the trading part of the nation.

The king's old stores were ransacked; the shops of tradesmen and the kitchens of burghers were pillaged, to supply the mint with a quantity of brass, which was converted into current coin for his majesty's occasions; an arbitrary value was set upon it, and all persons were required and commanded to take it in payment under the severest penalties, though the proportion between its intrinsic worth and currency was nearly as one to three hundred.

A vast sum of this counterfeit coin was issued in the course of one year, and forced upon the protestants in payment of merchandize, provision, and necessaries for the king's service.

James, not content with the supply granted by parliament, imposed, by his own authority, a tax of twenty thousand pounds per month on chattels, as the former was laid upon lands.