22 
HISTORY OF THE [book hi. 
give them leave to institute in his name, but at 
their own cost, a process in the Exchequer for try¬ 
ing the validity of the earl’s patent; or that he 
would leave those who claimed under it (for the 
second earl of Carlisle dying in the interim, had 
bequeathed his rights in the West Indies to the 
earl of Kinnoul) to their legal remedy, absolutely 
denying that either the late or former lord Carlisle 
had sustained the smallest expense in settling the 
colony. 
Instead of consenting to either of those most 
reasonable propositions, the king ordered inquiry 
to be made into the several allegations and claims of 
the parties concerned, by a committee of the privy- 
council ; before whom some of the planters being 
heard, one of them, in order more readily to induce 
the king to take the sovereignty of the island into 
his own hands, offered, in the name of the inha¬ 
bitants, to consent, in that case, to lay an impo¬ 
sition of so much in the hundred on the produce 
of their estates, out of which his Majesty’s go¬ 
vernor might be honourably supported, and the 
king dispose of the overplus as he should think fit. 
To a monarch of Charles’s disposition, this was 
too tempting a proposition to be resisted. We are 
informed, that his majesty received the offer very 
graciously ; cc and the next care of the committee,” 
adds the noble historian who was himself of that 
body, “ was to make some computation, that might 
be depended upon, as to the yearly revenue that 
would arise upon the imposition within the island.’ 
