verage expenditure about L1,110,000. At
that time prices were lower and the country less burthened with navy
and garrisons, among which latter Dunkirk alone now cost more than
L100,000 a year. It appeared, therefore, that the least sum to
which the King could be expected to 'conform his expense' was
L1,200,000." Burnet writes, "It was believed that if two millions
had been asked he could have carried it. But he (Clarendon) had no
mind to put the King out of the necessity of having recourse to his
Parliament."--Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. ii., pp. 22, 23.]

And in my Lord Treasurer's excellent letter to the King upon this
subject, he tells the King how it was the spending more than the revenue
that did give the first occasion of his father's ruine, and did since
to the rebels; who, he says, just like Henry the Eighth, had great and
sudden increase of wealth, but yet, by overspending, both died poor; and
further tells the King how much of this L1,200,000 depends upon the
life of the Prince, and so must be renewed by Parliament again to
his successor; which is seldom done without parting with some of the
prerogatives of the Crowne; or if denied and he persists to take it of
the people, it gives occasion to a civill war, which may, as it did in
the late business of tonnage and poundage, prove fatal to the Crowne. He
showed me how many ways the Lord Treasurer did take before he moved the
King to farme the Customes in the manner he do, and the reasons that
moved him to do it. He showed the a very excellent argument to prove,
that our importing lesse than we export, do not impoverish the kingdom,
according to the received opinion: which, though it be a paradox, and
that I do not remember the argument, yet methought there was a great
deale in what he said. And upon the whole I find him a most exact and
methodicall man, and of great industry: and very glad that he thought
fit to show me all this; though I cannot easily guess the reason why he
should do it to me, unless from the plainness that he sees I use to
him in telling him how much the King may suffer for our want of
understanding the case of our Treasury. Thence to White Hall (where
my Lord Sandwich was, and gave me a good countenance, I thought),
and before the Duke did our usual business, and so I about several
businesses in the house, and then out to the Mewes with Sir W. Pen. But
in my way first did meet with W. Howe, wh