and land to land.  What want they of being kings, but the name?  Look into the shires and counties, where, with their purchased lordships and manors, one of their private letters has equal power with your Majesty’s privy seal.[D] It is better to be one of their hinds, than your Majesty’s gentleman usher; one of their grooms, than your guards.  What care they, if it be called tribute or no, so long as it comes in termly:  or whether their chamber be called Exchequer, or the dens of cheaters, so that the money be left there.”

[Footnote A:  Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell had the monopolies of gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state; and not only cheated the people, but, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made of it are said to have rotted the flesh.  As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment.  The brother of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to fly the country.  The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different from kings’ speeches in parliament:  he speaks as indignantly as any individual who was personally aggrieved:  “Three patents at this time have been complained of, and thought great grievances; my purpose is to strike them all dead, and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done presently.  Had these things been complained of to me, before the parliament, I could have done the office of a just king, and have punished them; peradventure more than now ye intend to do.  No private person whatsoever, were he ever so dear unto me, shall be respected by me by many degrees as the public good; and I hope, my lords, that ye will do me that right to publish to my people this my heart purposes.  Proceed judicially; spare none, where ye find just cause to punish:  but remember that laws have not their eyes in their necks, but in their foreheads.”—­Rushworth, vol. i. p. 26.]

[Footnote B:  The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers, who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth’s reign, it was one of the popular grievances brought into Parliament—­it is there called, “A bill against Double Payments of Book Debts.”  One of the country members, who made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, “Pay the reckoning overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morning.”]

[Footnote C:  In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth 400,000_l_., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets.  He generally contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called “making the feathers pay for the goose.”  He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly compared his bonds “to infants, which battle best by sleeping;” to battle, is to be nourished—­a term still retained in the battle-book of the university.  I have elsewhere preserved the character and habits of the money-dealer in the age of James I.—­See “Curiosities of Literature,” 11th Edit. p. 228.]