182.
** This tax was a livre upon a hearth; and it was imagined that the imposition would have yielded one million two hundred thousand livres a year, which supposes so many hearths in the provinces possessed by the English.

But such loose conjectures have commonly no manner of authority, much less in such ignorant times.

There is a strong instance of it in the present reign.

The house of commons granted the king a tax of twenty-two shillings on each parish, supposing that the amount of the whole would be fifty thousand pounds.
But they were found to be in a mistake of near five to one.
Cotton, p.3.And the council assumed the power of augmenting the tax upon each parish.
This incident revived the animosity which the inhabitants bore to the English, and which all the amiable qualities of the prince of Wales were not able to mitigate or assuage.

They complained that they were considered as a conquered people, that their privileges were disregarded, that all trust was given to the English alone, that every office of honor and profit was conferred on these foreigners, and that the extreme reluctance, which most of them had expressed, to receive the new yoke, was likely to be long remembered against them.