the conquest,
seems to have consisted in certain reservations or rents out of the
demesne lands of the crown, which were expressly appropriated to her
majesty, distinct from the king. It is frequent in domesday-book,
after specifying the rent due to the crown, to add likewise the
quantity of gold or other renders reserved to the queen[n]. These were
frequently appropriated to particular purposes; to buy wool for her
majesty's use[o], to purchase oyl for her lamps[p], or to furnish her
attire from head to foot[q], which was frequently very costly, as one
single robe in the fifth year of Henry II stood the city of London in
upwards of fourscore pounds[r]. A practice somewhat similar to that of
the eastern countries, where whole cities and provinces were
specifically assigned to purchase particular parts of the queen's
apparel[s]. And, for a farther addition to her income, this duty of
queen-gold is supposed to have been originally granted; those matters
of grace and favour, out of which it arose, being frequently obtained
from the crown by the powerful intercession of the queen. There are
traces of it's payment, though obscure ones, in the book of domesday
and in the great pipe-roll of Henry the first[t]. In the reign of
Henry the second the manner of collecting it appears to have been well
understood, and it forms a distinct head in the antient dialogue of
the exchequer[u] written in the time of that prince, and usually
attributed to Gervase of Tilbury. From that time downwards it was
regularly claimed and enjoyed by all the queen consorts of England
till the death of Henry VIII; though after the accession of the Tudor
family the collecting of it seems to have been much neglected: and,
there being no queen consort afterwards till the accession of James I,
a period of near sixty years, it's very nature and quantity became
then a matter of doubt: and, being referred by the king to his then
chief justices and chief baron, their report of it was so very
unfavorable[w], that queen Anne (though she claimed it) yet never
thought proper to exact it. In 1635, 11 Car. I, a time fertile of
expedients for raising money upon dormant precedents in our old
records (of which ship-money was a fatal instance) the king, at the
petition of his queen Henrietta Maria, issued out his writ for levying
it; but afterwards purchased it of his consort at the price of ten
thousand pounds; finding it, perhaps, too trifling and troublesome to
levy. A