s to expire, none of them will take a lease on other
conditions; or, if he brings in a foreigner who will agree to pay a
reasonable rent, the other tenants, by all manner of injuries, will make
that foreigner so uneasy, that he must be forced to quit the farm; as
the late Earl of Bath felt, by the experience of above ten thousand
pounds loss.

The gradual decrease for about two hundred years after, was not
considerable, and therefore I do not rely on the account given by some
historians, that Harry the Seventh left behind him eighteen hundred
thousand pounds; for although the West Indies were discovered before his
death, and although he had the best talents and instruments for exacting
of money, ever possessed by any prince since the time of Vespasian,
(whom he resembled in many particulars); yet I conceive, that in his
days the whole coin of England could hardly amount to such a sum. For in
the reign of Philip and Mary, Sir Thomas Cokayne of Derbyshire, [1] the
best housekeeper of his quality in the county, allowed his lady fifty
pounds a year for maintaining the family, one pound a year wages to each
servant, and two pounds to the steward; as I was told by a person of
quality who had seen the original account of his economy. Now this sum
of fifty pound, added to the advantages of a large domain, might be
equal to about five hundred pounds a year at present, or somewhat more
than four-fifths.

[Footnote 1: Sir Thomas Cokayne (1519?-1592), known as "a professed
hunter and not a scholler." He was the eldest son of Francis Cokayne, or
Cockaine, of Ashbourne, Derbyshire. One of his sons, Edward, was the
father of Thomas Cokayne, the lexicographer. Sir Thomas, in 1591,
published "A Short Treatise of Hunting, compyled for the Delight of
Noblemen and Gentlemen." [T. S.]]

The great plenty of silver in England began in Queen Elizabeth's reign,
when Drake, and others, took vast quantities of coin and bullion from
the Spaniards, either upon their own American coasts, or in their return
to Spain. However, so much hath been imported annually from that time to
this, that the value of money in England, and most parts of Europe, is
sunk above one half within the space of an hundred years,
notwithstanding the great export of silver for about eighty years past,
to the East Indies, from whence it never returns. But gold being not
liable to the same accident, and by new discoveries growing every day
more plentiful, seems in danger of