The advantage, therefore, of every change was taken against the crown; and the crown could obtain the advantage of none.

And, to make the matter worse, the alterations which happened in property during this age, were in general unfavorable to the crown.

The small proprietors, or twenty-pound men, went continually to decay; and when their estates were swallowed up by a greater, the new purchaser increased not his subsidy.

So loose, indeed, is the whole method of rating subsidies, that the wonder was, not how the tax should continually diminish, but how it yielded any revenue at all.

It became at last so unequal and uncertain, that the parliament was obliged to change it into a land tax.
The price of corn during this reign, and that of the other necessaries of life, was no lower, or was rather higher, than at present.