YEARLY COST DURING THE REIGN OF CHARLES II. 157 



royal treasury permitted. It seems the hunt-servants were 

 entitled to sell, or otherwise dispose of their offices to any 

 sufficient deputy — provided the King or the Lord Chamberlain 

 approved of the transference ; but as the security was so 

 equivocal very little business was done in that respect. Mr. 

 Francis Dodsworth, the sergeant of the pack— who held the 

 same office by patent in the reign of Charles I., with a salary 

 of 50/. a year, a pension of 50/. a yeai", and an allowance of 

 100/. a year for keeping and feeding sixteen couple of buck- 

 hounds — now surrendered that patent into the High Court 

 of Chancery to be cancelled, whereupon another patent was 

 granted to him to hold the same office with the wages of 

 10s. ll^d. per day, " which amounteth to the said sum of 200/. 

 a year formerly allowed to him, wanting only the twice half- 

 penny, to be paid to him, his assignees, &c., during the natural 

 term of his life."* The other officers of this branch of the 

 royal pack were entitled to a salary ranging from 4s. 2|f(Z. to 

 lOd. a day each, and in most cases certain annual allowance for 

 two suits of livery a year. To these sums must be added the 

 King's free gift and reward to the huntsmen for their attendance 

 from Midsummer to Michaelmas, an annual donation usually 

 amounting to about 156/. 16s. 4c/. However, those halcyon 

 days did not long continue. The Treasury of Charles II., 

 always in a strained condition, exhibited grave symptoms in 

 1677, for which year the total allocated to the officers of the 

 Buckhounds was no more than 790/. 12s. 4f(^., principally 

 arrears, and even this sum was not distributed until three 

 years later (in 1680). The payments for 1678 were still worse 

 — total 427/. 19s. 4|c/. ; while those for the following year 

 dropped to 162/. 14s. 2d. As a matter of fact, the Royal 

 Exchequer was practically bankrupt — the Civil List being 

 almost suspended — most of the Court officials " utterly un- 

 done." Yet the King continued to lavish vast sums on his 

 favourite mistresses ! At the same time he had hardly a shirt 

 to his own back, still he kept half-a-dozen laundresses who 



* He died some weeks before Midsummer l(ifi2. 



