26 HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

chap. 200,000 pounds thereby levied on the people,Lll. scarcely 1,500 came into the king’s coffers.Though we ought not to suspect the noble histo-rian of exaggerations to the disadvantage ofCharles’s measures; this fact, it must be owned,appears somewhat incredible. The same authoradds, that the king’s intention was to teach hissubjects how unthrifty a thing it was to refusereasonable supplies to the crown. An imprudentproject! to offend a whole nation, under the viewof punishment; and to hope, by acts of violence,to break their refractory spirits, without beingpossessed of any force to prevent resistance,i63 *. The council of York had been first erected,after a rebellion , by a patent from Henry VIII,.without any authority of parliament; and thisexercise of power, like many others, was indul-ged to that arbitrary monarch. This council hadlong acted chiefly as a criminal court; but, be-sides some innovations, introduced by James,Charles thought proper, some time after Went-worth was made president, to extend its powers,and to give it a large civil jurisdiction, and that,in some respects, discretionary *\ It is not im-probable , that the king’s intention was only toprevent inconveniences, which arose from thebringing of every cause, from the most distantparts of the kingdom, into Westminster - hall:But the consequence, in the mean time, of thismeasure, was the putting of all the northern

3 * Rush worth, vol. ii. p. 158,1; 9, &c. Franklyn, p. 412.