POLITICAL HISTORY for hay, oats, straw, poultry, butter, and other provisions for the royal house- hold. These assessments appear to have been sometimes compounded for ; and that the person upon whom the order was made occasionally obtained the provisions outside the county is evident from an agreement between 'John Barker of Hambledon, Gentleman, and Richard Jacobb of Westminster, Butcher,' for the supply ' of 200 sheep for the county of Rutland into the King's House, 100 at or before 4 February and 100 at or before 20 May 1635,' the prices being 6s. for each of the first and ys. for each of the second hundred sheep/ They seem to express a rate in kind and were probably levied in accordance with the royal prerogative of purveyance,* which, though cur- tailed by Magna Charta and still further restricted by the Long Parliament in 1 64 1, was not finally abrogated till it was resigned by Charles 11/ The forced loan of 1626 was raised with little difficulty, the county, though there were some defaulters, being reported as 'very willing, some offisr- ing two subsidies, some one and a half, and some one subsidy ' ; * and this was also the case with respect to the first levy of ship-money on Rutland in 1635. The total amount of the sums payable by the various parishes, as assessed by ♦he sheriff. Sir Francis Bodenham, in October of that year, was ^(^ 1,000, which was to provide a ship of 100 tons ; half of the money was collected by the end of November, and a receipt for the whole was sent to Bodenham by Sir William Russell on 2 February 1636. The clergy in each parish were rated at a tenth of the whole parochial assessment — a valuation which the sheriff considered as probably lower than that made with respect to the laity/ A fresh assessment of ;/^8oo was made in 1636/ An order was made at the proceedings of the council in December 1635 that ' the judges should take into consideration the dividing of all the counties where one sheriff serves for two counties, for Rutland is a small service and yet has a sheriff alone ' ; ^° and indeed in the matter of ship-money Sir Edward Harington, the new sheriff, had quite enough to do in dealing with this small county. There was not much resistance, though there were ' some few towns wherein some particular persons obstinately refuse to pay (as they pretend out of a matter of conscience), and so not only hinder the towns ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v, App. 402 (Barker MSS.). Some of these papers (with others which do not appear in the Report) were communicated in 1744 to Archaeologia, xi, 204-7, by Thomas Barker of Lyndon, who suggested that such requisitions were made either in pursuance of an old custom or through one of those shifts to which the Stuart kings had recourse when they would not call a Parliament. A document of 27 Jan. 1629 speaks of this provision of 200 sheep as made in accordance with a composition long since made with the officers of the king's household ' by reason of which agreement noe takinge is made of the goods of anye his Mat'ts subjectes wt^in the said countie ' {Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. loc. cit.). This apparently means a composition for the general right of purveyance. But an argument for the existence of a special custom relating to Rutland may perhaps be found in the early connexion of the county with the royal house. It may be noted also that the peculiar position of Rutland in relation to the neighbouring counties continued even in the 17th century Thus in 1640 John Green was appointed escheator of Rutland and Northants {Cal. S.P. Dom. 1640, p. 638;, and in 1661 Maurice Tresham {Cal. Treas. Bks. 1660-7, p. 311), while for the purpose of farming the excise the county was united with Northants in 1662 and three years later with Leicestershire (ibid. 402, 640).
- The prerogative of buying up provisions and other necessaries by the intervention of the king's
purveyors for the use of his royal household at an appraised valuation, in preference to all others, and even without the consent of the owner, and also of forcibly impressing the carriages and horses of the subject to do the king's business on the public road ; Blackstone, Comm. i, 287. ' Taswell-Langmead, Engl. Const. Hist. (3rd ed.), 83, I 36, 590. • Ca/. S.P. Dom. 1625-6, p. 419 ; ibid. 1627-8, p. 364. ' Ibid. 1635, p. 458 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v, App. 402. ' Ca/. S.P. Dom. 1635, p. 498 ; ibid. 1635-6, pp. 208-9. ' Rymer, Foedera, xx, 64. This sum was equivalent to the provision of a ship of 80 tons. '" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1635, p. 558. I 185 24
