ome, they will watch their time when there is but a
bailiff or a servant remaining, and put the axe to the root of the tree,
ere even the master can stop it. Again, they use a strange and most
unjust exaction in causing the subjects to pay poundage of their own
debts, due from your majesty unto them; so as a poor man, when he has
had his hay, or his wood, or his poultry (which perchance he was full
loath to part with, and had for the provision of his own family, and not
to put to sale) taken from him, and that not at a just price, but under
the value, and cometh to receive his money, he shall have after the rate
of twelve pence in the pound abated for poundage of his due payment upon
so hard conditions. Nay, further, they are grown to that extremity, (as
is affirmed, though it be scarce credible, save that in such persons all
things are credible,) that they will take double poundage once when the
debenture is made, and again the second time when the money is paid. For
the second point, most gracious sovereign, touching the quantity which
they take far above that which is answered to your majesty's use; it is
affirmed unto me by divers gentlemen of good report, as a matter which I
may safely avouch unto your majesty, that there is no pound profit which
redoundeth unto your majesty in this course, but induceth and begetteth
three pound damage upon your subjects, beside the discontentment. And to
the end they may make their spoil more securely, what do they? Whereas
divers statutes do strictly provide, that whatsoever they take shall De
registered and attested, to the end that by making a collation of that
which is taken from the country and that which is answered above,
their deceits might appear, they, to the end, to obscure their deceits,
utterly omit the observation of this, which the law prescribeth. And
therefore to descend, if it may please your majesty, to the third sort
of abuse, which is of the unlawful manner of their taking, whereof
this question is a branch; it is so manifold, as it rather asketh an
enumeration of some of the particulars than a prosecution of all.
For their price, by law they ought to take as they can agree with the
subject; by abuse, they take at an imposed and enforced price. By law
they ought to take but one apprizement by neighbors in the country; by
abuse, they make a second apprizement at the court gate; and when the
subjects' cattle come up many miles, lean and out of plight by reason of