ely deigned to pretend any sentiment of love or
even of gratitude towards her. The chief part of government to which
she attended, was the extorting of money from her people, in order to
satisfy his demands; and as the parliament had granted her but a scanty
supply, she had recourse to expedients very violent and irregular. She
levied a loan of sixty thousand pounds upon a thousand persons, of whose
compliance, either on account of their riches or their affections to
her, she held herself best assured: but that sum not sufficing, she
exacted a general loan on every one who possessed twenty pounds a year.
This imposition lay heavy on the gentry, who were obliged, many of
them, to retrench their expenses and dismiss their servants, in order
to enable them to comply with her demands: and as these servants,
accustomed to idleness, and having no means of subsistence, commonly
betook themselves to theft and robbery, the queen published a
proclamation, by which she obliged their former masters to take them
back to their service. She levied sixty thousand marks on seven thousand
yeomen who had not contributed to the former loan; and she exacted
thirty-six thousand pounds more from the merchants. In order to engage
some Londoners to comply more willingly with her multiplied extortions,
she passed an edict prohibiting for four months the exporting of
any English cloths or kerseys to the Netherlands; an expedient which
procured a good market for such as had already sent any quantity of
cloth thither. Her rapaciousness engaged her to give endless disturbance
and interruption to commerce. The English company settled in Antwerp
having refused her a loan of forty thousand pounds, she dissembled
her resentment till she found that they had bought and shipped great
quantities of cloth for Antwerp fair, which was approaching: she then
laid an embargo on the ships, and obliged the merchants to grant her a
loan of the forty thousand pounds at first demanded, to engage for the
payment of twenty thousand pounds more at a limited time, and to submit
to an arbitrary imposition of twenty shillings on each piece. Some time
after, she was informed that the Italian merchants had shipped above
forty thousand pieces of cloth for the Levant, for which they were to
pay her a crown a piece, the usual imposition: she struck a bargain
with the merchant adventurers in London; prohibited the foreigners from
making any exportation; and received from the Englis