12 LETTERS FROM STEPHENS. 



To the King. 

 May it please your Majesty, 



Being yesterday assembled in council to proceed in the 

 course we had begun for retrenchment of your majesty s 

 expenses; we received your princely letters, whereby we 

 are directed to send to your majesty the names of the 

 officers of the exchequer, custom-house, and auditors, out 

 of which you purpose to make choice of some to be sub- 

 committed to handle the mechanic and laborious part of 

 that which your majesty had appointed to our care; we 

 have according to our duty sent unto your majesty the 

 names of the several officers of your majesty in those 

 places, to be ordered as your wisdom shall think best to 

 direct. But withal, we thought it appurtenant to our 

 duties to inform your majesty how far we have proceeded 

 in the several heads of retrenchments by your majesty at 

 your departure committed unto us, that when you know in 

 what estate our labours are, your judgment may the better 

 direct any further course, as shall be meet. 



The matter of the household, was by us, some days since, 

 committed peremptorily to the officers of the house, as 

 matter of commandment from your majesty, and of duty in 

 them, to reduce the expense of your house to a limited 

 charge of fifty thousand pounds by the year, besides the 

 benefit of the compositions; and they have ever since 

 painfully, as we are informed, travailed in it, and will be 

 ready on Sunday next, which was the day given them, to 

 present some models of retrenchments of divers kinds, all 

 aiming at your majesty s service. 



In the point of pensions we have made a beginning, by 

 suspending some wholly for a time, and of others of a third 

 part ; in which course we are still going on, until we make 

 it fit to be presented to your majesty; in like manner the 

 Lord Chamberlain, and the Lord Hay, did yesterday report 

 unto us, what their travail had ordered in the wardrobe ; 

 and, although some doubt did arise unto us, whether your 

 majesty s letters intended a stay of our labours, until you 

 had made choice of the sub-committee intended by you, 

 yet, presuming that such a course by sub-committee was 

 purposed rather for a furtherance than let to that work, 

 we did resolve to go on still, till your majesty s further 

 directions shall come unto us ; and then, according to our 

 duty, we will proceed as we shall be by your majesty 

 commanded ; in the mean time, we thought it our duty to 



