HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII. 327 



laws both of war and peace : concluding, that he 

 could neither with honour, nor with the safety of his 

 people, to whom he did owe protection, let pass 

 these wrongs unrevenged. The parliament under 

 stood him well, and gave him a subsidy, limited to 

 the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, 

 besides two fifteens : for his wars were always to him 

 as a mine of treasure of a strange kind of ore ; iron 

 at the top, and gold and silver at the bottom. At 

 this parliament, for that there had been so much 

 time spent in making laws the year before, and for 

 that it was called purposely in respect of the Scottish 

 war, there were no laws made to be remembered. 

 Only there passed a law, at the suit of the merchant- 

 adventurers of England, against the merchant- 

 adventurers of London, for monopolizing and exact 

 ing upon the trade ; which it seemeth they did a 

 little to save themselves after the hard time they had 

 sustained by want of trade. But those innovations 

 were taken away by parliament. 



But it was fatal to the king to fight for his 

 money ; and though he avoided to fight with enemies 

 abroad, yet he was still enforced to fight for it 

 with rebels at home : for no sooner began the subsidy 

 to be levied in Cornwall, but the people there began 

 to grudge and murmur. The Cornish being a race 

 of men, stout of stomach, mighty of body and limb, 

 and that lived hardly in a barren country, and many 

 of them could, for a need, live under ground, that 

 were tinners. They muttered extremely, that it 

 was a thing not to be suffered, that for a little stir 



